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This sounds like a completely uninformed opinion. Nebraska is much more rural than Kansas; if you prefer this, go to Nebraska. However:

The three principal universities have Internet2 and there is a LUG in each of the university cities (Wichita, Lawrence, Manhattan). The University of Kansas is one of the top ten party schools (KU) and Lawrence is close to Kansas City. Wichita is the industrial city in the state and has low housing costs.

"Real northern California" (i.e. Humboldt county) is beautiful and cheaper than much of California. I think Nevada "sucks", but this is my opinion and I know other people like it. Everyone has to make her/his own decision. Just realize that your opinion is exactly that and nothing more.

Is Ariel kite photography now gonna be banned?

I don't know about aerial kite photography, but Ariel kite photography is already outlawed in Title 17, United States Code. The Walt Disney Company holds exclusive rights under copyright in The Little Mermaid, accidental dick tower and all.

This is an urban legend.

It's an urban legend:

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

Of course, since interstate highways are federal property, I don't suppose there's anything stopping the government from shutting down those portions of the roads that are straight and free of obstructions to use as airstrips in an emergency. But there is no such thing as the "one-mile-in-five" law your friend mentioned.

DennyK

Microsoft and AOL are now the largest Internet company and in an effort make sure that Internet explorer remains the most widely used program, Microsoft and AOL are running an e-mail beta test. When you forward this e-mail to friends, Microsoft can and will track it (if you are a Microsoft Windows user) for a two week time period. For every person that you forward this e-mail to, Microsoft will pay you $5.00, for every person that you sent it to that forwards it on,Microsoft will pay you $3.00 and for every third person that receives it, you will be paid $1.00. Within two weeks, Microsoft will contact you for your address and then send you a check. I thought this was a scam myself, but two weeks after receiving this e-mail and forwarding it on, Microsoft contacted me for my e-mail and within days, I received a check for $800.00.

Disney's head is in cryogenic storage.

Walter Elias Disney was not frozen. Quite the opposite; he was burned.

Mod parent up, excellent example of shortsightedness .

http://www.snopes.com/language/document/vanburen.h tm

For more information about this joke, read the truth about Penis Van Lesbian, or rather Richard Wayne Van Dyke.

Coincidence Design is a hoax. Research, people! It takes all of two minutes.

False

Oooh. The Green Party USA must be out of money because they can't even afford their own domain. They have to host on Geocities!

By the way, you might want to check your facts before you post a link to a Geocities site!

Too bad that it is considered just an urban legend.
See This page on snopes.com for more information about this story.

We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

---Herman Goering, Nazi Reichsmarshall and Luftwaffe-Chief, during the Easter recess of the Nuremberg Trials

Claim: The United States standard railroad gauge derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman war chariot.

Status: False.

Here's a reference which says the rumor is true.

And I tend to believe Snopes.

During his service in the U.S. Congress, Al Gore did take the initiative in transforming a private network of military and scientific institutions into the commercial Internet. Even Vint Cerf has acknowledged the former Vice President's contribution.

"I invented the Internet" debunked

But one of Thomas Crapper's employees did invent an improved flush toilet.

(read down to the end to understand how the myth came about).

More or less correct, due to the railroad being developed most heavily in England first, and then exported elsewhere. Note that Russian/Soviet rail gauge is different from pretty much the rest of the world, which caused supply and troop movement issues for the Nazis in WW2.

For more information I recommend the snopes page, which sorta debunks the pseudo-UL of railroad track widths being passed down from the Roman Empire.

As best I can tell it isn't an actual government regulation (although I wouldn't be surprised if it became one ex post facto), but was an industry standardization.

I wanted to vent a bit about ABCNews.com's coverage of the shuttle disaster. In this story, the fourth from the last paragraph reads (note about challenger, not columbia):

Challenger's nose section, with the crew cabin inside, was blown free from the explosion and plummeted 8.7 miles from the sky. NASA learned from on-board voice recorders that the astronauts lived through much of the capsule's death plunge. The capsule shattered after hitting the ocean at 140 to 180 mph.

Now, for those of you that are aware, the second sentence refers to a weekly world news article, which as you know, is america's second finest news source. A google search quickly found a debunking article. There are no audio tapes suggesting that the pilots survived "much of the ... death plunge." The correct information can be found here.

Anyway, I just wanted to vent, because ABCNews has a responsibility to print facts, and, AFAIK, they didn't even announce the correction, although subsequence stories with the same content did fix it. What's with internet news services and not announcing corrections (again AFAIK)?

If they can't get history correct, how can they fairly report on the present?

-Sean

I have been to Japan.

you can buy teddy bears that are DILDOs.

I never tried this, but there are plenty of shops where you might be able to.

you can buy used panties from vending machines.

That ended almost 10 years ago. However, there are shops where you can buy entire uniforms previously worn by schoolgirls. I don't know if that includes underwear.

you can't buy a beer in a lawson's without passing at least one prostitute.

I bought a beer in a Lawson's without passing any prostitutes.

You are right he merely "took the initiative in creating the internet"

"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. "

No, he didn't claim to have anything to do with authorizing the DARPA project that ultimately led to the internet, as he didn't become a member of congress until 1977, well after ARPANET was up and running. Your version of what he claimed he did is no more true than that of the parent poster.

Even though he was one of the leading congressional supporters of the internet in the 80s, he did overstate his own role in its creation even if the quote is read in context. This was a bad mistake and led to inevitable criticism- but only some of that criticism was justified. He never claimed he'd invented the internet.

I doubt this is true.

There are all kinds of rumors surrounding McDonalds' food.

See here for a related example.

Also, the FDA won't let them put undisclosed ingredients into their food.

S

Urban Legend

The important word there is story, considering this is false. Snopes

You do know that there's no such thing called Internet Privacy Act, right?

I'll take that as a joke. :)

It is ironic that you choose "Happy Birthday" to illustrate your example, as it has been a very hotly contested copyright. Do you really think the schoolteacher that put those seven notes together in 1893 deserves 2 million dollars per year? Not that she saw any of the actual money, she was dead long before the song actually paid any royalties. Only other people have profited off of "Happy Birthday", the original author got nothing for her (limited amount of) work. In fact, that $2M/year is going to AOL-Time Warner, who else? Like the majority of copyrights-it only goes to benefit the large media corporations, not the starving artist. Extending copyright terms well past the death of the artist does no good for the creator, as they will only see money until they die. It doesn't seem to me like this is promoting more art (which is the aim of the copyright principle), as the actual artist sees no added benefit. Life+x terms are simply to benefit the corporations that bought the laws in the first place.

more news here.

I quote:
"Clearly, although Gore's phrasing was clumsy (and self-serving), he was not claiming that he "invented" the Internet (in the sense of having designed or implemented it), but that he was responsible for helping to create the environment (in an economic and legislative sense) that fostered the development of the Internet"

Al Gore never said he invented the Internet.

Jobs for president? The guy's a millionaire, but he still only takes $1 for his annual salary. He completely turned around Apple (with help of course, but I don't think it could have been done without him). He's a straight shooter (willing to fire people in the elevator down to the lobby, or at least he used to). We could do worse than Jobs.

In fact, we already are.

You are missing something. Singing the songs in a school would be a public place.
Very much like the Happy Birthday song can't be sung in a restaurant without paying ASCAP fees.

Just in case you think I'm kidding about the 'Happy Birthday' bit see "The song "Happy Birthday to You" is protected by copyright.", Lessig Blog on the 'Happy Birthday' song

Urban legends aside, it seems to me that a robot with two wheels would be able to move around in much smaller spaces than one with four, and that the ability to pivot on the spot might help in cramped maintinence areas where humans don't want to or can't go. After all, isn't the idea of robotics to replace humans in dirty or dangerous jobs?

Urban legends aside, it seems to me that a robot with two wheels would be able to move around in much smaller spaces than one with four, and that the ability to pivot on the spot might help in cramped maintinence areas where humans don't want to or can't go. After all, isn't the idea of robotics to replace humans in dirty or dangerous jobs?

NASA spent over a million dollars developing a pen with a pressurized ink cartridge so it would write upside down or in zero-g. The Russians just used pencils.

And look, here's some further reading!

Speaking of density and a new unit, the dord would be most appropriate.

For an interesting story about Mickey on the side of a daycare center see here.

There is another story with more examples here.

Copyright violation is pretty easy. One simple way to do it is to perform in public a copyrighted song. Since Happy Birthday to you is copyrighted, singing it in public is illegal (more so if you get money for it (so put out a hat and have a accomplice throw in some money)). Anyone out there interested in protesting by singing in public and trying to get arrested? It would probably be quite good publicity and would demonstrate to more people the absurity of copyright law.

Oh? did he really?

The origins of "mad as a hatter" are not as clear as you imply in your post. See Snopes

The felt used in Victorian-era hats was treated with mercury salts to make it easier with which to work. Whether this is the actual origin of the phrase "mad as a hatter" is debated, but it was definitely mercury compounds that caused hatters' neurological problems.

That claim Al Gore said he invented the internet is a misquote. He never claimed he invented the internet.

Of course, that space pen story is an urban legend.

of course, This story is completely and 100% true and you would never perpetuate a false rumor or anything.

I'd have to disagree with 'Disney have failed to aggressively defend it.'. Disney is the company that goes after daycare centers with Mickey Mouses.

He was also instrumental in supporting the academic internet during his years in Congress when all other people in Congress didn't have a clue about these things.

I know first hand about this because I was in IT at the time -- yes, I'm old -- and worked in a community college where we were debating whether or not we should halt the rollout of our TCP/IP network and switch to OSI because we were a two-year college and more tilted to serving business and not research and maybe the upcoming information super highway thing would be better than hooking to the then non-commerical Internet.

Now, as it turns out, the separate networks never materialized, OSI fizzled, and the non-commerical Internet became the Internet we know today and serious research institutions are going off on their own with Internet 2.

So, he's a tithead, but he *was* the leader in congress in understand the benefits of an internet (of some sort) and that commercialization of the internet is what was a large factor for the economic boom of the 90s.

Remember, no one outside of academia heard of the Internet before like 1992. The first mass media cartoon regarding the internet was in the new yorker in 1993 (the "no one knows your a dog on the net" one) which we all, at the time, were amazed (and scared) that mass media noticed the Internet.

p.s. I find it interesting, however, that conservatives are so quick to jump on someone's bad choice of words when their own people who can't choose good words in speeches are somehow to be given understanding, ala Bush and former VP Dan Quayle (and visa-versa of course).

Some more on this at snopes.com

From snopes.com (www.snopes.com/spoons/felsenstein.html):

For those who may be deceived, this is not, in fact, on snopes.com. For those who missed it, it is moderated as "Funny" (at least, as I write this), and it may be somewhat amusing. Also, the fact that the URL for the article was shown, but not linked, might be another indication of this. (Searches on snopes.com for "Felsenstein" also come up blank.)

Doubt is a good thing, but it is taken advantage of just as easily as gullibility.

Most of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence died or ended up destitute by the end of the war but there were few regrets because they knew they were right.

No they didn't. See snopes.com for a refutation.

Aha! I knew it was true.