Is an HDD temperature of 68C too high?

So, not too long ago I decided to add my hard disk temperatures using HDDtemp to my conky.
After a good two hours of having the computer on, the temperature of my HDD was already at 68C!
This is in a desktop system.
I used hddtemp to obtain the temperature figures:
~#hddtemp /dev/sda
/dev/sda: Maxtor 7Y250M0: 68°C
This computer is 7 years old now and nothing at all has been changed in the cooling setup from the stock setup.
Is running my hard disk at such high a temperature a good idea? Will it damage the hard disk (I do not back up my data at all) or cause a hard drive failure?
Scott

Published specs are available at this store: http://www.superwarehouse.com/Maxtor_Ma … /ps/295212.  It shows 141 °F or 55 °C as the top operating temperature.
My rule of thumb for temperatures for electronics is "if you can't hold it in your hands, it's too hot".  60 °C is normally the hottest temperature anyone can hold.  You quickly drop things that are warmer.
Google studied hard drive failures and published their findings.  Higher temperatures on older drives were related to increased failures. However, they stated:
Surprisingly, we found that temperature and activity levels were much less correlated with drive failures than previously reported.
The Google paper can be downloaded from here: http://labs.google.com/papers/disk_failures.html.

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