back to article Top adviser claims John McCain invented the BlackBerry

Nine years after Al Gore said he invented the internet, the John McCain campaign has claimed that the email-challenged Republican presidential nominee "helped create" the BlackBerry. This morning, when asked what McCain had done as Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee that would show he has the chops to mend the nation's …

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  1. Carl Roman Hultay
    Stop

    Ahhhh.... ???

    Call me crazy, but RIM (Research in Motion) who invented, developed, and produced the BlackBerry, are from Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

    Proof here: http://www.blackberry.com

    So is this to claim that John McCain was an advisor/consultant for a Canadian Corporation?

    'Canadian' is basically a bad word to Americans, so I don't see how they could have:

    1. Claimed John McCain had a part in developing a product with a foreign corporation

    2. Ignored the fact that the BlackBerry/CrackBerry is a foreign product to the U.S.

  2. Solomon Grundy

    Poor Babies

    Haha! I invented anal sex to prevent my girlfriend from having babies.

  3. Tom
    Joke

    Solomon Grundy

    Too bad your mom didn't :P

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    He's grey and inoffensive

    Difficult to get excited about him for or against. It's a real pity they aren't fielding Palin as their candidate. They need someone new, not connected to Bush, and McCain doesn't fit that bill.

    Also not really a leader, Obama rejects Clinton (rightly IMHO), so Clinton chooses a running mate to be a proxy Clinton. Obama wants 'change', so McCain says he's 'change'. His campaign seems to be defined by Obama choices, not by his own choices. Sort of like the same way he lost to Bush, then towed the Bush line... just not leadership material.

  5. Solomon Grundy

    @ Too Many Names Carl

    Blackberry is an American invention, we just put it in Canada for tax purposes, cheap First Nation labor and increased security, duh.

  6. LaeMi Qian
    Paris Hilton

    Of course we all know...

    ...that Al Gore never really claimed to have invented the internet, he claimed to have coined the term "Information Superhighway".

  7. yeah, right.

    @Grundy

    Unfortunately, Grundy has it backwards. The USA was a Canadian invention, where they shipped their insane and criminal because Australia was too far away and Canadians were too cheap. Oh, and the Acadians, but they were really sorry about that one.

    Since then, Canadians have invented the phone, insulin, Java, basketball, cobalt bombs, zippers, wonderbra, electron microscopes, light bulbs (yes, even that) and other world shattering advances like the Crackberry. Unfortunately, when they shipped all the criminals to the south, Canadians forgot to search them and they managed to keep the keys to the side door in addition to money they'd already stolen. Since then, the pantry has been pilfered so often there's talk of Canada joining the USA as the 52nd to 83rd state (all larger than Texas), because they've stolen everything else anyway.

    So the southerners have been stealing ever since - resources, well educated people, Avro Arrows, water, and so on. The Americans even invented Prohibition and used Canada to get even richer. So now Canadian inventors and actors have had to go south to get money for production, and get fleeced by the American criminals running their system. Meanwhile, Canadians staying here working for mostly American corporations have to settle for better beer and moose burgers.

  8. Kwac

    @ Of course we all know...

    Spot on.

    High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991(known as the 'Gore Bill') - which (amongst other things) funded the development of the Mosaic browser.

    Joseph E. Traub (computer science professor, Columbia University) says Al Gore "was perhaps the first political leader to grasp the importance of networking the country.

    "Could we perhaps see an end to cheap shots from politicians and pundits about inventing the Internet?"

  9. Solomon Grundy

    @yeah, right.

    Yes, but the Canadians did invent Poutine; there's nothing better after a long, long day(s) of their beer and cheap Scotch.

  10. David Barr

    Carl Roman Hultay - You're crazy.

    Neither this article nor the McCain team claimed he invented the Blackberry. Did you actually read the article before going for "I can has prove it points on the internets!"?

    No sooner do Americans try a bit of light hearted humour, than they are reminded that the American public doesn't get it, unless there's a laugh track. (Not that we're any better here.)

  11. Shannon Jacobs
    Joke

    McCain invented SPAM!

    Actually, this sort of started a a joke. No, not the neo-GOP idiotic joke/lie that Gore claimed to invent the Internet. The joke that Al Gore is partly to blame for the spam problem. He did such a good job of getting money, they didn't even think about real-world economics when they were designing the Internet, including SMTP. Sometimes it's better to go a little slower and think things through, but there was Gore saying: "Faster, faster. Just let me know if you need some more funding, and I'll fight to get it for you." (Just too bad he couldn't figure out how to fight that bizarre SCOTUS battle of Florida, eh?)

    In that context, why not give McCain some credit for email? As long as we get to blame him for the spam, too. Also, let's give McCain an accessible device so he, too, can experience the thrills of spam. Talk about being out of touch with the lives of typical voters...

    By the way, I don't really consider myself a Democrat, and I've voted in different parties' primaries in different years, depending on the situation. However, over the years the Republicans have gotten consistently worse in picking candidates, and they make worse picks as you go higher up. McCain/Palin is another sick joke--but that's what I thought about Dubya and that Quayle fool, so I'm not laughing yet. Pretty sure I've never voted for a Republican for president, though Teddy Roosevelt seemed like a good one... (McCain only missed Teddy by a 17 years.)

  12. Dean Ransevycz
    Thumb Down

    3rd-rate journos fail to grasp comment -- again!

    Seems exactly the same as the Gore non-quote: McCain's staffer said something about innovation & the government's hand in fostering it & a poor excuse for a journalist claims that a politician is big-noting himself as an inventor, then another 3rd-rate journo regurgitates the big-noting claim without a facts check. Then again, i'm not sure that the journalists are to blame in that the subsequent comments from the McCain camp would indicate that they to cannot separate a general comment about the government's hand in fostering innovation & a claim that said poli is a the inventor of some-such. Then again, maybe the subsequent comments are a response to the reportage, rather than to the actual meaning of the original comment. Wouldn't it be nice if editors would take the blue pencil to basic comprehension errors?

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    WTF?

    "Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years"

    No-one mention Japan or Yurp or they might feel less "premier" and more "division two"...

  14. Alex Cooksey
    Stop

    Really poor journalism here

    Come on - your own article says that a spin doctor waved his own mobile about (in this case a blackberry) and said John McCain sat on the government committee that pushed through legislation that enabled modern comms technology to happen. That's a far cry from "John McCain invented the Blackberry."

    Remove the article - its sensationalist and shoddy journalism and frankly you can do better.

    I can't say I'm in favour of McCain or his views, or that modern American comms tech is anything to be bragging about. I'm just complaining about this awful article that will doubtless be all over the tabloids tomorrow because the Register is supposed to be good at technical issues.

  15. Joe K
    Dead Vulture

    Old fart

    Maybe some people seem to forget that the guy is well into his seventies!

    I'd be amazed if he could use a computer, or even a mobile, just well, he's in his godamn seventies!

  16. Mark
    Paris Hilton

    McCain is supporting a critical part of the internet

    MILF hunting.

  17. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Pirate

    Obama and Co getting depserate.

    The Dems are desperate for ANYTHING they can throw at McCain seeing as how he has wiped out Obama's lead in the polls in a matter of weeks. McCain's experience is a big target for the Obama camp as Obama has so little real experience of anything other than climbing the greasey pole of politics, so they wanted something to attack McCain's time on the Commerce Committee, and having been caught out for the "email illiterate" smear now they are trying to make McCain look like a liar.

    The background noise generated by the Blackberry mud-slinging is also doing the Dems a favour in hiding the new story that McCain co-sponsored the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005 that would have put a safeguard on the Freddie and Fannie setup, but it was shot down in in Congress by, amongst others - drumroll please - Barrack Obama! Obama also happens to have been the second-highest receiver of Freddie and Fannie lobbying money during his very short stay in Washington. So, we have the candidate that saw the danger of sub-prime mortgages and tried to implement a control, and the mud-slinging, greasey-pole-climber candidate who was happy to take the cash and look the other way.... If I was an Obama camp man I'd be screaming about Blackberrys too!

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Blackberry

    Given the current state of the intelligence of US presidents and contenders, I expect what he actually did was plant a blackberry bush. And I expect he needed an aide to tell him whether or not the roots had to point up or down...

    Paris, because she knows which bits go up or down.

  19. hey_may
    Paris Hilton

    Right....

    ...and what with this being a UK site what has this got to do with us in the UK? Secondly, I think you'll find the Internet should be spelled with a capital "I".

  20. thomasthetanker
    Joke

    Gorey story

    Al Gore didnt invent the internet, he invented the worlds first Powerpoint presentation as anyone who's seen An Inconvienient Truth will testify

  21. Jim Oase

    Read the rest of the story...

    In the urge to have something other will read this author has ignored the rest of the story. The comment was made by an aid as a joke. After which the aid apologized for the poor joke. What McCain was involved with was the legislation involved with getting BlackBerry's on the air.

    I think the author realizes that good news is the most difficult to sell, that their are mobs of people eager to read the bad news about someone other than themselves. This author needs money to support self and family so choose the low hanging grapes and with generalizations and vague statements to created a bad news story. Count the number of specific facts with supporting, solid references verses the vague words and terms the author cited.

    Would a reasonable person consider this article news supported by facts or rumor supported by assumptions. Then read the tenor of the comments with the article. Would a reasonable person conclude all these people are without fault and therefore free to toss the rocks they are verbally tossing?

    Read these comments, count the number of vague terms used to describe events and people. If news is supported by specific information and rumors by vague descriptions, how would a reasonable person characterize the comments being made?

    Jim

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @old fart

    My mum's in her 80's and doesn't have any difficulties with technology. Quite capable of placing her Damart order by the web and then haranguing their customer service dept. with here mobile phone or eMail. In fact all my remaining crumblies can.

    Mind you she still hasn't worked out that you need to keep it switched on to receive calls.

    BTW my father, 87 if he were he still with us was a Fellow of the BCS and one of Hawker's first DP managers in the 1960s. (When 1K was a lot of memory)

    Technology didn't start in 1983 you know, so stop being ageist.

  23. Joe K

    @AC

    "Technology didn't start in 1983 you know".

    Oh yes it did: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    McCain

    If the McCains own eight houses, why would they be diddling around with emails like us?

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    *Yawn*

    Dunno about the rest of you but I'm bored stupid by the American presidential campaign. It's been going on for ages and we're still a long way from their election. I couldn't really give a monkey's about it, to be honest.

    I wonder how many typical Americans have heard of Messrs Brown, Cameron and Clegg?

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Attention!

    (static filled PA system)

    Carl Roman Hultay, Dean Ransevycz, Alex Cooksey, and Matt Bryant ...

    Your sense of humor has been located in the parking lot. Please stop by the security desk on the way out to pick it up.

    It was located next to the person holding the sign saying "The world doesn't revolve around politics."

    I think, if one reads the article, that it pretty much clears everything up.

    El Reg has only been doing the sensationalist headline thing since - forever? Does November really have that many people seeing red (or blue)?

    Vote for me, the cowardly AC, and I'll rule with an iron hand^H^H^H bring peace and prosperity to the political system <- Joke Tag

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