[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Geez, sounds like many of the Main Fram discussions I have been involved.

Some Executive says --" We have 3 million records in there and I don't understand if it is in the machine why in hell we can't get it out!!!"

Those numbers seem way too low!

[ThePythonicCow]

Those numbers seem way too low!

Which number seems low? The posting number is visible in the URL for this post:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/688797/posts,

which is where my 700,000 posts came from. My guess of 10,000 chars per average post (if you don't follow any of the graphics links) was a wild guess, but I would hope would be within an order of magnitude one way or the other, on average.

Yes, my post will sound familiar to those in the computer business. I punched my first card in the late 60's, while protests against the Vietnam war were raging outside. Since then I've worked a number of systems, large and small, mostly Unix the last 25 years, including a very custom search engine that is in heavy use 24x7 for the last 8 years on a 0.6 Terabyte pile of data.