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NASA never asked Paul C. Fisher to produce a pen.

The pencil story is false, but based on fact. Basically, NASA (and the Russians) used pencils for a while, but didn't like have pencil dust or broken leads floating around the capsules. Some guy came up with the design on his own and started selling them to NASA and they worked. The Russians started using them too.

http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp

Not a true story really..

http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/mondays.asp

There were school shootings long before video games started to take off, and long before the advent of the kind of graphic ultraviolence that this bill targets....

Yes, and I do also remember that those very images were debunked as archive footage two days later. Do you?

No, in fact I don't remember that.

Probably as divided over time and space as those incidents. The Cole was in 2000. That's 6 years ago.

So? What does the age of the event have to do with it? Are you saying things would be different now? Well, the Madrid bombing was two years ago, and the London bombings were 7 months ago. Are those recent enough? Because I still don't recall anybody demonstrating in the streets in protest of either of those events. Yet over a cartoon they come out en masse.

You're right, it is injustice. My point in all of this is that while the Muslim community seems to take great offense to their being stereotyped as terrorists, they could do a heck of a lot more than they are to combat that myth. Showing outrage at the terrorist acts themselves, condemning those that commit such acts in the name of Islam, not electing a terrorist organization (which unfortunately goes a long way to dispel the notion that it's all the violent minority), finding a strong leader to stand up to be the voice of the non-militants (an anti bin Laden, if you will). They have allowed some extremists to completely corrupt their religion by using it to perpetrate heinously violent acts. It's time for the silent majority to become not-so-silent.

. . . throwing a frog into a pot of water and gradually bringing it to a boil . . .
In the interest of public education, I would like to point out that this is an erroneous myth:
http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/frogboil.htm
Interestingly, humans are probably more susceptible to this sort of treatment since our bodies will busily try to adjust to the increasing temperature, leading us to think that it's something we can handle. When the frog notices the increased temp, on the other hand, his only strategy for lowering the temperature is to jump away.

about a CARTOON.
3,000 people murdered in the name of Islam and no worldwide Muslim led riots against this terrorist act committed against the West. Why not? Those extremist, Saudi funded mosques which originally brainwashed and recruited the hijackers as soldiers of Islam dominate the landscape in the Muslim world and Europe too. Maybe the only way we could appease Muslim anger is to allow another terrorist attack. Then they will party and dance in the streets like it's 9/11
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/cnn.htm

In a way it makes sense. They wouldn't have gotten so big today if they weren't doing something right in the first place. They gained their original capital by making games that people actually wanted to buy (without the brandname to rely on and the oodles of marketing they can spend now) which allowed them to make all the acquisitons which have led to them becoming the behemoth they are today.

As is described in more detail by the Snopes article on the "curse" that seems to follow football stars featured on Chunky Soup can labels, if you pick out a particular person, company, whatever, and laud them for their excelence, it is only because they are performing above the mean in whatever merits you're observing compared to their peers. No one comments about companies who have always performed poorly, "oh how the mildly pathetic have become even worse." And once you've become the best there's only one other place to go. You can strive to remain the best as long as possible but eventually you will fail in that goal.

Of course there's always the question of whether you fail because you can no longer remain (as) competitive or through some kind of explicitly self-destructive action. Or whether that failure is of a financial or PR nature. Nintendo made what are, in retrospect, some obvious blunders and dropped from #1 in the console industry to a distant second, but have still remained a company that makes quality products and still turns a profit (though perhaps not as much as in their heyday.) EA on the other hand has become even more successfull financially, but at the cost of adopting policies that have made a lot of people regard them and their games unfavorably.

Wow - how is this 'insightful'? Conspiracy theories are sexy and aluring, but often based in pure fantasy:
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/pentagon.htm
http://libertyboy.free.fr/misc/attack/2001_09_11_p entagon_plane/index.php

S**pes

That's not a bad outlook. I will not ask Time Warner for permission to sing happy birthday, the same way I would have to ask you before using your car. The Hill sisters would be outraged if I did have to ask. That's because the song is not property and it never will be. I'll always be able to share it with my friends, no matter how loud you act or how stupid you make laws. Free speech is a natural right which trumps the created rights of copyright. Good content will propagate with our without your pimping and will always be free despite your efforts. Indeed, good content will do better without the help of concentrated media and will flourish when the radio empires of the 1920s finally die.

Stop repeating a fictional backronym....
http://www.snopes.com/language/acronyms/fuck.htm

Well, actually, Michael Jackson and Sony own the copyrights on most of the Beatles' music.

So, when the copyright extension issue comes up, ask this: "Do you want to put more money in the pockets of a man who sleeps with little boys?"

Surely you jest. As any child could tell you, it is critically important to the well being of our democracy that songs like The Happy Birthday Song remain copyrighted until at least 2030.

There's no contradiction. It's perfectly possible to believe that lots of bad things happen, and still smell the sweet odor of urban legend on a particular "A friend of one of my students' best friends" story. If I admit that people sometimes hire dangerously irresponsible babysitters, am I expected to buy that one story about the stoned babysitter cooking a baby in the oven? I hope not.

The end result does not matter for defining the action, stealing. I never claimed end results have no meaning, just that they don't define what it and is not stealing (an action). Sheesh!

Bottom line: copyright infringment is functionally identical to stealing.

This is called a false dichotomy. There are more than two possibilities here.

I don't believe there are.

I don't know if you know this, but before copyrights, people still made music, art, literature, etc. They got paid for it too.

My bet is there were far, far fewer of them making a living at it, and even fewer getting rich at it, compared with today.

Copyright is by no means the only way to make money off of content.

No, selling it is. Without protection from copying, it becomes much harder to sell it, as most people would rather just have a free copy.

Ask 95% of musicians where they make their money and they'll tell you it isn't from copyrighted songs, it is from touring, concerts, appearances, and merchandise.

I highly doubt this is true. And even if it were, without the huge marketing machine that pushes their content out to the market, most artists couldn't get known well enough to fill a cofee house, let alone a stadium.

Without copyright it would be from the same thing and probably from commissions and donations as well.

And wouldn't that just be great for our world-vision of free content for everyone. If you reduce art to only those who are willing to pay to commission it, it is REALLY going to get locked away from the rest of the world. You think I'm going to commission someone to compose me a song, or a movie, or a picture, and pay good money for it, only to let the rest of the world copy it for free? Hell no, it's going in my vault.

No, we're talking about your laughably bad new definition for the word stealing. Which receiving a gift fits into. I don't care how much lipstick you put on your pig, it is still a pig.

Speaking of pigs, I've given up trying to teach you how to sing. If you don't agree with me that copyright infringement is functionally equivalent to stealing, I give up.

Most of the artists who made the works are dead, and they still are being compensated so that they will make more art. It's a steaming load of crap.

No, the owner of the copyright is still being compensated. They paid the artist, dead or not, for the work, which they now own and are selling. In turn, they will pay more artists to make more art, so long as it is profitable to do so.

Gee, a product is basically producible for free due to technology, but we're all expected to pay extortionate fees for it due to legal shenanigans. It sounds like the law is holding back progress to me. No, the product is not producible for free. It is reproducable for free. There is a huge difference here that you seem unable to grasp. Someone has to pay for the production of the original content. You can either commission it privately (in which case the work will likely stay locked up in a private collection), or you can spread the cost of the production by selling copies of it to many people.

No you can't. It is perpetually copyrighted due to our corrupt laws and non-commercial use clauses were removed in the 70s. It is illegal to sing happy birthday without permission. You're 30 years out of date.

Please see Snopes: http://www.snopes.com/music/songs/birthday.asp

"Does this mean that everyone who warbles "Happy Birthday to You" to family members at birthday parties is engaging in copyright infringement if they fail to obtain permission from or pay royalties to the song's publisher? No. Royalties are due, of course, for commercial uses of the song, such as playing or singing it for profit, using it in movies, television programs, and stage shows, or incor

The most popular brand, Dragon Skin, is BETER than what the army provides. ... if you're killed in combat while wearing body armor that wasn't issued by the military, your family doesn't get your death benefits.

Army Orders Soldiers to Shed Dragon Skin or Lose SGLI Death Benefits

There was a a case a few weeks ago where a guy was paralyzed from the waist down, and the military withheld his pay until he paid back a few grand in combat pay

Wounded Soldiers Told They Owe Money to Army Seems this is happening so much Nightline is doing an investigation. One telling quote: "No Pay for Four Months"

Then there's the guy who had to pay $600 for body armor that was destroyed when his arm was shredded by an enemy land mine.

My Mistake. It was $700

field medic tied a tourniquet around Rebrook's right arm to stanch the bleeding from shrapnel wounds. Soldiers yanked off his blood-soaked body armor. He never saw it again. But last week, Rebrook was forced to pay $700 for that body armor, blown up by a roadside bomb more than a year ago.

Your good point notwithstanding, it turns out that the boiled frog myth is exactly that.

uhh

When they got home, they found that "air" meant it had...air. Not air-conditioning. The courts eventually found this legal because the sentence was literally true. It was too bad the person assumed "air" meant "air-conditioning", but that's too bad on the person.
Reminds me of some of those great scams like the potato bug killer.

Lemmings don't actually march to their death. That was a film hoax by Disney.

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

Jaysyn

I'm with the other poster on this one, except with a suitable link: Mussolini, just your standard propaganda loving fashist.

Of course the corolory that; if you do make the trains run on time you are not a fashist is something of a non-sequitur.

"To say nothing of employee's arms being taken and used to gain access."

I hear this already happened. There was this guy I heard about, see, who met this nice looking woman in a bar. She invited him up to her room, spiked his drink with some kind of knock-out agent. When he woke up, he was in a bathtub full of ice and his arm was gone.

(Yes, I'm joking.)

Sorry, but I have to call bullshit on the barcode/666 thing. We'll let this article on Snopes take care of that.

Contrary to popular myth, no bar code includes the number 666. This belief arose because the number six is represented by a pattern similar to that of the guard bars used to mark the beginning, middle, and end of every bar code. Since the guard bars always appear three times in a given bar code, people who mistakenly read them as sixes claimed that the pattern 6-6-6 was embedded in every bar code. However, if you look closely at the '6' in a bar code, you will see that there is a wide white bar either to the left or the right of its pattern (depending upon where within the bar code the number is positioned), which is not the case with the guard bars.

Not only are the guard bars not used as digits, if they were they would not be proper 6's anyway. The whitespace in barcodes is not insignficant.

This is Indiana, where the state legislature passed a law decreeing that pi (as in the ratio of the circumference of circle to its diameter) is 3. Just 3. No messy fraction. No messy transcendental. Just 3.

Just as an example of how out of control perpetual copyrights have gotten, the "Happy Birthday" song is under copyright till at least 2030. It's fair use to sing it in front of family and friends, but if you want to use it, say, at your restraunt or in a student film, you have to pay royalties to a AOL-Time Warner subsidiary.

Unless there is a distinct and pronounced rise in the mean temperature that can be shown to begin with the industrial revolution, I don't see this to be anything significant.
From the data in TFA, it only shows that there is currently a spike in the median temperature, and that there have been previous spikes and lulls.
In geological terms, IIRC we are between ice ages - 10K years into a 20K cycle. Guess what, I expect it to be warm right now & then start cooling off in the next 1K years or so.
I see lots of proof of global climate change, but I have seen very little data showing it starts with the industrial revolution and the increased production of greenhouse gasses by humans.
Compare 100 million cubic metres of gas of CO2 from 1 lake (184K Metric Tons) with 5652 Metric tons for the US in 2000. 30X the CO2 output of the US in it's worst recorded year - almost 8 times the entire worlds output. You think those numbers are bad? 1,800 tons per day of SO2 from a Hawaii volcano - with even more CO2.
Am I anti-polution control, heck no. I like breathing. But when it comes to claiming that humans are having a huge influence, I just think people are underestimating Mother Nature.

http://www.snopes.com/medical/emergent/redcross.as p

I know Snopes isn't infallible but I've yet to see any proof of this persistent accusation.

The evil Kanagroo consipracy has already been documented:

http://www.snopes.com/humor/nonsense/kangaroo.htm

What more can you say?

...and most importantly, the space pen!

See Antispam group rejects e-mail payment plan for more reactions.

I had to read the story twice before realizing it wasn't a hoax.

While charging for reliably sending e-mail may be a good way to fight spam, putting the onus on the sender to pay isn't that great an idea.

I run an opt-in, non-profit, ad-free announcement list, for example. I just checked and there are 521 AOL and Yahoo addresses subscribed. I'm not going to pay $5 a day to reach those people!

I don't know how AOL filters work, but ideally a user could whitelist an address. But the pay-for-bypass method seems designed around reaching users that *don't* specify they want the "priority" spam.

Just how many boxes of this checklist does this plan grossly violate?

Once again people post crap without looking anything up....aside from being off topic you're wrong. Here are several articles from the cell phone and petroleum industries which are provided below to give you the correct information.

Petroleum Equipment Institute (PEI)-

                        http://www.pei.org/static/

Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association (CTIA) -

                        http://www.ctia.org/news_media/press/body.cfm?reco rd_id=377

                        http://www.ctia.org/news_media/press/body.cfm?reco rd_id=407

Urban Legends -

                        http://www.snopes.com/autos/hazards/gasvapor.asp

American Petroleum Institute (API) -

                        http://api-ec.api.org/media/index.cfm?objectid=4BB B0597-308E-49BE-9F513DE9A8B0C156&method=display_bo dy&er=1&bitmask=001007000000000000

Wired News -

                        http://www.wired.com/news/wireless/0,1382,58188,00 .html

A simple search on Google will yeild the results you seek:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=WTC+9%2F11+PU T+options+AMR+UAL&btnG=Google+Search

Oddly enough, snopes claims this rumor is false:
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/putcall.asp

Then they go on to say that yes, there was unusual trading, but that it was explainable. But if that were the case, if the traders really do have an iron-clad alabi that it was just their good fortune, why was over $2.5 million in profits never claimed?
Also note that if these trades were done as part of some strategy connected with the generally declining stock market, then why wasn't Delta given the same PUT option treament as AMR and UAL?

Another doubter:
http://www.nationalreview.com/rose/rose20040726070 0.asp

If you buy that story, then you need to look deeper:
(note: not a single source I could find comes from a "major news outlet" - so keep your salt shaker handy)
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/HEN204B.html
OR
http://www.unknownnews.net/010918911.html
OR
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?nof rames;read=73104
OR
http://www.humanunderground.com/archive/lucy.html
(don't read too much of this one, if you value your sanity).
OR
(one of the better articles "connecting the dots")
http://www.tetrahedron.org/articles/apocalypse/ins ider_trading.html
OR
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?nof rames;read=73104
OR
(scarier:)
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?nof rames;read=73105
OR
Sadly, Wikipedia lists this as a "conspiracy-theory":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_conspiracy_theor ies

If this were true, a naked magentron would be a great cellphone jammer. Even if not, it still might be!

...does this work with Poodles?

• "Mars is essentially in the same orbit . . . Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."
• "For NASA, space is still a high priority."
• "[It's] time for the human race to enter the solar system."

• "Mars is essentially in the same orbit . . . Mars is somewhat the same distance from the Sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. If oxygen, that means we can breathe."
• "For NASA, space is still a high priority."
• "[It's] time for the human race to enter the solar system."

Think reception will improve?

National postal services can still provide a mark of integrity. In the U.K., although not the U.S., writing a letter to yourself can be used as an argument of prior authorship. Also, registered mail with a return receipt actually works in the US Postal Service: you can get hard proof that a user received a letter, whereas with e-mail who knows what happened to that letter you sent. No e-mail client is required to honor an electronic return receipt request.

In the U.S. opening someone else's mail quickly escalates to the level of a federal crime. Opening someone else's e-mail has fewer legal ramifications, and those idiotic "For the intended recipients only" disclaimers do nothing to protect unencrypted messages. Everyone ought to be taught in E-mail 101 to never send important information through unencrypted e-mail, or at least not to get pissed off when you learn that someone in Eastern Europe just grabbed that "password protected" Excel file you sent yesterday.

And to answer your question, yes, I have sent a friendly letter using the postal service. I wrote a letter to a local police department commending the officer who helped me when I got a flat tire a few years ago. I got an equally friendly response. A friendly letter warms the cockles of one's heart more than a friendly e-mail does.

This crap has happened for so long, the only surprise is that Apple didn't put the warnings there. Not saying Apple made a dangerous product, just that their lawyers clearly didn't do their job to protect them (assuming no significant 'idiot' warnings were included -- I don't own one so I don't know).

Urban legend alert! Contrary to your talking point, Congressmen have been part of Social Security since 1984.

http://www.snopes.com/medical/myths/8glasses.asp

Drinking more water, "cures many diseases like arthritis, angina, migraines, hypertension and asthma." Sure thing, Doc. Speaking of water, have I got a bridge to sell you...

This isn't the only example of people without brains getting along just fine... It used to be that scientists thought these people were able to function normally with smaller brains since normal people used just 10% of their brain. However, that is largely a debunked idea.

It doesn't have to work to be effective. The suspect just has to believe it works.

Here's your answer, you ignorant cheesedick.

It's more important to do what you do best. Jobs really is a showman, and he really is technologist. Gates? Gates was a damn good coder, and he is a damn proficient businessman. The humanitarian stuff only started in earnest when he realized he had to do some serious brown-nosing with the government in order to get a free pass from the DOJ for his abuse of his monopoly.

On that score - it's Jobs by a million miles. He knows what he's good at. He does it.

Besides, you really don't wanna see Gates putting on a show with technology anyways, but at least now you know where Steve "monkeyboy" Ballmer got his dance lessons.

Private or public donations? Not my money, none of my freaking business.

If it were my money, it'd be donated in private.

"So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."
- Some long-haired hippy freak

You don't have to believe in Jesus -- hell, you don't even have to believe in God to see that the long-haired hippy freak had a pretty good point. If you support a cause - donate. There doesn't have to be a God for you to feel pretty fucking good about what you've done to advance your views.

Is was Bert, not Ernie that appeared on the poster. A picture of said poster and Urban Legends take on it can be found here

Personally I liked the Lost excerpt of the Pam and Tommy Honeymoon video the best.

http://www.snopes.com/language/notthink/deserts.ht m

Slashdot requires you to wait at least 15 seconds before blablabla :| *eyes watch*

Is this the beginning of the end for the Japanese obsession with humanoid robots? Say it isn't so! All they will have left is panty vending machines and Boong-Ga Boong-Ga to keep them entertained.

"Would this possibly in some way point to why we only use 10% of our cranial capacity? (These can be considered widely spread and disassociated thoughts)"

You're basing your worldview of "extra" brain capacity off of a new-age urban legend that has nothing to do with anatomy, medicine, or any science whatsoever.

http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10percnt.htm