The FBI is getting close to awarding a contract for Project Sentinel, the showcase of their technology upgrade. Looks like the bidding is only open to two companies - Lockheed Martin being one of them. Cost of the project is estimated to be around a half a billion dollars.

And what are they buying for all this money? A relational database. Lockheed Martin can build some pretty good airplanes and satellites, but databases? Server farms? I wonder what the cost would be if they opened the bidding to folks who actually have experience building scaleable information systems...