Obama Wants Broadband, Computers Part of Stimulus 901
damn_registrars writes "President-elect Barack Obama announced in his radio address that his administration's economic stimulus package will include investing in computers and broadband for education. 'To help our children compete in a 21st century economy, we need to send them to 21st century schools.'
He also said it is 'unacceptable' that the US ranks 15th in broadband adoption." No doubt with free spyware and internet filtering. You know... for the kids.
Re:Great (Score:5, Interesting)
It would be great if the local cable or phone company could run their lines just 1 block further from my nearest neighbor so I could get broadband.
Maybe Obama can make it happen!
Or Obama can help find where that 200 billion dollars went.
http://www.newnetworks.com/ShortSCANDALSummary.htm [newnetworks.com]
Re:China (Score:5, Interesting)
Note that if giving job to China is an issue, one could prefer Taiwanese makers. I believe the difference is more important than it seems : one is a democracy, the other is not.
Re:Size (Score:4, Interesting)
exactly. but i remember hearing a story in the late 90s about the guy who founded Qwest was heir to a railroad company or something. basically, he sold off all the land around the tracks except for a certain number of feet on either side of the tracks. the trains were then outfitted with something that would automatically lay fiber.
this could be total crap, but i don't know.
Re:No doubt with free spyware and internet filteri (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, despite being an Obama supporter (as am I), Taco is being pragmatic. Eric Holden could be his Attorney General, and he's all for net censorship. Plus this is the Democrats we're talking about; the old guard is salivating at the prospect of getting all their old nanny state legislation back on the plate.
Re:Failure is the only possible result (Score:1, Interesting)
Your a idiot.
Hoover tried protectionism. Look up the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. It wasn't increased spending... it was protectionism and the dustbowl that made the Global recession so bad.
Computers can help motivate High School students! (Score:4, Interesting)
why? so humans can move forward. (Score:5, Interesting)
No offense, but if you think that you can do Math on a calculator, your arguements for better education are kinda weakened. Calculators (yes even graphing ones) are a way to get around the tedium of simple arithmetic, a way to skip past the dark ages and get to the meat of critical, logical thinking.
I analyze water flow patterns as it relates to insurance risk for a living... a mathematical job to be sure. When calculating the trajectory of a projected river overflow, I grab my scientific calculator, and I think back in sympathy for my 4th grade self, who was tortured by moronic ciriculum focused on creating mindless times table memorization, which I could not do...
The main advantage humans have over other animals is that our history and our technology make it possible to learn in one lifetime what could not otherwise be possible in a hundred lifetimes. "Back to basics" is how humanity self-destructs. Give them a pile of computers, have them teach the teacher.
Re:No. (Score:3, Interesting)
Depends on your profession. I was fortunate to attend a school that had a computer lab that allowed me to learn how to program on my own time (my family couldn't afford a computer at home at the time).
If you come from a poor family having computers at school is a real boon. I don't think studious kids should be punished by not being allowed access to computers due to the majority not using them for educational purposes.
I also don't think the school system is broken. There's nothing stopping kids from going to school and being productive except their own lack of discipline and work ethic.
Re:Great (Score:4, Interesting)
I've always wondered if there was some way that consumers could "get back" at the telecoms for sucking so hard.
Can someone file a class action lawsuit or something along those lines for the telecoms failing to serve the taxpayer/consumer despite being given so much aid from the government? Maybe throw in some analogy of how the banks over-sold the consumers with loans which led to a real estate crash and how the telecoms are over-selling the consumers with bandwidth which could potentially lead to an infrastructure crash. Add in a last quip about how their lazyness is what is causing the whole discussion of all protocols/websites/whatevers being equal in the idea of net neutrality and how if they just did their jobs the way they were supposed to the first time.
Could solve all our problems in one fell swoop!
Re:Size (Score:3, Interesting)
Not sure about trains outfitted with automatic fiber laying machinery, but I know about specially made train cars that lay fiber. The nice thing about railroads and fiber is that at the turn of last century, railroads were giving large swaths of right of way for running tracks from town to town. So the railroads usually connect towns together, the same towns that are perhaps wanting digital connectivity. Also, many lines used to have multi track routes, and these have been reduced to reduce maintenane and then you have wide areas where you can lay fiber without much fear of running into many obstacles. This allows easier connections of towns by running cables along the railroad right of way.
re: Qwest (Score:4, Interesting)
No, I believe you basically heard correctly. I remember that being one of Qwest's competitive advantages at the time they got started. When everyone else was stuck negotiating for rights to use other people's land to place their fiber cabling, Qwest could usually just use the "right of way" land along the sides of the train tracks instead.
I think in the end though, it didn't change much of anything for the "end user/customer". Eventually, the big telcos all found ways to get things cabled up where they wanted to cable them up. Qwest might have gotten it done for less money initially, but they all have similar costs of operation and pricing models today.
Re:No. (Score:3, Interesting)
In school, using computers I learned BASIC programming, Logo, the relation between frequency and musical notes, binary arithmetic, and quite a lot else -- and that's just 4th through 6th grade, in the 1980s, without the internet (or any other kind of net.) The problem's I've seen in recent years in schools with computers is that we've vastly expanded the number of computers in schools and the percentage of students that have access to them -- but eliminated most of the idea of a coherent, meaningful use of computers to teach anything, other than the use of computers as generic office tools.
Of course, the way public school teachers are compensated or treated, if they had the skills to do anything else, they could make four times as much money with much better non-financial working conditions outside of the schools, so I'm not really surprised; there are still some people out there doing better, but the number of people with both the skills and the willingness to suffer through the environment that school teachers have is small. More computers in more schools won't help without dealing with that issue, and more broadband penetration will only help a little (it'll help some of the places that are doing good in this respect do better).
Get rid of NCLB & Becca, push nat'l teacher ce (Score:3, Interesting)
My wife is a HS English teacher in Washington state. If Obama want to seriously help schools, priority 1 should be to put a bullet in Bush's collossal screw up that is "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB). It's too flawed to "fix" other than flat out removal. Bush has been too stupid to admit it's a failure and correct it (just like everything else he's done), so this is the only option.
Next, in Washington state there's a bill called the Becca bill that requires the little monsters to be contained by the state in schools up until age 18 because some stupid brat ran away from school and got herself killed. Unfortunately, this also means that kids that would rather quit and go jockey a McRegister between times passing the bong are instead required to stay in school and suck up resources they don't care about. Get rid of this in Washington state (and similar laws in other states) and teachers can look the kids in the eye and tell them to leave and come back when (if) they care about learning something.
Then, get back to helping the kids that are going to do something with themselves.
Last but not least, get rid of the stupid state teaching certificates in all 50 flavors. There's a shockingly fantastic National Board Certification (federal gov't too... go figure!) program that uses a peer evaluation system to focus teachers on becoming good teachers IN PRACTICE in their own environment. My wife did this certification and is now contributing to the mentoring portion. Interestingly enough, teachers who can't "reach these keeds" don't cut it in these programs because it requires them to learn, grow, and be self-reflective about how they teach and continue to grow, unlike the the rubber stamp Master's degree (a.k.a "Masters in Ed.") programs that set teachers up for either a check-mark in the "has masters" box and unwarranted pay raise or a future as yet another worthless administrator (and a MUCH greater unwarranted pay raise).
Bottom line, schools need more funding to train and retain good teachers. "Education" has a latin root word "educare" meaning "to bring out". It's not about throwing stuff at kids and hoping it sticks. It's about bringing out the best. You've never needed broadband or computers to do that.
Re:No. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:China (Score:2, Interesting)
There are some fields where it is possible (construction, restaurants...)
Here in the south (Dallas, TX south to Houston, Austin and San Antonio), almost all construction and restaurant jobs are held by illegal immigrants, who send most of the money home to Mexico
Re:Don't confuse the issue. (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the government interference with electricity/phones was a mistake. Phones were already ubiquitous with even the most remote cattle rancher being served (the companies often used the barbed wire to form a connection). Electricity had already reached 95% of the population by the 1930s. There was no need for that corporate welfare. (I detest corporate welfare.)
Politicians often create a problem that either (a) doesn't exist or (b) used to exist but has already been solved via the free market. Obama saying the U.S. is falling behind is a manufactured problem that does not exist. We're already essentially tied with the EU and Russia.... we're NOT falling behind.
Re:The .com plan to fix the economy. (Score:1, Interesting)
Actually we tried this with Bush 41 (Luxury tax-remember?). The rich DID QUIT buying yachts (from US companies), putting them out of business.
Also, the 1.2 million paid tot he small yacht business would be spent within the US, instead of buying cheap imported stuff for your new house built with cheap imported illegal labor.
Dollar for dollar, the yacht companies are far better for the US economy......
Re:why? so humans can move forward. (Score:3, Interesting)
that is true, but I always get the impression people are implying that having a calculator is detrimental to the teaching of "math" whereas what they really mean is "Damn you, I had to learn my times tables, so you should too".
I would argue that pen and paper arithmetic is just as much "not math" as punching numbers on a calculator, it is just slower, and therefore more of a waste of time.
Re:Mexico (Re:China) (Score:4, Interesting)
A lot of the kids i went to high school with dropped out of school to take up jobs in construction with their parents (whom are only legal since their kids were born here) and typically sent back half of their income to their families across the border. One 16 year old kid i knew was on our track team and worked whatever the maximum number of hours a week you can at that age, and sent all but $100 a week (also about 50%) back to his family. $1000/wk for construction seems a little high. I know drywallers get paid about $20 an hour to do out of town work (dallas to san antonio) but $1000 a week? That seems a little high, is he a bilingual foreman or something? $600 a month may be all they can afford to send after rent, car payment, and gas for their truck (though gas prices have dropped recently). That's still $7,200 a year, plus whatever he spends in mexico while visiting family and buying them gifts there. Sorry to substantiate using my real life experience vs. your article you read in a magazine.
Re:The .com plan to fix the economy. (Score:4, Interesting)
>Shuffle it though an inefficient bureaucracy .
Wait, so AT&T and Comcast are efficient non-bureaucracies? Hahaha. Sounds like you've never worked for a big business.
Sounds like you've never worked for - or intimately with - the Federal Government. Compared to that institution, Comcast, AT&T, IBM, and even GM are nimble and highly responsive entities!
Re:Public transport (Score:3, Interesting)
This is the same argument folks in the US use to justify the lack of public transport.
Funny how it works that way. Cell phones too. I see that your website is hosted in the UK. You happen to have any experience with small US cities? Or are you another slashdotter speaking authoritatively about things you don't understand.
The fact is that the US is 80% urban and suburban, so getting decent services to those folks (in both broadband and public transport) shouldn't be a problem. What is the problem, with internet connectivity anyway, is the deeply entrenched telecoms companies with their local monopolies.
No. You probably are using US Census "metropolitan statistical areas" which are not necessarily fully urban. These are regions which the US Census has decided to group into economic areas of influence with one or two big cities at the core. For example, here's a map [census.gov] of the state of New Mexico showing how the state is divided into economic regions by the US Census Bureau. It uses the boundaries of counties. The Albuquerque metropolitan statistical area covers four counties and a lot of rural land. Albuquerque is a city of roughly three quarters of a million crudely in the center of Bernalillo county.
My weak understanding is that the US is somewhat over 50% urban, including "suburban" areas. Further, US cities are notorious for low density "urban sprawl", vast areas of buildings on postage stamp lots with no more than a couple of stories to them. It's a lot harder to provide broadband services to such areas than the dense cities more typical of Europe.
Re:No. (Score:5, Interesting)
The exact issue is that the school system is modeled after the one room schoolhouse. The entire concept of grades K-12 needs to be thrown out, and instead just have each student advance in each subject at his/her own pace. In this way, a student who is good in English but needs math help does not get held back or even looked at strangely.
Every student will have strengths and weaknesses, so it should be the norm to be several "grades" higher in one or two subjects, and possibly one or two grades lower in one or two subjects. When there is no stigma to having difficulty with a given subject, students will no longer have to hide the fact, and their needs can be addressed.
With this sort of system, the school system can finally improve. Throwing more money at a system that is clearly broken will not help, but replacing the system with something that will work and then moving students into that new system WOULD.
It is a sad thing when most people are more willing to replace an old but working computer than they are to replace a clearly broken system. The same applies to Social Security, health care, and everything else. Everyone keeps trying to fix something that is broken beyond repair instead of trying to figure out what to replace these old broken systems with.
Re:China (Score:3, Interesting)
>I think, anyone who thinks and acts in the long term nowadays, will rule them all in the future.
But they won't because they will have been outcompeted by short-term interests.
This is a fundamental problem with relying on amplification systems. The same thing is seen in evolution: the organisms or systems which reproduce with the highest gain overwhelm everything else.
Your investor wants to make the highest income per unit time. That is the investor's only quality metric, and that's pretty much as it should be. Your company wants as many investors as possible so it has to give back the best return per unit time. Again, that's as it should be. The result is that long-term planning is not a natural result of marketplace action. As such it is probably the domain of government -- hence space programs being nationally funded.
It doesn't matter how smart you are. If you're slow, you will be crushed.
In my opinion, China isn't slow, at all, and their government is thinking long-term, directing all the short-term companies. That's a recipe for success.
But it doesn't make sense to criticize companies for acting in their short-term interests. It is, unfortunately, the only rational way for them to behave.
Re:Are filters in schools that bad? (Score:2, Interesting)
I do IT and network security for a university. One of my big concerns is deprogramming all the proto hackers that are coming to us from the secondary schools.
You need filters in elementary ed. You still need some filters in secondary ed, but you have to be very careful how you do it. Teenagers start off smart and rebellious. From that starting point, it is easy to turn a high school into a factory for creating talented hackers.
Every semester, a university has to deprogram these people. It is well worth the effort. They turn into our most valuable thinkers. And, if you can't get them back, you end up in a world of hurt.
Every time, it's the same thing:
- Honest! We have no filters.
- No, we don't care what you look at. Just be ethical and don't hurt others.
- Yah, you can look at pron. But it doesn't get the homework done. And it is not as satisfying as going out with people or creating stuff.
- Yah we detected your attempt to hack the routers or do IP MITM. Honest! You don't need to do this crap to get to the internet here.
This used to be easier. But lately the kids are getting more paranoid.
Miles