To start with, that search page is about the most "user unfriendly" government Web page I have ever seen. Normally I can program my Virtual Operating System Perl language computer program to automatically go to any Web page and extract whatever information is needed. But with that present search page I have to have my program pause so that I can use the computer mouse to cliek on the SUBMIT button. Frequently that can be done by pressing the ENTER key or by pressing ALT S. But not this time. You actually need to use the computer mouse.

It does actually work and is not that confusing. An earlier version of that Web page actually let you do that with their blessing. What you did was use the regular Web page to set everything you wanted. Then you used the computer mouse to press a special Web page button. And it returned a URL that you could automatically enter the next time you visited the Web page. And all of your results would be displayed for you without your having to reselect every option.

Finally, the Web page doesn't even load correctly. After it is displayed for a few seconds the menu changes. An extra option is added in the format area.

What I am planning to do is create a Web page at my Web site discussing all of this. And I will then post a note to the sci.geo.earthquakes Newsgroup asking for opinions and telling USGS officials to take note. If they aren't interested I will contact U.S. Policy Makers and ask them to get something done.

They only have to do this once and then perhaps add some updates now and then. How difficult could that be?

These are personal opinions.