Sponsor's Message

While a few ISPs and some network providers seem to be able to carve a living out of people's online activities, the search for a foolproof online business model suitable for content providers, online retailers and others continues, with little success.

However, there seems to be a new optimism building out there.

This story in the NZ Herald gives the impression that advertisers are preparing to start pouring money into online ads again, their enthusiasm buoyed by recent confirmation that there really are eyeballs out there.

Even our Aussie cobbers must be heartened by this story being run by The Age which claims that their Net economy is now worth around A$43 billion a year.

Over in the USA, tech stocks have shown a slow but sure resurgence, partly due to Microsoft's recently announced jump in earnings and companies such as Yahoo seem to be recovering from "the bad times"

Is it possible therefore, that the worst is over?

Could now be a really good time to launch new online ventures so as to capitalise on this growing confidence and the gradual appearance of that most prized of all things -- profitability?

Readers Say (updated irregularly) From Yesterday... Australian Financial Review... - Andrew Guns... - Charlie Have Your Say

How Long Do CDRW Disks Really Last?
If you've bought a computer in the last three or four years, chances are it's got a drive capable of using CDRW media.

The CDRW disk has all but replaced the floppy when it comes to transferring data between computers that aren't connected to the same network. And, at just a few dollars for 650MB of storage, they're a great way to extend the total capacity of your system.

But they do have a problem.

Every time you rewrite a spot on the disk, the photosensitive dye breaks down a little bit. This break-down reduces the contrast between light and dark areas on the disk (the 0's and 1' of stored data).

Eventually the contrast becomes so reduced that read errors occur and the disk becomes unusable.

Most disk manufacturers cite a lifetime of around 1,000 rewrites before a CDRW disk becomes unusable but my own experiences seem to indicate that the rot sets in much earlier.

I've tried a number of different brands of CDRW disks in a number of different drives and found that the raw error rate starts to rise after about 30-40 full rewrites.

It's worth pointing out that the CD/CDR/CDRW format is littered with lots of error detection/correction codes that cleverly hide the existence of raw errors that occur during writing or reading -- but eventually the error rate will reach a point where this system can no longer cope -- and your disk can't be read.

If you're using CDRW disks, I'd like to know how many rewrite cycles you've been experiencing before disks go bad -- are you really able to erase and reuse your disks 1,000 times?

It's better to find out the practical limits BEFORE you commit important data to an old CDRW disk, only to find that you've just exceeded the rewrite limit eh?

Note: I've also had this question posted to SlashDot so you can see what others have said and join the discusion here.

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