[Xastir] MrSid (was --A good question)

[Gerry Creager N5JXS]

The cost of the CD is the estimated cost in terms of time (human, $$$) 
and media (CD, minor) plus postage (essentially small, fixed).  The 
Legislature requires cost recovery of us.  TNRIS is a small agency and 
has spent a lot of time trying to do the math.

(I'm a little biased.  I sit on the State GIS council...)

FWIW, they charge me the same thing as you.  However, a lot of the data 
are available for free on-line.  If something's not available that way 
and you can get specific, let me know and I'll try to get them to set it 
up, or send it to me .  I'm writing, even as we speak, a grant request 
for a multi-terabyte tape-store/disk (RAID) farm to provide a 2nd site 
for all the TNRIS/State of Texas data, and all the Mesonet data.

gerry

Brian Heaton wrote:
> I was one of the ones that asked about support for it. I'll take a guess
> its driven by bandwidth costs and complaints from users about download
> times. It also lets them fit more on a CD. I don't like it all either.
> I'd be happier if they made the full resolution/uncompressed data
> available via a bandwidth limited connection. When I was downloading
> whole states worth of DOQQs for work I just set the rate limit on wget
> and let it ride.
> 
> How they (TX) come up with $28 for a CD of 4 geotiffs and associated
> metadata I'm just not sure. 
> 
> The long and short is we all need to keep a close eye on what is
> available and make sure we get data we can use.
> 
> 			THX/BDH
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, 2003-02-19 at 12:40, Curt Mills, WE7U wrote:
> 
>>On 19 Feb 2003, Brian Heaton wrote:
>>
>>
>>>	I don't recall which state at the moment, but I know I've hit at least
>>>one that has its 1:24k DRGs online in MrSid format. That was a definite
>>>turnoff for me.
>>
>>More than a turn-off.  It's a proprietary compression format.  I've
>>tried to contact them once so far (they're just south of me in
>>Seattle) and haven't gotten anywhere with them yet.
>>
>>I have a problem with free data payed for by U.S. taxpayers getting
>>converted into this proprietary format, but a lot of states are
>>already doing just that.  WY and TX are two that come to mind.
> 


-- 
Gerry Creager -- gerry.creager at tamu.edu
Network Engineering -- AATLT, Texas A&M University	
Cell: 979.229.4301 Office: 979.458.4020 FAX: 979.847.8578
Page: 979.228.0173
Office: 903A Eller Bldg, TAMU, College Station, TX 77843