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Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

arstechnica.com

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Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#131

Post by Random_Person »

WestCoastJustin wrote: post #24

Probably going against the grain here, but what about the operations staff who are charged with supporting these 1,164 routers? What about warranties and parts replacements? There is a price for standardizing on a piece of hardware at such a large scale. When you standardize, sure there is going to be hardware overkill in some places, but in the big picture this is just a price of doing business at this scale. What i…

I am one of those charged with maintaining this equipment. Spread throughout our state, there are 8 Education Services Agencies that manage their region's networks. I personally installed ~115 of these routers...

What's the price? Not a lot.

We are state employees, and as such, are paid state employee wages. I am compensated for mileage, but beyond that, there is no charge to the individual districts. Part of the cost of these routers was a 4 year Cisco Smart Care plan which replaces the hardware within 24 hours at no additional cost. What that really means is, they ship it to me and it's my responsibility to replace and return the failed part. Much of what I do is remote configuration changes and very little on-site time.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#132

Post by poloniculmov »

paganel wrote: post #98
joenathan wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does Microsoft have to do with this?

> What does Microsoft have to do with this? I don't have a source handy, but around 2004-2005 Steve Ballmmer came in a short visit to my country (somewhere in Eastern Europe), he had a even shorter meeting with the Prime Minister of that time and sure enough not 6 months later a Government programme was launched and all the schools and public libraries in my country had to be equipped with Windows machines. This was…

Hey fellow countryman! What good would it do for kids in our country to learn Open Office, an office suit nobody uses in a workplace?

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#133

Post by jeltz »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #122
Mvandenbergh wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies are not natural persons any more than governments are, they don't have their own money. The difference is that shareholders are better at demanding independent audits than voters are.

The government takes money from people involuntarily, corporations receive money due to voluntary transactions. If I never buy a product from Apple or Exxon, there's no problem with that. If I don't pay taxes I go to jail.

Your comparison is incorrect. The citizens of a company are its shareholders, not its customers. And if you are a shareholder the company is indeed spending YOUR money.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#134

Post by wisty »

jacques_chester wrote: post #57
vidarh wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get similar stuff at private companies too, though few private companies are large enough for corruption like that to be able to reach the same scale without getting too big to go unnoticed by auditors for long enough. The number of times I've had potential supplier hint at extra perks or "return favours" is fairly high, and I've not even been in positions of very substantial purchasing power. It's often not even…

One main difference is that public companies are required by law to have independent auditors. Government departments are not. In Australia independent audits rely on the Australian National Audit Office, which is profoundly and deliberately underfunded because of its annoying habit of discovering embarrassing incompetence and wastefulness.

Australia isn't that badly off - at least the governments have to do accrual accounting. Most countries don't, because it's too much work.

As a consequence, when most countries release their budgets, expenses can be hidden for the next guy to reveal. And lazy assets don't burn a whole in spending. Imagine if the US government had to admit how much it was "spending" on rent (taking up land which could otherwise be used by the private sector). A $20,000 router isn't an "investment", it's a burn of $4,000 a year over the 5 years it's in use.

The reason accrual accounting is used in large companies is, when ownership and management is separated, you need to ensure the managers give an accurate picture of what they have spent.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#135

Post by mgkimsal »

poloniculmov wrote: post #132
paganel wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What does Microsoft have to do with this? I don't have a source handy, but around 2004-2005 Steve Ballmmer came in a short visit to my country (somewhere in Eastern Europe), he had a even shorter meeting with the Prime Minister of that time and sure enough not 6 months later a Government programme was launched and all the schools and public libraries in my country had to be equipped with Windows machines. This was…

Hey fellow countryman! What good would it do for kids in our country to learn Open Office, an office suit nobody uses in a workplace?

30 years ago, why would anyone have bothered to use MS Word when nobody used it in the workplace? Everyone used WordPerfect or WordStar.

If you had a generation of kids who have experience with openoffice, it'll be much more likely that openoffice would be something that would be adopted over time - newly formed companies using it, gradual shift away from MS Office, etc.

MS knows their history, and will continue to seed generations of users with low-cost/free stuff to keep their dominance going. If they quit doling out free copies, something like openoffice would gain a larger foothold in schools and eventually businesses in < 10 years. Would MS Office be entirely replaced? Of course not, but it would not be the default/automatic choice for everyone without question.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#137

Post by yaddayadda »

"For those keeping score at home, this means that 75 $20,000 routers are depreciating in a state police warehouse somewhere in West Virginia." So we should be seeing 74 Cisco 3945 routers on eBay very soon. (My commission for this idea is 1 Cisco 3945 router.)

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#138

Post by mgkimsal »

rlpb wrote: post #125

From the article: > the legislative auditor concluded that the company "had a moral responsibility"... Since when do corporations have any kind of responsibility, other than to make as much profit as possible? Expecting anything else is futile. If something needs to be fixed, it is in mechanisms to restrain this kind of behaviour where it is in the public interest. Demanding that corporations have morals is not the s…

If corporations have the concept of 'personhood' attributable, they can probably have the concept of 'moral responsibility' attributed as well.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#139

Post by megablast »

nikcub wrote: post #8

I have first hand experience with this, although in Australia. My first job was working for a IT development and solutions shop (this is over 17 years ago) where they won the bid to rollout the internet and network gateways across a large number of Australian government schools. We were doing similar work for private school at the same time, and the process for the public and private school could not be more differen…

I hope you wrote this up detailing the people involved? I guess you it would cause a lot of trouble for you, but if you could do it anonymously, that would go a long way to changing this behavior.

Re: Why a one-room West Virginia library runs a $20,000 Cisco router

#140

Post by megablast »

jeffdavis wrote: post #99

I was surprised how much blame this article lays at the feet of Cisco. What did they do except sell the customer what they wanted? Sure, they might have been more noble if they put on the breaks in the name of the taxpayers, but that could hardly be expected. It takes a lot of nerve for someone who just wasted my money (federal dollars) to try to blame it on the other party for fulfilling the order.

It is not one or the other, it is both of them.

If Cisco wants to be treated like untrustworthy rip off artists, then they acted the right way. People will take note.

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