Possibly the scariest "feature" of the face recognition system is that it can be hooked up to an existing hit list database of naughty people's mugs which can then be referenced against real world data from a camera.
Every transaction changes the balance in your account and as the bank gets new accounts or closes existing ones, that database must be updated to reflect accurately such changes as they happen.
The truth about Big Data today is that there are many existing high-end database solutions from large established systems vendors that can with brute force and serious cash tackle the scalability challenges that many Big Data projects present.
Both Memcached, which accelerates existing relational databases like MySQL, and Redis, which is a complete, stand-alone database and acceleration solution, are open source technologies.
The two million people already signed up to the London 2012 ticketing database will receive information about how to apply, with registered users being able to use their existing log-in details.