On Thu, 19 Apr 2007, Bosman, Don wrote:

> So, first offer to host student mail. Then offer to put a data center
> in for local caching. Gosh wouldn't a university with a cyclotron be
> able to make use of some of that data center processing capability?
> and so on and so on...

In terms everyone can clearly understand:

marketing data for one year collected via email >= 10 sun black box trucks
fully loaded.
(a -very- conservative estimate)

I am sure Google isn't the only company interested in that data and
willing to pay that little for the data. The Fed's want it, but are
unwilling to pay for it, Im sure Microsoft is willing to pay for it.
hosting email is a -really- cheap way to get data.

To put in into more perspective:
McDonalds and Microsoft's -marketing- databases in the mid-90s were 30+
terabytes which was huge at the time.

It is actually a pretty interesting subject given industrial espionage is
a -HUGE- black market.

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  Sean O'Malley, Information Technologist
  Michigan State University
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