🚀 go-pugleaf

Rob & Theresa Edmunds wrote:
> 
> Matt Byrd <matt_byrd@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:8c06ki$ddg$1@nnrp1.deja.com...
> > I was down-town recently (Bank & Cooper) and I watched some contractors
> > laying a fibre-optic line into a small 3 floor building on Cooper Street
> > at the sotheast corner of Bank & Cooper. It looked like a fairly large
> > strand, so any guesses of who could need a big fibre connection, my
> > guess is with ADSL, xDSL, ATM it would have to be a very large pipe,
> > otherwise why bother! My question is who needs that amount of bandwidth
> > in a nothing little building? I know 400 Cooper had at least a 100 Meg
> > pipe, and this pipe looked the same? Any ideas? The building directory
> > listed only a few small companies, a barber shop and a Dojo. Did I find
> > a secret government installation?

There are exceptions but, in general, you might be surprised at how
small a bandwidth most government installations are forced to use. A
lot of it has to do with budget constraints, aging infrastructure,
negative inertia, a long and painfully bureacratic justification and
approval process, plus a pervasive minimalist mentality. This extends
to other aspects as well. Believe it or not, virtually all the desktop
systems in the division responsible for developing new Defence
department IT projects are currently P166's running W95.

The view of the government blowing money on huge bandwidths and
cutting edge technology may be true south of the border, but in Canada
our politicians don't fund public service spending on technololgy to
the same extent. Gains are made in small nibbles and by the time it is
approved, it is generally insufficient and obsolete. Nowadays almost
any corporate office is using technology more current than that used
by much of the government. This raises a couple of fairly broad, but
important, questions: 

* If government is not able to effectively exploit current technology
for itself, can it competently set policies to nurture and partner the
development of the high tech industry in this country? 

* Is the technology culture in the government relevant to where the
industry is and where it is headed?

Perhaps some of that HRDC $Billion should have gone to investing in
technology for our future?

--
burns

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I speak for no-one but myself.