PlayStation 3s Helping the U.S. Government

No, they are not providing recreation for the employees on break. Although I suppose they certainly could be second tasked for that.

The government has decided to replace an $8000 Tableau/Dell server with more efficient and cheaper PS3s, at about $300 each. (This is a good example of government efficiency at its best, but I’m sure this won’t be making the nightly news anywhere.)

That news comes from slashdot -

“It seems that the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Cyber Crimes Center, known as C3, has replaced its ‘$8,000 Tableau/Dell server combination’ with more efficient and much cheaper $300 PS3s. Each PS3 is capable of 4 million passwords per second, and C3 currently has 20 PS3s with plans to buy 40 more. Naturally this is only being used to break encryption on computers seized with a warrant and suspected of harboring child pornography.”

I don’t suppose that the AG of New York ever thought of using these, before he effectively caused the shutdown of many ISP’s newsgroups servers either.

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