Jon -

The article is probably too lengthy to post, and as noted it may not be accessible for many. I scanned and OCRd it from the magazine, and haven't bothered to register my membership with the magazine, so I can't be certain it's there.

Random notes include that at the current "cost per byte" we've recently crossed the line where HD storage is cheaper than paper. He offers the opinion, without much to substantiate it, that any time the "value of the data" exceeds the "cost of the medium" an economically unstable condition exists that can't be sustained. Although he doesn't offer much argument, the premise sounds like it might be worth considering in your market investments.

"With a T1 connection, running steadily at top speed, it would take nearly 20 years to fill up 120 terabytes." He estimates "MP3 audio files run a megabyte a minute, more or less. At that rate, a lifetime of listening—24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 80 years—-would consume 42 terabytes of disk space." About the only medium currently existing that could press the capacity of a 120 TB drive would be DVD, for which: "In the format used on DVDs, the data rate is about 2 gigabytes per hour. Thus the 120-terabyte disk will hold some 60,000 hours worth of movies; if you want to watch them all day and all night without a break for popcorn, they will last somewhat less than seven years."

And note that if there's enough data freely available to fill a 120 TB drive by downloading, "you don't really need to download it." (?) The problem will be, whether the data is on your machine or elsewhere, "how do you find what you need?" He suggests that maybe the data should be free, and the "Table of Contents" is what costs you to subscribe to.

DRM is gonna be a real mess, but you can easily see why "searching and indexing" is booming.

John