Re: Megabytes

[chrisw@fciad2.bsd.uchicago.edu (chris williams)]

Joe replies to Ron Hill,
>>        How much does it cost to make CDROMS?  How many people would be... 
>
>A lot. You could count on spending anywhere from $3,000 to $10,000 to
>master a CDROM using your PC. Plus, you'd need "accessories" that you probably
>don't have, including a hard disk at least as big as the CD itself (650M
>or so.) 

   Not really. A local BBS, "You Can Call Me Ray," one of the best Ray
Tracing BBS's ran out of hard-disk space they needed to delete the older
files. So they offered to make a CD-ROM available to the users. They are
able to offer the CD-ROM to as few as 30 people for $50.00 a piece.
A Macintosh company offers to create *single* CDs from 4 88-meg Syquest
carts, for less than the cost of four Syquest carts. So no, it isn't
really that expensive. I have access to a number of different data 
formats, and could find an inexpensive format to do the transfer to 
the CD-ROM masterer.
    I mean, music CDs don't cost that much to master, and
data CDs are simpler to create than music CDs. 

   I'll take this opportunity to offer Jon a chance to mention his CD
and discuss the costs involved in making a music CD. Jon?

>The archives are nice the way they are though I agree with other articles
>I've seen, perhaps an ASCII version would be nice.

   The archive are a holy *mess* the way they are, and ASCII hardly does
justice to Kate. Information in the archive is repeated in endless
fashions - the same interview may exist in several forms in the
Love-hounds archive files, IEDs "The Garden," Ron Hill's various
projects, etc. 


                          Chris Williams of
                             Chris'n'Vickie of Chicago
                               chrisw@fciad2.bsd.uchicago.edu (his)
                                 vickie@njin.rutgers.edu      (hers)
                                   katefans@chinet.chinet.com (ours)