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 ..."

Taxe Money

[SurfSlade]

1. Use your Taxe money to develop the Ipod.

2. Ipod consumer pay taxes on purchases

3. Apple pay taxes on all money they've made from Ipod

4. Apple employees pay taxes on their income.

5. .....

6. Profits !

Want to read more?

[Futurepower(R)]

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 [wikipedia.org]: "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 [wikipedia.org] 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 [wikipedia.org] 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 [imdb.com] 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.

Re:From tactical to practical

[NoMercy]

Yes, and so did everyone else, the iPod isn't just one of those devices, the major inovation of the iPod is that you can look cool while telling someone about your MP3 player, rather than blend in with the geeks.

Now if your telling me the goverment invented a way to make geeky things non-geeky without having to pay $99 for a 'sock' which fits your iPod, now that's something I'd be interested in.

Don't forget

[cvalente]

The Swedish mathematician who proved a convergence theorem for Fourier series.

without him there would be no IPOD. :p

That is, according to the article in
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/2 7/0548252 [slashdot.org]

Re:US government Invented the iPod

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you any idea how many people would have died if we invaded Japan? Do you know nothing about the Pacific Theater. Let me give you a quick synopsis...

Japanese soldiers, highly trained and well equipped and wanting to die (a lot like Ira.* today, except for the well equipped part). The only way our guys on the ground could get the job done was to destroy EVERYTHING, generally by literally cooking the fanatical Japanese in their bunkers. Loss of life on our side was huge, on thiers it was nearly 100% (based on thier beliefs about dying for honor).

The Japanese were even teaching school children to fight the Americans... from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall [wikipedia.org]

One mobilized high school girl, Yukiko Kasai, found herself issued an awl and told, "Even killing one American soldier will do. ... You must aim for the abdomen." (Richard B. Frank, Downfall)

The loss of life and the atrocities we would have to commit, since basically anybody would be an enemy combatant would have been too great to comprehend. Only fear would get the Janaese to surrender without us nearly wiping them off the face of the planet. We had already leveled Tokyo and other cities with firebombing campaigns (with a greater loss of life than the atomic bombings). It was obvious they had NO chance of winning the war, they were merely fighting on to keep from the dishonor of surrender. I personally believe that those bombings SAVED tens of thousands of lives or more and thus was one of the best and most humane decisions of the war. You are entitled to have your own opinion, and you're right atomic bombs are terrible things, but before dragging the US through the mud for using them, think about the consequences of not.

Disclaimer: I'm no warhawk, or crazy right-winger... and I'm only posting this AC as I have no account to use. I know that because of this I'm automatically -1 Credibility because of this :)

Re:US Basic Research Made iPod Components Possible

[typical]

Now, why is it that nobody pointed out that this is exactly what Gore was saying WRT the Information Superhighway?

Re:Fraunhofer & MP3 Development

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, a lot of the critical development was done at AT&T Laboratories, a US company.

Crediting Fraunhofer with MP3 is somewhat of a historical injustice. The standard was finalized with contributions from a dozen companies.

According to what I have always read, it is the other way round.

Here is a historical overview of MP3 [fraunhofer.de]. Granted, it's a Fraunhofer site. Nevertheless, I don't think they would ridicule themselves by making false statements. But I'm interested in your sources.

Re:US government Invented the iPod

[Jon_A_Mnemonic]

I've lived in some of those countries that you mentioned, near or on U.S. military bases. You were apparently seeming to imply that our bases are not wanted in those countries. From experience, I can say that you are wrong about that. Everywhere there is a U.S. base, there are huge economic benefits for the surrounding area. The people NEAR the bases generally greatly wish those bases to remain where they are, because the bases positively impact their quality of life. If you go ask a mountain farm family in eastern Turkey whether they would like the airbase at Incirlik gone, they will probably say yes. However, if you ask the same question of a Turkish family living near Incirlik, 9 times out of 10 you will get the opposite reaction: "Hell no, we don't want them to leave!" That's not *always* the case, but it is true more often than not, that our bases are desired, at least by the majority of those living near enough to them to reap the economic benefits. By and large, once people get to know us (by getting to know our troops when they're not on duty), they like us. Those who never meet us never see us as actual people, so of course they are negatively biased.

Re:Want to read more?

[WindBourne]

Gitmo is not illegal. What we are doing there, is. It violates every one of our laws and conventions that we have signed. But since few in the white house served and NONE have been to war, I am not surprised.

As to how we should be treating these people, well, they are POWs. They are not citizens, so they can not be tried as such. But they are soldiers and to say otherwise, is a lie. They should all be in a POW camp with the geneva convention being applied until the end of the war with bin ladin and the rest of the terrorists.

Now, as to the media leaning left, you have to be kidding me. Show me any real study and the result, coward. In fact, I doubt that it has any validity. It reminds of me how republicans claim that "Al Gore developed the internet" statement. Every time I hear that CNN is a liberal news, I have to laugh. None of the main stream media are liberal. Not one. Now, if you say that they are sensationalists, well, yes. They chase stories and they twist them. All during the 90's, every news media looked like they were doing a fox make over. It was total BS. Worse, right after 9/11, they all got behind the president. Great. Lets ignore all the issues. Our invasion of iraq was wrong and should have been looked at much harder than it was. The media should be putting pressure on the white house for the lies, cowardarce, and treason related to such as issue as Valerie Plame, Sibel Edmunds, the give away contracts to Halliburton, how are money is being spent in iraq, etc. Bush is getting such an easy ride, it is ridiculus.