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."

Required line

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a beowulf cluster of those things.

Google

[sik0fewl]

Still not as fast as if they'd make the info public domain and use google :)

Very interesting because...

[Anonymous Coward]

Usually the US Government rams upgrades. Iraq, Haiti, next?

Google?

[powerpuffgirls]

in order to speed up searching through huge database

Have they consulted Google?

$4.7 million

[vasqzr]

The list price of the system, which is made up from 40 RamSan 320 units, reviewed here, is $4.7million

Purchased from Dell's website that would have been....$12.5 million?

RAM upgrading

[Anonymous Coward]

They're upgrading in time for Longhorns release you insensitive clod!

Use the correct post

[Shipud]

I just hope they rememebr to use the USB2.0 for their new keychain disk; access time might be horrible otherwise...

Doom 3

[vinit79]

My guess is that they want to play Doom3 with a fps higher than 5 fps.

Is Unreal Doomed

Doom 3 ?

[MarkoNo5]

Wonder if they got hold of an early copy of Doom 3.

Longhorn Beta Tester

[MooseByte]

They really just needed it to beta test Longhorn.

obligatory Gates quote

[Gothmolly]

"2.5 TB ought to be enough for anybody."

Heck, that might even be enough to boot Longhorn!

This is a nice change of pace

[Lord_Slepnir]

After weeks of seeing overblown headlines on slashdot (IE, Bill Gates runs over a squirel on the way to work, headline reads "Bill Gates Murders Animals as part of his Job!!!"), it's good to see one that is, well, underblown. 2.5TB is a bit more than a 'RAM upgrade'

Re:Doom 3

[irokitt]

Government Official: "No, its this damn Halo demo...."

Re:Doom 3 ?

[Aliencow]

No, longhorn.

Re:Not for the DHS

[GoofyBoy]

I would feel less threatened if it was in the hands of the DHS rather than the IRS.

this came...

[maxpublic]

...right after their purchases of thousands of those little X10 spy cameras that you can mount just about anywhere! Oops, said too much, gotta go before-------------

Bleeding Edge

[Embedded Geek]

'very happy' with the purchase

I just hope they didn't get it at Fry's. God help them if they've got to return it.

Re:for Pr0n!!!

[billimad]

oh man, and I thought I was the only one with a collection THAT big.

Re:Lets see

[bad_fx]

I wonder if they also use the 'evil' bit.

Re:Lets see

[Ummagumma]

the 'terrorist bit'? Thats the one right next to the evil bit [slashdot.org], right?

=)

Re:Doom 3

[jtwJGuevara]

A little further than that actually... they will host a free Doom3 server, and then track down and convict anyone playing an excessive amount of hours on it with suspicion of terrorist activities.

Re:More stats

[vidnet]

Not even about beowulf clusters? What's the world coming to!

Re:Don't even bother trying to figure out...

[SlashdotLemming]

A certain three letter agency

NSA, CIA, or the Department of FUD?
Did your compensation include Xena tapes and Hot Pockets?

Re:$4.7 million

[Anonymous Coward]

>The list price of the system, which is made up from 40 RamSan 320 units, reviewed here, is $4.7million
>Purchased from Dell's website that would have been....$12.5 million?

No idea, but if it was sold by the RIAA, it'd cost about $470 millions.

Re:Not for the DHS

[BabyDave]

I hear that now it can process over nine tax returns per day.

Longhorn developers...

[Stevyn]

This is what's going through the mind of someone at redmond right now...

"With that much ram, I won't have to worry about fixing the memory leaks!"

Databases, my ass...

[M. Baranczak]

They're using it to store ripped DVDs! It's an outrage! They're stealing the bread from the mouths of Julia Roberts and Steven Seagal!

Re:It's awesome and all...

[Tenebrious1]

How are they going to save the data if the power goes out? That's a lot of data to store on hard copies.

Of course, possible power outages were considered before the system was purchased. To prevent the loss of information, they hired 35,000 people to watch console screens and transcribe the data from the screen onto legal pads 24x7.

Re:More stats

[blair1q]

I'd like a beowulf cluster of this thing's fucking cooling fans.

Re:$4.7 million

[WC as Kato]

Wait a year or two and it'll be so cheap that everyone and their dog will have one. I'm even cheaper so I'll wait 4-5 years before I get one.

I have one of these.

[Mordack]

Yeah, I have one of these things too. It really speeds up my builds.

Re:This is a nice change of pace

[nlindstrom]

You mean Bill Gates uses IE (Internet Explorer) to run over squirrels? Wow!

Re:Not for the DHS

[Tackhead]

> This was bought by the Internal Revenue Service in order to improve the auditing of tax returns. They say that the additional revenue brought in will easily pay for the device many times over.
>
> If it was for the DHS or NSA you would not have heard about the purchase.

You're both wrong. It's probably just some bureaucrat who happened to have $4.7M to spend before the end of the fiscal year. Half an hour ago he saw a Slashdot article titled "Can Software Kill?" [slashdot.org], and he said "Hey, I'm from the Government, and I'm here to find out!"

Startup time

[jhines]

Now checking 2,748,779,069.440 bytes of memory, please wait.....

Re:SMASH THE GIANT COMPUTER!!!

[dustmote]

Your opinions have been noted, citizen. Please report to the nearest termination booth immediately. The Computer is your *friend*, citizen. -The Computer

I hope they are using ECC memory

[hazman]

Or else the Ministry of Information may just be looking for a Mr. Buttle rather than the Mr. Tuttle they really want to find.

Ok, now imagine

[Anonymous Coward]

running memtest on this.

BUSH n PORN

[llZENll]

Nice, now half of Bush's porn collection will be instantly viewable. Next up you'll see a purchase for 1000 OLED displays to simulcast all his feeds on.

Re:A Single Disk Hit Kills Responsiveness

[MMaestro]

That's why all the good search engines keep *everything* in RAM all the time.

Everything? Damn thats a lotta quick always available pr0n then.

In other news...

[fizban]

...1-800-MAGNETS reported a very large order from an undisclosed source for very high-powered magnets...

Re:A Single Disk Hit Kills Responsiveness

[NSash]

Google has multiple copies of the entire web in memory.

HOLY SHIT!

Re:$4.7 million

[gosand]

Purchased from Dell's website that would have been....$12.5 million?

Yeah, but they would have gotten a free scanner with it!

Re:So What?

[Fedallah]

In 15 years (or less) people will have this much data on their Palm Pilot.

And somehow, my wife will still be able to fill it up with MP3's.

Re:SMASH THE GIANT COMPUTER!!!

[gonffen]

Ya...
They'll be renting it out to use for their EVIL MP3 sharer searches.
/. Headline: "In compensation for NSA making 2.5TB of fast access database of MP3's RIAA has been given permission to use the terminal for their searches for 6hours a day free of charge for it's lifetime and $5 an hour after that..." click for details [slashdot.org]

Let the humorous SQL queries begin!!!

[macshune]

SELECT * FROM tblNSA WHERE usLivingIn = "true" AND ethnicity = "arab"

SELECT * FROM tblCIA WHERE ss = "xxxxxxxxx" AND surname = "Kerry" AND dirt = "true"

SELECT * FROM tblFBI WHERE student = "true" AND politicalID = "left" ORDER BY antiwar

UPDATE tblTEXASAF SET duty_fulfilled = "true" WHERE ss = "xxxxxxxx" AND surname = "Bush"

Re:Google

[ThisIsFred]

Word has it that the gov't was disappointed with the results of comparative benchmarks against more mainstream pigeon-based searching technologies.

Re:Google

[DingoBueno]

PigeonRank(TM) [google.com]

Re:Google?

[Tackhead]

> Quick searching could allow the CBP agent to notice that the car was stolen and that the drug dealer always carries a gun, so that they could wave them through and avoid conflict.

Exactly! With this fantastic and expensive technology, the new-and-improved BCIS could have sent the 9/11 pilots their approval to go to flight school before they blew up the WTC, rather than six months after the attack, thereby saving them much embarassment.

By government standards, that means it's money well spent.

Re:Lets see

[TheGratefulNet]

to save space, you can compress the evil bit and the terrorist bit since you don't need 4 full states.

there are really only 3 states, evil, not evil, and ashcroft.

(yeah, that was a stab. figure it out..)

Its a good investment

[zenst]

Given the new cap limits and surcharges alot of american broadband connections have impossed and increased average speed of connections. It would make only perfect sence to have the fastest spamming maching possible. Why - more spam's, more communications infrastructure utiliased the more money changing hands and...more tax's paid. There is the added bonus of not having to find out what people want and elling them. End result is a small database that fits on a PDA were FBA/NSA can instantly know if somebody is a terroist/pervert or simpsons fan. So for there faster database they generate more tax's, more comms infrastructure intilisation and a easier to manage personel details database. Lets not forget the growth in IT stocks thru the growing spam prevention markets. :>

Either that or thats a heck of an MP3 player the presedent has there.

What to search for

[Anonymous Coward]

This is to find the Iraqi WMD's, of course. And also, to find the traitor who outed Valerie Plame.

On a different note, OJ has ordered one of these for himself, to help with the search for the real killers.

Mr Shapiro

Re:Not for the DHS

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually this article sounds pretty factual to me. I am a civil servant in the Dept. of Homeland Security. We have a whole bunch of these grey plastic boxes that have rack mount computers in them lining the hallways of one of the floors in our headquarters that each have 2.5 TB of storage one them, according to the label. No one really knows what they do, or at least those who do know won't say anything, but rumor has it they have something to do with financial crimes. Ecivres Terces. ---

Re:Watch out for Bad Electricity Days!

[quinkin]

And that's why I always deposit then withdraw... the banks don't mind. Honest.

Q.

Now for the obligatory...

[alphorn]

"Imagine a RAID5 of these!"

How long..

[Quo_R]

How long will it take until Dell starts shipping their standard PCs with that much RAM? Guesses?

Windows Users

[BlackHawk-666]

Wow 2.5TB of RAM, they must be running the new Beta of Windows Longhorn!