THIS is TRUE #766: 15 February
To read the full text of this week’s issue see
This is True‘s –
weird news stories.
Large portions of True are archived on the web, including the
This is True story archive,
the Honorary Unsubscribe, and
the Bonzer Web Site of the Week.
This is True covers
bizarre-but-true stories from newspapers from around the world. True
is also the source of the (in)famous Get Out
of Hell Free cards, the well-edited humor site
Jumbo Joke, and is the publisher of the
True Stella Awards, featuring case write-ups of
crazy lawsuits.
Special Note from True‘s 13 March 2005 issue:
Bad News, Good News: The bad news is, the RSS feed for
True‘s free edition was being abused: people were using scripts to post
the text to their web sites automatically, despite very clear prohibitions
against that. Since people wouldn’t stop that abuse, I stopped it –
by not putting the full text in the RSS feed anymore. It sucks that a few
idiots spoiled it for everyone, but that’s the way it is. True
depends on its copyright to stay in business, and I just can’t have people
stealing it like that. I offer all sorts of neat things for free, including
the “True-a-Day” service for you to put a story on your own web sites that
automatically changes every day, a free archive of past stories, this free
subscription, and lots more. Yet some just can’t be satisfied with that and
take more than what’s offered. That is indeed stealing, folks, and those of
you who post stories on your web sites, post them to Usenet, print them in
newsletters, and more threaten True‘s very existence. And that
matters to me. It’s not a “victimless crime”! I’m very generous
with my work, but I must draw the line somewhere. The “where” is up to me,
not you, and if you’re one who’s stealing it and can’t deal with that fact,
then stop reading my stuff.
The GOOD news is, I’m very sympathetic to the vast majority — those who
want to stay within the rules, to not cross the line, to not steal. A lot
of you try hard to subscribe and get the issues by e-mail, but have
difficulty, either because you only have a work e-mail address and are not
allowed to subscribe to e-mail publications, or your ISP filters out the
e-mail you asked to get, even while you still get loads of spam.
Thus, as of last week I have started posting the current issue on the
True web site so you can read it via the web. Not only that, but
because very often the letters in the current issue refer to the previous
one, I’m also posting the previous issue on the True web
site. They automatically rotate, and the RSS feed is now a notification of
the new postings, keeping the RSS option a useful feature. To find the
current issue, look in the Navbar on the True site. The previous
issue is linked from the current one’s page. (That Navbar is pretty handy:
it has links to the True-a-Day service, the archive, the Reader Forum, the
Bonzer and Honorary Unsubscribe archives, site search and a lot more. The
site is pretty big, but it’s well organized — if you take the time to
explore it and use the tools provided to find what you want.)