Your post partly just repeats what I said was the purpose of placebo, and partly expresses an overly narrow view of the matter.

The scienceblogs.com article equated placebo with control, and I am extricating them. You are wrong to say the only meaningful drug test is drug versus placebo.

Interesting data have also been gleaned from situations where people receive treatment but don't know it. Their outcomes can then be compared with people who receive treatment and know it, people who don't receive treatment but think they are, and people who know they're not getting treatment. There is no need to do these experiments at different times or in different places.

No, the guy who wrote that article is wrong. He is using "placebo" where he should be saying "control". A control is what you use to measure the difference between normality and the thing you are testing. In medicine, this may or may not involve a placebo (which means a "pleaser"). For example, I can give 1000 people my new drug, and put another 1000 people in a control group, with no drug. However, I may worry that some of the improvement in my patients is due to the psychological effect of popping a pill; I therefore may give the control group a fake pill to take, called a placebo. If I have enough funding, I may even have three groups: one with the real drug, one control group with the placebo, and one true control group with absolutely nothing. This will often produce three levels of improvement.

A control cannot be described as strong or weak, but a placebo given as part of a control certainly can be. Although it is something designed to have no real effect, the fact is that every aspect of the treatment situation (the colour of the pills, frequency of treatment, the crispness of the white coats...) alters the strength of the pleasing effect, which can have major consequences for health and well-being.

Unless you are in the army of a country currently being invaded, your SMSs are not that important. In fact, it would probably be better if you didn't answer them, or even walked off the job.

Look, I use Linux, and Microsoft is evil, etc.

I've also met some Poles who were... old-fashioned, let's say.

But let's not use this to make a cheap attack. The original photo was perhaps appropriate for politically-correct America, where it is normal to have ads in which 100% of the people in them belong to a minority. In Poland, that is pushing it too much. They modified the ad so that only 67% of the people were a minority (an Oriental guy, a white guy and a white girl). It's not as if they knocked it down to 33% or 0%. Do you realise that Poland has a population that is 96.7% ethnic Polish? Once you count other groups, that means that ~99% of the people are white. And you're whining that they only have 33% ethnic minorities in an advert, plus 33% female (in a male-dominated industry).

It's not a matter of being "scared". Do you not have even a layman's understanding of marketing, of localisation?

What, pray tell, is the first result if one googles for " cut his mic! "?

Some parts are; some parts aren't. And I'm not saying that everywhere has to end up very well connected. Some places obviously don't merit a New-York-style subway, but they could perhaps have a bus come through once a week instead of never, or once a day instead of once a week. It all depends.

More needs to be done before you can just say you are at the saturation point for the existing density. The fewer cars are used everywhere, the easier it will be to push for better transport, and thus the vicious circle becomes virtuous.

There, I fixed it for you.

Mine, is it? So I can build a house in the middle of the road, can I?

One of the major roles, and most legitimate roles, of the state is to act as custodians of public spaces, allowing everyone to use them in such a way that they do not transform into de facto private property. For example, I can park in a certain spot for an hour, but then I have to move on and let someone else use it. I can sit down on a bench, but I can't sleep there. I can stand at the front of a queue in a government office when it is my turn, but when it is not my turn, I have to go away.

You don't seem to have a good grasp of this basic concept.

It lacks public transport because you all drive cars.

Haven't you heard of chicken-and-egg? Something has to change. No more excuses.

You might as well say that the H-bomb isn't evil because it's just an update on the fist.

For a second, I thought the same. However:

• I then remembered that Slashdot supports enough HTML to allow proper lists.
• I concluded that he had therefore formatted his message thus because he is one of the following:
  1. ignorant,
  2. an annoying person.
• I note that though you claim he used the ' "code" modifier', both you and he actually used <tt> rather than <code>.

It's lovely, seeing with 20-20 hindsight, isn't it?

a) He doesn't need to. The defence lawyer will.

b) Quite often, in relevant cases. It is a well-established principle.

You appear to have a form of Stockholm syndrome.