[lug] Mass Quantities of Govt Data & Torrent (was Wget Behavior Differnces on Different Machines)

[Bill Thoen]

Matt Thompson wrote (regarding Census Bureau TIGER data):

>I'm surprised there isn't a .torrent for this data.  Seems like a
>perfect thing for it.  Of course, the >5 GB size means it'd be a
>ginormous torrent.  Maybe someone could make a torrent for each state?
>  
>
If you go over to the Govt Docs library at CU Boulder's Norlin, you can 
get your hands on all kinds of government data. It's federal depository 
library so it's open to the public, and it's a gold mine of data 
resources. But now that a lot of this stuff is stored online, you're 
right -- the sheer size of the data makes it a good candidate for a 
torrent resource. This is still a new idea to the GIS community (and the 
government), but it's catching on (see http://www.geotorrent.org/, 
http://uo.space.frot.org/?GeodataTorrents, etc.)

>And, how many DVDs does this come on from the guvmint?
>  
>
It used to be 44 CDROMs.

- Bill Thoen