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US Government Upgrades RAM
Deep Throat writes "Techworld has the scoop on a new super-sized RAM disk that the US government has just bought for a few million dollars in order to speed up searching through huge databases. It's 2.5TB! The VP of the company that made it says it is for Washington DC and searching databases but won't say who. Techworld explains why it reckons it's the Department of Homeland Security searching in the NSA and Pentagon databases for terrorists. And apparently the government is 'very happy' with the purchase and thinking about getting more."
Did not see the reference to the actual size of it. I'm guessing a platter the size of Alcatraz (which is in between "as big as a house" and "the size of Pittsburg").
Just wait until AOL starts mailing these out.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
but does it really matter? they'd have spent the money on something anyway because they seem to think that it is theirs to spend and that they are some how above the citizenry that they were elected by and from. They might as well have spent it on something "cool." as for searching for terrorists and stuff, big bloody whoop. As long as they only index and infringe on non-citizens, i really don't care. of course, they are going to do that and it doesn't matter who is president because both major parties are in on the international totalitarian conspiricy.
Maybe NSA wants to build a searchable database of SHA1 preimages. Maybe FBI wants to crack domestic terrorists' GPG keys (because, thanks to export restrictions, *no* international terrorist could ever have access to strong encryption, right guys?) Maybe NTSB wants to sort everyone's mother's maiden names alphabetically and cross-index with blood type in order to make a pretty picture.
There are a million uses for this kind of lightning-fast random access storage, so it's useless to speculate. Whichever government agency is using it, one thing's certain: they're not using it for our benefit.
I bet they are hooking it to one of their Cray's just to search their own DB.
Can you imagine the amount of signals traffic they intercept in a day? Then try to sort into files of what is coded in cyphers we have broken and what needs work. Then translate the decoded messages and forward them to the agency that needs them.
No wonder they have several Crays.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
to reformat.
Why still haven't we heard any news inside the US about ECHELON?
*DrugCheese rants*