Popular beliefs

While this method won't magically fix whatever is wrong with your computer, it can get your hard drive working long enough for you to recover important data before it gives up the ghost for good. This generally works best when the drive is making a tell-tale clicking sound caused by overheated metal parts that have expanded. Freezing the hard drive cools and shrinks the metal so the drive will mount properly and run long enough (hopefully) for you to copy your files to another source.

In 2003, Microsoft's MSN U.K. division announced plans to develop a portable toilet for use at summer music festivals that would be equipped with a keyboard, plasma screen and wireless Internet access. They already had some success with Internet-ready park benches in London, and were carrying the idea through to the "iLoo," complete with special toilet paper printed with URLs.
The iLoo project quickly became the butt of jokes in the media and on late-night talk shows. Microsoft's corporate headquarters in the United States responded by saying the whole thing was a hoax, but later confirmed that while their British MSN division had been working on such a project, it had been scrapped after the announcement prompted so much ridicule.

Although Rear Adm. Grace Hopper, the mathematician who oversaw the project at Harvard, is largely credited with coining the term "computer bug," the word "bug" had been used to mean a glitch or error for many years before this incident occurred. In fact, she was not even there at the time, but the technician who removed the moth from the machine carefully taped it into the logbook with the notation, "First actual case of bug being found."

According to a bit of email advice that has been circulating on the Internet since 2001, you can foil a computer virus by adding a fake email address, such as aaaaaa@aaa.aaa, to the beginning of your address book. Unfortunately, most computer viruses don't go through your address book alphabetically and stop as soon they encounter one that doesn't work – they just send a separate message to each address – so the only result would be having that particular one bounce back while the virus sent itself to everyone else you know.
The best way to beat a virus is to install anti-virus software and avoid opening emails and attachments from unfamiliar senders.

This email – along with many, many copycat versions – has been circulating for over a decade. The original version claims that Bill Gates will share a piece of his vast fortune with you if you help him beta-test a new email tracking program simply by forwarding the message to everyone in your address book. In return, you'll get a check reflecting the number of people the message was forwarded on to.
Of course, no such program exists, and the only thing you'll achieve by forwarding this hoax email is to annoy everyone you know.

Despite rumors to the contrary, Arthur C. Clarke did not name the artificial-intelligence onboard computer that runs the spaceship in his 1968 novel "HAL" because it was "one step ahead of IBM." Both Clarke and film director Stanley Kubrick have contended that this was purely coincidental, and that the name HAL is an acronym (of sorts) for "Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer."

Peeping Tom

This is one of the most common myths: "Can someone be watching me right now as I use my computer?" Although the answer seems obvious to some; for Mac users this can actually be true.
Apple experts have found that by using Universal Remote Access, a Mac user can log into one Mac from another Mac, and view and take video and pictures of what's on the other end. However, the hacker would have to be armed with the user's password.

from: http://media.www.tsumeter.com/media/storage/paper956/news/2008/09/08/Business/Fact-Or.Just.Plain.Fiction.Top.10.Computer.Myths-3419278.shtml

More recently, maybe you received an e-mail warning you about an Olympic Torch virus making the rounds that would "burn" your computer's hard drive. Don't get hot and bothered over this one--it's also a hoax.
from: http://pcworld.about.net/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/hoaxes/olympic.html