Best Results From Bartering Computer Services?

silicon not in the v writes "Last night I was over at some friends' house. They had cable modem with no firewall and tons of spyware, etc. on their system. They complained about all the popups and how bad it was that they were afraid to let their kids on the computer, so I set them up with ZoneAlarm, Ad Aware, and Firefox to get it cleaned up. In return, the husband, who is a chiropractor, gave my wife and I a free adjustment. What other interesting services or benefits have people been able to get by bartering IT/programming services?"

Comments

Re:Chiropracters == Quacks

[VanillaCoke420]

Homeopathy is not medical science, and it's not accepted in Europe, not among real scientists and doctors anyway. Please don't lie.

Re:IRS

[YankeeInExile]

Here is some information on just that.

Homeopathy and Quackery and Symptoms

[billstewart]

Homeopathy is a bogus quack theory with two hundred years of trial and error experience. The lack of scientific basis means that their experience has been used less effectively than it could have been, and it means that much of what they write about what they're doing is too silly for words, but they _have_ learned a lot over the years about what works. They didn't catch on to the Germ Theory of Disease, which means it's not something I'd trust for curing real diseases when modern Western medicine can do something for you, but that doesn't mean it's useless.

Allergies are one area where homeopathy is useful, because you're not concerned with curing the causes, you're concerned with getting rid of the symptoms. ("Yes, I know there are trees blooming outside, I just want to stop sneezing.") Modern medicine has antihistamines that can help block the symptoms, and cause some side effects, and homeopathy has bogus quack formulations that can also help block the symptoms, and have different side effects, and depending on which one does a better job for _you_ with the allergens that are blowing around right now, and which one has more annoying side effects (e.g. drowsiness vs. stomach upset), sometimes homeopathy is the right choice. Or you can get allergy shots, which aren't really much different from well-controlled homeopathy. It's only been the last couple of years that I've found that modern medicine has products that are significantly better.

Flu is a special case. It's a virus, so if the vaccine didn't protect you this year, modern medicine mostly tells you to stay home in bed, drink hot fluids, and cover your mouth when you sneeze, and otherwise can't do much. Homeopathy is good for this - there are a couple of homeopathic preparations that can take you from feeling really lousy to merely feeling not very good, and that's a big win.

The nice thing about homeopathy is that its particularl bogus theory is that the more you dilute a medicine, the more subtle the hints it gives your body's immune system about how to attack the real problem, and therefore the stronger it is. (It's similar to the theory of making martinis that says that you should take the vermouth bottle and gesture meaningfully in the direction of the glass without actually pouring any in...) So unlike herbalist medicines, which you take in non-trivial quantities and can sometimes cause liver or kidney damage if you're not careful, most homeopathic medicines aren't going to hurt you, and the "really strong" stuff is no threat at all if it doesn't work.

Chiropractic is another quack theory that is obviously not useful for curing disease, but sometimes it can help with back and neck pain, and if you think of it as yet another form of massage, it's often somewhat helpful for many people. My first chiropractor was also an MD, which rather surprised both communities. The last one I went to wasn't able to recognize that my shoulder pains were early bursitis, so it was a while before I found a doctor who could do much about it, but at least he knew his limitations and could tell me that shoulder joints weren't something he knew about.