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The Internet

Al Gore Invented the Internet! 396

Posted by CmdrTaco from the who-woulda-thunk-it dept.
An anonymous reader sent us a link to a priceless wired article where you can read about presidential hopeful Al Gore's claims that he created the internet. I for one thank him. Without the hardware he designed, the protocols he defined, and the software he coded, think where the internet would be today. Good think he didn't have my vote, or he woulda lost it.
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Al Gore Invented the Internet! More

Al Gore Invented the Internet!

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  • Cisco (Score:1)

    by mfh ( 56 )
    The people at Cisco call them routers (rowters), so I'm going to call them that too.


    - Mike Hughes

  • Rob (Score:1)

    by Shiska ( 131 )
    Now that's sarcasm.

    ----------------- ------------ ---- --- - - - -
  • I liked the internet a lot better when nobody else knew about it. fooey.

    ----------------- ------------ ---- --- - - - -
  • Gore was a congressman before 1994 (he was in congress in 1977 according to the article), and he claims he helped the internet in congress. So who was in office is irrelevant to his claims. The claims are still false, of course.
  • I liked his comment just after that (from the CNN transcript link in the article), "During a quarter century of public service, including most of it long before I came into my current job, ..."

    And here I always thought most of his 25 years were the six since '93. Go figure.
  • Oh yeah, well Intel invented it six hours before MS, and forgot to turn the switch off to take it out of 486 CPUs. So there.
  • ...and people are actually contemplating voting for this mannequin? He's got all the personality of a piece of balsa wood, and he's almost as intelligent. I'd stoop to voting for a Republican (as long as it wasn't their village idiot Dan Quayle) over this moron.


    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad

  • I'll vote for whoever I think can do the job the best, of course. I guess, at this point in time, I don't think either Republicans or Gore can do it well. Unfortunately, I haven't been keeping up on other parties' candidates. Right now, from my admittedly limited viewpoint, it looks like "none of the above" will be the best choice...

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad

  • I myself don't vote. It only encourages them.



    Then you have no right to complain at all about the current elected officials. Stuff it.
  • I myself don't vote. It only encourages them.

    Then you have no right to complain at all about the current elected officials. Stuff it.
  • The National Review (a conservative political magazine) ran an article entitled Apocalypse Gore [junkscience.com] which provides an interesting take on him.

    I also suggest that you check out How to tell the difference [anxietycenter.com]
    between Al Gore and the Unabomber.
  • >At least with Buchanan you might have a president
    >who would put a stop to big business importing
    >aliens to take away tech jobs.

    Well, I guess that would make our government happy...
    Over here the problem seems to be to get our people to stay...
    Swedes like to think of themselves as international...
    It's not hard to be more international than the average american... : )
  • Whaddya mean, Al Gore?? Everyone knows that Bill Gates created the Internet!
  • Actually, no, he's not. Gore has been proposing a large scale national network for some years. One which bore no resemblence to the current Internet. When the popularity of the net took off, he quietly started making it sound like the 'net was the network he was talking about (which anyone who has followed his comments on it would know).

    He knows the vast majority of people will never know the difference, so he's going to take whatever credit he can. He's been doing it quite awhile now. While this latest claim is the boldest one I've seen yet, it's basically business as usual.

  • "Hawaii is very important to American interests in the Pacific. That's because Hawaii is in the Pacific. Hawaii is an American island in the Pacific." -Speech by Dan Quayle in Honolulu.
  • You think we're all stupid? That you can revise history and we'll believe it? You're revisionist tactics won't fool anyone...Everybody knows that Bill G. single-handedly coded everything that makes the 'net go.

    You just want to take the credit from MS so they will stop innovating. Stop stifling innovation!

    This sarcasm brought to you by...
    Special J
    (Too bad I can't not vote for him)
  • Posted by akor:

    The guy -- Al Gore -- in spite of all his technobabble, clearly talks out of his ass, and is generally in need of clues. True, this is extremely common among politicians, but is not limited to any political party.

    Akor
  • Posted by akor:

    Yes, it IS useful to know the facts.

    Even leaving aside the question whether "the commercial Internet we have today" is a good thing, I heavily doubt that Al Gore is responsible for it. The Internet started its explosive growth and commercialization when the world at large (non-geeks, that is) discovered it. The government had (thankfully) nothing to do with it.

    "Net's chief supporter in Congress"?? Oh yeah? How much support did the 'net receive from Congress, anyway? YMMV, but my chain of associations goes Internet/Congress -> CDA -> CDA II...

    As to moving the "closed research oriented internet" somewhere, there never was any such thing. Almost from the very beginning Internet was open to anybody who had a computer and a connection. I still remember my dial-up account on a BBS...

    Al Gore is a politician and that, to a great degree, defines him. Saying patently ridiculous things is part of it.

    Akor
  • Posted by Akira410:

    Wow, He must be a genious or something. We should all bow before him. ROFL... *sigh* Its sad what some people will say HAHAH

    Well, I've had my laugh for today.
  • Posted by Parcells:

    This is just lunacy. Anyone ever read any Soviet history (propaganda stuff) ?

    It is quite frustrating to think this lawyer can go around saying this with no liability for lying.

    Figures.

  • Posted by US Marine:

    What a dufus.
    He wouldn't know TCP/IP if Koskinen slapped him in the face with it. Too bad Koskinen doesn't know a helluva lot either.
  • Posted by Dr Pi:

    For someone who comes from Russia, I'm surprised you can't see the obvious: after 10 years of capitalist reform, Russia is worse off today than it was under communists. Russia would have eventually adopted free markets, but the Harvard ideologues wanted this overnight and thus the current disaster.
  • Only 2 senatars voted against the CDA (version 1), one of them a democrat, and one a republican. (I know the democrat was Russ Fiengold from WI, because that's my home state, but I don't remember who the Republican was.)

    This is not a party vs party issue. It's a common-sense vs. politician issue.

  • First Al tries to fool us into thinking he's Joe Environment, now he wants us to think he's Joe Internet. He may be slightly more clueful than his opponents, but it probably won't show in his policies. Oh well. I need to brush up on my Dutch, I guess. Now where did I put my passport?

    --

  • especially considering his wife is a fascist.

    Hey, ease up on Tipper! I should remind you that she used to be a rock'n'roll drummer. That PMRC junk? It was just trendy political maneuvering designed to shore up Al's "pro-family" credentials - I doubt the PMRC is even mentioned in Al'n'Tipper's press releases these days. You see how suck-cessful it was: he's had to wait until 2001 to become president. D'oh!

    Yeah, I considered libertarians but they seem to forget what free-market capitalism did to America (prosperity in the 20s followed by....)

    When I look at today's economy, I think of a steroid-enhanced athlete. We watch and cheer and marvel now, but in a few years, when the guy's body prematurely breaks down...

    There's always Greens.

    Or emigration :)

    --

  • After that, the resulting depression was made far worse by FDR's New Deal policies - employment and output kept falling throughout much of FDR's term of office, bottommed out, and did not significantly rise again until the US entered WWII. This can clearly be seen in any graph of key economic indicators during the Depression.

    Which shouldn't imply that other courses of action would have been a significant improvement over what actually happened.

    I encourage you to study the subject further (and to vote Libertarian - the government screws things up just as much by messing with our economic freedoms as it does by messing with our social freedoms).

    Which shouldn't imply that study of New Deal-era economic history has anything to do with the Libertarian Party platform. Talk about margins all you want, but dysfunction is dysfunction, and that's what ties the 20's to the 90's; the times are different, but the ethos is similar, and the postmortem of this boom (if there is to be a postmortem) will no doubt touch on the Roaring Twenties for comparisons.

    If economic freedom is your thing, there's plenty of unfettered capitalism going on in Russia. Go take a look; you might like it there. Or if you know (or are married to) the right people, give Indonesia or Malaysia a shot.

    America: Love It Or Leave It!

    heh heh heh... couldn't resist!

    --

  • All previous US ecnomic downturns ended _much_ faster. That certainly implies to me that New Deal style socialism is not the right answer to an economic downturn.

    Come on. It implies nothing. "New Deal style socialism"++ didn't seem to cramp the German wirtschaftswunder that followed the "economic downturn" known as WWII. They've even managed to digest the East.

    You've also ignored the rest of my post where I argued that the Great Depression was originally caused by economic interventionism, in the form of a newly established central bank making credit too cheap, leading to rising speculation.

    It's the Fed's fault? Nobody put a gun to people's heads and said "speculate!", just as no-one's saying "do really bad derivatives deals!" today; no-one's saying "make economies brittle by searching for the lowest common denominator of labor laws!". The motivating factor is excessive greed. If the Fed helps it along, shame on them. But they are not to blame. Yes, some agencies can go overboard - witness the IMF making countries keep ridiculous interest rates in order to prop up their currencies. The Fed is an itty bitty lamb in comparison.

    My mention of the Libertarian Party was on-topic because the poster I was replying too said he would not vote Libertarian because he believed that the Great Depression was caused by the free market. I believe I've made a decent case (considering the limited space in a post) that this is not true.

    That's fair. I think he may have meant something like "rampant or unrestricted free-market", rather than just tarring the whole thing with one brush.

    It happens that I am originally from a formerly communist country (take a look at my name) so this was a poor move on your part.

    No, it was a deliberate move. Both because of your geographic origins and because of the "shock treatment" prescription of the Bush-appointed experts. If we're going to say how great the free market is, or how victorious capitalism has been, we should look at those countries where there is even less regulation than in the United States, and at those places where the think-tank denizens had a much freer rein than in the US.

    Russia's pathology is the result of corrupt government officials selling out wholesale to so-called businessmen and other gangsters: selling off formerly state-owned industries at far below the market value as special favors, and generally passing a bunch of laws that favor the so-called "oligarchs". This is not a free market.

    This is why I'm not fond of capital-L Libertarian solutions (though there's bound to be some aspects that I agree with): we already have corruption (the gangsters are just more well-heeled here); a corrupted super-free market wouldn't be any better than what Russia has now. There is no such thing as a Free Market; there is no Invisible Hand - just an iron fist in a velvet glove, backed by economic, political, and military power. I wish people would stop deifying capitalism and the free market. It's not a silver bullet. We don't live in a vacuum; there is more to life and economics than cold-blooded financial ideals. If men were angels, maybe your solutions would work.

    Nontheless, despite the pain that Russia and some other post-communist nations are feeling, ultimately the process they are going through will lead to a far better society if they can get the corruption under control. I visited Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic recently and already they are much better off than they were under Communism.

    "They"? The US economy is only as good as the consensus opinion of it in Bed-Stuy and Appalachia; my opinion of Eastern Bloc economies would be the same, if I knew where to look. Please don't give me travelogues or macroeconomic statistics - I want to know the opinions of those at the receiving end of what's being dished out. I don't care about some amorphous "they".

    Please argue with facts and logic instead of name-calling.

    What names did I call you? Shall I show you what name-calling is? :) I don't know if you're aware of the origins of my little joke ending.

    --

  • That's "magic bullet", not "silver bullet".

    --

  • Strange you should mention this ["If men were angels..."]. This is exactly the reason why Socialism fails so dismally. In fact, *any* economic system (or political system) will fail if the people lack honor and morality. That is the real key to a successful nation.

    That was one of my points. We have a lot to learn from great economists of all stripes, whether we agree with their politics or not. But to swallow wholesale a school of thought, and advocate solutions divorced from ethics and morality, only rearranges the deck chairs on the Titanic. I tend to get especially incensed at Libertarians, since I really have problems with being a slaveowner-by-proxy-and-timeshare: the all-benevolent invisible hand of the market place has seen fit to apportion a 50/hr wage to many factory workers around the world - a situation that would be more widespread if there were even fewer restrictions on businesses. Yeah, cheap goods are great, but at what expense? We end up paying for it in other ways.

    yr hmbl & obed svnt, PINGOU~1

    --

  • Clinton the most conservative Democrat since "solid South" days? You are using "conservative" in a sense alien to most "solid South" voters who have gone over to the Republicans precisely because of "conservative Democrats" like Clinton. Get your head out of your ass and pass some of that crack around for the rest of us.

    The GOP have inherited Strom Thurmond's Dixiecrats; they've inherited the old fellow himself, for that matter. The whole point of the DLC was to position people like Clinton and Gore as "pro-business" and moderate/center-right, which is what they were anyway; the positioning was needed in order to combat the "Democrat == liberal == commie" FUD that a generation of conservatives have been spewing. Why is it FUD? I refer you to the words of George Wallace (may God rest his soul): "there ain't a dime's worth of difference" between the Donkey Party and the Elephant Party. Aside from a Maxine Waters or a Henry Gonzalez, the average Democrat on the Hill only differed from the average Republican on abortion rights and in rhetoric; much of the rancor is really just Bloods v Crips posturing on the periphery of issues. Or to quote Mike Malloy of Chicago's WGN (formerly of WSB and CNN; someone who spent a large chunk of his life enduring Southern politics): "Clinton's the best Republican president we've had in years".

    I hope this clears things up.

    --

  • (Thank you for going into more detail about Poland).

    To me, a fully free market specifically means a 100% separation of economics and state, i.e. that the government has no power, as established constitutionally, to affect influence or regulate the economy. Under such a system there is no meaningful influence for gangsters to buy or sell. Of course, with enough systematic corruption, constitutional limitations can be made irrelevant. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

    This is the part that scares me. Large corporations have already freed themselves from a good deal of oversight or regulation by governments - they subvert domestic labor or environment or tax laws by shifting capital elsewhere. They have almost total freedom in many non-Western countries. Some textile workers in Central America miraculously were able to organize themselves recently; the American contractor shut down the plant, rather than deal with collective bargaining. I don't see the gain in replacing one set of "dictators" (elected governments), with a new set (CEOs); I gravitate towards the former, since I don't get to vote for CEOs. All I see in your ideal New World is Brazilification, far and wide. Including my own back yard. And with such a Brazilification comes the (traditional) political instability of a Brazil or an Argentina. The freedom you seek is the socio-economic/political equivalent of the freedom to shout "Fire!" in a crowded movie theatre. So I see the quest for 100% separation as quixotic and harmful as my Christianity-mandated concern for the poor would probably look to you.

    Viva Quixote! :)

    Have a nice weekend. I'm glad to have elicited these good posts from you; it's the rare /. Libertarian who is able to explain things intelligently.

    --

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Actually, it was 1993, IMO. When Delphi released its clueless horde on to Usenet.

    The 1994 thing is probably referring to AOL reaching Usenet.

  • true... (Score:1)

    by pohl ( 872 )
    ...but I lay claim to inventing the term "Information-Superhighway-Howdy". :-)
  • Is he to blame for that emarassing bulge I walk around with all day!? That @%$*&!
  • Didn't he also try to "create" a new Potato hybrid spelled with a ... *gasp* ... E?!?!

    If Gore is a robot (many feel he is), he needs a reboot or something because his memory is leaking.

  • Big Deal (Score:1)

    by TedC ( 967 )
    I invented TCP/IP. Without me Al would be nothing. ;-)

    TedC

  • I'm voting for Liz. :-)

    TedC

  • Isn't that what Clinton does all day?
  • This dweeb prolly doesn't even know how to use the 'net fer chrissakes. I'm soooooooo sick of so-called prominent(sic) people spouting off about stuff they have clue -10 on. Al Gore for prez and BgatusdeBorg for his vp. That way, they can collectively claim they invented the universe and all the accessories. Sheesh. Would it be politic to email this luser and point out an appropriate book/website with the facts, or would that just be a futile gesture?
  • ROFLMAO! Thanks! I needed that.
  • hehe . . so true that it's the EXPLOITER and the one that has the backing of the people and manipulating them to BELIEVE something . . in which they have no knowledge of . .

    but it's sooo true, the way to have some power is to have the power to reach out to soooo many and force them to believe in something because they don't know what to believe so they need someone to TELL them what to believe . .

    It's that whole Citizen Kane thing . . I mean . . Susan Alexander didn't sing too well did she ?
    What a star ! =)

    (if you don't know what I am talking about RENT the movie)

    Manipulation of the ignorant masses is not funny.
    I know of a few dictators that started that way.

  • . . and also . . I don't want to allow the growth of stronger encryption . .because . . how would I get the nudie pics being sent out to other countries . . I invented the Internet so I get to see what goes out . . . thats' my job . .

    Did I mention I invented FIRE . . yeah . .it was really strange . . I turned on the stove and I did it . . I'll demonstrate it for you sometime.
  • Nonsense. Inside Cisco its pronounced ROUTER. Not ROOTER. Gee, but I guess I wouldn't know - I just WORK THERE.


    --
    Python
  • Sure, and with his Clipper Chip it will be even more friendly! Having actually worked for Al Gore back in 94-95, I can tell you that he is just as clueless as every other poilitician about the Internet. When we move www.whitehouse.gov to the White House (it used to be at JPL), and redesigned the site, Al Gore went out to CA to present "Welcome to the White House" to the world.


    Not only did he not know what a hyperlink was, but he couldn't even figure out that he was supposed to CLICK on hyperlinks! After he was told several times, coached, helped, scripted and everything else someone off screen finally had to move the mouse around because he was so freaking clueless.
    Al Gore is just another in a long line of scum sucking politicians trying to take credit for other peoples work. (And yes, I consider most - if not all - politicians to be scum sucking parasites).


    Al Gore is fucking clueless about the Internet. He doesn't even read his own e-mail! Its screened and anything he does get is printed out on paper! He doesn't like to use computers! Ugh... hes a PHB at best.

    --
    Python

  • In DC, where Al Gore is and lives, its pronounced ROWT, not root. The point is that the guy doesn't know what a router is, which is evidenced by a number of things not the least of which is that he doesn't even know how to pronounce it. And since Al Gore is an American, and since he lives in DC, and since its pronounced ROWTER in Washington DC, and the rest of the United States, and since the CEO of Cisco systems, the company that INVENTED the router was being introduced (and pronouces the word ROWTER - ask him sometime), and since Cisco Systems pronounces the word ROWTER (I work there) it stands to reason that Al Gore had no idea what he was talking about or what it is that Cisco makes - and in turn, that means Al Gore knows little about the Internet (the dolt couldn't even figure out how to use his Mac at the White House!). Which was the whole point of the article, how can the guy "invent" the Internet when he knows nothing about it, and can't even get simple things straight like how to pronounce things like router. Al Gore is not british - hes an American - and thats how we pronounce router here. Sheesh.

    Damn, why the hell do people have to nit pick these things to death. Its not that fsking complicated.

    --
    Python
  • (This from my sig, which I pulled from duh-2000.com...

    "How could this [y2k bug] be a problem in a
    country where we have Intel and Microsoft?"

    And imagine the implications of Gore getting
    Gates as Veep. Those two could rewrite the whole
    of history, even down to the missing 11th
    Commandment "Thou must use MS Windows"
  • Well, to the AC from Paraguay: The guy
    who invented Algorithms is Al-Kwarism, I
    think, and he was from a place that was a
    part of Iran at the time (sort of), but is
    now in one of the Turkish republics, south
    of the Sea of Azov.
    Phil Fraering "Humans. Go Fig." - Rita
  • WTF? You just looking to defend Gore?

    He's opposed manned spaceflight in Congress, yet never passes up a chance to schmooze with astronauts.

    He's taken money from the tobacco producers, yet demonizes them every chance he gets.

    He's called for campaign finance reform, yet accepts $5,000.00 checks in a buddhist temple from nuns who have sworn a vow of poverty and never thought to question the source of the funds.

    Face it, Al Gore is a hypocritical, self serving, self aggrandizing SOB who will try to be on the "right" side of an issue if it will bump him up a half point in the polls, since he has no strong convictions of his own other than that the people exist to serve government and not the other way around.

    In other words, he's just being a typical politician.
  • ...does that make it a roto-router? :)

    --Troy
  • I don't know about you, but I do pronounce route as "r-ow!-te". "root" is what you have when you see an octothorpe, not the path something takes to arrive at its destination.

  • Yes, I am.
  • Umm, wasn't that his wife Tipper Gore?

    /mill
  • Errr, I think you're thinking of the Republicans. Although these days it's getting hard to tell the difference..

    Daniel
  • and he probably thinks AOL bisks are kewl too.

    yet another reason why the government shouldn't stick its nose on technology, or why RMS should run for president (Linus can't, as you probably know already). :o)

    ^D
  • Assuming they manage to get a candidate in.
    What are the alternatives?
  • Actually I thought that was the whole point.
  • > He's opposed manned spaceflight in Congress

    He's right on that one at least. Manned spaceflight in a confined area like the Congress building would be very dangerous.

    Regards, Ralph.
  • A: His lips are moving...
  • If anyone had actually watched the hearings on the much hyped "Information Super Highway", they would have realized that it was actually a national cable system! They were going to use the huge volume of bandwidth so they could start movies every 15 minutes!

    I really wish that the media would stop treating Gore as if he were some sort of "Wired Intelectual".

    Come to think of it, did'nt Gore also claim to be the inspiration to the book "Love Story" was based on? What next? Is he going to claim he invented the printing press and velcro?
  • Just remember.. if it wasnt for good ole Al.. we probably wouldnt be walking erect yet.. =)

  • I get this mental image of a bunch of Cisco employees standing around a computer cheering as a packet gets sent from the NIC, encouraging it to make it all the way to a router.

  • :-)

    It's called "negativie campaigning"
    It lost the British Conservative Party the last General Election.
  • Well, the Iron Lady shouted and dictated till even the most dedicated fasci^H^H^H^H^Hconservatives saw through her, so no one could really keep up the pretence. John Redwood had a go for party leader, but there just weren't that many hard-liners left.

    Now we have Tory Plan B led by the ex-thatcherite Tony Blair :-)

    Maybe they _did_ win after all!

    .. and as for the House of Lords with it's in-builtd bias...
  • GNOME 1.0 is roughly identical in functionality, good looks, and bug-free-ness as KDE 1.0 was. From your comment it appears that you haven't seen GNOME since the 0.30 release, and just assumed that 1.0 wasn't any different.
  • I can tell you first hand there are American employees working for Cisco who pronounce it "rooter". Who cares? What a stupid thing to diss on Gore for.
  • why not add a mailto link to his name - it's vice.president@whitehouse.gov .
  • Why is it that the 99% of americans have to give the other 1% a bad name?
  • ....a better Internet experience. I just love those commercials that prey on the stupid people....and the politicians are right behind....

  • The more Al Gore speaks, the more I wish Bob Dole was running in 2000. I mean dang, first he and his wife want to restrict what we can buy in music stores, now he wants to be the father of the information age.
  • you alwasy make sure that you have a moron as the vice-president. this will prevent anyone from trying to kill the president. or so i believe.
  • BTW, if you want to read more by Declan McCullagh, the guy who broke the story, check out Y2K Culture.Com [y2kculture.com] or see him in video on Meeks Unfiltered [thesync.com]
  • Since he's talking about his Congress time, I would assume that he's crowing about his support for the NSFNet, which was real. NSFNet was an important step in the creation of the net we have now, it was the backbone for some time.


    Nonetheless he has taken things a bit far...


  • Of course, if Microsoft made PC's easy to use, then Al Gore invented the Internet.

    I wonder how many things in history are attributed to the wrong people at the wrong time, and they didn't really happen that way.

    Who knows? Who cares? Shrug, it all doesn't really matter. A lot of people are probably going to believe him anyway.
  • I'm totally serious, if you want to find something significant he has come up with (which is completely impossible, but let's say for the sake of argument its not), His good ol wife, Tipper, and he consolidated on a small committee and gave us the censorship stickers you see on records and cd's that warn parents of "evil things", as well as the ability to censor especially "bad" records by co-ercing the major labels. They also tightened the FCC's ability to censor things on the radio, NOT necessarily sex or profanity, but also things that they disagree with.

    The worst mistake anyone in this country can make, especially anyone who values their free speech, is to put Al Gore into office.
  • In this unfortunate day and age, 12 second soundbytes and the occasional very-prepared interview are all we have left to see what the heads of our state are thinking. It's not that he should be crucified for mispronouncing router or misspelling "potato" or any other stupid vp-ism.

    It's both the pompous state of mind and obvious maneuvering to get into a hot new topic that we as the american people should call him on. Commander Taco is right, we should be offended that he would look at it that way, that he would try to use for political gain something that in the real world, he had very little to do with. Most people believe that almost nothing any politician does is on his own anyway, and I think it's naieve (sp?) to think that he's truly commited to the internet, especially if shows a continuing ignorance about it.

    I also submit his previous record on censorship, for which he very much in favor. Warning labels for "Parental Guidance" weren't done by an admitted right-wing conservative, but a closet conservative Democrat and his wife Tipper.
  • Triana is a joke.
    Having another Sun-synchronous satellite would be sweet, but not just for pretty pictures.
    For the cost of a webmaster, this site has done exactly what Triana is supposed to do, but does it today. Warning, requires some real bandwidth:
    http://farside.gsfc.nasa.gov/ISTO/dro/global/page1 .html [nasa.gov]
  • Information Super-de-duper Highway! (Stop, Look, and Listen before crossing)

    (Don't watch Barney, watch a little kid watch Barney)

  • He's obviously a hardwood native to North America!

  • Yeah, how many times have you heard "Microsoft saved us from DOS!"?

    cripes...
  • >> I wish we could hack congress and make *them*
    >> more efficient.

    Can you imagine if we turned Linus loose on 'em? Maybe he could improve their memory management (no more, "Uhh, I really don't recall that.")

  • tjones for President!

  • Give me a break. Revisionism has nothing to do with conspiracies, aliens, liberals, the Trilateral Commission (I've never even heard of it), the Jews, the Rockefellers, or anything else. Revisionism is just bending the truth about what happens.

    Al Gore did talk up the internet, so in a way, he "encouraged" it. But he didn't invent it. He bent the truth.

    Stop attaching a bunch of unrelated issues together!

  • >> If men were angels, maybe your solutions would
    >> work.

    Strange you should mention this. This is exactly the reason why Socialism fails so dismally. In fact, *any* economic system (or political system) will fail if the people lack honor and morality. That is the real key to a successful nation.
  • Come on! I, with open arms, would welcome the days of BBS again. It would be better than the graphical, spam-tastical, hype-filled smorgasboard of cluelessness that is the "Internet" today.

  • Socialist economics and relativist morals...sounds like a recipe for disaster to me. An honest and moral nation is the only hope for *any* economic or political model.

  • You seem to be unsure of what you hate. Do you hate opposition to sex or opposition to perjury? As to the "Ever President lies. That's their job." Not every president lies in front of a *jury*. And no, it isn't their job. It's a crime. Bush didn't lie before a jury (but I still don't mind him being gone). You seem to realize that Nixon *was* a crook, but this doesn't bode well for your case because Nixon was impeached (and rightly so) and resigned. As for Reagan, I was only 10 when Reagan left office, so I *myself* don't know everything about what went on during his presidency.

  • There are many things that are presented as "historical fact" that are not fact. These things are collectively referred to as "revisionism."

  • More like Texas George Bush than Pat Buchanan. Or maybe Lizzy Dole. Pat Buchanan doesn't have a chance in hell
  • Come on, Quayle will not get nominated in a million years. It would be suicide for the Republicans. My money is on Texas George Bush.
  • And what makes it stupid? Calling him on his amazingly inaccurate statement of creating the internet?

    If he can't keep his head straight and not lie on a cheezy cnn interview then he definetly isn't material to be president. The president has to be able to lie directly to the camera without blinking.

    He has not been a strong supporter of the internet. He has been supportive. He has however been a strong support of the clipper chip and both CDAs.

    I'd rather have either a cardboard box or a magic 8 ball as president than any of our potential canidate choices.

    ---
    Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux/ultrix/OSF /...
  • This is the kind of thing where we should
    demand a (front page, not Op-Ed) retraction.
    That would make quite a statement.
  • By making this broad claim, has he laid claim
    to anyone's patents? Can Cisco file a civil
    action against Al now? Can a VP be impeached :-)
  • Strangely enough, on internet related issued, the Republicans are usually on the right side and the Domocrats are usually on the wrong side. The Clinton administration pushed for the CDA, signed it, and argued for it before the Supreme Court. Quite a few Republicans opposed it. Also, it is the Republicans who are pushing bills to allow export of encryption, which are blocked by the Clinton administration.
  • Stuff like this just solidifies my choice to vote for Hollywood Hogan in 2000.
  • I find this flaming of the Vice President pure
    stupidity. Al Gore should have phrased it better.
    If you look back you will realize that his is the
    one who pushed the internet into what it is today.
    To claim that he actually invented it was a bit
    exagerated but put yourself in front of a camera
    and be asked a lot of questions you would likely
    be making a few mistakes as well.

    Al Gore has been for years a strong supporter of
    our rights to have satellite dishes as well as
    a strong supporter of the Internet.

    Al Gore is a good man and would make a fine
    president.
  • Buchanan is a joke, a slightly better candidate
    than Pat Robertson was. The real choice will
    be between Al Gore and George Bush.
    Both Al Gore and George W Bush would make great
    presidents.
    Al's handicap is his wife and George's handicap
    is his kissing up to the fundies. We're in a fix,
    I rather have Tipper than a fundy. If George Bush
    tells the fundies to kiss off, I'll vote for him.

  • I knew he would do that sooner or later, with him talking about the "Information Superhighway" Just before most Americans became aware of the Internet.
  • This is the same guy who gave that tear-jerking/barf-inducing speech at the '96 Democratic convention about how the evil tobacco industry killed his sister. Yet he was raised as a tobacco farmer, and he bragged about this fact in campaign speeches to tobacco farmers years after his sister died.

    So he's a typical Pol.

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