I respectfully disagree. The power of positive thinking isn't going to heal a tumor, a scorching case of chlamydia, or schizophrenia. In other words, there is a huge and very meaningful difference between thinking you're feeling better and actually having treated the cause of the pain. It's time that we - collectively, as human beings - put magical thinking aside and start to own up to the fact that we can't simply will away the misfortunes that befall us.

When we talk about the placebo effect, what we are really saying is that, when we are sick, there are usually two causes to our pain that can function independently of one another. The first is the actual, organic cause - which we can't treat simply by adopting certain beliefs or thinking differently. And the second is psychic pain, which we can.

"As a business tool, it's all but useless"

umm.. unless you run your business in the could, want a 'laptop' that you can hand out to your employees and not worry about what the hell is on there if either it gets left on a park bench or another employee uses it.

sounds absolutely perfect for business and government.

A friend's girlfriend loved to hang out in an IRC channel. She thought she was "stranger proof" because she limited the amount of information she shared in any one conversation. Some of the items she revealed were public, while others were revealed in "private" conversations. She (erroneously) assumed that some of the private conversations were with individuals sharing no connection with each other. After hanging out in the channel for a couple of weeks she got a phone call -- from Australia. One of the channel members created profiles of other users and data mined their conversations in order to identify them. Coupled with the ability to search the net for the consistent use of handles that many become attached to, he was able to track down people rather easily.

For him it was a game. For others it's business.

I use the caps lock key a lot. On French keyboards, when a word begins with an accentuated letter, the only way to display it correctly is to hit caps-lock and press "é" or "à". Give me way to write easily É or À otherwise this is a (arguably minor) feature you remove from me.