Very few districts have problems procuring IT parts. Remember the Universal Service Fund? That was specifically designed to give money to schools to build this sort of infrastructure. I am sure every district got a piece of the pie. Yes, it was supposed to originally go to rural/impoverished schools...but that was changed mid-session and then everyone climbed onboard to spend those hard earned dollars on....microwave links for schools....video conferencing gear.....Cisco 7600 routers....modem dial pools....you name it.

Schools don't buy at $500/machine prices. They buy at $1k+/machine prices....I've seen their "discounts" and it's usually pretty appalling. I was invited by my local school corporation to buy at their "discounted" rate which was (for a similarly specced machine) 40% above sale prices.

But they spun it as a 50% off of "LIST" price....

I have seen school districts want to build their own fiber infrastructure, build 100MBit microwave feeds between buildings, and demand Cisco TelePresence in every school. And when you look at port utilization, it's around 1%avg/3%peak. I also doubt that the current IT budget hasn't been replacing computers for the past five years as they breakdown, etc.

This is a bond issue, not a budget issue. They want to specially finance $45 million into a district of 17k kids to "build for the future".

As a telecom geek, I see many people create these vast, incredibly complex networks that end up being more difficult to troubleshoot and manage because they invoke non-standard designs which fail when people wander in and make mundane changes. And then when these links fail, go down for maintenance....surprise, there's no 100% network availability.

Three simple rules to networks...

Simple enough to explain to your grandmother.
Robust enough to handle an idiot walking in and disconnecting something.
Reasonable enough to be able to be maintained by Tier I staffing.

Also throw in the fact that SpaceX is NOT incorporating reusability into their price points (from what I have seen, the boosters are designed to be recoverable but the cost structure isn't built around that being an expectation for each launch)...and now all of a sudden the price point becomes lower. Musk said recently the propellent costs for a Falcon 9 launch were around $150k. If he can get a 50% reuse rate of of his boosters, that's a hell of a cost savings AND drives the cost to orbit down much lower.

When SpaceX and Bigelow meet in orbit, that will be an important date in spaceflight. Two wholly private ventures meeting in orbit. Now if someone could just throw enough coin at both of them to undertake a Mars mission...

Have to wonder since most airports are local/state owned entities, could the TSA legally pull it's shenanigans on flights that originate and terminate within Texas? /yes, of course they will //but isn't the crux of the DOJ's argument around Interstate Commerce?

Isn't "Deep Space" supposed to be outside the influence of the Earth's Gravitational Field? Because three weeks of spaceflight probably won't get you there unless someone has packed a VASIMR engine and a nuke power plant inside of the Lego set NASA is calling a deep space vehicle.

This seems appropriate... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwyCcGse8WE /not the stupid commercial before it...

#1. Some Anthroprogenic Global Warming believers (scientists, media, and nut jobs) think the seas are going to rise, there will be widespread famine, pestilence, etc. #2. Some Anti Global Warming believers (scientists, media, and nut jobs) think the seas are NOT going to rise, there will NOT be widespread famine, pestilence, etc. #3. Some of the data from both sides is utter bullshit. #4. Some of it is valid. Activists on both sides tend to draw themselves to the extremes, and like Abortion, Socialism, Capitalism, Racism...the activists believe in the extremes. Don't fall for their bullshit (that's what sell books!).

And the Dell rep must have been his brother in law...

Had a laptop for my BS and MBA, online doing all sorts of crap. Still graduated with a 3.8+ GPA. As always, it depends on the student. I could see how a bunch of teenagers would be easily distracted.

And don't forget what the British Post Office did back in the 1960s as well (which my stepfather was a part of). City of Light is a nice read about the history of Fiber Optics.