Not even remotely proven. A small minority of studies (primarily of the "exploratory type") show an effect. But the better the studies the less the effect.

This still isn't quite correct. For example: patients may want their doctors to feel as though a treatment is working and thus report an effect that isn't real ("yeah, sure - I feel better"). But the minute they walk out the door they feel just as crappy as when they entered. Other "effects" from placebo are simply bias in the study on the part of the researchers. Or the "observer" effect where people change simply because they're being watched. Placebo is a catch-all for any reported result that isn't explained by a real treatment.

Also - something quacks^Hhomeopaths never want you to know is that any reported effect *size* is minuscule from both homeopathy and placebo. So a small percentage of people reporting a tiny improvement? Your money is best spent elsewhere.

This represents a gross misunderstanding of the placebo effect.

Placebo has no physiological effect (like homeopathy). Often people taking placebo, homeopathy, etc. will *report* feeling better - but this does not mean they are better in any meaningful sense of the word.

More info here: http://www.csicop.org/si/show/...

It is very unethical to sell somebody a treatment which does not *treat* anything.

That's a good rant - not sure what it had to do with my comment or the question I was replying to. I even quoted it.

Because there's nothing wrong with seeding a Linux ISO torrent?

I *just* updated and it's pestering me to reboot again. Mostly libkrb stuff.

Just because you ignore it doesn't mean it's not asking you to reboot.

Ubuntu pesters me nearly daily to reboot....

This is just me probably - but WTF is with languages making semicolons optional? Require them or don't allow them. Making them optional is a pain in the ass for somebody who is used to adding them since it will cause me to sometimes use them and sometimes not. I *hate* having this inconsistency in my code...

I've never quite understood the hate for the semicolon - but I type it so reflexively now that maybe I don't realize how difficult it is for newbs?

'When you want to listen to Nas's Illmatic you don't think "I want to fire up Grooveshark so I can listen to Illmatic." You just think "I really want to listen to the one of the greatest rap albums of all time right now."'

Not me. I do think "Should I fire-up Subsonic and pre-load a bunch of music for later off-line use or stream now from Pandora?" Apps give not only content but specific functionality for their use-cases.

Maybe I'm showing my age - but I prefer my apps to provide specific functionality rather than these sort of "mashups" where we just put a bunch of crap in front of the user and hope they find what they were trying to do.

You may be using too restrictive of a meaning though. What if I phrased it this way:
Fox News is doing ISIS' work for them.

That would seem to make sense regardless of whether Fox News is getting any monetary reward right? And I can be said to be working "for somebody" without being paid by them if I labor on their behalf. And I could say that somebody I trick into doing my work is "working for me."

I don't even think this is an archaic usage. Seems pretty common to me.

Robots!

It's not even out yet for any of the Nexus devices. https://developers.google.com/...

*I* think it's funny that you believe being overly pedantic is going to help move the discussion forward. Nerds or not we should all know how to have a conversation without assuming things not in evidence. And still you persist with believing the OP thinks there is "no risk". Perhaps nerds don't know how to ask clarifying questions?

He didn't say "no risk" he *at best* implied "no risk." My reading of his comment was that he implied "low-risk" actually. That's why I say your over-the-top reaction to it was unnecessary since your confidence in what he meant should be low.

Except - Comcast has signed exclusivity deals with those towns and won't let you build or make it prohibitively expensive to build there.