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Al Gore Invents Internet TV
catdevnull writes "The SF Gate is reporting that former VP Al Gore is launching "Current" a new CableTV-Internet hybrid. From the article: "Current, the name of Gore's enterprise, hopes to do that by airing a shuffle of short news features, some produced by the network but many submitted online by viewers. Current will also air segments every half hour showing TV viewers what Google searchers are tapping into at that moment -- everything from current events to tourist destinations. It's all directed at a generation that thinks nothing of plugging into more than one media outlet at once." "
...he'll invent SlashDot!
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
You mean like MSNBC? The channel both Microsoft and NBC want to dump?
"Al Gore's endorsement should be enough for anybody"
The original inventor of the algorithm?
Current will also air segments every half hour showing TV viewers what Google searchers are tapping into at that moment
That's going to be kindof X-rated, don't you think? Experience has shown that at any given point, a good portion of people using the internet are searching for porn, or at least naked pictures of celebrities.
Still funny. All these years later. No it is, it's never gotten old. Not even when the NSF credited him with a major role in makeing the internet into something broadly useful.
...articles about robots recently?
I don't get it.
Credit for Internet funding by Vinton Cerf & Robert Kahn:
http://tinyurl.com/65ssc
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Emperor of the Moon? It's taking too damn long.
A TV show or short segment showing what people are looking for on Google? Oh god, I can just imagine it now:
193.53.2.10 is looking for "l33t w@r3z" with 57 hits
Oh but check this out! 216.23.129.44 is looking for "vast right wing conspiracy" with 683,000 hits!
101.23.64.99 is looking for "CENSORED" with 2,947,345 hits. What a perv!
Etc.
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.htm
Nope. The internet makes you stupid.
Look at the context of the quote though. It's obvious he's talking about a legislative accomplishment
People seem to be assuming that Gore wants to make a liberal counterpart to Fox News, but it appears that he's trying to do something quite different, making something that is far more interactive than traditional television. I have no idea if it will work (and I suspect that it won't), but critics might want to actually pay attention to what he's trying to do before criticizing something that has nothing to do with what he is trying.
Yeah keep mocking him. You'll be sorry when he decides to take it back.
No he didn't. That wasn't his choice of words at all. He said he "took the initiative in creating the internet."
Still a poor choice of words, but you are spouting the same falsehoods as you see on TV/Slashdot.
Snopes Article
And "took the initiative in creating" and "inventing" are most certainly differnt. Nikola Tesla discovered/invented AC power distribution, but George Westinghouse took the initiative in creating the power grid, by providing the money for it. Al Gore's role was more like Westinghouse's, in that he worked to secure funding for the internet and similar projects in the 80s when no one else really cared about them.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
And he did. Even the NSF acknowledged as much. Without the shift in government policy, we wouldn't have had the explosion of Entrepreneurship. The republicans post-Regan aren't pro Entrepreneurship, they're pro consolidation, pro-monopoly, and quite frankly, anti-american.
"...a generation that thinks nothing of plugging into more than one media outlet at once."
Maybe in my college days, but never again!
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. -Oscar Wilde
He actually said he "took the initiative in creating the internet"
Poor choice of words? Maybe, but Wired misquoted (libel!) him and put the word "Invented" in his mouth.
Either way, Al Gore did coin the phrase "Information Superhighway" and Eisenhower should get credit for the Internet because it's his vision of the Interstate system that was the fundamental idea that went into creating the Internet (and that was in like the 1950's!)
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What, you mean the stuff we get has had most of the crap screened out.
http://www.nbc.com/nbc/The_Tonight_Show_with_Jay_L eno/headlines/H_2871/H_2871_13.jpg
Announcing Car Bot: Thank you all for coming. It is my pleasure to
introduce the host of the Kyoto global warming convention. The
inventor of the environment, and first emperor of the moon, Al Gore.
Al Gore: I have ridden the mighty moon worm!
[Applause]
Fry: Good for him.
I don't know why people get all worked up about it though.
People get worked up about it because it was used during the 2000 election by right-wing pundits (yes, I mean *you*, Peggy Noonan) to "prove" that Al Gore was a serial liar who couldn't be trusted with the presidency.
So people on the right who get worked up about it do so because they see it as evidence that Gore is a dangerous buffoon who came *this close* to leading the country. People on the left who get worked up about it do so because it confirms for them that Republicans are evil, election-stealing savages.
Still others get worked up because the initial accusations and the long debate that followed seem to suggest that either something is badly wrong with the political system, or possibly that people aren't wearing enough hats.
Take your pick.
Kill, Tux, kill!
Why not post the link to the Current TV homepage?
It's pretty, and it the layout works with Firefox (unlike some sites)
Get your Unix fortune now!
The quote actually does not, except by wild misinterpretation, actually mean what the widespread, if only in jest, humorous interpretation implies it does. The actual quote: "I took the initiative in creating the Internet." this means, from the political perspective, that he encouraged the allocation of funds for the greater development of the protocols and systems that now comprise the systems that are thought of when "Internet" is heard by the majority, into the commercial entity that it now is.
Dumbass: AA came back and now has 53 stations across the country.
Having viewers make shows for you? I guess that's kind of like how /. works. I was hoping, however, that it would be like blogging meets TV--you know, bloggers at events and getting air time in front of a cable audience and not just the blogosphere.
Then again, it's already like that but with only text. And the blogging goes straight through to the viewer. So the more I think about this, the more it sounds like he's creating a middle-man company, which is to say, a completely useless and potentially brain-damaging company. Fuck that.
By the way, the first sentence of the article is "Al Gore never said he invented the Internet." So at least there's some good text in there.
AA failed miserably because instead of being original they were shallow and vicious copy cats. Most of their junk was a mean spirited parody of some other sucessful show.
Air America now has 51 stations, and reaches millions of viewers. It is also, according to Time magazine, "financially stable."
If your going to compete with the likes of Rush, Hannity, and the right you need to deliver facts and keep the slant off.
I almost spit up my drink over that line. Do you really believe that Rush and Hannity don't have a "slant"? Sounds like you drank the coolade to me.
-G
www.pixelstatic.com
From the description in this news article, "Current" sounds like MTV without the music tapes. String together all the semi-hip news and pretentious lecture-in-disguise clips MTV now offers, and you get "Current"!
A friend who has participated in numerous "brainstorm" sessions in TV industry once described those meetings as "plenty of saliva storm but no brain". Now I know why.
The report says Gore bought the network for $70 million; my graphic blog, http://sunandfun.blogspot.com/, does not cost a dime to produce and offers plenty of entertainment.
Sun and Fun
- Advanced the Internet
- Guest-starred multiple times on Futurama
- Was Vice-President
- On the Apple Board of Directors
- Now going into...um...network television.
I gotta tell you, I respect the guy. And this is only what I know about!i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
...that's why they're called Al-Gore-ithms.
For those of you keeping score at home:
Al Gore: 1 semantic slipup
His Opponent: 12,476 slipups (plus $2e11 mistake penalty), and counting.
Thank God we dodged that bullet, eh? With the wrong man in charge we might have ended up, oh, I don't know, invading the wrong country by mistake or something...
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
"Don't get it"??
Dude, I've been listening to talk radio since I was 8 years old. I have two solid decades of talk radio under my belt. I know good talk radio from bad. I have listened to "Air America" plenty and it is the most droll, uninteresting, unprofessional, ill-prepared drek ever. It's a decent idea, but poorly excecuted. You can't just take the cast of SNL and make a syndicated political talk station out of it.
And 53 stations is nothing if they're 53 stations with poor ratings.
I don't know a soul who regularly listens to their programming. It's downright painful at times. Even my hardcore liberal friends can't stand it. They'd rather listen to a professional right-winger who knows what being a radio personality is than some chunky comedienne whining about how unfair the world is like your typical hollywood looney.
I'd give my left nut for a station that aired an opposing side to the right-wing drek that's on the air (I don't agree with either side, but it would be nice to switch to for a bit of flavor now and then), with a reputable person instead of some smarmy LA git. Dump Al Franken and Janine and give me, say, James Carville. Come on.
I'm really tired of everyone thinking that just because they're famous, they can swing radio. They CAN'T. Radio is DIFFICULT. You have to be INTERESTING and CLEVER and ARTICULATE. People like O'Reilly and the above mentioned names don't belong within a mile of a radio broadcasting booth.
Anyway, the same network that is responsible for all of the whacko rightwingers is responsible for the leftwing "Air America". Yep. You got it. Clear Channel. Oooh. That's really showing them!
And just because it has okay numbers (nothing to crowe about in most of the country, including the very progressive west coast state I live in), doesn't mean it's good radio. If you're a hardcore lefty, what are you going to listen to? It's not that there's much else out there. You have your choice between many very talented conservatives who you may disagree with most or all of the time, or very unpolished highschool/junior college quality liberal broadcasters that you can enjoin for a round of daily navel-gazing.
That it can manage to eek a three-share at times just means people are desperate for a different voice. And since this is the only voice out there doing that, it's their only option. Stick a competing network up out there that shares the same views, but with more professional and qualified personalities and you will quickly see Air America circle the drain.
So, Saddam gave some money to widows and orphans of Palestinians some of whom might qualify as "terrorists" (a badly misused and meaningless, not to mentioned loaded, word). That's Israel's problem not ours. Oh, wait, I forgot: we're the United States of Israel now. I keep forgetting "everything changed" after 911.
If you were referring to the alleged Iraq/Al Qaeda link, that's complete bullshit. Only the shills still push that line.
Dude, I was USING the internet before Al Gore was ever got involved! Maybe it didn't have that name, but a TCP/IP network connecting universities and government agencies was already in place. That may not be the internet that we know today, but it was the seed from which it directly grew.
Al Gore didn't create a damned thing, all he did was spend money to expand it. No matter how many times his fans mod it down as flamebait, the truth will not change.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Still a poor choice of words, but you are spouting the same falsehoods as you see on TV/Slashdot.
It's funny how such a liberal crowd as Slashdotters and TV writers keep repeating the Republican-created meme that Gore "invented" the Internet. Does this make you fools, tools, or both? You could at least give the Republican party credit for knowing how to play you.