U.S. Government Developed the iPod

ezavada writes "Engadget reports that in a speech at Tuskegee University, President Bush claims that government research developed the iPod." From the article: "While we have to gratefully acknowledge the efforts of government agencies such as DARPA in some of the fields mentioned by the President, we also feel obligated to point out the accomplishments of private companies in the US and abroad, including IBM, Hitachi and Toshiba -- not to mention the Fraunhofer Institute, which developed the original MP3 codec ..."

Comments

Re:Sounds like a (bad) joke to me

[Hartree]

It's Zonk on duty. What did you expect?

...Yes, and

[obli]

...Yes, and in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four "The Party" invented the airplane.

April fools?

[tomstdenis]

The US government invented the FFT?

Hehehehe, that's cute.

As for the others... well "contributed to" is better than "invented".

If I find a way to make a better tasting sugar then someone takes that and makes a completely new drink. Did I invent the drink?

The government through it's research may have helped but I'd like to think it's the millions of people all over the world who have individually contributed to various projects.

But that's typically American. take credit for everything regardless of the contribution.

Tom

Re:Absurd

[lasindi]

It will probably get passed around the net as if Bush said he developed the iPod. Al Gore never did say he "invented the internet" either.

Perhaps, but what Al Gore did say is that he "took the initiative in creating the Internet." What Bush said is that the US developed technologies that "were the key ingredients for the development of the iPod." You can say that Newton developed math that was a "key ingredient in the development of the iPod," but you can't say Newton "took the initiative in developing the iPod."

In short, yeah, both one-liners would be unfair. But Gore's is a little more fair.