rick@hanauma (Richard Ottolini) (08/30/89)
In the last three days we have had over 600 ftps of images, our most popular service. A half dozen were from NASA or JPL! We did not want to be a data service, but merely educate ourselves and participate in the adventure of space exploration. Many others felt likewise, so we shared what little we had, which was more than available through "official" channels. During the previous 1986 flyby, workstations that could handle megapixel 256 color images were expensive and few. Now a medium-sized Mac II or 386-clone is capable of this for the masses. Also in the last three years cable TV has permeated everywhere. It is time for the US government to modernize its data distribution. A couple months ago we were complaining about the inaccessability of USGS digital map data. This week it was NASA-JPL images. Lets see action instead of apologies.