It's not an exoskeleton, it's a walker.

The article says it's an exoskeleton. The LandWalker article says it's an exoskeleton ... what's the difference? No working arms?

I'd probably buy that distinction.

A girlfriend!

Try this. ;-)

Instead of pony, package contained bobcat. Would not buy again.

I got a cougar. Would definitely buy again. :-P

I guess the problem with this kind of list is that _everything_ has an extreme. Pick something you like, and some millionaire probably has an obscenely expensive version of it. This list was mostly the extreme versions of things I have no interest in.

But .... but ... exoskeleton!! Powered freaking exoskeleton.

Of course, I'd need the bigger LandWalker version, but it comes with guns, so that's OK.

Which is a sales technique whereby you convince yourself that you believe the lie, so as to lie more effectively.

Well, it's like the old joke ...

What's the difference between a software salesman and a used car salesman? The used car salesman knows he's lying to you. :-P

And that applies even if the symptoms are clearly exacerbated by real physical stimuli (such as milk).

In this case, the only reason I knew about the milk is someone (as a rather cruel prank) spiked something with dairy and said it didn't have any. Thirty minutes later, there was rather a mad sprint.

I'm disinclined to believe that something you aren't aware of can lead to a psychosomatic response.

Just sayin'.

I also don't know how they got the study past the scientific review board, which I thought, would laugh them out of the room.

Well, it's not like he endangered the placebo group any more than the control group.

I should think it would be an interesting conversation ... "I'm going to do nothing with one group, and tell the other group I'm giving them a placebo and then I'm gonna see what happens".

Fun job though, medical studies without medicine. :-P

I can't prove it, but I suspect that a lot of modern chronic illnesses are psychosomatic and are a consequence of loneliness.

I can't speak to all chronic illness ... but I've know at least two people with IBS. Trust me, loneliness wasn't the cause of it in either case. Milk, however, in one case had observable and, er, 'dramatic' results in a very short time.

It's easy to dismiss this stuff as purely psychosomatic, I'm just not sure that is always (or even mostly) the case. In its early stages, Multiple Sclerosis is pretty hard to diagnose and can be chalked up to all sorts of things.

You have to start with the premise that, generally speaking, people actually experience this stuff, even if you can't explain why.

So they expect it to still work. And because they expect it to work it does.

You know, if you could induce the placebo effect like that, it would be fairly astounding because the placebo effect is often as effective (or more) than the medicine. I suspect it would also turn modern medicine on its ear. "You're better because you want to be better" becomes something for some pretty serious investigation.

Part of me wonders if the patients understood this -- they were described as "like sugar pills", and it said placebo on the pill -- but it's possible that they just didn't realize that they were literally being given nothing whatsoever in terms of medicine.

This part intrigues me ... "these findings suggest that rather than mere positive thinking, there may be significant benefit to the very performance of medical ritual" ... that would seem to imply that the human brain has a far greater capacity for fixing itself than Western medicine believes, no? At least, it might. At which point, prayer and dance have as much "medical" validity as actual medicine -- at least, for some conditions; if I'm in a car accident, I still want to see a trauma surgeon if need be.

Heck, leeching was considered medically useless for a long time too. And then there's that whole maggots thing.

I think the underlying mechanism for this (or at least explanation for it) is fairly interesting.

If deception isn't necessary for placebos to work, does this mean the homeopathic medicine advocates can admit it's bullshit now?

Arguably, if it works as well as what modern medicine is doing, is it any more bullshit than that is?

I'm not advocating for homeopathy, but from what I understand ... in some cases modern medicine would consider itself doing well if they could reach the levels of relief they get with placebos using actual medicine.

And, as someone I used to know in sales used to say ... it's not a lie if you believe it. :-P Homeopathy may not be perceived as a "lie" by its practitioners.

You seem to be making the assumption that all computer programs are best accessed via the internet.

And you seem to be making a lot of assumptions about what I'm saying. :-P

A lot of us still like to have local program execution and read/write access. Pulling live information from the internet doesn't mean that you have to have separate apps to access each source of information.

I generally prefer to have as much of my information locally so that I can still access it off-line. One of my favorite apps is a reader for wikipedia which keeps the pages you view locally so you can read them offline.

However, I am saying that a native interface to view the content that you pull off the internet (some content, not all content) can simply be a better designed user interface than a web page.

The web as a one-size fits all model where everything needs to be pulled down every time has been around a while. But, it's not the last word, and there is room for improvement.

I can't help thinking that your post is either an elaborate exercise in irony, or else an excellent troll.

Have you considered the fact that neither interpretation is correct? Because, it is in fact, neither. Go back and re-read it.

How anyone can claim that accessing the internet is better on a phone than through a web browser on a full sized computer screen is beyond me.

Except, that's not what I said.

Primarily, I was talking about the iPad, not a phone. And, I was talking about accessing content and applications -- not "the internet" or a "web browser".

An iPad-native application to access content is a cleaner interface than simply viewing things in a web browser, specifically because it is optimized for the screen size and the difference in the interface. Because you use the device differently (as you will with any touch screen tablet that isn't trying to reproduce a desktop experience with a keyboard and a mouse).

I also said that moving away from having everything being a web-page is long overdue -- I generally find a lot of applications just simply don't lend themselves to being on the web, but people still insist on rolling out everything as a web page because that's what we've been doing.

Content delivery apps on any tablet gives us the opportunity for something new. In this case, an iPad newspaper -- while I'm not interested in subscription content from News Corp, I do have free news applications from the likes of BBC and Reuters. And, as I stated, reading content on a native app is simply a better designed interface than a web-page.

The web isn't going anywhere, but why should we slavishly stick to everything being a web-page when we have new types of user interfaces and technologies? Having a touch screen changes how you interact with the device, so to me, a native app to access the content makes more sense than sticking to the old web-page model. In this case, some content providers have decided that in addition to their web-pages, they would write a native app which you can also use to access their content. Customers get choice.

Human-Computer interaction can't just halt at the web-page, especially since the first tablets are showing us how we can do it better. However, this gets lost in the sea of Apple bashing and nobody is listening because "zomg I hate Apple". What Apple has done is to actually establish some new ways to interact with a device -- consequently, an app designed to use that has the possibility of being nicer to use than a web-page.

All of the above should be true for any touch-screen tablet. Specifically because it's not a "web browser on a full sized computer screen".

Sorry, this goes nowhere.

On line photos which could be downloaded for a fee (or free) were incorporated on the net before there even was a net.

And, indeed, ever since HTML has had the IMG tag. Sites like Flickr and Picasa are essentially hosting services.

I seriously hope Kodak gets smacked down hard over this. Judging by the quality of the last two Kodak printers my wife bought, I say good riddance to them.

This is essentially one of those "with a computer" patents.

So you're saying you're in favor of companies paywalling information in a pretty frame that's freely available

Nope. You said that -- I said:

I have the free BBC news app on my iPad, as well as Reuters and several others. In fact, I've never paid for an app on my iPad (or a track from iTunes for that matter) -- there's so much free stuff out there it's amazing. It's so much nicer to use than a web page, because it's a user interface that takes into account the platform it runs on.

I merely pointed out that a platform-native application is a better user interface than the web, especially on a touchscreen interface which gives you better ways to interact with it. I didn't say anything about paying for content (for or against), merely the way it is presented.

There are plenty of organizations which have made apps for their content, and they still give it away for free. I flatly refuse to pay for online content, but I do find, for example, the free news apps I have a nice format to read it -- of course, my primary news source is still Google news.

Paywalls and charging for content is happening (and going to continue) no matter what I think about it.

Now if we get it down to a second we can use it to control turnstyles...

I'm more worried about them using it in airports. That will mark the last time I ever fly.