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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

#161

Post by arethuza »

cynwoody wrote: post #66
jacques_chester wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>One main difference is that public companies are required by law to have independent auditors. Also, companies can go broke. Compared to that sanction, independent auditors are a band-aid.

"companies can go broke"

Apart from the "too big to fail" banks...

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

#162

Post by poloniculmov »

mgkimsal wrote: post #135
poloniculmov wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

I don't think that's public education's role.

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

#163

Post by Nelson69 »

redshirtrob wrote: post #11

I'd like to know how much of that $5 million savings would have been burned up in the capacity studies. My guess is a lot. Given the choice between a fixed cost and an unbounded cost (being the capacity study referenced throughout the article) I'm not surprised they went with the fixed cost. I'm not saying WV didn't get swindled, but I can sure see how this might have happened: WV Rep: Do we really need these $20k ro…

Capacity study? Hahaha Like they're going to go to the schools and someone there will "know" how much internet they need. They can't even go to the schools and get a good estimate of how many students they expect to be attending in 10 years, almost all the schools in the US are reactive to that sort of thing, they build new ones when the old ones are either so broken down that they can't fix them or they are over capacity. If you go to the schools you get one of two things: 1) a tiny internet straw that 2000 kids share and it's useless or 2) an OC48 to a tier one peer that 163 kids and teachers use for email.

There is something more fundamental, there were probably schools that had nothing close to reasonable internet access. (Likely a lot of them were in places where they can't get great internet at home either.) The masses were fed up with it, especially as they thought their kids were being left behind so they beat on their representatives and they just got a blob of cash to fix it, costs be damned. You think it was going to make the parents happy when they announce that it's going to take 7 years to get DSL to their child's school?

It's a monster of our own creation. No idea how you solve it... the people that doll out the money have no idea how to do the work or how to estimate if an estimate is good or not; they're just too far away it and the public's memory is too short term.

They probably did open an RFP to multiple bidders.. That's just game theory though, you think the bidders want to leave money on the table? Every where I've seen government bids produced, they increase the costs.

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

#164

Post by jeffdavis »

dalke wrote: post #150
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.

Did we read different articles? The one I read says "The report finds plenty of blame to go around. The ultimate cause of the fiasco, it says, was the fact the grant implementers did not conduct a capacity or use study before spending $24 million." This does not place the ultimate blame on Cisco. You say "what [West Virginia] wanted", but the article shows how Cisco was unable to show that they knew what WV wanted. F…

"Cisco was unable to show that they knew what WV wanted"

Yes, they have a contract. That is the best indication possible that the customer wants what you are selling.

If I trust someone else with my money, and they transfer that trust over to a salesperson, then they have violated my trust.

I don't want to hear about "blame to go around" and "the salesman should have sold us less stuff". Maybe apply some shame or sanctions to the salesperson, I suppose, but I really don't care unless there was some kind of kickback involved.

Allowing the stewards of your money to redirect blame onto Cisco for selling too much stuff seems so overwhelmingly naive that I don't know where to begin.

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

#165

Post by homosaur »

intended wrote: post #123
tdoggette wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I chuckled. It is, in fact, quite easy to imagine that American bureaucrats (as a collective) are that stupid. I'm not discounting the other possibility, though.

Whats somewhat sad though, is that for the majority of my time, America was described as the place where things "just worked". To be fair, a lot of things do "Just work". This may just be the time Americans look to their government and decide to clean house and rehire competent people into it.

They can hire all the competent people they want, the system itself has become broken. There's too little representation and too much gerrymandering. There needs to be profound systemic reforms to even begin to address what's wrong with the US government.

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

#166

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

ryguytilidie wrote: post #22
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…

How are people not being arrested for this daily?

What law did they break?

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

#167

Post by pekk »

cynwoody wrote: post #78
hmottestad wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My high-school admin bought a Mac Pro with dual CPU. It was powerful enough to run all the school servers at once, yet he only used it to remote desktop into the real servers.

Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach administrate.

And I suppose none of this applies to private industry...

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

#168

Post by pekk »

crusso wrote: post #156
tzs wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is the kind of nonsense you want to stop, that approach is ineffective to the point of idiocy.

Since the sequester is really just a reduction of an increase and not really a cut, how is it ineffective? Seems like it's the only thing that even kind of looks like a cut that might go into effect in our lifetimes. Funny how the Feds were fine with a 2% increase in payroll taxes for consumers but a 2% cut in the increase of their budget is going to bring on Armageddon.

I don't understand why people speak so fondly of things like education cuts. Reducing the absolute size of the budget and increasing revenue are both important for continuing to reduce the deficit. But almost every real problem with government is caused by the relative allocations of funds and how departments are managed, not the mere existence of funding for things like education or public health.

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

#169

Post by pekk »

guynamedloren wrote: post #84

This makes me sick to my stomach. The worst part is that there's nothing we (the taxpayers whose hard earned money went to to pay for these things) can do about it, nor is there much we can do to prevent it from happening in the future. I really really hate to admit it, but that's the truth.

Did you consider any of the tools of democracy? Although it can take time, that should work just fine if most people actually agree on what to do.

If you are in a minority of the population which wants to unilaterally impose its will on everyone else because they are more important, however - then I guess that democracy is no good and only an armed coup will do. Let's hope that people don't start thinking that way, because then we are all in trouble.

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

#170

Post by pekk »

homosaur wrote: post #38

Corruption is awesome when you're on the nipple end of the government tit. Nice work if you can get it, Cisco.

Doing antisocial things for money is corruption in the public sector. The same grade of evil in the private sector is fiduciary duty and entirely acceptable, regardless of how high the cost to third parties.
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