From: ggm@brolga.cc.uq.oz.au (George Michaelson)
Subject: Re: Medline Server Was: URGENT Internet upgrade proposals due 23 November - $13M
Keywords: AARNet Australia Internet Research Grants
Organization: Prentice Centre, University of Queensland
Date: Wed, 11 Nov 1992 00:26:44 GMT

nholford@ccu1.aukuni.ac.nz (Nick Holford) writes:

>johnd@cortex.physiol.su.oz.au (John Dodson) writes:
>>What about a national "Current Contents" & "Medline" server ?
>>Would we have a chance of getting the money for the hardware & some of the
>>licence fee, if we developed the software & maintained the machine ?

>I believe that medline is available via the Internet directly from the
>NIH in the US. I have been trying (so far without success) to get an
>account there. If I can arrange it this seem to be the simplest way for me
>to get Medline access. What would be the advantage of setting up a
>Medline server in OZ?

Interactive response over the satellite link is really ratshit. Getting
services migrated into Australia, with the long-haul transfer being
bulk data (hopefully sent during otherwise idle time, and at lower priorities)
makes a lot of sense.

This holds for lots of things beyond medline. Genbank is available from
Sydney for instance, and certainly cuts down on telnet traffic to Genbank
servers stateside. Its much nicer than using mailservers.

	-George

Ps my personal view is that this is NOT the right thing to point at the CRC
money. This cash should be spent on high-frontier work such as multi-media,
to pay for raw bandwidth increases across the board, and to extend service
to places of interest like T.I. (I presume the low-bandwidth and distance
ed. people are in this camp too)

If Medline is worth having, then Medical Research oriented funding sources
should cough up. The CRC money is of a MUCH more generic nature. It should
be used to do Infrastructure.

Frankly, I think the whole CRC deal stinks of lost opportunities. A
significant part of the Money spent on AARNet at the physical level
would have come straight back to the Government by way of the Golden
share in Telecom, which makes it a very cheap way of spending the
grant. 

Industry cooperation in CRCs is not the same as Industry waking up to
the benefits of being publically networked. Nor is demanding Telecom
introduce >10Mb/s network services without offering it a few large
CUG's with money to spend. Perhaps AARN will migrate to these anyway, but
getting some cash to do it NOW seemed a nice idea.

Funding CRC's winds up sending people to hawaii, buying expensive
Italian Marble reception desks, flash workstations and Wanking
chambers. Sorry chaps, much though I envy your terms and conditions, I
just don't think key centres are the way to fund all research, and
certainly isn't the way to fund the collaborative infrastructure.
Buying cables is the best use of money in this area.

--
                         George Michaelson
G.Michaelson@cc.uq.oz.au The Prentice Centre      | There's no  market for
                         University of Queensland | hippos in Philadelphia
Phone: +61 7 365 4079    QLD Australia 4072       |          -Bertold Brecht
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