NHS primary care trusts are slashing funding for homoeopathic treatment amid debate about its efficacy and the drive to cuts costs, a study has suggested.

As Dan so succinctly put it, about freakin time. That said, the BBC are still a little wooly on the scientific side of things:

...and some scientists argue the solution is so diluted it does not contain any active ingredients at all.

Both sides generally agree it doesn't contain any of the active ingredient, that's pretty much the entire point of homoeopathy verses conventional medicine or poison (depending on what the active ingredient is). Scientists point out that a remedy can't do anything if there is nothing but water in it, homoeopaths insist that water has a mysterious (and bounded, unless tap water in old houses doubles as the homoeopathic remedy Plumbum Metallicum) memory which makes it magically work.

1. IPC. Akonadi uses IMAP for most operations, with DBus used for notifications and other "control" messages apparently. As IMAP supports notifications fine, why not drop DBus entirely? To use Akonadi there has to be an IMAP connection, correct?
2. Data format. How is something concrete, like a contact, represented? In what format would it be stored in the "local addressbook", and in what format is it transferred over IMAP?
3. Dependencies. For a GNOME component C++ I can just about handle, Qt is pushing it, and libkde is out. What are the real dependencies of Akonadi, and can they be reduced?
4. Examples. Can anyone provide example code of basic operations against the addressbook, such as searches, handling live views, adding and removing contacts?

Thanks!

NP: Artists Like: Skalpel, Last.fm