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OT, but the truth seems to be far stranger than the fiction in this case.

Oh yes, the man is keeping us down. Or, the 200 MPG story is bullshit. Those patents would be in the public domain by now. Why don't you make one of the carbuerators and let your slashdot friends peer review it?

Snopes as an interesting story about this. 5 minutes with Google is a good way to debunk urban legends. You should try it some time.

"There is a 100 mpg carburetor patent that an oil company is sitting on."

Prove it.

This story has been around forever and seems to have no merit to it. Snopes addesses it as false:

http://www.snopes.com/autos/business/carburetor.as p

So unless you can show me some proof to the contrary, I'm going to to say it's just so much BS.

There's been con artists that have claimed to have miracle devices. However there's always some common threads:

1) They do something that seems to be impossible.
2) They'll never let anyone mess with and test their devices.
3) There's always some string of "unfortunate problems" that keep it form coming to market.

Also please remember: Patents last only 20 years, and by definition they are public. So if an oil company bought a patent for a super efficent car, they could sit on it for only 20 years, and everyone who wanted to know how it worked would, since the patent is public record. It's not like they could cover it up.

So, please, provide a link to the 100mpg patent if you think it's real.

Heh. Sorry about that. But it's a good example to show the dangers of the "airchair" engineer mentality.

http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/lemmings.htm

Well if winning the award itself didn't stop them, there's always the fact that they don't exist.

1. I can understand straight (underage) girls camwhoring themselves out to older men. I have a bit more trouble with straight (underage) boys camwhoring themselves out to older men.

2. Nobody online would have given two shits about his behavior it it wasn't for his freakish looking head.

Brian Peppers is this guy. I'm not sure who the other two are.

They knew about prior art.

My understanding of the patent system is that you are required to reveal all prior art of which you are aware. Otherwise your patent is invalid. Er, or something like that. Anyway, not disclosing prior art is a Bozo no-no.

Not according to these folk:

Well, not quite. The Italian railway system had fallen into a rather sad state during World War I, and it did improve a good deal during the 1920s, but Mussolini was disingenuous in taking credit for the changes: much of the repair work had been performed before Mussolini and the fascists came to power in 1922. More importantly (to the claim at hand), those who actually lived in Italy during the Mussolini era have borne testimony that the Italian railway's legendary adherence to timetables was far more myth than reality.

To believe that your opinion does not matter and that you can not control your life is the first realization one makes on the path to self destruction because you believe you lack control in a general sense. First you believe you hold no control over politics, then you believe you hold no control over whether you are hired or fired, then you believe you have no control over what choices you make, then you believe you have no control over your anything, and finally you cease to be, either literally or you exist as walking death unable to muster the courage to get rid of the walking. You have exactly as much control over the world as your resources (money, talent, and intelligence) will buy you.

Blah blah blah... boy, somebody's spent a lot of time in the self-help section.

Posting to Slashdot is the first action one takes on the course to self destruction. First you post to slashdot, then you post to digg, then maybe you take time out to read Google News. Then you post to gameFAQs. Soon you're posting huge binaries to USENET, you're in the midst of an illicit, semi-consentual (and oftimes homosexual) love affair with CowboyNeal, you're addicted to the internet and heroin, and then you start calling yourself Al Gore, lead strategic innovator of that there inter-web unit. After that you destroy yourself!!!, like the first sentence of this paragraph subtly implies. It sounds nuts, I know, but I'm sure you'll see that the logic is pretty much the same as your own. So it must be right. It takes an island of dozens to change a nation of millions .

My bolding, of course, denotes HEARTFELT TRUTH and DEEP ROOTED, unnerving sincerity (and certainly not my tongue desperately scouring the inside of my cheek as my eyes attempt to roll at 700RPM).

Fact is, I'd like you (or any of you silly airheaded "you've got the power!!" morons) to name a single national policy that was decided by a single vote.

...if there are more than 1000 participants, Microsoft will pay them each $1000.

Yes, he had a higher quality desk back in 1983. I'm not so sure that his current one could support his weight.

Could it be time for another landfill?

I estimate that since late 2001, I've been called "Communist" about 300 times, "Socialist" another 150-200, and have had my patriotism or nationalism seriously questioned (even up to the accusation of "treason") about 500 times. These events are incomparable to what happened before 911. So, I can say with some surety that 911 only brought out America's simmering trend of civilian militancy. This is well in line with your observation.

So, Goering's observation (which I confirmed verbatim by obtaining Gustavus Gilbert's book, "Nuremburg Diaries" -- hint hint) about scaring a Republic into supporting Fascism is an accurate prediction about Western culture at least, and may reflect all Human cultures to some degree.

I highly recommend obtaining Gilbert's book. Goering and others in the Nuremburg clink had a lot more to say about the structure and attitudes of their hyperpatriotic government. They supported the effective worship of the leader, even to the point of accepting all blame just to clear said leader of any taint. They strongly advocated the violent supression of dissent, and the monopoly control of state elements leading to the formation of public knowledge (i.e. manipulating public opinion via propaganda). Too many of these viewpoints apply to what's happening in the West (primarily America and Britain) today.

(To be fair, Gilbert's book is biased. It is just another book written by the victors, who have obviously now re-arranged the world into another Third Reich, but a T.R. dominated by a class and philosophy of bankers and capitalism. We can clearly say that certain elements of the T.R. actually won the war since they were already inherent in the Allied powers, or they were quickly adopted by same.)

This is an urban myth, but I get your point.

http://www.snopes.com/military/lighthse.htm

You are right in some ways: there are http://www.snopes.com/katrina/charity/library.asp institutions that really would appreciate secondhand books: hospitals, Salvation Army, schools, homes for the elderly. Better contact them first before showing up with several cubic meters of Louis Lamour pockets though :)

I’ve always loved the boiling frog analogy, as it explains so many social phenomena very eloquently. Too bad it’s wrong.

You misspelled "Dated Wisdom from a Hollywood Hack."

That's pretty rich, since King plagiarized a portion of that speech.

Too funny.

Maybe you should post a source link, telling us all where you copy/pasted the list from, lest we believe you have actually done some independent research on the topic?

This is all very OT, but a quick search finds it on http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/wmdquotes.asp

From Snopes: " All of the quotes listed above are substantially correct reproductions of statements made by various Democratic leaders regarding Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's acquisition or possession of weapons of mass destruction.
However, some of the quotes are truncated, and context is provided for none of them several of these quotes were offered in the course of statements that clearly indicated the speaker was decidedly against unilateral military intervention in Iraq by the U.S.
Moreover, several of the quotes offered antedate the four nights of airstrikes unleashed against Iraq by U.S. and British forces during Operation Desert Fox in December 1998, after which Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen and Gen. Henry H. Shelton (chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) announced the action had been successful in "degrad[ing] Saddam Hussein's ability to deliver chemical, biological and nuclear weapons." "

But here is also an email from gates: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/15180#fn*

Yeah, well let's all trust Bill about what he said, because no one could possible forget the most important quote that has been attributed to them in their entire life.

A minor quibble, the US/Soviet writing in space story is false

Pfft, everyone knows that frog story is a debunked myth. Find a better proverb to use, or risk your argument falling flat on its face in an actual debate.

That give, I agree with you ^^

Sigh. I'm so tired of this urban legend. Al Gore never claimed to invent the Internet. As much as I disagree with much of that man's politics, it irritates me when people harp on something that's simply untrue.

It's FUD, and as with all FUD, it detracts from reasonable and serious discussion and debate.

Too bad you don't know know what you're talking about. Way to parrot right wing spin, though. Mad props.

Well you go on believing that FUD: We've already made it back to the 90's, I don't think the 90's rate is sustainable at all so I'm expecting a downturn over the next couple of years because we are doing so good it can't be sustained. As for your statement about unemployment figures the change only was for federal employee's benefits affecting only an extremely small fraction of the number. The random sampling method continues today, let me let snopes.com school you on your FUD: http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/unemploy.htm On the economy, let me just copy and paste what I did on another forum back in November (which is why some of the numbers are a little older than a couple of months but still less than a year, and we've gotten even better since then)

ftp://ftp.iza.org/charts/PDF56_e.pdf
For the past 3-4 years the US has had the highest GDP growth of: germany, france, italy, japan, canada, UK & EU in general

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/35/47/35326565.pdf
From OECD standardized unemployment rates, July of 05 we have a level of 5.0, less than Germany (9.3), less than France (9.7), less than Italy (7.8), less than Canada (6.8), only UK (4.7) and Japan (4.4) have a lower one.

http://inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_rate/ CurrentInflation.asp
For about a year we've been hovering at around 3% or so (up and down) inflation, which is the same it was before 9/11. You'll note around 9/11 Greenspan dumped a whole lot of cash into the economy & China picked up it's output significantly decreasing inflation to some of the lowest rates it's ever been (~1 percent). Greenspan only lately has been saying that our economy has been doing so *good* that our growth rate is starting to encourage those inflationary items, so he's started gradually raising the interest rate to start removing dollars out of the economy to slow it's growth rate down. Classic example of a Phillips curve. I think greenspan should probably start getting more aggressive on it as our economy has been going so *good* that we need to stop it from turning into a beast like it did in the 2000 where we get another big bubble. Right now it ain't sky high, it's nowhere near sky high, under 1-2% means our employment level isn't doing well and pressuring it down, over 5% is high, over 10% is sky high (look to the 70's).

So we have a higher GDP growth rate (rate our economy is expanding/contracting) and we have one of the lowest unemployment rates. Our unemployment rate is at a level that is lower than almost every other country in the world. Our inflation rate is increasing but it's still very reasonable, but the government does need to start pulling money out of the economy because we are doing so good we are starting overheat it. The govenment needs to start becoming more miserly with our money: spend when the goings bad and save when the things go good to reduce the major peaks and valleys. Unlike you, from all the things I see as economic indicators that I think our economy's been doing *so* good that we should be expecting a dip here in the next few years as part of the general up/down cycle, and we should start pulling money out of the economy.

It's actually not illegal to sing happy birthday to a group of people. Public domain and all.

"Happy Birthday" is notin the public domain, and if Disney-like companies keep on extending the copyright period, it never will be.

Having said that, however, and as you & the Snopes article describes, non-commercial use of "Happy Birthday" like singing it at a party to your friends & family fall under Fair-Use considerations - at least until "content providers/parasites" manage to kill Fair-Use.

Or, for more information: Snopes chooses 80% as a reasonable upper bound.

Not quite.

Coca-Cola became completely cocaine-free in 1929. Even at that point there was barely 0.06 oz of cocaine in the entire year's supply of ~25 million gallons.
Ref

I'll tell you what! I set up a business that sees a lot of cash go through it: a fast-food restaurant or a network of vending machines. I process all cash I take in through some sort of molecular scrubber based on these molecules. I pick up all the miniscule clumps of cocaine that are on the bills. http://www.snopes.com/business/money/cocaine.asp I then invest those monies back into more cash-accumulating businesses and extract more and more cocaine.

Regarding airplane parts, this may be interesting: http://www.snopes.com/rumors/pentagon.htm

I believe it refers to this case from Philadelphia. Charges against seven of the protestors were dropped, and hate crimes charges against the remaining four were thrown out on first amendment grounds. That was the only story I could turn up about Biblical passages leading to hate crimes charges in the U.S. IANAL, but somehow I doubt that Fred Phelps would still be a free man if it were possible to prosecute him under hate-crimes laws.

I don't know that I would qualify "screaming Leviticus 20:13 through a bullhorn to disrupt a gay pride parade" as merely "reading the Bible in public," but that's just me.

Yeah, whatever.

The 9/11 Commission found the pre-911 stock activity to be innocuous; details at snopes.

We are living in interesting times when we have so much choice... much like the Chinese curse.

http://snopes.com/autos/law/ticket.asp

I mean, why are they even worried about RFID tags? The REAL mark of the beast is in bar codes.

I mean, why are they even worried about RFID tags? The REAL mark of the beast is in bar codes.

Think frog in the boiling pot analogy.

That people will believe anything patently false if it's repeated as truth often enough?

Sorry, I believe that you're spreading an urban legend.......

The plate actually read "NO PLATE."

Snopes is there.

Well, for today only, Fat Tuesday or National Pancake Day, you can also drop into your local IHOP and get Free Pancakes.

This guy is hardly the first. snopes has a good writeup on what happens if you have a vanity plate that reads "NO PLATE", "NONE", "MISSING", "VOID", etc...

I checked snopes, and the story's been verified for NO PLATE, NOTAG, UNKNOWN and VOID. What makes me laugh is that the same thing has happened four times with similar types of vanity plates, ranging from 1979 to 2004, without the DMV creating a set of standards for vanity plates.

Actually according to snopes, this one is true.

http://www.snopes.com/autos/law/noplate.asp

This storey reminds me of one I heard about in the 1980's.
Some smart *ss decided to get a vanity plate that read "NONE". It seems that whenever a police officer or parking commisionair issued a ticket for a vehicle without a license plate, they would write in "NONE" where it said plate.

Barbour, a sailing enthusiast, wrote down "SAILING" and "BOATING" as his first two choices; when he couldn't think of a third option, he wrote "NO PLATE," meaning that if neither of his two choices was available, he did not want personalized plates. Plates reading "BOATING" and "SAILING" had indeed already been assigned, so the DMV, following Barbour's instructions literally, sent him license plates reading "NO PLATE." Barbour was not thrilled that the DMV had misunderstood his intent, but he opted to keep the plates because of their uniqueness.

Full details at http://www.snopes.com/autos/law/noplate.asp/