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By its own count, Wal-Mart has 460 terabytes of data stored on mainframes. The Internet has less than half as much data, according to experts.
Information about products, and often about customers, is most often obtained at checkout scanners. Wireless handheld units, operated by clerks and managers, gather more inventory data.
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This artical serves as a good read for everyone. That's an amount of data that is just stagering. And the questions it raises are great.
Who designed the storage system? Dell? Ibm? That must have been an large contract with constant service argrements.
What does Walmart do with that data when not coming to the amazing realization that beer sales went up before hurricane Charlie?
Do you think that Walmart collects too much data on it's shoppers, or that such data collection needs to be limited by privacy laws that make sure that their use of the data is in line with our beleifs as a larger society, or do you beleive that Walmart
owns that data and could do with it what they wish?
Do you think Walmart would rather destroy/scrub their database than allow the court to use it against them in determining backpay? Do you think it's existance makes it of fair use by the court against Walmart?
I do think that if walmart made it, then it's availiable for supena whether Walmart likes that or not. I think that Walmart wants to have the database without restrictions but wants no governing body to know what it contains or use that data against them. I don't beleive they can ahve it both ways.