Spite house

I just learned that the infamous and unrepentant scammer, Bernie Madoff, is being kept at the Butner prison, in NC. That's a couple of miles north of Durham, NC, about 30 miles from our house.

Look at the names of the towns up there:

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Stem, Knap Of Reeds, Orange Factory.

Awesome!

The first hard drive I ever bought was 212 megabytes. 1993.

I just upgraded the drives in my network storage box. I now have a whopping 4 terabytes of storage sitting in back of my monitor, purring away, quietly.

I'm old enough to remember when a "terabyte" was something we nerds would use as an impossibly huge amount of information, something nobody could ever possibly need (see also Bill Gates and "640K"), an amount so large that it could be used as a geeky synonym for "infinite".

Today, you can get a 1TB drive for under $90.

Hooray for technology!

Also, I wonder: do geeky kids today speak of mythical exabyte drives ?

The Consumerist says that the Saab brand will be junked. So sad. I always dreamed of owning an S3 (or 900, as it used to be called). A bandmate of mine had a 900, and used to drive it around the snowy roads of Rochester NY like it was a sled: he'd take every turn in a slide, and fishtail down the streets. Or at least that's how I choose to remember it.

And man, did that heater work!

Ganja Gourmet

Wall Street Journal, via Obsidian Wings:

Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.

These things cost $15,000,000 each. And their signals are less secure than a $30 WiFi router.

U! S! A!

Update: It's bigger than just Predators ?

W! T! F!

Gal's Bulgarian airbags halt traffic (ref)

BBC

A supermarket employee who alerted bosses when he was mistakenly paid more than £1m has been rewarded with a crate of beer.
...
A spokesman for the firm said: "Due to an error in our wages department earlier this month, Stephen Foster, an employee at our Birtley regional distribution centre, received a monthly salary payment of £1.4m.
...
"We were surprised and concerned about our mistake but not by Stephen's exemplary behaviour, which is typical of him.
...
"Coming as it does just before Christmas, it's the kind of act that renews your faith in human nature."

If you gave me a $20 case of beer in return for my saving you $1,400,000 my faith in human nature would definitely not be renewed.