Tuesday, July 30, 2002

manias, panics, and crashes An expert on bubbles gives his thoughts on the current economy. In short, the technology bubble followed the typical pattern but was pretty large. Between that and the binging on debt based on home equity that American's have done, he thinks we're at the bottom and likely to "bounce along the bottom" for a few years. He sees signs of a housing bubble, particularly on the West Coast. 10:13:22 AM

CNet.  Western Digital's new hard-drive arrives at 200 Gbs.   This is great: >>>Drive makers will surely need the new interface, as developments push areal densities to 100GB per platter. Such density could allow desktop drives to reach 400GB of storage by the end of next year.<<< It's too bad that overly generous copyright laws prevent this capacity from being utilized.  If copyright was at the Lessig threshold of 5 years, all manner of scenarios are possible.  A personal copy of the Library of Congress.  Archives of major newspapers, magazines, etc.  Societal memory at your fingertips.  Amazing.  What value is that to our civilization? To not fill this capacity and unleash the creativity it could spawn would be tantamount to Caeser's burning of the great Library of Alexandria.  In his quest for power and control, he accidently destroyed one of the founts of knowledge in the ancient world.  Aren't we experiencing a similar power grab by corporate copyright holders for the same motives? [John Robb's Radio Weblog] 6:55:05 AM