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Wal-Mart's Data Obsession
g8oz writes "The New York Times covers Wal-Mart's obsession with collecting sales data.
Fun fact: 'Wal-Mart has 460 terabytes of data stored on Teradata mainframes, at
its Bentonville headquarters.
To put that in perspective, the Internet has less than half as much data, according to experts.'
That much information results in some interesting data-mining. Did you know hurricanes increase strawberry Pop Tarts sales 7-fold?"
and shopping there means your income has dropped 7-fold
would like to welcome our new (evil) data collecting overlords.
"Sanity is not statistical", George Orwell, "1984"
you fools have no idea that I would never let you hurt the Wall-Mart
Someone at Walmart has ALOT of pr0n!
the Internet has less than half as much data, according to experts
What's the word I'm looking for? Oh yeah - it's bullshit
they're storing them on a huge cluter of their $200 lindows systems. ;)
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
The moderation on this guy amuses the hell out of me. Instead of saying "Why can't you be nice? -1 Troll" you say "Yeah, I know. -1 Redundant."
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've been reading the comments
I forgot, are we supposed to hate Wallmart?
On one hand they are a large corporate empire and on the other, they promote cheap linux computers.
arg, Im so confused
select sFirstName,sLastName,iPhone from LargeAssDatabase where bWelFare = False;
go on vacation for a week or ten..
deal with resulted data.
I'm a big retard who forgot to log out of Slashdot on Mike's computer! LOOK AT ME.
Yes I did. God help me!
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
460 terabytes? chargen would seem to disagree.
Yeah, all that evil marketing data is really oppressing the masses and restricting the free flow of ideas.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
You worked for Kmart, right?
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It's a well-known fact that hurricanes bring toasters and mini-fridges, so Pop Tarts and beer are logical purchases.
Did you know hurricanes increase strawberry Pop Tarts sales 7-fold? ...and if you needed a 460 TB data array to tell you that then you're too stupid to live.
You're using her as bait, Master!
I think the experts as in ex=former and spurt=drip under pressure.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
It's simple really. Each piece of data is given 2 32 bit keys. One is called the selector, the other the offset. The selector key is left-shifted 8 bits and added to the offset to generate the physical address of the data. Thus, any piece of data can be accessed if you know hits selector and offset.
Unknown host pong.
For which it stands, one store under God, indivisible, with sales and product for all.
From the article;
"You can see the pattern of Wal-Mart's mandates, and as Wal-Mart grows in power, it is getting more dictatorial.....Wal-Mart lives in a world of supply and command, instead of a world of supply and demand."
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Except it takes 8 Teradata DBAs to manage the 460 TBytes, and 23 Oracle DBAs to manage 1 Gig ;^)
(Not a slam on Oracle DBAs, but on the ridiculous management burden of Oracle)
007: "Who are you?"
Pussy: "My name is Pussy Galore."
007: "I must be dreaming..."
... do they have a freezer big enough for 460TB worth of drives?
Perhaps you should switch to Wal-Mart. I hear Wal-Mart Pharmacy has the cheapest anti-psychotic medications in the US.
Hugh Hefner?!? Dude, didn't think you'd be posting anonymously! Share the wealth, man :)
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
Soooooooooooooooooo....
:-)
If pop tart sales go up, head for high ground?
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
That much information results in some interesting data-mining. Did you know hurricanes increase [non-perishable food item] sales 7-fold?
It took them 460 terabytes of data to figure out that hurricanes make people buy more non-perishable food than usual?
Wow, data mining is "usefull"...
You can't take the sky from me...
1 year = 52.177457 weeks
So 72 weeks is 1 year plus 19.822543 weeks.
No, the grandparent poster was correct - 72 weeks is 1 year plus 2 weeks, if you're using Canadian years.
"Wow, you're like some kind of superhero able to ward off happiness and success at every turn."
-- Ryan Stiles
The gentleman who gave me the tour indicated they have something like 72 weeks (1 year plus 2 weeks) of purchase data on LIVE disk arrays, plus huge archives of the same data on tape. If you buy anything and use your credit, debit, or whatever card they can figure out your sales history obscenely quickly. Be afriad. Be very afraid.
Did he happen to mention anything about an attack on Zion?
Ok, people are going to be without power for a while, possibly a long while, and Walmart predicted the sale of nearly unperishable dry goods would rise? My God, the sheer genius of it baffles me!
Call me when they can Mathmatically prove which flavors are most popular in a Hurricane.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
They got their Internet statistics from the Chinese government.
That's 20 terabytes per month, not per day.
Even with that number, I wouldn't want to be the Hard Drive specialist...
Interviewer:Would care to describe you previous job?
-Installing HDs 24/7.
I live in Soviet Canuckistan you insensitive clod!
I think they mispelled "Phish concert".
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
No seriously, why didn't you trash their data and free us all?
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
300k employees all with desk jobs?
As mentioned by a friend when referrering to his video clip collection (but it doesn't help the videos/films he makes):
"Oh, I have a few frigabytes of data."
"Frigabyte? What's that?"
"Oh, that's a friggin lot of data."
I've never actually had a pop tart in my life.
Ok, buddy, you can hand in your geek card right now...
then if they deem it neccessary THEY will call the REAL 911!
You mean like 912?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Walmarts storage breakdown (where 460Tb goes)...
Illicit Pornography 200Tb
Hidden Toilet Camera archive footage 100Tb
Sys admins private warez collection 80Tb
Previous employees records 60Tb
CIO's mp3's 15Tb
Sales Records 3Tb
Records of Returned / Faulty Products 2Tb
... More than 640 Terabytes anyway, right?
(did I just say that out loud?)...
> According to Google:
> 1 year = 52.177457 weeks
You need google to say that?
[RM101's mind boggles]
Dude, do you seriously have nothing better to do than spend this crazy amount of time feeding junk data into a supermarket computer? Go outside. Breathe the air.
I dunno, maybe you WILL lay on your death bed, not thinking of your wife, or children, but you'll be proud of how many hours you spent contaminating some database.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Well, if you learn to spell terabyte properly, you'll save about 11% storage space for that word!
"With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this is not necessarily a good idea...."
RFC 1925
So hire a monkey to sit in front of the rack. Condition him to hotswap a new hot spare when a red light & alarm goes off. If he replaces the drive before the old RAID hotspare gets rebuilt, he gets a treat; if not, a ZZZZZzzaaaappp! :)
--
Power to the Peaceful
"Dad, how does walmart sell everything so cheap?"
"Well son, it's simple economics. Which I don't understand one bit."
Did you know that Wal-Mart anally implants a tracking device into each employee?
/conspiracy
It's to measure the stool production of each employee. You see, Wal-Mart realized that you can only eat so much during your breaks. Excessive stool production implies that your breaks are too long. Any employee with excessive stool production is flagged and actively monitored by store management.
It also is linked into the in-store McDonalds'. If an employee is producing too little stool, the employee is forwarded to the McDonalds for a quick snack, increasing the blood sugar of the employee and boosting productivity.
'Wal-Mart has 460 terabytes of data stored on Teradata mainframes, at its Bentonville headquarters. To put that in perspective, the Internet has less than half as much data, according to experts.'
Apparently the "experts," overlooked alt.binaries.*
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I like to buy strange things together.
Extra Large condoms, fruit, and k-y gelly.
Have a lot of fun,
-Steve
look all we have to do is go to the electronics section and open up the panel... heck its only a mirror.
(note: if you don't get it, don't mod it)
THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!! eventually.
To destroy the walmart, you must strike it's heart. A small mirror in the back near the television department....
Last weekened picked up some Heinz ketchup,Silk soy milk, the Star Wars Trilogy DVD, and some Hefty garbage bags. Had I known these were substandard products I would have never bought them there. I guess I will return all that stuff and run over to Target and buy the premium versions of Heinz ketchup,Silk soy milk, the Star Wars Trilogy DVD, and some Hefty garbage bags. Thanks for the info!
Hang on, I can count that:
...and one bit set to 0... .... hrm... everything else seems to be a repeat of the same data...
We've got one bit set to 1...
I get 2. 2 bits of data on the internet. Hang on, I'll recount to be sure I didn't miss anything. Nope, just two bits...