Datacenter Gives Internet To 70 Percent of Navajo Nation 162
Nerval's Lobster writes "The Navajo Nation cut the ribbon August 13 on an $8 million data center that has been under debate and development since 2000, when then-President Bill Clinton expressed shock that a 13-year-old Navajo girl who just won a new laptop couldn't connect to the Internet. At the time that girl won the laptop in a school contest, the Navajo Nation--a 27,425 square-mile region that covers portions of Arizona, Utah and New Mexico--had barely any IT infrastructure. The incident helped drive debate among leaders of the Navajo Nation, many of whom said they believed adding telecommunications and computing facilities were secondary to other concerns for the chronically poverty stricken region. The 50,000-square-foot facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico includes 25,000-sq.-ft. of datacenter and an equal space for computer training and business incubation, according to Nova Corp., an IT services company owned by Navajo Nation and formed in 2004 to execute an IT plan to create the "Digital Navajo Nation" (PDF). The drive to get it built also helped push development of a $46 million broadband project designed to cover about half of Navajo territory with 550 miles of fiber, 32 new cell towers and upgrades to another 27. It will eventually connect more than 30,000 households and 1,000 businesses."
Re: (Score:1)
The article title is poorly worded. A datacenter did not give the internet to 70% of the Navajo Nation.
The correct title is, "Datacenter connects 70% of Navajo Nation to internet".
I'm pretty certain all the other nations on the internet would have an issue with transferring control of the internet to a tiny native american nation in the U.S. southwest. Although maybe they could manage it better? I dunno.
Re: (Score:2)
The article title is poorly worded. A datacenter did not give the internet to 70% of the Navajo Nation.
That is just how I read it. My knee-jerk thought was to wonder how they would run my own ISP.
Made me read TFA anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
How...?
They Didn't Have Any (Score:2)
They didn't have any casino's on the Navajo Nation until about two years ago. It was probably the one that held off the longest on building them, partially because they could never come to an agreement with the State of New Mexico, but mostly due to tribal opposition.
The bigger thing is that it will benefit those that have power... What many people don't realize though is that much of the reservation is like a third world country without running water or electricity!
Re: (Score:2)
...the women...liked taking the hot showers.
Pics, or it didn't happen.
(Oh, I see. That's why Clinton wanted to connect them to the internet!)
Re: (Score:3)
If they get something worth having, the white people will run them out of there and march them to some useless land. Probably Detroit.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Rural internet at its best (Score:5, Insightful)
It has a direct impact on education. And try to get a decent job in today's world without knowing at least basic Internet use.
Re:Rural internet at its best (Score:5, Insightful)
"Thousands of years" ago, information was restricted by the practicality of reproducing it. That is, someone actually had to write out the scroll. Literacy wasn't common for most of the populace. Some 600 years ago, reproducing books became more practical, with the advent of movable type. It made more sense to have a more-educated populace. The Internet is another iteration on the ease of disseminating information. It makes finding information easier than books did before it. That being said, it's just another tool on the educational toolbelt.
Basically, you can't compare education millenia ago with education centuries ago. As the Internet leaves its infancy, you won't be able to compare learning and education a few decades from now to education a couple decades ago. The Internet allows so much higher ease of access to so much more information that a sensible comparison is difficult to make.
Re: (Score:1)
If I want to know something, there's a good chance that I can learn it on the internet. It used to be that I had to go to a library to find information, sort through a card catalog for books that sound like they'd fit what I'm looking for, /quote> ... then find that 40% of them had been stolen, and the rest were woefully out of date. While I revere the concept of libraries, the reality has often been disappointing.
Re: (Score:1)
Unlimited access to worldwide knowledge and communication is will make a huge impact on education, employment potential and quality of life.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
true a lot of the navajo res don't even have runny water
Indeed. The government built some nice houses for the Navajos on the reservation and they lived in them for a bit but then moved back out to their hogans (pronounced ho-gones) because that is where they were most comfortable. The left the houses open and sheep/dogs/etc. wandered in and out.
Re: (Score:2)
Soon the Navajo will have better internet than the rest of the West!
Given what's out there on the internet, that ain't exactly a hard thing to do.
What good is served by spending all kinds of money to get "rural broadband"?
Seriously. What real societal good does broadband internet access bring? It's not anything like electricity, which has a direct impact on sanitation and health.
Oh for fuck's sake! Why did one of the first posts have to be the old "technology is useless to impoverished areas" trope? When are you people going to get it into your thick skulls that internet access and technical know-how are actually quite useful enablers of education and upward social mobility, hmm?
Let's hope.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
who's "we", in your statement exactly? The company building the datacenter and infrastructure is owned by the Navajo Nation.
Go swallow your Liberal Guilt for a while and join the rest of us in reality. We have cake.
Re: (Score:2)
Why do you assume he's a liberal? Are there no guilt-ridden conservatives?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Why do you assume he's a liberal? Are there no guilt-ridden conservatives?
They're the ones attending church every Sunday to wash away the sins of the previous week. ;-)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Most conservatives understand that smallpox lives about 24 hours on a blanket exposed to air.
The who story is mythology, designed to provoke white guilt.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Are you expecting us to believe most conservatives are well versed in immunology? Half of them believe in creationism, so I'm not expecting much scientific literacy.
The who story is mythology, designed to provoke white guilt.
Bullshit. Google for "Lord Jeffrey Amherst". There are actual historic documents which detailed his intent to do it.
You're full of shit.
Re:Let's hope.. (Score:5, Interesting)
The professor that built his whole carrier on this story and was about to have to eat crow, miraculously found a diary entry to back up his version. He still won't let anybody else examine the diary. He's full of shit.
So his story now is 'Even if smallpox couldn't live on blankets, they _were_ trying to use blankets to spread it.'
Even if what he saying is true. White people still didn't use blankets to spread smallpox. It's virologically impossible. Smallpox traveled around the world in infected people, same as the aggressive new world syphilis.
Re: (Score:3)
well, that one's easy: Liberal Guilt (as I have labelled it here, in capitals) is derived from other people's collective actions or inactions and not on the actions or inactions of the person feeling guilty... Conservative Guilt, then, would be derived from what the individual feeling guilty does or doesn't do. It's a pretty consistent pattern on both fronts. One can have both, although not usually on the same topic.
Re: (Score:1)
If you're right, I think the equivalent for Liberal Guilt would be Conservative Denial. In America, that would be the about slavery.
One person I conversed with ( here on Slashdot?? ) a couple years back even blamed slavery in the US on black people because of a Virginia case where one black man sued for another to be awarded to him as his personal slave in perpetuity.
Re:Let's hope.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Are there no guilt-ridden conservatives?
No. They always believe they're right, facts be damned.
Re: (Score:1)
Psst! This is /., facts be damned, we're right!
Re: (Score:2)
No.
Re: (Score:2)
Wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
Certainly nothing that happened in the past that I wasn't directly involved with....
Re: (Score:2)
If you're moderate, how would you know if there are no guilt-ridden conservatives? And the question wasn't "are YOU a guilt-ridden conservatives?" but "are there ANY guilt-ridden conservatives?".
Of course, it was a rhetorical question, of which I'm sure you were aware unless you're not very perceptive.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
>
... We have cake.
The Cake is a Lie
Re: (Score:2)
And are they not hiring third parties to run it for them? Compare to other tribes which have casinos, they often let some sleazy third party gaming company run the thing whereas tribe members just get jobs as waiters at the casino.
also goal of 2009 stimulus program (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:also goal of 2009 stimulus program (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly.
The problem is that like every other program like this, is that there is no real penalty for NOT doing what you were granted money to do. So you have all kinds of fly-by-night companies appying for and receiving grants, but they don't do anything except do studies and pay themselves. Nothing ever gets built, because it's quicker to take the money and run.
Rural broadband will only happen when the federal government does it THEMSELVES. Trying to get the "free market" to do things like this is impossible.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Nova corp isn't some fly-by-night company though; I've actually consulted with them (they were looking to upgrade the nation's slot machines from old mechanical ones to new digital card-based models, and open some new casinos). That said, they're run by Navaho nobility, with all the kickbacks, inaction and nepotism such political ties entail. They did get things done, however, which is more than I can say for the US government's attempts in the area.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you get free healthcare from the US government? Does the US government fund your local court system, law enforcement, child welfare, disaster relief, and road building, while also letting you declare yourself a member of a sovereign nation? Does the US government free you from restrictive state and local laws governing things such as casino placement in areas where non-tribal citizens are prohibited from doing so?
Did the US government steal 3.79 million square miles of my land and systematically kill multiple generations of my family?
Re: (Score:1)
The US government did not steal 3.79 million square miles of YOUR land and did not systematically kill multiple generations of YOUR family. That process was initiated by the Spanish and had been well underway for over 200 years before there was a US government. And by the French for 100 years before there was a US government. And the English were no slouches, either.
The displacement of the few-millenia-in-place residents of North America started long before there was a US or a government or even any Euro
Re: (Score:1)
Woo hoo. The Navajo Nation now has access to Facebook, YouTube, and Netflix. Woo hoo.
Please tell me what actual good "rural broadband" will do. It's not a cost-effective way to get educational material to the 3 kids who'd use it.
Maybe the Navajo Nation will decide to utilize the data centre and broadband connectivity to promote the history of their people thereby educating their own children as well as anyone else with a connection to the World Wide Web. And the inclusion of a business incubator as part of the data centre facility can be leveraged to increase employment opportunities for their people. The nepotism and political / ruling family corruption poses serious problems but then the white man has dealt with the same problem
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Generally tribal land is administered separately, due to its quasi-autonomous status, so they wouldn't be covered under the "regular" rural-broadband programs. However the federal government could choose to give them equivalent subsidies via the Bureau of Indian Affairs to manage themselves, which seems like what's happening here.
Re: (Score:2)
In unrelated news (Score:1, Flamebait)
Every liquor store in the region just set up a website.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Stereotype much, asshole?
Being a stereotype does not inherently make something false.
Re: (Score:2)
However, I have a close relative who was a drug/alcohol counselor on a Native American reservation(not the Navajo) for several years back in the 80's. Unfortunately, alcohol has devastated many lives on the reservation. It is still a big problem.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, life.
I think some state / federal laws stop that (Score:2)
I got a on line survey from Potawatomi Bingo Casino about on line gameing it say that at this time they can't have a on line casino.
Re: (Score:2)
Well you started it AC. So let's see, their ancestors crossed the Bering Strait 20,000 years ago. Where were your ancestors back then?
I guess you have made a very strong case for Africa for Africans since THOSE were "always there".
But no-one else has a historic claim to their lands, right?
Re: (Score:2)
Well you started it AC. So let's see, their ancestors crossed the Bering Strait 20,000 years ago. Where were your ancestors back then?
I guess you have made a very strong case for Africa for Africans since THOSE were "always there".
But no-one else has a historic claim to their lands, right?
I've seen plenty of "American Holocaust" deniers in my time, but this AC is the first, I believe, to try and justify their ancestors actions by bringing up literal ancient history.
Re: (Score:2)
But no-one else has a historic claim to their lands, right?
Not if WalMart wants it.
Re: (Score:2)
Right. Find someone with something of value and take it.
Re: (Score:2)
No. That's "a fool and his money are soon parted". Are the gamblers being dragged bodily onto the reservations or did they happen upon them by chance?
Re: (Score:2)
Your ancestors are Chinese?
Re: (Score:1)
How about they put that casino loophole [wikipedia.org] to good use and pay for their own goddamned infractructure.
And no, before anybody starts, they weren't 'always here' [wikipedia.org].
Casino investment is what Nova's been using prior funds for. I see this datacentre as a positive change.
Re: (Score:2)
And no, before anybody starts, they weren't 'always here' [wikipedia.org].
The only thing worse than bigotry is ignorant bigotry. 20,000 tears? If you knew anything about the Navajo you'd realize that they and their ancestors have been in the Southwest for "only" about 600 years. [wikipedia.org] But you know how it is, after the first few centuries people start to act like they own the place.
Navajo Nation (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Navajo Nation (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd actually be curious to know how, if at all, the peculiar political status of certain treaty-administered reservation areas would affect a datacenter built there.
For the purposes of day-to-day jurisdiction(beat cops, that sort of thing) they are at least as distinct as a state, in some respects more. On the other hand, there are assorted BIA fed-level things, and it's sort of a tangled mess. Do Navajo servers have to respect DMCA requests? Can they run an offshore gambling operation? If somebody cracks one, are they subject to the CFAA?
Re: (Score:2)
In that classic Slashdot acronym, IANAL, but I believe federal law applies on reservations.
Re: (Score:2)
Navajo Nation Data Center
Now the new home of piratebay.
Re: (Score:2)
Navajo Nation Hosting: Where the internet is still a wild west!
Re: (Score:1)
Would they be able to let businesses like factories open there with reduced cost burdens (taxes, costly regulations) and turn themselves into a South Korea instead of a North Korea? Or do state and federal laws get in the way? Or do their councils act more like Detroit's, more concerned with their fiefdoms and kickbacks, driving people out?
That it's about resources instead of government has been disproven time and time again.
Re: (Score:1)
So the question is... who is being called racist?
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps you don't know the history of the Americas, but when European settlers came they tended to push indigenous peoples out of their territory; eventually, the US government made the minimal concession of relinquishing territory in the form of reservations. The Navaho Nation is just that: an autonomous entity within the USA, organized much like similar entities within Canada. There is nothing racist about this, although the concept of a "Navajo Nation" is, by definition, both cultural and nationalist.
C
Re: (Score:2)
... the white community--a 27,425 square-mile region that covers portions of Arizona, Utah and New Mexico ...
It is obvious that this is really about providing internet service to a particular geographical area; not specifically because of anyone's race. I'm not much of a fan of the reservation system, but there are many areas that are predominately populated by people of one ethnicity or another; it's not "racist" to provide them with services.
cell based = low caps with high overage charges (Score:2)
also cell based is really that good for fixed base users aka fixed homes / offices. Also fast will it be when all users on one tower all hit YouTube at the same time?
Re: (Score:2)
A rhetorical question that was, Yoda?
Re: (Score:1)
With low population density (i.e. user base) over a large region, its far more cost effective to run a few high bandwidth lines and provide wireless service. Cellular network bandwidth isn't that bad, e.g. people use their mobiles as hotspots - in city areas, which have a far higher density of wireless signals (leading to more interference, and also less available per person).
windtalkers (Score:4, Funny)
and now the NSA won't be able to read their email ...
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, my first thought was "Great, we'll get the best cryptographers on the planet on the Internet now!" because the Japanese didn't even came close to figuring out what they were saying back in WWII.
Rural Sourcing (Score:4, Funny)
While there is always debate about whether something like this is the best way to spend money in a poverty stricken area, one way it could help is if "rural sourcing" got started in the Navajo nation. That could include things like software development and call center work. No, it's not for everybody, but when a few people start making better money in a poverty stricken area it sometimes has a positive feed back effect. The newly employed hire someone else to work on their house or their truck, buy other local services, that sort of thing.
P.S. Now for a couple of things that you know people are dying to say (or groan about).
1. Finally, software written by real Indians.
2. In the future I want real Apaches working on the Apache server (hey, at least the Navajos are a related people).
Re:Rural Sourcing (Score:5, Insightful)
Thats funny, I thought the Apaches and Commanches were offshoots of the Sioux
Uh, no. Apaches and Commanches are quite unrelated to the Sioux (and each other), much like, say Chinese, Turks, and Tai (even though all those folks live on the same continent too). Apache is a Na-Dene language, most of the other speakers of which live in Alaska and the NW of Canada. Commanche speak a Uto-Aztecan language [wikipedia.org], all of whose speakers originally hail from either the Wetern US or NW Mexico.
The Siouan languages and cultures [wikipedia.org], by contrast were found in the central USA, roughly in the Mississippi watershed (with a couple of prominent exceptions in what is now New England). And yes, they were quite different peoples. Siouxans lived on riverbanks and were basically a settled farming people before Europeans came with their diseases and horses, making Buffalo hunting a more profitable living.
The Apache and Commanche OTOH were hunters from way back (in the Apache's case, living a bit more off of raiding nearby settled communities as well). The introduction of horses basically turned them into the New World's equivalent of the Mongols and early Turks.
They may look similar to the melanin-deprived, but they are very, very different.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Thanks for the info, but was the snark "they may look similar to the melanin-deprived" really needed? The GP just made a mistake about the relationship between different peoples; nowhere did he imply that they were "all the same".
Re: (Score:2)
This is actually, this is a quite fair point. I was trying to point out that as far as the peoples in question are concerned, they don't look a thing like each other. However, non-Indians have a tendency to see the native people of the entire continent as one big race with some kind of monolithic nature-based culture.
That isn't an easy concept to get across w/o going into TL;DR-land, so I used that pithy one-sentence shorthand. It works pretty well in person, where people can see that nobody in the room i
Broadband Problem (Score:1)
It's great they want to connect the Navajo Nation, but the real problem is that you have many homes there that don't have running water or electricity, no less a computer. I just moved away from the area and knowing the Navajo government, this is just a project to generate more money for the government that will not go to the people. This data center will be leased out and none of the money will go to the people, or projects for the people.
What they really need (Score:1)
What they really need to do is fix the tribal courts. Currently, if you do business there and get into a dispute with the tribal government, you are screwed. There is no guarantee they won't throw sovereign immunity in your face and tell you to go fuck yourself. There's a reason one of the first things the US Congress ever did was waive sovereign immunity for torts and contracts. It lets you do business with the government with the assurance that they can't just take their ball and go home...you at leas
Re: (Score:1)
"Sovereign Immunity" is exactly how they tried to fuck over the company that financed and built that glass bridge/walkway and tourist center over the Grand Canyon.
They entered a tens of millions of dollars agreement with them and then when it came time to start paying them back, they tried to fuck them and renege on the contract. Unfortunately for them the courts sided with the company.
http://www.komonews.com/news/national/Courts-uphold-28-million-award-in-Grand-Canyon-Skywalk-case-190780991.html
New laptop? (Score:3, Funny)
That 13 year old girl doubled her lifetime waiting for the net, and her laptop may be a little bit obsolete by now - they should give her an upgrade for starting all this :)
13 years for an 8mill 50k sf data center? (Score:2)
Are we supposed to applaud this? It sounds like a boondoggle.
I read the article, and read the PDF produced by the Navajo 'IT' group. They spent the past 13 years soliciting funds from the state and federal level. This is also another E-Rate disaster [fcc.gov]( FCC based 'broadband' initiative that also 'successfully' hooked up 9 schools in Puerto Rico for 150 million ).
Obama wants to not increase cell phone taxes to give E-Rate even more funding.....
That's $1483 per household/business (Score:1)
Seems like a lot to me. I tend to think that (1) it could have been done a lot cheaper (wireless?) and (2) if in fact it had to cost that much, then the money probably could have been spent better.
Re: (Score:2)
$1,500 actually sounds on par with Cable and other broadband initiatives.
When I got wireless internet at my house back in Highschool it was about $900 for the antenna and gateway etc and speeds where nowhere near cable speeds with really high latency.
Great confusing title (Score:2)
I'm thinking, "Why does one Datacenter have the power to give away control of the entire Internet, why on earth did they pick Navajo to give it to, and what did that unlucky 30% do to get left out of this sweet deal?"
Its a old newspaper trick (perfected IMHO by The Register), to use purposely confusing titles to induce the reader to read at least a bit of the article to figure out what's going on. In this case, two sentences in all was made clear, but by then I was reading. Bravo, Editors!
RFC? (Score:2)
TCP/IP over smoke signals.
Re: (Score:2)
Fact Check.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for providing actual facts (even if it does put a damper on a good debate).
Re: (Score:3)
Will they only be and/or "prefer" hiring Native Americans? I'm from Oklahoma where there is a bunch of Indian stuff (I even have an underutilized CDIB card) and one of the crazy things I always came across was that a lot of businesses only seemed to hire native americans. If federal law applies to them, I never could see how this was legal...
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Anonymous Native attorney here, offering information but not advice. Native American preference in hiring is considered under federal law to be similar to a citizenship requirement (it is classified as a political classification) rather than a racial requirement. Hence, the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs is allowed to hire with Native preference. See Morton v. Mancari, 417 U.S. 535 (1974). Native nations, of course, are sovereigns who can require citizenship just as a state can require state residency for
Re: (Score:2)
the data center is in Shiprock New Mexico on the Navajo Nation, NOT in Albuquerque. This is a 240+ mile difference. It's a common occurance that news articles written by people outside the area tend to make. Everyone not from New Mexico thinks that Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Taos are the only places in New Mexico.
There is a HUGE difference between Albuquerque and Shiprock. Shiprock is beautiful, but in a uber-stark kind of way. And it is small... It makes Farmington look big. And it's "on the rez"... which has both pros and cons. A person would have to be comfortable living in that environment.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
How sovereign is their, um, sovereignity? For example, if they wanted to build a datahaven, immune to US wiretapping laws, etc (granted, it doesn't stop the NSA from snooping on the ins and outs), how long before the national guard gets called out and they get blasted back to iraq levels?
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe they'll spy on the NSA.