back in 2011, Free Planet reported on Bruce Robert Dell's amazing Unlimited Detail Euclideon Engine for proposed use in 3D games and such; a visual database algorhythm for super-high-resolution 3D models onscreen. It never came out, never got adopted by the corporate 3D games conglomerate at least.
Woah!
I've just looked at EUCLIDEON's website this morning and it's all gone MEGA CORPORATE. Of course, the Euclideon Engine was always just a 'database manager' so that enormous amounts of data could be compressed onto the screen in super-high-resolutional detail. Sure, you can use it for LIDAR-based Geospatial World Data sets; cramming them into realtime memory so that you can play the most realistic 3D games ever.
But, you can also apply that devilish number-cruncher to DATA i.e. Facebook, MySpace, Beebo, Google+, CCTV, laptop cameras, mobiles, Kinect etc; just imagine the tracking/advertising potential such an application would spawn. Imagine the Big Brother potential of such a 'useful weapon' in the hands of FFGs or Future Fascist Governments.