One day, Bill Gates was standing on a street corner, watching the clouds roll by. Absentmindedly, he dropped a $1,000 bill out of his pocket. A bystander noticed and said, “Are you going to pick that up?”

“No, why would I do that?” Gates responded gruffly, and walked away.

OK, fact or fiction?

While my version adds a little color, it’s still just a fable.

You can mix and match the details, but the essence of the myth — which I’ll define as anything grossly inaccurate yet widely regarded as true — is still there.

It’s part fantasy, part fabrication, but wholly inaccurate.

Tech myths come in all shapes and sizes: Some contain a morsel of truth, but many of them are so wildly preposterous that it’s hard to imagine anyone taking them seriously.

“A myth generally exists to explain the worldview of a group of people,” says Rob Enderle, a consumer analyst. “This means its intent is to convey an idea but not necessarily the whole truth, and given it’s conveyed largely from person to person, the initial story can change a great deal.”

Read on at CIO.com.