Well I suspect this bubble (if it is indeed a bubble) is somehow related to the recent stimulus efforts, so I suppose it depends what the Fed does after ending QE2 at the end of this month, if they eventually begin a new round of QE (in one form or another), and how long they maintain exceptionally low interest rates.
I imagine ex-bureaucrats are useful to hire because of all the connections they made while in office. If there are term limits and the churn rate is high, that doesn't leave much time to build those connections while in office, or to keep them after they've left.
For the sake of thinking it through, how exactly would a government get rid of bitcoin?
I imagine they'd make it illegal to accept bitcoins as payment, which would remove all legitimate users from the market, but illegal drug buyers and sellers may still use it as payment, along with underground bitcoin/cash currency exchanges.
The anonymity of bitcoins may prove to create great enough demand, and help decentralize the illegal drug trade.
I don't think anyone believes there is actually a bubble in diplomas. Obviously there aren't any DBS's (diploma backed securities), or diploma flipping schemes.
However you might be able to make the case that there is a bubble related to university costs, or the market for university grads. Tuition costs continue to rise while wages remain stagnant and jobless rates remain high. If this trend continues long enough, the demand for diplomas is bound to go down and universities will be forced to lower their costs.
I think part of the problem is that people have been sold on the idea that Macs are safe and "there aren't any viruses for the Mac." There is this ill conceived notion that naive users hold that they aren't at risk so they'll more more inclined to install malware without thinking about or understanding the consequences.
Yesterday I spent several hours going through discussions.apple.com and collecting requests for help from Mac users who have been affected by this issue. I found more than 200 separate discussion threads, many of them from people who have been tricked into installing this software and are desperately trying to remove it. It started with four posts on April 30; this past weekend there were 42 unique, new discussion threads on this subject.
I am not unfamiliar with Apple’s forums. I’ve done similar searches in the past, especially after reading some of those same posts that Gruber called out from 2008. I have never found more than one or two in-the-wild reports. This time, the volume is truly exceptional.
This appears to be the first widespread malware attack.
Sometimes I know there is something wrong with my app because someone writes a bad review, but I can't do anything about it because I can't contact them to figure out how they got that problem.
So I made the "contact us" functionality front and center in the app and started getting a lot more direct feedback.
I have an old friend I follow on twitter who tweets way to much garbage and I want to unfollow her, but I know for a fact she uses an unfollow tracker, and I KNOW it'll spite her. I wish there was a way to mute people right in Twitter.