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We're moving a f'en carrier group into the region for support and search and rescue, you think that's cheap?

Does that *really* cost anything extra?

Here's a relevant link.

There's a reason it's been rated +5 Funny :)

But seriously, this theme was the subject of an urban legend back in the day. As the tale goes, a town in Japan was renamed Usa so that Japanese goods could have the phrase "Made in the USA" stamped on them. Though there actually is a town named Usa in Japan, it's had that name since before WWII and its name was never leveraged for trade purposes.

But still, games were better back then, when they concentrated more on the gameplay and/or story before the prettiness of the graphics.

Better? A bad game today is generally more entertaining than a bad game from back then. Plus, we tend to only remember the games we liked.

Speaking of bad games, it's funny how people forget the obvious.

Since I'm thinking about ET, here's an article that I find curious. Of importance:
1. The article is dated July 1983, which is after the release date of the original 2600 ET (fall 1982). This article is NOT about the infamous one, however I would expect references to lessons learned (which I can't seem to find).

2. I feel that the following quote disproves your statement: "These included high standards of graphic and sound representation, especially for the E.T. figure and voice, and a natural yet playable game concept that was true to the feeling of the film." Notice how graphics and sound are listed first (with emphasis on quality), and game concept just needs to be "playable".

Or, does "back then" refer to games made before 1983?

Actually, Black Friday is not the busiest shopping day of the year, even for Brick-and-Mortar. The two weekends before Christmas almost always push the day after Thanksgiving to fifth-busiest. See Snopes.

Look man I'm with ya but
he probibly didn't say that
I realise that saying Lincoln said that lends it some wieght, but, him having not said it doesn't diminish its kernel of truth. The problem iw corparations is they don't die. While that lends stability to the economy it also lends stagancy. Imagine if Carnagie had never died. This is a man who amassed enormas wealth, but because humans die he gave much of it to start a whole bunch of .edu's and musseums and to this day a foundation of his funds pbs.

I was just thinking the same thing. The headline should read "Craigslist saves San Franciscans $65 million a year".

Then we can run another article "E-mail costs the US post office $230,000,000 in revenue per year. Bill 602P proposed."

The amount of money Bill Gates was giving away was actually $1000, not a piddly $100 cnote. You obviously never got paid and are just jealous of the millions who did.

Merely a snapshot of the continually-evolving Jargon File.

The Big Book of [Urban Ledgends|Hoaxes|Vice|Loosers|Conspiracy| etc.]

Again, more up-to-date stuff can be found at Snopes, The Straight Dope, The Urban Legends Research Centre, Hoaxkill, The Museum of Hoaxes, &c.

Nothing wrong with dead-tree books, of course, but nice to know of alternatives.

The VCR was an early predecessor of the DVD player. Lower in quality, and only programmable by a select few..
You can find a picture here

Who says everything has to be in the center? With proper wiring and piping, the bathroom and kitchen could be in relatively the same place all the time.

There could be a central room that everything opens into, and where the border between the apartment and hub is. There could also be radial walls, as long as they didn't go all the way to the center (this gruesome accident comes to mind).

When an anecdote is a little too perfect (and this one is way over the top), then you need to google for it at site:snopes.com. http://www.snopes.com/college/exam/barometer.asp

Sorry for adding so late.
Yes urban legends to end up all over the media in the place they supposedly happen, but only when the journalism of the local media is so craptastic they cant bother to actually check the facts.
In columbus, Ohio. A mall was the supposed site of a famous legend, the story spread and the local media printed it as truth. Then a couple days late when no one could verify in any way the contents of the legend hey started to try to backtrack on the fear they were capitaliziing on.
The UL in this case was an old 1800's era one.

You mean Code 431.322.12 of the Internet Privacy Act won't protect me? Damn, and I thought my warez site had foolproof protection...

Offtopic, but can you believe that JELLO is made from bones?!

There are all kinds of things you get worked up about here.

Still I'm saddened twinfold by those attacks. Not only did they kill a number of innocents, but they also made US Xenophobic to an extreme where they were willing to finance a war on an unrelated soverign nation for an vested interests of the rulers. People don't want war, but they can always be brought to the bidding of the rulers [warning: swastika]

> Another good example is the pen Nasa spent a
> log of money to create so astronauts could
> write in space...and the Russians use pencils.

Charming, but false.

A regular pencil creates lots of graphite dust, which is a big problem in zero gravity. It gets into computer gear and creates short circuits.

This has got to be the urban legend that pisses me off the most, just because so many people try to make a point out of it. Long story short, originally both the USA and the USSR used pencils, but they would cause problems in microgravity due to the leads breaking and floating around in the air. The Fisher pen company developed the pen with their own money and sold each pen to nasa for only 2.95.

Ah, one of my favorite Urban Legends.

Actually Mountain Dew doesn't cause lower sperm count. That's an urban legend.

That would be http://snopes.com/

When the unemployment runs out, the jobless do stop getting counted.

I thought it was time to trot this out. I reference it at snopes because the history is interesting, but I'm mentioning it for the content of the "bill" itself.

But for someone putting money on it (me) it's safest to take into account the possibility that the OP would try to come up with a collision using a birthday attack.

But doesn't Warner own IP in the birthday attack? Snopes seems to think so.

I saw a chart of IQ vs. who each state voted for. The top 12 or so all were blue states. Most of the rest voted Bush. I'd prefer to think that most of your country isn't THAT stupid, to support the PTC.

That was debunked. Just remember that when you see it again in 4 years.

You ignorant slut.
Snopes

I guess we keep perpetuating the myth until it becomes truth, huh?

If the word gets out that one member of a community is covertly foisting products on the rest, a general sentiment of deceit smites the social atmosphere. I feel that, although this is a perfectly legal, dare I say brilliant, marketing system, I would make it a point to rout out and publicly humiliate any Bzzers I discover.

I had the same thought. But this has to be done cooperatively to be effective. Why not infiltrate, find out which products are being buzzed, list them online, and let volunteers stamp out the astroturf they see? In other words, we need a site that plays the same role that Snopes does for urban legends.

I've just registered counterbuzz.com and created an overview page and logo. I'll also send a brief letter to the NY Times Magazine suggesting this strategy and giving the URL.

Who wants to take over development of the site? If the letter is selected for publication, it will appear in 2 weeks and send a lot of visitors to the site. We need at least a forum so volunteers can get organized.

The page says:

CounterBuzz will try to collect and verify information about which products are being "buzzed." If someone is buzzing in a public forum about a product listed here, you can post your own review that exposes her and proves it with a link to CounterBuzz. If your friend is buzzing you one-on-one, at least you can tell him how you feel about it.

The name CounterBuzz was chosen by analogy with counter-propaganda and counter-spin. If volunteer shills can play this game, so can volunteer debunkers.

What's wrong with buzzing? There are ethical arguments on both sides of this practice. But the bottom line is that I deserve to know when I'm being spun. If you claim to be my friend, or you're posting a review on Amazon, you'd better tell me if you have a conflict of interest.

See the site for more discussion.

And to compound the idiocy of linking to a dynamic host, what's with repeating the "Gore invented the Internet" bullshit -- he never said that, as has been discussed here ad nauseaum. (See Snopes)

They proved themselves to be partisan hacks before. And if in you're in the 'truth' business you don't do what they did to Michael Moore and remain trusted.

Granted, that article is correct, but their credibility was killed long ago.

Gore did provide early support for the technology - even if he puffed up his role - but computer pioneers can't even agree on exactly what the Internet is, let alone who created it. ... Technical histories of the Internet refer mainly to the technical milestones along the way. Among all the techno-whizzes that get the credit, only one legislator is mentioned - Gore - despite the fact that every stage of the Internet's evolution was funded and directed by federal grants and initiatives.

Gore was widely credited in histories written long before the vice president's oft-derided comment to CNN reporter Wolf Blitzer that he ''took the initiative in creating the Internet.''

Gore is credited by the technological cognoscenti for having sponsored legislation that helped launch the expansion of the fledgling Internet to ever-wider uses. As early as 1986, Gore articulated a vision of widespread connected computing. In 1989, he said that ''the creation of this nationwide network ... will create an environment where work stations are common in homes and even small businesses.''

Two years later, he introduced a followup bill to expand access to the network, saying, ''In the future, I think we will see computers and networks used to teach every subject from kindergarten through grade school.''

None of these histories comes close to giving him credit for the ''creation'' of the Internet. One account, written by Vinton Cerf (widely known, though he eschews the title, as ''the father of the Internet''), states: ''I think the vice president is very deserving of credit for his active support for the Internet and the businesses that depend on it daily.''

Cerf, now a vice president at MCI-Worldcom, added that ''his remark was almost certainly a slip of the tongue, because he'd be quite correct to say `I helped create the Internet' - because of his work to provide an environment of support for research, technology transfer and e-commerce initiatives so fundamental to the Internet today.''

Claim: Vice-President Al Gore claimed that he "invented" the Internet.

Status: False.

Origins: No, Al Gore did not claim he "invented" the Internet, nor did he say anything that could reasonably be interpreted that way. The derisive "Al Gore said he 'invented' the Internet" put-downs are misleading distortions of something he said (taken out of context) 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.

Al Gore did NOT claim he invented the internet.

The lawn-chair man sounded like a hoax to me, but snopes.com (which we all know is the final word in urban legends) claims it's true!

My favorite part:

As Larry and his lawnchair drifted into the approach path to Long Beach Municipal Airport, perplexed pilots from two passing Delta and TWA airliners alerted air traffic controllers about what appeared to be an unprotected man floating through the sky in a chair.

The lawn-chair man sounded like a hoax to me, but snopes.com (which we all know is the final word in urban legends) claims it's true!

My favorite part:

As Larry and his lawnchair drifted into the approach path to Long Beach Municipal Airport, perplexed pilots from two passing Delta and TWA airliners alerted air traffic controllers about what appeared to be an unprotected man floating through the sky in a chair.

Claim: Vice-President Al Gore claimed that he "invented" the Internet.
Status: False.

See here

Internet petitions are not necessarily effective though they sound like a great idea. Information such as e-mail addresses can be faked. A better idea would be to encourage people to write nicely to software producers. If many people felt strongly about abandonware, a company might well take notice. Even if a company releases a package of older titles, that is better than nothing.

http://www.snopes.com/autos/law/noplate.asp A little googling has found that someone in California has already (inadvertently) done this 25 years ago. Other possibly problematic vanity plates include: MISSING, NONE, EXEMPT, ERROR, VOID, EXPIRED, INVALID, TEMP, UNKNOWN, DELETE, SEIZED, IMPOUND, CTRL-X, think of any more?

Watch the state direct tickets for all vehicles without license plates to your house...

snopes link

See Snopes for more.

Well, no-one except Bert from Sesame Street.

Not only does the GameCube motor not spin opposite from the way most optical drives spin, 'Headcase' is referencing a similar urban legend that water will always spin in a certain direction in the northern hemisphere of the Earth (as in a sink drain or toilet), but in the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere.

This was mentioned in a Simpsons episode, where they visited Australia IIRC (it was a big issue for Homer when the toilet spun 'the wrong way').

This is also not true. The direction the water spins when circling a drain can be attributed to nothing more than the construction of the sink and Chaos Theory. If you don't believe me, ask Snopes!

" In the fall of 1963, Laura narrowly averted a life of pointless obscurity, when she ran a stop sign and collided with another vehicle, inflicting a fatal neck fracture on Mike Douglas, a then-serious boyfriend"

In-depth Snopes info (TRUE)

(not same AC)

IRC, we humans use only a small percentage of our brains.

Thats asolute bullcrap, check this out. Why would we evolve such a big brain if it was mostly deadweight?

What the hell kind of filthy, disease-ridden Typhoid Mary wannabe are you that you've had 3 infection requiring IV antibiotics over the years?

I suppose I could have claimed to have written it myself or left out the fact that I found it somewhere else.

snopes traces it to 1995. Do you have any info to add? I'm sure they'd love to hear from you if you do.

To be fair to -taj-, he was merely quoting the top of the page he linked to, where it does indeed have the claim that the guy is real. And the link at the bottom about it being an urban myth seems to be semi-broken. Here's what Snopes has to say, though.

Even out of context I would say I would not interpret it that way. And he did, in fact, help create the environment that led to the Internet.

Snopes always has the digs on this stuff.

Of course, we well-informed readers of slashdot all know that Al Gore never actually claimed to have invented the internet...

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.htm

That's just Dismisinformation
Let's not be bothered by the facts when dissing the US:
Space Pen