
Recovery.Gov -- tracking “how and where we spend taxpayer dollars”. - babyshake
http://recovery.gov/
======
kin
I hope they get detailed on spending. I always hated it when "modernization"
of schools and hospitals means using a $2000 LCD to display the lunch menu.

~~~
kajecounterhack
Or buying entire sets of computers...usually from Dell.

I mean, Dell's fine, but seriously, it's not like they're going to dealcatcher
to find the PCs for cheap. They get them cheap _er_ than "official" retail
price, at a bulk order price.

And then with a new set of computers, elementary schools don't know what to do
next. Word process and web browse...

Oh well.

~~~
jamesbritt
"I mean, Dell's fine, but seriously, it's not like they're going to
dealcatcher to find the PCs for cheap. They get them cheaper than "official"
retail price, at a bulk order price."

I used to know a guy who did IT work, and he explained why his place always
bought Dells. If he ordered 100 Dell Foo2000 boxen, he knew they would all
have the same video card, same motherboard, same hardware top to bottom.

This meant one could roll out new software or upgrades and not be stymied when
this machine behaved differently from that because of weird subtle driver
issues on different hardware.

I don't know if this is still true (or really if it was ever true) but it
seemed a good way to reduce overall maintenance issues.

~~~
martin
Right. It has nothing to do with a company not bothering to go to some
discount code site -- the point is that a large enterprise has different needs
from some guy buying a computer to put in his den.

There's a reason Dell has different product lines for consumers and
businesses, and that businesses buy the latter despite the higher price. To
sell consumer PCs so cheaply, Dell has to use the cheapest hardware available
at the time of manufacture. (Also, they have to agree to install various
crapware from EarthLink and AOL and Real Networks, but that's another story.)
This means that the hardware used in the consumer products changes frequently,
and that it's not necessarily the highest quality or of the best-known brand.
The business lines, like OptiPlex, have longer lifecycles and use more
reputable, name-brand components.

For a consumer, price is the most important factor, so the home product is
fine. But in an enterprise, those savings would be quickly wiped out by
administrative overhead and perhaps worse reliability. A decent IT department
tests new software on every hardware/OS configuration on which it will be used
prior to deployment, and they'll have a standardized desktop build process
based on a cloning product (e.g. Ghost), Remote Installation Service, or
something similar. Good luck doing those things if you have 287 different
hardware configurations in your environment, or if your computers have some
off-brand NIC that doesn't support PXE booting, etc.

------
greyhat
When did the .GOV namespace become a wide open frontier for politicking?
recovery.gov as a name flies directly in the face of the rules and suggestions
for .gov, being a general and vague word. Although I will admit, its not
nearly as bad as change.gov, featuring the phony Office of the President Elect
nonsense.

It is also a political opinion statement, with the implicit assumptions that
recovery is needed from something, and that the government should do it.

Why can't the BLS or Treasury or anything else host a website to explain this
stuff? Or why not go one step further and create a US Economics website to
teach people economics and track and explain current US statistics?

And don't even get me started on the new whitehouse.gov.

------
babyshake
From the HTML source:

<h3><a
href="[http://WhiteHouse.gov">http://WhiteHouse.gov</a>...](http://WhiteHouse.gov);
<p> <h3><a href="[http://USA.gov">http://USA.gov</a></h5>](http://USA.gov);

Whoops.

~~~
s3graham
Yeah, I'd have to say this one's a little less exciting web-design-wise than
whitehouse.gov. Body text as img, and two people that were maybe a little
overly proud of their accomplishment in the source.

(not that my html & css skillz are so hot either, but...)

------
pmjordan
Man, I wish I knew what our government was really spending those insanely high
tax rates on. Plus, the economic downturn is sending governments across Europe
on spending sprees that I fear I'll be paying for for the rest of my life. (oh
and that state pension I have to pay into? Yeah, doubt I'll ever be seeing any
of that)

~~~
Retric
Mostly, it's interest on debt plus SS / Medicare / Medicare which moves money
around but are not direct spending. ~68% of what's left is Military spending.

<http://www.wallstats.com/deathandtaxes/> is a good place to start for the US
Federal budget, but that's just the major branches I don't know of a good
breakdown for say the number of LCD's the government buys. The picture on the
bottom right is a good summary.

------
zitterbewegung
Looks interesting that we might have an opportunity of transparency in
government.

------
helveticaman
I get the feeling that this will get killed...

Why don't they get Community Wizard back?

