> When SGI bought super-computer maker Cray in 1996, our CTO who worked there at
> the time said the running joke was, "SGI sold no units this quarter, but made
> a healthy profit." That wasn’t magic accounting. It was the NSA requiring
> purchases not be disclosed.
Love this quote; when this kind of thing happens does it prove for some difficult finances/auditing? Can you even report the units sold (SKUs, quantities)?
There are/were Supercomputer manufacturers that you have never heard of because their sole clients are the NSA and/or DOD. It has been a joke, in Supercomputing circles for some time, that the real top 10 machines are missing from the top 500 list for this very reason.
I believe with the onset of better programmed accounting packages, now most money that flows from {{3letteragencies}} to companies goes via cursory legit looking shell companies.
Are those calculations taking in a healthy amount of redundancy? BlackBlaze Storage Pods were designed without any redundancy as it's done purely in software by the company. They just let the hardware fail and replace the drives. The data is then copied from a near-by, healthy pod.
I'm sure the NSA has redundancy in their design but I wonder to what extent. Are there off-site backups? Could a physical disaster cause them to lose most or all of their data?
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[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 22.5 ms ] threadLove this quote; when this kind of thing happens does it prove for some difficult finances/auditing? Can you even report the units sold (SKUs, quantities)?
I'm sure the NSA has redundancy in their design but I wonder to what extent. Are there off-site backups? Could a physical disaster cause them to lose most or all of their data?