Old datasearches
grey...@mail.com
--
Greymaus....
\/\
\?
Tim Shoppa
I think you might mean "Dialog":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialog_(online_database)
I used it several times in the 80's and 90's as kinda a funked-up
journal and news article search through University libraries that
subscribed.
According to Wikipedia, both Dialog and ISI (a different citation
index I used) are now owned by Thomson, which also owns a buttload of
other fee-for-access databases. I'm guessing that their big cash cow
these days is WestLaw.
Tim.
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
Tim Shoppa <sho...@trailing-edge.com> writes:
> I think you might mean "Dialog":
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialog_(online_database)
>
> I used it several times in the 80's and 90's as kinda a funked-up
> journal and news article search through University libraries that
> subscribed.
>
> According to Wikipedia, both Dialog and ISI (a different citation
> index I used) are now owned by Thomson, which also owns a buttload of
> other fee-for-access databases. I'm guessing that their big cash cow
> these days is WestLaw.
one of the (ibm mainframe) institutions in the bay area with large disk
farm ... was part of lockheed way back when (one of the places in the
bay area I could easily periodically visit).
http://www.dialog.com/about/keydates/
after lockheed wnt to knight-ridder
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight_Ridder
including sjmn (also in san jose)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jose_Mercury_News
another such large mainframe operation was lexis-nexis (but not in bay
area)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LexisNexis
misc. past posts mentioning Dialog:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#33 Did AT&T offer Unix to Digital Equipment in the 70s?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001g.html#46 The Alpha/IA64 Hybrid
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#0 Search for Joseph A. Fisher VLSI Publication (1981)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#61 10 choices that were critical to the Net's success
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#30 Empires and Imperialism
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006b.html#38 blast from the past ... macrocode
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#88 Continous Systems Modelling Package
another such large mainframe operation was lexis-nexis (but not in bay
area)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LexisNexis
the former head of aix software development did stint as senior vp of
development at lexisnexis for a period ... back when it was still meade
data central. it was then sold to reed elsevier.
--
40+yrs virtualization experience (since Jan68), online at home since Mar1970
grey...@mail.com
> On Nov 17, 7:49�pm, greyma...@mail.com wrote:
>> Sorry, not that, was it Digalog?
>>
>> --
>> Greymaus....
>> �\/\
>> � � \?
>
> I think you might mean "Dialog":
Yup, its been a while.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialog_(online_database)
>
> I used it several times in the 80's and 90's as kinda a funked-up
> journal and news article search through University libraries that
> subscribed.
>
> According to Wikipedia, both Dialog and ISI (a different citation
> index I used) are now owned by Thomson, which also owns a buttload of
> other fee-for-access databases. I'm guessing that their big cash cow
> these days is WestLaw.
>
> Tim.
Rough guess, a precedent lookup thingie?.
--
greymaus
.
.
...
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
> Rough guess, a precedent lookup thingie?.
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#24 Old datasearches
after the head of aix development went to head up lexis/nexis ... we
were brought in to talk about such stuff. different states have
precendents going back to country common law ... based on the country of
origin of the early inhabitants ... and so different states could have
common law precedents back to different (european) countries.
misc. old posts mentioning lexis/nexis and precedent:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001i.html#50 I hate Compaq
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002.html#30 Younger recruits versus experienced veterans ( was Re: The demise of compa
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#3 Why are Mainframe Computers really still in use at all?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#29 [OT] Faces of terrorism
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004e.html#31 [OT] Faces of terrorism
about the same time ... we went in to look at NIH's NLM (national
library of medicine). in the early 80s ... it had run into online search
problem (similar to some of web search engines) ... with boolean logic
... out at 7 or 8 terms ... it results would be bimodel ... returning
hundreds of thousands of results or zero results. Holy grail was finding
magic search that returned more than zero by less than 100 (and people
would frequently get confused and invert the intended "ANDs" & "ORs")
a couple of the people responsible for the implementation in the 60s
were still around. they had implemented their own CICS-like online
interface ... on top of mainframe BDAM. Indexes were built for
terms/strings in something like 80 categories (authors, titles,
keywords, etc). The index record was list of the corresponding BDAM
record numbers for the article/abstract. ANDs/ORs operation involved
"SET" operation (intersection, etc) on the lists of BDAM record numbers.
this was about the time that the univ. I was undergraduate got selected
to be one of the initial betatest sites for original CICS (ONR grant to
the univ. library for online catalog) ... and I got tasked to
support/debug it (also a implementation on BDAM, in any case, I had been
thru some of the same things that the original NLM implementation had
been thru)
In the early 80s, "Grateful Med" interface appeared on Apple ... which
would emulate dumb terminal to NLM ... and instead of getting back the
responses ... get back the number of responses. Search strategies were
then based on saving term combinations (search) ... looking for number
of responses that fell into >0 and typically <100.
misc. past posts mentioning NLM
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/94.html#26 Misc. more on bidirectional links
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001j.html#1 Off-topic everywhere [was: Re: thee and thou
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2001m.html#51 Author seeks help - net in 1981
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002g.html#3 Why are Mainframe Computers really still in use at all?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002h.html#0 Search for Joseph A. Fisher VLSI Publication (1981)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002l.html#53 10 choices that were critical to the Net's success
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#45 XML, AI, Cyc, psych, and literature
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2002o.html#50 XML, AI, Cyc, psych, and literature
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004l.html#52 Specifying all biz rules in relational data
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004n.html#47 Shipwrecks
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004o.html#67 Relational vs network vs hierarchic databases
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2004p.html#0 Relational vs network vs hierarchic databases
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005.html#23 Network databases
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005c.html#41 Oldest active information system
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005d.html#57 Thou shalt have no other gods before the ANSI C standard
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#45 Where should the type information be?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2005j.html#47 Where should the type information be?
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2006e.html#34 CJ Date on Missing Information
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2007l.html#27 John W. Backus, 82, Fortran developer, dies
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008l.html#80 Book: "Everyone Else Must Fail" --Larry Ellison and Oracle ???
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#6 Yet another squirrel question - Results (very very long post)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2008m.html#74 Speculation ONLY
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009.html#44 Lawyers & programming (x-over from a.f.c discussion)
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009m.html#88 Continous Systems Modelling Package
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009o.html#38 U.S. house decommissions its last mainframe, saves $730,000
Mike Causer
grey...@mail.com wrote:
> Sorry, not that, was it Digalog?
I remember Dialog Corp about 1981/2. Tbey had a satelite office next
to us in Cambridge, Mass. and used to invite us round to eat up the
remainder of their generous lunches when they ran training courses for
real customers. We could also use their system at any time we needed,
but unfortunately our trade, high-end CAD-CAM, didn't benefit much from
it. Was interesting to play with though, and might have helped when we
wrote our own database system to integrate with the CAD-CAM a few years
later.
In the office on the other side were the Atari (an? Atari) research
group with lotsa toys, a few VAXen, and personel mainly recruited from
the wild side. Group meetings were held next to the elevators, because
the office was non-smoking but the public spaces in the building were
not.
On the ground floor was the second restaurant of "Legal Seafoods",
where we used to take out-of-towners to find out what sort of dining we
could take them to. A plate of deep-fried baby octopus would be
ordered and if the "honored guests" looked horrified we knew if was
going to be a hamburger night :-(( If they tucked in we knew we could
take them to any of Greater Boston's eating places.
Mike
--
Mike Causer
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
> I remember Dialog Corp about 1981/2. Tbey had a satelite office next
> to us in Cambridge, Mass. and used to invite us round to eat up the
> remainder of their generous lunches when they ran training courses for
> real customers. We could also use their system at any time we needed,
> but unfortunately our trade, high-end CAD-CAM, didn't benefit much from
> it. Was interesting to play with though, and might have helped when we
> wrote our own database system to integrate with the CAD-CAM a few years
> later.
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#24 Old datasearchces
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#25 Old datasearchces
Following refers to getting an unsolicated call to interview for
technical assitance to the president of NAS. "xxxxx" was somebody I had
known for a long time and then doing some work as consultant at DIALOG
(at the time he lived in s. cal, & peridically visited n. ca). He
happened to call president of DIALOG while we were there and so he
handed the phone over to me for a chat. DIALOG had recently gotten a
AS9000 (370 clone) from long ago and far away ...
From: wheeler
Date: 04/22/81 09:51:27
re: Tandem, DIALOG, etc.;
before the BAYBUNCH meeting last night, we went up and did a customer
call on DIALOG (& got to see the AS9000). While we were there xxxxx
called & I talked to him for a while. I happened to mention the NAS
headhunter call & the details -- coincidence it was the day before I
was to call on DIALOG & see the AS 9000. He said that DIALOG would
offer a much better deal. DIALOG is currently part of a Lockheed
division. DIALOG has around 120 people, the whole division has around
20,000 people, but last year DIALOG accounted for 40% of the division
profits. Right now DIALOG is in the process of breaking off & becoming
a subsidiary. They will be offering substantial profit sharing deals.
... snip ...
to not get involved in silicon valley traffic ... go up valley early
and could make customer calls on both tymshare & dialog before monthly
baybunch meetings at slac.
sometimes car pooled with other people from research to baybunch ... but
if going alone ... I could go by HONE and do some work there before the
baybunch meeting.
Just recently I had added 3 short items to facebook:
HONE historical trivia How many have noticed facebooks mailing address?
The US HONE datacenters were consolidated in Cal. in the mid-70s. How
close is the facebook address to the address of that consolidated US
HONE datacenter?
... and then
HONE had started in the US after the 23Jun69 unbundling announcement. By
the mid-70s, mainframe orders couldn't be submitted w/o first having
been processed by HONE applications and cloned HONE datacenters were
popping up all over the world.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=1601+S.+California+Ave.,+Palo+Alto,+CA+94304.&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=65.645551,49.21875&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=1601+S+California+Ave,+Palo+Alto,+Santa+Clara,+California+94304&ll=37.41648,-122.151414&spn=0.003996,0.003004&t=h&z=18
... and finally
building next to facebooks was were US HONE operations were consolidated
in the middle 70s. Interior was mostly one large computer room
(bldg. has different occupant now).
... snip
Anne & Lynn Wheeler
re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#24 Old datasearchces
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2009q.html#25 Old datasearchces
diaglog.com history site:
http://www.dialog.com/about/history/
some of references from above:
Reflections on the Beginnings of Dialog: The Birth of Online Information
Access"
http://support.dialog.com/publications/chronolog/200206/1020628.shtml
and
Online Before the Internet: Early Pioneers Tell Their Stories
Part 1: In the Beginning;
http://www.dialog.com/about/history/pioneers1.pdf
and
Online Before the Internet: Early Pioneers Tell Their Stories
Part 2: Growth of the Online Industry;
http://www.dialog.com/about/history/pioneers2.pdf
Tim Shoppa
> In the office on the other side were the Atari (an? Atari) research
> group with lotsa toys, a few VAXen
As far as I've been able to determine, through the 70's and early 80's
much of Atari's software development was done by cross-compiling
(cross-assembling more likely) using 6502 tools on PDP-11's and then,
small VAXen.
Tim.
Mike Causer
This bunch, in One Cambridge Place, Cambridge, Mass (not the /real/
Cambridge of course), had VAX 750s IIRC. We had a Prime 750, but could
borrow odd cables from them (& vice-versa) when needed. Our stuff did
run on VMS, but Pr1me [1] had the US rights and we only sold on VMS in
Europe, alongside PrimOs and eventually SunOs. This research group did
not produce us/er/able? software.
[1] Back in the original Cambridge a few years later I was designing &
implementing the user interface for the CAM/CAM system (CIS Medusa)
under ComputerVison's banner. When Pr1me took over CV there was a
certain amount of local resistance (CV had left us alone, Pr1me killed
all our advanced projects including one I had put a lot of soul into),
and I nearly got one issue out of the door with a logo that could read
Prime from one direction or Prune from another.
Testing dept, unusualy accute for them, spotted it ;-(((
Mike
--
Mike Causer