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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 ..."
Because i'm almost sure that the US Military needed a way to store audio in a portable device without carrying tapes and disks around long before the iPod
In three, two, ..., ...
AL GORE Hi, I'm Al Gore! You may remember me from such Vice-Presidencies as the 45th... And I was critical in securing the funding that made the DARPA project that became the Internet possible.
QUEUE CARD GUY: The iPod, sir.
AL GORE: The iPod possible.
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
He didn't say that at all. According to the article, he said that the "the government funded research in microdrive storage, electrochemistry and signal compression" and goes on to say that while the government intendeed that for one (unspecified) purpose, that "it turned out that those were the key ingredients for the development of the iPod".
That's a long long way from claiming to have "invented the iPod".
This whole story is a waste of space. It doesn't even mention Ponies.
The title of the article is incorrect; the US government didn't develop the iPod. It just helped fund the development of certain technologies at various research labs and universities that private corporations picked up and further developed on.
In other news early this morning, the US government helped develop Linux. More details come later.
The bold type is mine. I doubt that the single reason that things like signal compression were funded was because it was necessary to develop the iPod. It seems like these things could be more useful in military/computer/communications/etc. spheres than in personal entertainment.
Does this sound like a (bad) joke taken out of context to anybody else? Don't we have editors for this sort of thing?
Baltika
--
http://www.pancakelane.com/
This proves my conspiracy theory. You think you're listening to music, but in reality, your brain juice is being sucked out and put to nefarious use by the CIA.
The truth is out there, my friends! Protect your precious bodily fluids!
Well to take it to the logical extremes, the people elected the government who decided to fund these projects with their tax dollars.
Which means I indirectly contributed about a hundredth trillionth trillionth percent to the development of the iPod... which means based on iPod sales I'm owed about $400,000 in royalties, if my calculations are correct.
He didn't say "we invented the iPod". He didn't say "We invented MP3".
What he did say, according to the article, was: "the government funded research in microdrive storage, electrochemistry and signal compression. They did so for one reason: It turned out that those were the key ingredients for the development of the iPod."
I don't think there's anything outrageous or untrue in there. And it's so short an excerpt that it's impossible to say what the overall tone of the speech was. Quite possibly this was taken out of context.
So an obviously partisan article and an inept Slashdot summary. Don't bother to read TFA.
Since this will obviously raise the spectre of the "Al Gore invented the internet" meme, I'd like to take the opportunity to remind people that Robert Kahn and Vincent Cerf (who arguably did invent the internet) have defended Gore's actual statement, with the observation that: "No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time."
--- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous
If there's one thing worse than getting busted for shit, it's getting busted for shit after you flushed it already.
Oh no... it's the future.
In a private email message, Vint Cerf told me that it was true that Al Gore was instrumental in the development of the Internet. Before Mr. Gore's involvement, it was a semi-private utility known as ArpaNet and NSFNet. Mr. Gore championed the development of the private network as a public utility. This was years before Bill Gates, for example, recognized its importance.
Bush had to have said this to get a laugh. If he pulled it off and got a laugh, I'm honestly surprised. Not because I don't think it is funny - it is. I'm just really surprised to hear something so witty from the man that gave us these gems:
"Those who enter the country illegally violate the law." --George W. Bush, Tucson, Ariz., Nov. 28, 2005
"Wow! Brazil is big." --George W. Bush, after being shown a map of Brazil by Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brasilia, Brazil, Nov. 6, 2005
"It's in our country's interests to find those who would do harm to us and get them out of harm's way." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., April 28, 2005
"I can only speak to myself." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., April 28, 2005
I was in the park the other day wondering why frisbees get bigger and bigger the closer they get - and then it hit me.
> You can say what you want about Bush.
True, but not on the phone!
My other car is first.
Not that I disagree with you, but perhaps a more credible news source would have made your point clearer, such as The BBC.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
The "full compliance" demand was manufactured by the US administration as an excuse to invade Iraq. According to Hans Blix (head of UN inspection teams) they complied well enough, not perfect, though. Moreover, much of the information the inspection teams was given from USA was very wrong or outright lies designed to provoke a reaction from the Iraqi government.
Where Saddam stopped, USA continued, and committing many war crimes as well. Why do you think that USA is so hated by the general population in the Middle-East?
Myth: Bush is an idiot.
Fact: Bush optimized the original MP3 codec and worked with top engineers to create the ipod.
The mis-interpretation of Gore's words came from a dishonest political attack.
Anyone wanting to read more may be interested in a quote from Wikipedia's History of the Internet: "Funding for Mosaic [the first browser] came from the High-Performance Computing and Communications Initiative, a funding program initiated by then-Senator Al Gore's High Performance Computing Act of 1991."
Here's a quote from one of Wikipedia's articles about Al Gore: 'His [Al Gore's] statement caused no surprise at the time, and none of the journalists who covered it thought it worth including in their stories. However, two days later, the Republican Party began issuing press releases and statements denouncing Gore for claiming to have "invented the Internet".'
Another Wikipedia article about Gore quotes Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf: "...as the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time."
Interesting fact: IMDB says that the character Oliver in the movie "Love Story" was partly based on Al Gore. Al Gore had been a roommate of Tommy Lee Jones, who appears in the movie.
You misspelled world.
Well, while I'm sure it hasn't done much to endear them to the average man in the mosque, the USA was hated by people in the middle east well before any of their Iraqi adventures. The bigger fallout from the Iraq war has been the damage to America's standing amongst their allies and other friendly nations. Even if the USA is stronger, nobody likes a greedy lying bully.
According to a Foreign Affairs article, Saddam fell victim to his own bluff. One one hand, he was desperate to prove that he had complied with the requests to destroy any WMD; on the other hand, however, he still kept playing the WMD card in regional matters. When he finally did decide that it was time to quit bluffing and prove that he really didn't have a WMD program anymore, these steps were intrepreted as an attempt to cover up existing WMD.
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
MABASPLOOM!
USA has a long history of toppling democracies, crushing popular movements and installing/supporting dictatorships in the Middle-East and elsewhere.
These US policies are backlashing fairly often. The USA mostly created, trained and financed those very same groups they are hunting down in their so-called "war on terror". During the Soviet occupation of Afganistan, billons of dollars was poured into these networks. US specialists in terrorism, guerilla/urban warfare and insurgency trained what is to become their enemies.
USA through their puppet governments are crushing down hard on any popular movement for social improvement, democracy or worker rights. Socialists, union activist, academics or generally any on the left side are hunted down and prosecuted. What remains are radical religious movements that hardly stand for any social progress. Yet another backlash. A good example of this is Iran where the brutal US installed was toppled.
The list goes on and on.
Bush never claimed the government developed the iPod. Slashdot boned this one, engadget boned this one. From TFA:
"the government funded research in microdrive storage, electrochemistry and signal compression. They did so for one reason: It turned out that those were the key ingredients for the development of the iPod."
Turns out the government decided to spend our money researching some technologies that happened to be useful in portable mp3 players. no more, no less.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/04/20 060419-5.html
I suppose it's too much to ask that slashdotters actually read it. But I can always hope.
The latest Slashdot meme.
I think this is what Bush was trying to put into words.
a ges/mp3-technologies.gif
http://www.whitehouse.gov/stateoftheunion/2006/im
This graphic explains what Bush is talking about. Many of the components in the iPod were made possible because of basic research funded by the federal government. Much of this basic research was done at government labs, universities, and within companies with funding from the Pentagon, Department of Energy's Office of Science, National Science Foundation, etc. Hosts of other individuals and companies developed that basic research into components, but the initial funding and reseach was supported by the U.S. government.
Smaller hard drives, codecs, file compression, etc. are build on the foundation of basic reseach - much of it made possible by initial U.S. funding.
It's good that you remind us how bad the Baath regime was. But it shouldn't affect our view of the policies we're pursuing. It's also important not to "shift the goalposts" when evaluating the success of a policy. You have to judge it by its ostensible purpose, otherwise there's no accountability for failure. You might as well ask to be lead around like a pack of sheep.
There's no doubt that Hussein's regime, by any reasonable standard, was evil. But that wasn't the purpose of the war; nor was Iraq the only evil regime in the world, or even the worst regime. It was supposedly the most dangerous regime. The stated purpose of the war was to preempt the transfer of WMD to Al Qaeda. If you doubt this, check out this presidential speech:
and
and
and finally:
The speech even conjures up the "mushroom cloud" which was so in evidence in the run up to the war, and connects it to the 9/11 attacks.
Judged on its own terms then, the policy was a failure. None of the evidence that was cited has panned out; in fact it is now clear that much of it had already been disproven when it was cited at the time, the only question being whether the knowledge of this had reached the policy making levels of the Administration. Either way you answer the question, it's not a happy scenario.
It is posssible that Sadaam had a covert WMD program, which moved its stocks and equipment to a third country, Syria as some have suggested. It's not very likely in my opinion, but less likely things have happened in the past. I could spin a pluasible sounding scenario which would explain this unlikely event, although spinning is far from proving, as we're learning to our regret. But assuming that the WMD program was taken out of the country, then the policy was if anything a worse failure than if the weapons never existed. Because now we don't know where they are, and the most likely country doesn't just have tenuous ties to Al Qaeda: it keeps its own pet terrorist groups.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Now mod me down, because I am not part of the group think and my ideas and opinions burn you eyes.
Funny, but I see your opinion every time I tune into Fox News.
It always kills me to see the same black and white debate on the same issue. Absolutely nobody in America can stand politically in the middle, or concede that either side might have some valid point.
The WMDs had been used extensively during the Iran-Iraq war.
The WMDs had been used extensively, with our support, during the Iran-Iraq war
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