<...Aldridge said Poindexter will only "develop the tool, he will not be exercising the tool." He said Poindexter brought the database idea to the Pentagon and persuaded Aldridge and others to pursue it.

Don't know if that makes you feel any better.

I pointed this project out a while back, mostly to make fun of the logo, but maybe it might cool everyone's jets a bit if I point out that DARPA is a defense advanced research lab, and if you want the truth of it, projects like this fall into pretty much the same category as the stuff that comes out of NASA about negative matter propulsion and the like.

If the press hadn't gotten a feather up its butt about this, nobody except a few people in the Defense Department would ever have heard of it, probably from a series of Powerpoint slides, and nothing would probably have ever come of it.

For a good time, go to the DARPA project site, and browse for a few hours. Some really cool stuff there. Check out all the divisions, especially TTO.

FYI, I happen to be earning a pretty good living right now working on this one as a contractor.