Bill wrote:
**************************
Pat, about distribution of B1.0: I made inquiry of David
Monet (head honcho of B1.0) on this subject. He questioned the
usefulness and practicality of doing so. On the practical side,
it _is_ an 80-GByte dataset; it currently is "distributed",
to assorted servers, on a Linux-formatted hard drive. It's
already in binary form; it could probably be compressed (rough
estimate) about 2:1, which _still_ leaves a big dataset.
Of course, in a year or two, it may be just as practical to
distribute B1.0 on nine DVD-Rs as it currently is to distribute
A2.0 on eleven CD-ROMs. If that happens, we may revisit the
whole issue.
*********************

I bet in 5 or 10 years 80 GB will not seem that big at all. I remember spending over $1700 for a 200 megabyte hard drive. I think that was in the late 80's. The only reason I got such a "bargain" was that the owner of the computer store liked me. Full retail would have been about $2000 at that time. I'll bet within a decade not only could the data be distributed on DVDs, but that many people will be able to find room for 80 GB on their hard drives.

As far as "usefulness," my observatory is in a rural setting, and the phone connection is not that great. There is no "cable" out there, so forget high speed modems. Maybe one day I will be able to afford a satellite system that will enable me to access the net at a reasonable speed. For people in my situation, distribution on 9 DVD-Rs would definitely be "useful."

I have a high-speed connection here at work, and a CD-burner on my computer. I am starting to wonder how big a piece of sky I could put on a CD. I.e., how much sky can you get, say, in 500 megabytes. Nobody uses our system at night, so downloading some chunks of data at night would not harm the business effectiveness of the computer network. I could probably get the whole data set onto 160 CDs. Maybe even 100 CDs, if I decide I really don't care about anything within 35 degrees of the south celestial pole. Am I the only one to think such devious thoughts? Or are others figuring out ways to get their hands on USNO-B.1?
Pat


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