CompuServe Messages

Hi, Nathan– I agree, with the reservation that "enough potential buyers" will be a limiting factor for a fair amount of info. People should be careful to obtain less-popular data soon if privatization of the USGS is in the offing. When in doubt about the number of potential customers, I recommend grabbing the data swiftly. Now if I just knew which data I was talking about… Data of interest mainly to pros may wind up at a price that is quite reasonable for pros, but not easy for amateurs, as we have seen with some mineral databases. As John points out, the sellers may refine the data to add lots of value and justify those pro prices, but an amateur might have preferred to do his own less-thorough refining on cheaper data. Neither the USGS nor private enterprises currently see fit to make available a cheap mineral database (Lanny may change this soon); this suggests to me that some data currently easy to obtain might become harder to get (perhaps that which we amateurs find most interesting), even as other data becomes more readily accessible. Indeed, the very fact that the raw data is public domain may insure that only processed, higher price forms would be –Doug