Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!husc6!mgh-coffee!cherry From: cherry@mgh-coffee.uucp (Mike Cherry) Newsgroups: bionet.molbio.genbank Subject: Re: Distributing GenBank over the Internet Message-ID: <3435@husc6.harvard.edu> Date: 16 Dec 89 23:00:07 GMT References: <1989Dec7.213027.8591@phri.nyu.edu> <1364@uvm-gen.UUCP> <30.25862b68@bio.embnet.se> <1989Dec13.201432.20058@phri.nyu.edu> Sender: news@husc6.harvard.edu Reply-To: cherry@mgh-coffee.harvard.edu (Mike Cherry) Organization: Dept. Molecular Biology, Mass. General Hospital, Boston Lines: 43 In article <1989Dec13.201432.20058@phri.nyu.edu> roy@alanine.UUCP (Roy Smith) writes: >kristoff@genbank.BIO.NET (David Kristofferson) writes: >I was somewhat surprised (pleasantly) when a >new person came to the Institute a few months ago and asked me how to send >email. He didn't ask me *if* we had it, he took it for granted that we did >and just wanted to know the local juju. > ... >So why am I surprised when people are so impressed? Because I consider what >we have to be just barely passable. If most of the visitors here are >impressed, that must mean that what most people have available to them in the >way of computer resources is a disaster. >-- >Roy Smith, Public Health Research Institute >455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016 >roy@alanine.phri.nyu.edu -OR- {att,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers,hombre}!phri!roy >"My karma ran over my dogma" I run a similarly equiped network of systems at Massachusetts General Hospital. We became connected to the Internet about a year and a half ago. I also receive compliments from scientist that are enjoying our computer environment. These scientists generally have at least a little experience with sequence analysis or modelling. More interestingly the younger students or post-docs that haven't actually used the computer for much expect all these applications and networking to be there. I recently automated the transmission of the weekly genbank updates and subsequent reformating into our databases. Many of my users didn't see this as a great acheivement. This preception appears to be the result that these users do not realize how the databases had been transferred to our system in the past or even where the databases where physically located. Many thought we were always "connected to genbank" and that everytime they ran FASTA they were searching "the" database in Los Alamos. Anyway, it seems that computers in molecular biology is starting to make many advances. I can't wait to see what will be possible in a couple years when all the fruits of the work going on a GenBank, NCBI and NCSA (to name a few) become available. J. Michael Cherry Director of Computer Systems Department of Molecular Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital Boston, MA 02114 (office) 617-726-5955 (TeleFAX) 617-726-6893 cherry@mgh-coffee.harvard.EDU cherry@harvunxu.BITNET