The eight most brainless tech rumours ever

Apple wanted to buy Nintendo back in 2006. Undoubtedly the result of an Apple fan having a mushroom-based trip while playing Super Mario Bros, we have to hold up our hands and say we didn't exactly ignore it -- it made the number one spot on our list of the Top 10 Apple rumours of all time.

True, Apple did want to spin-jump its way into the gaming sector. But it never needed Nintendo. What it needed was to pair some compelling hardware of its own with some original games makers. Y'know, like Electronic Arts and an iPod touch. Today, the App Store, thanks to the iPhone, is one of the fastest growing game markets in the world. Batteries included, Nintendo not so much.

In early 2008 there was an interesting rumour about none other than CNET Networks -- us, before we were bought by CBS. Google was massaging the idea of getting into the business of producing original content, and wanted to do so by buying CNET.

Naturally we were quite surprised. For all we knew it was speculation, hand-crafted by someone who should've known better. But nonetheless it sent the company's share price up, and caused numerous high-profile news outlets to question the authenticity of the claim.

A little later CBS piped up and bought us. We'll never know if Google had any real intentions of snagging us.

In 1999, everyone thought they were going to be killed. Planes were going to fall out of the sky and crush the world's children, nuclear weapons were going to launch themselves and flambe every continent. It was all the fault of the 'Millennium Bug' -- the Y2K time bomb inside every piece of computing equipment whose internal clocks weren't capable of handling the transition into the four-digit date format.

Enormous amounts of cash were funnelled into fixing software and hardware. PC magazines went ballistic, shipping promotional CDs containing diagnostic software from companies hoping to sell 'fix-it' products. Reputable software engineers will tell you there could have been serious problems with important economic systems if the bug hadn't been fixed. But in the end it was a fearful rumour that caused no notable global catastrophe, and in most cases was blown out of all proportion.

If we did a feature called 'The ten dumbest things ever said on the Internet by anyone ever', Bill Gates being the Antichrist would be items one through to ten.

About a decade ago a rumour circulated that if you converted the letters of 'Bill Gates III' to ASCII numerals (the letter B is represented in ASCII as 66, for example), then add them all up, you get the number 666.

The theory circulated the inboxes of every impressionable moron on the planet at the time. On a scale of one to ten in terms of how dumb something is, this 'rumour' would be past ten and right off the scale. But still people continued to milk it for all it was worth. Apparently there was even hidden code inside Microsoft products that supported the idea.

If, like us, you think this rumour is the result of someone's brain having broken, consider writing for CNET UK. All it takes is a date with a lovely lady.