My, what big drives you have, grandma

Recently, I found myself in need of a high-capacity USB drive. After assessing what was on the market, I settled on a 16 GB. HP model. It was the minimum I needed and although I paid a little bit more than similar capacity models, it had the advantage of actually being in stock. In the running was only one other model, the Sandisk offering which I had read often gets "locked" in read-only mode for which there is no "fix" to unlock it. But what really sold me on the HP device was its size.

This evening, while still marvelling at its minuscule dimensions, I decided to take a photo of it and offer up a comparison of it and older storage devices. I've been involved in the tech industry since the early 70's and I did a little research this evening to demonstrate how far we've come since then.

Pictured below is a string of six state-of-the-art IBM 3350 hard disk drives first released in 1975 made for large mainframes. They were far faster and much higher capacity than the previous generation of drives. Each drive had a capacity of about 318 MB. The entire string in the image had a capacity of just under 2 GB. As you can see, each single drive enclosure was about the size of an apartment-sized washer or dryer.

Here is a photo of my new thumb drive:

The dimensions are approximately 1 1/8 in. x 1/2 in. x 1/4 in. And half the device is nothing more than the connector. The actual storage area is about a half inch cube! As I said, the capacity is 16 GB. Compared to the old technology, this new device has a data capacity of more than 50 times a single 3350, and more than 8 times the capacity of the entire 6-device string.

Finally, I paid about $15 for my USB drive. Cost of a single IBM 3350 drive in 1975 was over $30,000. No, I did not misplace the decimal.

Note: 3350's came in pairs. The price above reflects half the cost of a 3350 pair.


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A great, big harrah!

goes out to Seagate. As one of the largest manufacturers of hard drives in the world, and having fallen on hard times, Seagate has announced that it will reduce its workforce by 3,000. No, that's not the part that needs to be applauded. It also said that various executives' salaries will be reduced between 15% and 20%. Now, we're getting warmer. The CEO will take a 25% salary hit. Applause!

Why does the reduction of someone's pay require applause. Simple. Very quietly (to some) the gap between CEO's pay and that of the average worker has widened exponentially over the last few decades. You're probably thinking "Vin, you must be exaggerating when you use the word 'exponentially', aren't you?" Au contraire, my friend. It is almost beyond belief how the wage gap has turned into a veritable chasm.

In 1965, the average Joe's pay envelope contained only 1/24th of what The Big Kahuna's did. Back then, that difference almost sounded reasonable. But greed being the hallmark of the rich, by 1979, that difference had grown to 35. By 1989, it was 71. 1995 was a banner year--it hit the 100 times milestone. Unbelievably, it was at this point that Chief Executives' salaries really took off. By the year 2000, they were making 300 times more than Joe Lunchpail!

If you were making $40,000/year, The Grand Poobah was pulling down about $12 million. And that's not counting the myriad of stock options, bonuses and benefits which can add millions more. Baby, you're a rich man! The tech wreck caused executive pay to be reduced...but it was short-lived. The gap between the poor and the rich continued its relentless, ever-widening journey.

This graph gives a visually-startling picture of the enormity of this untenable situation. Unfortunately, it only shows data up until 2005.



On behalf of all the little guys, a hearty congratulations, Seagate, on taking a gutsy stand on executive pay. Here's hoping your peers follow your sensible and ground-breaking stand.

The Story.

Here's to my sweet Satan

When I was growing up listening to hard rock, I never paid much attention to rumours of Satanic messages contained in such songs when played backwards. For one thing, my record player (and my 8-track) didn't play backwards. Anyway, in my meanderings this evening, I came across one such story. Wikipedia was good enough to contain a sound clip for me to judge for myself. I found it fascinating that so many consecutive words sound very much like actual words. Listen for yourself:

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