IT expertise desperately needed in washington, DC (humor)

[Robert P. J. Day]

    if you're an IT wizard, there's definitely work available in 
washington, DC, if you can take seriously the news article at
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/06/29/national1512EDT0658.DTL

         Justice Department says it can't share lobbying data
                 because computer system will crash

    "The Bush administration is offering a novel reason for denying a
    request seeking the Justice Department's database on foreign
    lobbyists: Copying the information would bring down the computer
    system.

    "Implementing such a request risks a crash that cannot be fixed and
    could result in a major loss of data, which would be devastating,"
    wrote Thomas J. McIntyre, chief in the Justice Department's office
    for information requests...

    "What they're asking for is a lot, and it's not something at this
    particular point in time we have the technical ability to do,"
    Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said Tuesday.

that's right -- simply *copying* the data will cause a catastrophic 
meltdown.  so how hard could it be to put a workable solution in 
place?  a dash of linux, a dollop of mysql, a smidgen of RAID, a pinch 
of failover or high-availability.  where's that DC LUG when you need 
it?

coming soon from the justice department: "the dog ate my hard drive."

rday