"Bert Robbins" wrote in message
...

"DSK" wrote in message
. ..

Al Gore assassinated his own character due to his many failings in life.
Wasn't he kicked out, I mean asked to leave, law school and divinity
school
for lack of performance. And, let's not fogtet that Al claims he invented
the Internet.



It's wise to check Urban Ledgends at Snipes,com before making a post that
shows what an ass you are.

See
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.htm
C&P in full for your embaressment



Claim: Vice-President Al Gore claimed that he "invented" the Internet.
Status: False.

Origins: No,
Al Gore did not claim he "invented" the Internet, nor did he say anything
that could reasonably be interpreted that way. The derisive "Al Gore said he
'invented' the Internet" put-downs are misleading distortions of something
he said (taken out of context) during an interview with Wolf Blitzer on
CNN's "Late Edition" program on 9 March 1999. When asked to describe what
distinguished him from his challenger for the Democratic presidential
nomination, Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, Gore replied (in part):


During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in
creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range
of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic
growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.
Clearly, although Gore's phrasing was clumsy (and self-serving), he was not
claiming that he "invented" the Internet (in the sense of having designed or
implemented it), but that he was responsible for helping to create the
environment (in an economic and legislative sense) that fostered the
development of the Internet. Al Gore might not know nearly as much about the
Internet and other technologies as his image would have us believe, and he
certainly has been guilty of stretching (if not outright breaking) the truth
before, but to believe that Gore seriously thought he could take credit for
the "invention" of the Internet - in the sense offered by the media - is
just silly. (To those who say the words "create" and "invent" mean the same
thing: If they mean the same thing, then why have the media overwhelmingly
and consistently cited Gore as having claimed he "invented" the Internet
when he never used that word? The answer is that the words don't mean the
same thing, but by substituting one word for the other, commentators can
make Gore's claim sound [more] ridiculous.)

However, validating even the lesser claim Gore intended to make is
problematic. Any statement about the "creation" or "beginning" of the
Internet is difficult to evaluate, because the Internet is not a homogenous
entity (it's a collection of computers, networks, protocols, standards, and
application programs), nor did it all spring into being at once (the
components that comprise the Internet were developed in various places at
different times and are continuously being modified, improved, and
expanded). Despite a spirited defense of Gore's claim by Vint Cerf (often
referred to as the "father of the Internet") in which he stated "that as a
Senator and now as Vice President, Gore has made it a point to be as
well-informed as possible on technology and issues that surround it," many
of the components of today's Internet came into being well before Gore's
first term in Congress began in 1977, and it's hard to find any specific
action of Gore's (such as his sponsoring a Congressional bill or championing
a particular piece of legislation) that one could claim helped bring the
Internet into being, much less validate Gore's statement of having taken the
"initiative in creating the Internet."

It's true that Gore was popularizing the term "information superhighway" in
the early 1990s (when few people outside academia or the computer/defense
industries had heard of the Internet) and has introduced a few bills dealing
with education and the Internet, but even though Congressman, Senator, and
Vice-President Gore may always have been interested in and well-informed
about information technology issues, that's a far cry from having taken an
active, vital leadership role in bringing about those technologies. Even if
Al Gore had never entered the political arena, we'd probably still be
reading web pages via the Internet today.

Last updated: 27 September 2000