Slashdot Mirror
Obama Wants Broadband, Computers Part of Stimulus
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.
He also wants to use broadband for health care facilities.
Since I know that most of you don't RTFA and the summary is lacking that point, I figured I'd point it out.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
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 think that was his point. Teaching them to hit buttons on a calculator isn't math. Giving them a computer isn't learning.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0883617.html
Please shut up. You have no clue what you're talking about. It's almost like you need an education. While education is part of the doctrinal system, the reality is that you have more chance of success at whatever you're doing whether the degree gets you a foot in the door or if you meet other people in your field and develop relationships. Even without all that, you typically make more money with a higher education. These facts escape you because you are too lazy to learn before speaking.
Almost every single technological breakthrough has occurred where? In government or university research labs funded by the state. You would not be typing on a computer and sending a message through the internet without it. The Human Genome Project was a government research program. Every time you take a flight you're riding in a modified bomber, researched with government funds.
So with all due respect, shut the fuck up. Really. Your ignorance is the problem, not spending money on education.
Well said. Also thinks are not as bad as claimed.
"the US ranks 15th in broadband adoption.""
You know that saying about lies, damn lies, and statistics? This is an example of lying with statistics. The United States is not some podunk little nation like Korea, but a continent-spanning nation that takes 3 days to drive across, and therefore it makes sense to compare like-to-like:
(1) Russian Federation - 6.9 megabit/s ...
(2) European Union - 6.2
(3) United States - 6.1
(4) Canada & Australia - 4.4 (tie)
(5) China - 2.1
.
The U.S. is only slightly behind its Russian/European neighbors, and significantly ahead of its Canadian, Australian, and Chinese neighbors. That is not a bad position to be. By the way I got these stats from speedtest.net which is based upon actual measurement of the users, and therefore not distorted.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
But the Taiwanese may still pass the jobs to China.
After all they have lots of factories in China[1].
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1181993.stm
The Hoover Dam was first proposed, by Hoover, granted, in 1922. His predecessor as President, Calvin Coolidge, signed the bill authorizing it in 1928; it was never a depression recovery project per se, the money had already been allocated before there was a Depression.
Contra Amity "You're all a bunch of whiners" Shlaes, who's work has been effectively discredited by anyone who cared to think about it for five minutes.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
"One country two systems" has been proposed by China for Taiwan. The Taiwanese - having had de-facto independence for over 50 years - would prefer to stay independent, rather than being someone's colony again. (It's described in the link you gave, btw.)
As for computers, even as a CS major we used shared computer labs. Most schools today already have enough PCs spread around classrooms to make a substantial computer lab or two, and any PC older than 5 years old is perfectly good for both tasks, and are being given away for free everywhere.
Agreed. My high school got brand new HP computers with new LCDs nearly every year while I was there. The entire network was locked down, no roaming accounts (yes it was all Windows), a terrible content filtering system (I disagree it is necessary! Give up already), and hardly enough space on the server for all those 'Windows Movie Maker' projects (120 GB). Half the time, students had no idea how to use WMM so they saved their work as a project, never encoded it, tried to bring it around and found out that does NOT work. The school taught no concepts which I had already learned (in this case, video encoding and what it does). Secondly, the school was a big Microsoft proponent as the classes it taught were almost all for Microsoft products, and the ONLY time they used free software was when they needed audio-editing software and could not find anything good that was cheap but also good. They chose Audacity (I give credit for this move). Schools generally do not trust free software as they do not think it will be quality software. THAT is a big problem. So they stick with licensing Windows (usually through a volume licence), Office (same as above), and all the rest of their software. What browser did the teacher have students use for what should be called 'HTML class'? IE, of course. Sure, MS gives incentives as always but parents need to understand the implications of being locked into MS software, which they never will because they have Windows at home, at work, everywhere nearly. Maybe even their phone and their console (Xbox/Xbox 360).
If it were up to me, would have been desktops (for things like multimedia) and terminals (for small tasks like web browsing and typing documents) all connected to a Linux server with a large hard drive. That is cheaper than buying new PCs every year for literally no reason (the old computers were fine, what's not is running Windows).
Also, if schools want to prevent students from running their games (EXEs), run Linux and do not install Wine.