Wrong!...posts like the one that started this thread are an
embarrassment to the academic community.
Those of us in the US academic community are quite blessed at the wealth
of data delivered to our doorsteps for practically no cost to us at all,
through the efforts of Unidata and the cooperation of the NWS. The
addition of NNEXRAD will be another great benefit. Where else in the
world does such a dense network of radars with unprecedented
accessiblility of the data exist?
Keep in mind that in many countries few people if anyone has access to
internal data outside that country's equivalent of NWS. This is in spite
of that fact that they pay even more taxes than we do in support of
producing that data.
Sure, we're all anxious to get the data, but flaming the NWS is quite
counter-productive. It will only serve to discourage them from reaching
out to our community with ready access to their data sources. They don't
want to have to put up with all the whining and griping. This was one of
the main reasons they entered into the initial NIDS contracts with the
vendors in the first place. They did not want the hassles of dealing
directly with outside end users of the data. It is a very thankless
business to be in.
It'd be different if we were paying big bucks for the data...then the
provider has an obligation to make sure it nearly always works as promised
and the customer has a right to gripe when it doesn't. But we're not
paying anything. (aside from the tiny percentage of our taxes that go
into the program... and it is a very tiny percentage compared to the gobs
of other things our taxes go into that we get no direct benefit from in
return)
Also, the data distributed through Unidata is primarily intended for
research, educational and other acedemic use rather than for primarily
operation use. It occurred to me that one of the most vocal people in our
community concerning NWS is using for purely operational use. If it is
that critical, they should be paying for the data through a vendor to
ensure access and reliability.
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David Wojtowicz, Sr. Research Programmer/Systems Manager
Department of Atmospheric Sciences Computer Services
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
email: davidw@xxxxxxxx phone: (217)333-8390
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