This is in fact true - more expensive placebos are more effective than cheaper ones (well, ones that the patient believe are more expensive).

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20080309/ai_n24918110/

Not so - see http://www.snopes.com/business/names/worldseries.asp

Not really - I just think you have a unwarranted faith in the effectiveness of antivirus products to prevent abberent behaviour. The best AV does not detect all malware, and no AV will do well against zeroday attacks. A better policy (for the clueless user who got themselves into the situation in the first place) would be to ensure that the machine is patched automatically, it has automatically updating antivirus software, and probably something against spyware installed too. Basically if you are going to take it upon youself to insist that the user installs security software (to the point of bringing in a receipt from a "professional") do it properly.

I think there is an implied "still in use" in the statement - otherwise this is a list - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_programming_languages suggests there are older ones still, and Lisp wasn't even third by any stretch.