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Anyone else here old enough to remember the panic when an urban legend spread that McDonalds was using ground earthworms in their burgers?

Well, multiply that by a hundred and guess why no food company or restaurant in their right mind is going to be jumping on this bandwagon anytime soon.

It says that the Americans put on their thinking caps and came up with a solution to a very difficult problem, in the best tradition of their kind.

Let me guess, your next example is going to be the old saw about the American vs. Soviet space programs, and how the Americans spent millions on a pen while the Soviets used a pencil. The AK vs. M-16 debate has been had a million times. Think of a slider bar with "reliability" on one side and "accuracy" on the other. Then, think about each nation's militaries (conscripts who have never seen a flush toilet vs. motivated volunteers).

What's up, snopes. Nice tall tale, though.

Or just someone looking to hide a few bodies

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/gruesome/bodybed.asp

I wish I hadn't read that. You see, the hotel room we just stayed in last week had a pretty bad smell in the bedroom portion...

Or just someone looking to hide a few bodies

http://www.snopes.com/horrors/gruesome/bodybed.asp

Suffice it to say that a lot of very forward-looking private providers of capital made that company possible, and they all made a lot of money in the process, and that turned the Internet from something you tinkered with at University into something real.

And now we're back to politics. The Senator who was largely responsible for the legislation opening up the internet for business and personal use, allowing those private providers of capital to invest and grow was... ...come on, say it with me kids... ...Al Gore.

One of those instances where a lie runs twice 'round the world while the truth is still pulling on its boots.

The thing you should be interested in is what isn't being said. The government budget projections are based (still) on the idea that businesses will pay for employee insurance after 2014. Guess what? Every conference I've been to says the plug gets pulled January 1st 2014 or thereabouts. Sure, companies will have to pay around a $2500 penalty - compared with $20,000 per employee for insurance, which is about double of what it is today.

This argument doesn't make sense. Businesses are currently not required to provide any health insurance at all. They do so, not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because it's part of the package of benefits that was offered to employees. If they stop providing insurance after 2014 and require employees to pay their own way in the exchanges, that's a massive pay cut. If employers thought they could get away with imposing a substantial pay cut on their employees, they would already have done so. The fact that the money is being spent on benefits rather than salaries is irrelevant – the employer doesn't care. Remember that for years, employers have justified the lack of cash pay raises on the grounds that insurance costs have gone up.

Have a house? If so, good - better keep it. January 1st there is a 3.8% tax on home sales which will introduce some significant changes in the housing market - as it will be drying up. Someone selling a $200,000 home will be paying out nearly $8000 at closing as a result of this tax. This can mean the difference between having enough of a down payment for the next house or not.

Bullshit.

I want unity. I like it. I've used a half a dozen different linux guis and unity is the one that lives on my desktop every day. Sure it's got issues, but they all do in one way or another.

Also, new coke was preferred in taste tests prior to release over "classic" coke and pepsi -combined-.

The reason it failed was because the coca-cola corporation had underestimated the extent to which they themselves had integrated coke into american lifestyles and memories, and any perceived change to that would be viewed by the american public as dicking around with their childhood.

http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/newcoke.asp

honestly, new coke was pretty good. I miss it.

Trolling much? http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslimfaith.asp

Can we stop using this old folksy saying now? It just isn't true.

Good one. I'd never heard that. Here's a snopes article which mentions it: http://www.snopes.com/language/mistakes/noprice.asp

You know how to boil a frog..you put him in cold water an slowly raise the temperature until he's boiled

Not actually true.

Sharp knives: catch 22. You keep the knife dull so that if you fuck up you don't cut yourself. The problem is that you then need way more force to actually cut. Result: you are more likely to cut yourself with a dull knife than a sharp knife.

Hmm. I didn't get any stats on that though. It's just always made sense to me and fit my own experience.

Any time you hear someone lying about "Al Gore said he invented the Internet", tell them they're lying:

Al Gore did not claim he "invented" the Internet, nor did he say anything that could reasonably be interpreted that way. The "Al Gore said he 'invented' the Internet" put-downs were misleading, out-of-context distortions of something he said during an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN's "Late Edition" program on 9 March 1999. When asked to describe what distinguished him from his challenger for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, Gore replied (in part):

During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.

Gore saw the 1980s "Information Superhighway" and saw the future. His leadership got the Internet protected and funded as one of the great Federal programmes of all time, along with the Apollo programme. Without Gore the Internet today would probably be either long dead, or still some obscure government system only Feds and giant corporate cronies use (eg. solely to spy on you). The Reagan/Bush recession wouldn't have ended under Clinton/Gore with the greatest wealth creation of all time. You wouldn't be reading this on Slashdot.

The Internet is one of the things that fulfills America's promise. Thank Al Gore for being among the few who recognized its value back among the blips and bleeps, and among the fewer who actually did anything about it.

You are absolutely full of shit.

http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/bananas.asp

Commercial citrus is just as varied, if not more so, than bananas. Citrus is also easily grafted to hardy/resistant root stocks to keep varieties viable.

Chocolate is not going extinct... it's value as a cash crop in Africa is decreasing because the time between planting and harvesting is extremely long for such meager profits.

Wheat? Come on man, are you trolling at this point or are you just completely misinformed?

pi = 3

Dunno about the Perdue thing, but the Nova story is a myth.
http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp

http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp

but it's still just vandalism. The same as pouring sugar into gasoline tanks would be.

So that would be no vandalism at all then...

We really only do that when someone makes a factually incorrect statement [. . .]

When Al Gore claimed to be responsible for the internet, were you content with letting people believe that or did you feel the need to point out that people like Vint Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee exist?

Your assertion about Gore seems to be one of those pesky "factually incorrect statements". You're welcome:

Despite the derisive references that continue even today, Al Gore did not claim he "invented" the Internet, nor did he say anything that could reasonably be interpreted that way. The "Al Gore said he 'invented' the Internet" put-downs were misleading, out-of-context distortions of something he said during an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN's "Late Edition" program on 9 March 1999.

Actually Bush still owns that ranch. And I think that if he wanted to make his ranch a political topic, he probably would have advertised somewhere that it is designed with immense energy efficiency in mind, which is in stark contrast to Al Gore's house:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp

Bush actually had it designed that way prior to the 2000 election. I think if he wanted to make a political issue out of that house, either he, or somebody in his campaign, would have pointed that out when Al Gore's primary selling point against Bush was that he is an environmentalist.

They suck. If the only think wrong with a CFL bulb was the "clamshell" packaging, I'd actually be happy. I saw on youtube last night of a bulb covering a bathroom with smoke/soot as it burned-out (normal operation according to the manufacturer). It cost the family thousands of dollars because they wanted to save a few pennies.

How full of shit is he Johnny? Well, Bob, he's pretty darn full of shit. Nothing in there indicates it could cover a bathroom.

It doesn't help that a lot of the left-leaning politicians who are preaching the need for the most draconian anti-global-warming policies also tend to live is mansions, drive SUVs, and fly around in private jets. This is the kind of issue where, if you people to make serious changes to their lifestyles, you have to lead by example.

I remember an email floating around the interwebs that talked about Gore's mansion vs Bush's ranch in terms of environmental impact.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp

Of course, nobody really cares about people leading by example, most people just listen to the interwebs propaganda, quickly decide if is this person associated with left-right leanings and are finished with their thinking for the most part and follow like sheep... It's not about the leaders, it's about what they are selling...

I guess I have karma to burn, so I guess I won't post this anon...

Steven Spielberg claimed to have done something similar. He claimed to have occupied an unused office on the Universal Studios lot by simply dressing in a suit, carrying a brief case, and bluffing his way past the security guards. But his story kept growing and growing. A clear sign of fabrication. So it was finally debunked by snopes. But even his tallest tale didn't claim to have lived on the lot full time. And now this kid has gone one better than the tall tale, actually living inside the corporate complex of a major tech company.

It's an urban legend.

We are talking about medical equipment that would have to be certified by the FDA. That would mean that every GPS receiver and every implementation of local NTP would have to go through a rigorous and costly certification process. The following issues would have to be certified;
1. Is the device accurate.
2. How does the device interact with the software.
3. How does the device interact with every device receiving data. This is the hard part.

Since GPS is Airforce(?) and NTP is NIST, they're likely good already.

Secondly, is it even necessary? [...] This reminds me of the time when the US spent tens of thousands of dollars to build a pen that would work in zero gravity(it was pressurized with gas). When a cosmonaut was asked how they coped he said "In Russia we use pencil". Sometimes high tech just complicates the issue.

Wrong: the millions spent by NASA on a pen is an urban legend.

While it may remind you of that story, it doesn't remind you of a true incident. http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp

It's really a shame that your pithy retort is based on a myth.

Lies! That urban legend was really about Tesla. You must also be part of the conspiracy to discredit him.

Man, the fucked up thing is that the Australians aren't even the most dangerous thing on the continent. We'll probably lose a couple hundred guys just to the local wildlife.

Well yeah, even the kangaroos have stinger missiles.

Enhancing the brain by waking some of the ~90% which is unused would almost certainly yield more practical results.

We use 100% of our brains.

More accurately, Twinkies are a pastry that, due to their popularity over such a long time, have become a household name in the US. Thus, hipsters like make up urban myths about them. Things like their longevity ( actually 25 days ) . Their 'artificial' status. And, the idea that they are not extremely delicious. I don't usually reference Snopes, but their writeup on Twinkies is pretty good. http://www.snopes.com/food/ingredient/twinkies.asp

If Google is the new MS, then at least the trains run on time. (most days)

Saying the trains run on time has been a propaganda lie before....

Hate to spoil a few things for you but:

- Coca Cola recipe: right here, most likely genuine.

Except as that snopes article says, that was the original recipe. The recipe was modified in the first 40 years of coke's existence (as, again, the article says). The current recipe probably has a significantly different flavor than the original recipe, certainly enough to tell the difference. So yes, Coke's current recipe certainly still falls under that of "trade secret".

Hate to spoil a few things for you but:

- Colonel's original recipe:chicken grease salt.
- Coca Cola recipe: right here, most likely genuine.

Now as to the USPTO, the problem is that they are no longer paid to DENY patents. In the late 1970s/early 1980s, republicans in key positions began playing games with the system, setting up metrics for the patent examiners that judged their performance not by the number of processed patents, but by the number of APPROVED patents. Examine several patents a week, deny most of them, and your "job performance" was not as good as the moron who just rubber-stamped stuff a few cubicles down.

To top that, corporations came up with the idea of "patent slamming." The idea was to overload the patent system; every time the tiniest change to a system was made, it was filed as a new patent by the giant companies like IBM, Microsoft, Apple, GM, GE, etc. Particularly nauseating about it have been certain software houses, where it seems every new line of code ends up farted out by some shyster in the legal department as a new patent application.

The result has been that for about the last 30 years, the USPTO has been pointless. Not to say that meaningful patents are denied, but so many meaningless patents are granted that any patent in the past 30 years is suspect.

Patents like making a rectangle. Or turning a playing card sideways, a patent so fucking stupidly absurd it should have been laughed out of the office and shipped back to the fucking morons at WOTC/Hasborg along with a copy of Hoyle's Rules for Card Games as century-old prior art.

This was an obvious case of targeting children. It reminds me of an old case with Soupy Sales asking kids to send him green pieces of paper from their parent's wallets. It was meant as a joke but he got in a lot of trouble. Snopes has a great quote on this subject. I can't copy the paragraph but it starts out "It's easy for those .........."Captain Midnight". The paragraph does an excellent job of stating how corporations have always preyed on children. http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/soupy1.asp

People debate it, but as one person points out on snopes, its melting temperature is quite a bit higher than room temperature. They quote 1400C, though for pure fused silica I understand it to be substantially higher.

Suffice it to say that people bounce it back and forth, but Ive generally heard it called an "amorphous solid".

a) and b) can give you results in "barometer-length" units. "The building is 234 barometers tall"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barometer_question

http://www.snopes.com/college/exam/barometer.asp

This is a nicely written account:
http://philosophy.lander.edu/intro/introbook2.1/x874.html

here are a bunch of ideas (most involve extras beyond the barometer)
http://www.esmerel.com/circle/question/building.html

reminds of the history about writing in zero-G.

NASA spend months and millions of dollars in researching a pen that could write without gravity. The Russians used a pencil.

False.

Wow, this has been around since at least '97, and probably before. It's false, and if I never see it again it will be too soon.

http://www.snopes.com/humor/business/wordperfect.asp

These kids are going to be totally left behind by the daily innovations in basic math and Algebra with their static etexts. Why, quite often Algebra Science is stood on its ear by decisions of the courts. Just a few years ago Alabama sought to upset Euclid and legislate that Pi was exactly equal to three. There's no way these tablets can be kept current with modern jurisprudence.

And then there's the Hubble constant, which we all know gets edited every year to re-explain the observations.

Or maybe you could just not be such a freaking retard. The above text (in case you didn't know) is sarcasm. That I have to call that out makes me want to (not talk to) you all. You may insert into (not talk to) whatever remediation technologies you prefer, as long as they involve acid, ballistic weapons, or a freaking flamethrower.

Letwin was OS/2's chief architect and one of Gates' most trusted employees at the time. He wrote the book that introduced the operating system to applications developers (now available for a bargain price!).

Here is a Usenet post Letwin wrote in 1995, after it was obvious that OS/2 had lost out to Windows 95 (and eventually NT/2000) in the marketplace.

BTW I also found Letwin in an early group photo of Microsoft (Letwin is second from the right in the middle row). By comparison, here is the photo for Mitt Romney and Bain Capital

75% dehydration in our population is an urban myth.

It doesn't matter how open-minded you are, or how pure the LSD, you still can't fly.

And it doesn't matter how many people believe a stupid urban legend about LSD, it's still not true that taking LSD makes you think you can fly.

Which is not to say that people can't use psychedelic drugs irresponsibly. But they can also go rock climbing, hiking, parachuting, or white-water rafting irresponsibly, or eat irresponsibly ("these wild mushrooms are edible, right?").

Well, remember

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a tatol mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.

Not actually determining the order of "e, i, l" is probably common in humans reading this title, so some people will just pick "files" since it fits all the data they've gathered at a glance. Also, "i" and "l" are so close that the two alternatives are hard to distinguish, leading to more errors. Neither of these issues falls under the term dyslexia. While it's common to call letter transpositions dyslexia, the term actually means something quite different. It roughly translates to "difficulty with words" and generally denotes difficulty reading caused by neurological problems (as opposed to, say, poor instruction). Just to fight social stigma, I should mention that dyslexia is essentially uncorrelated with intelligence--dyslexics tend to read more slowly and have trouble spelling, but they're not on average either smarter or stupider.

[Note: I'm not sure if the quote above is actually supported by academic research, though there's clearly at least some truth to it. snopes isn't sure either. Really one should ask a linguist.]

Its an urban legend, but a good one. http://www.snopes.com/crime/safety/response.asp

It's a movie but based on a true story. And thanks to your 880 reference it only took a few minutes to find it on snopes.com. But he didn't have the scam going as long as I remember and he got caught a different way... maybe that was the way they caught him in the movie. But I know I read about the story and never saw the movie. I would have remembered that. Thanks... I'll have to watch it now.

I live in Alabama. Pi day is the whole month of March!

'3'

Ok

I'm joking.

Here's the Snopes article on it

No, domesticated turkeys are the dumbest birds in the world! They'll drown if they look up at the rain!

OK, that wasn't actually true, but thanks for making me look that up anyway.
http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/turkey.asp

No, they don't.