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A summary for those that haven’t been keeping up with this series:<\/p>\n
I found a number of 5.25″ disks at a thrift store a number of years ago (sometime in the late 1990s to the best of my recollection). I finally got around to acquiring a 5.25″ disk drive and extracting the contents a several years back. Since then, I have been occasionally posting the content here.<\/p>\n
Based on the contents, most or all of these disks were apparently once owned by someone named Connie who used to run the \u201cClose Encounters\u201d Special Interest Group (SIG) on Delphi in the mid 1980s.<\/p>\n
The following description of this SIG was found in a document on one of the disks: “This SIG, known as ‘Close Encounters’, is a forum for the discussion of relationships that develop via computer services like the Source, CompuServe, and Delphi. Our primary emphasis is on the sexual aspects of those relationships.”<\/p>\n
This service was text based and was accessed via a modem and whatever terminal program you had available for your computer to dial in with. Many of these disks have forum messages, e-mails and chat session logs. All of this is pre-internet stuff and I am not aware of any archives in existence today that contain what was on Delphi in the 1980s.<\/p>\n
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This post includes the contents of DEC84.DOC. Similar to the last few posts in this series, this appears to be a report that gives details on the usage of the SIG (how many hours each user spent in the SIG, etc.). This is in the form of an e-mail from someone named KELLY who was presumably an employee of Delphi. The e-mail is dated January 18th, 1985.<\/p>\n
There are two SIGs (Special Interest Groups) that have been mentioned repeatedly in these files. One is the “Close Encounters” SIG and the other is the “Friendship Circle” SIG though I’m not entirely sure they were different. “Close Encounters” may have evolved from “Friendship Circle”. In any case “Closed Circle” is mentioned in this report but maybe this is an alias or the name changed again at some point.<\/p>\n
This report includes username, sessions (number of times the user called), prime minutes (this was probably online time during peak hours when a more expensive per minute charge was applied), and off-prime minutes (probably online time during off peak hours that were either “free” with your monthly subscription, or at least much cheaper).<\/p>\n
There are also a couple of other e-mails here discussing these reports. One interesting tidbit is that apparently ‘SIGOPS’ earned royalties (more like a commission if you ask me) based on usage. I guess this makes sense as users paid a monthly fee to access Delphi and also a per minute usage charge. After all, SIGOPS would have been responsible for running groups that led to people spending more time (and therefore more money) online.<\/p>\n
This file is dated September 2nd, 1985 and was in a subdirectory titled “SIGUSAGE”. This is the last of the SIG usage reports, at least on this disk.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\nFrom: UAP0M 17-JAN-1985 19:47 \nTo: GLENN,CC_TO,KELLY,@SIGOPS\nSubj: Sig royalties and reports\n\nGlenn:\n\nI would rather let each SIGOP state his\/her case rather me as \nfar as any case.\n\nYou stated that all sigs who earned Royalties in December had\nthose royalites listed on their bill invoice. Dying to know\nwho these people are, with the mail I have gotton on this\nissue. However anyone who didn't get a USAGE-REPORT has\nno way of determing if their SIG earned royalites, so until\nreports are released no one can state their case. Another\nthing, what formula is used for awarding sig royalties. I \nhave been asked this over and over again, so if you could\nplease clear this up it would avoid a lot of confusion.\nThanks for you help.\n\nKelly:\n\nIf you could please send out those USAGE-REPORTS to those who\ndidn't get one, it would be greatly appreciated. I am sure\nthat I can speak for the SIGOPs in offering to assist you in\nany way we can in getting these reports out. We really do\nappreciate those reports which you do an outstanding job.\nThanks.\n\nSigops:\n\nOK! You can see, for those of you hav browbeaten for the \nlast 2 weeks, that I addressed your concern to DELPHI. So,\nwhen you get your usage report and you feel it met the earning\nformula criteria, please notify your SIG REPRESENTIVE.\n\nI would rather you do this direct rather going through me.\nAlso, PLEASE do NOT GIVE OUT THE PASSWORD to the SIGOP JOURNAL\nto ANYONE!!! If you assign a level 4 or 5 manager for you \nsig, send me the manager's membername, real name, and level. \nI will then issue the password and other materials. Your help\nin this matter will be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Chris\n\nP.S. Don't forget the SIGOPS MEETING on 01\/26\/85 at 9:00\npm(ET).\n\nP.S.S. Glenn: sorry that you are getting this twice...\n\nFrom: KELLY 18-JAN-1985 10:50 \nTo: CABUYS\nSubj: Dec. Usage Report\n\nUsage report, by time, for Closed Circle Sig\n============================================\n PRIME OFFPRIME\n USERNAME SESSIONS Minutes Minutes\n -------- -------- ------- --------\n ACE 1 6 0\n AIRHITCH 1 0 5\n ALESSAN 10 0 231\n ANNEEB 1 0 2\n BGS 1 0 1\n BGSGUEST 1 0 4\n BIALI1 1 0 1\n BILLHICKEY 1 0 11\n BOBKING 1 0 7\n BOSTONROCK 2 0 15\n BTI 1 0 17\n BURNS 1 0 13\n BUSSIGMGR 1 0 6\n BZ 2 0 62\n CABUYS 71 1 1951\n CAMBATA 1 0 5\n CHEVALIER 1 0 12\n CJB 1 0 1\n CONRAD 1 0 22\n DARKSTAR 1 0 30\n DESHIELDS 10 15 181\n DJR 9 0 155\n EGBOK 1 0 1\n ELFAN 4 0 19\n ELLISCO 10 0 192\n EUGENEROSEN 1 0 4\n FOODMAN 1 0 5\n FTF 1 0 22\n GCCS 5 16 13\n GGUTHRO 1 0 2\n GRANT 1 0 13\n GRENDEL 1 0 4\n HANK 1 0 5\n HANSOLO 28 4 539\n HOWARDM 1 0 3\n IVY 3 0 97\n J1944 1 0 4\n JCG 2 0 18\n JESMITH 1 0 7\n JIMSTEWART 1 0 14\n JKIPP 1 0 3\n JMEL 15 9 186\n JMORITZ 1 0 8\n JOHNMYSELF 43 0 826\n JPM 1 0 1\n JSARAS 3 0 38\n JUN 1 0 2\n KENF 2 0 29\n KENNY1 1 0 4\n LISTENER 1 0 4\n MARTI 117 117 2170\n MGOOSE 1 15 0\n MIKE 3 0 21\n MIKECARRAHER 1 0 7\n NFSA 1 4 0\n NJOHNSON 1 0 2\n PARNASSUS 1 0 5\n PEPPERS 4 10 8\n PERRIGREN 1 0 9\n PRINCESS 30 36 1087\n PUGDOG 1 0 14\n PYTHIA 1 0 3\n QUICKRODNEY 8 0 37\n RABBI 1 0 3\n REGOODSTEIN 1 0 13\n REHMKE 1 0 6\n RGRIMSHAW 1 0 5\n RJB005 1 0 12\n RM 7 14 27\n RODM 7 0 57\n ROSEMARY 1 0 8\n SANDLAPPER 1 0 4\n SAUNDERS1313 1 0 8\n SCHONBERGER 6 5 135\n SHREWUS 1 0 4\n SMILE 4 8 20\n SPARKY 3 0 106\n SPIKE 1 0 16\n STRUBLE 2 0 34\n SUZIE 1 0 6\n SVENGALI 1 0 6\n TC1 1 0 8\n TECHNOLOGY 1 0 6\n THESTRANGER 61 144 857\n THORKILDSEN 2 0 17\n TOAD 1 0 11\n TOMOYASU 1 0 6\n TREK 1 0 62\n VAMPYR 1 0 2\n WHCL 1 5 0\n YOSHI 14 1 168\n------------------------------------------------------------\nTotals in minutes 548 410 9765\n 6.83 162.75 hours\n\nFrom: KELLY 18-JAN-1985 10:54 \nTo: CABUYS\nSubj: Usage reports\n\nConnie,\n\nI apologize for the confusion with the usage reports. \nHowever, we are currently working on a new report which we\nhope will be more complete than our latest version. With this\nnew report, we're hoping sigops will be able to access them\ndirectly, therefore keeping more accurate records.\n\nIn the future, if you or any other sigop have any problems or\nquestions, please contact me or JOHNWG.\n\nThanks and sorry for the delay.\n\nKelly\n\nMAIL> re\n\nTo: KELLY\nSubj: RE: Usage reports\nEnter your message below. Press CTRL\/Z when complete, CTRL\/C\nto quit:\nKelly, thank you for your explanation about the usage reports.\nI appreciate all your help and I'm looking forward to the\nnew version. If there's anything I can do to assist in any\nway, just let me know.\n\nAgain, much thanks!\n\n-Connie\n^Z\n<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A summary for those that haven’t been keeping up with this series: I found a number of 5.25″ disks at a thrift store a number of years ago (sometime in the late 1990s to the best of my recollection). I finally got around to acquiring a 5.25″ disk drive and extracting the contents a several years back. Since then, I have been occasionally posting the content here. Based on the contents, most or all of these disks were apparently once owned by someone named Connie who used to run the \u201cClose Encounters\u201d Special Interest Group (SIG) on Delphi in the mid 1980s. The following description of this SIG was found in a document on one of the disks: “This SIG, known as ‘Close Encounters’, is a forum for the discussion of relationships that develop via computer services like the Source, CompuServe, and Delphi. Our primary emphasis is on the sexual aspects of those relationships.” This service was text based and was accessed via a modem and whatever terminal program you had available for your computer to dial in with. Many of these disks have forum messages, e-mails and chat session logs. All of this is pre-internet stuff and I am […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2913,2042,2362,2914],"class_list":["post-36937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-computer-arcana","tag-delphi","tag-digital-archaeology","tag-retrocomputing","tag-telecommunications"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36937"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36939,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36937\/revisions\/36939"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.megalextoria.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}