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Google Expands Usenet Archive to 20 Years
Paul Boutin writes "The Ghost of Usenet Postings Past has returned to haunt many more of us: Google just announced the expansion of their Usenet archive back to May 3, 1981."Check out the past on Groups.google.com
Ahh, to be young and brash again... oh, wait. Noooooooo!! Glad I've changed my email address since those long-(best)forgotten days. It wasn't me, I swear!
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
It's nice to browse through the archives and read my various posts over the years. How I've grown. :)
It should be noted that not all groups are archived. I recently checked out one of my favorites and after the name of it, it said (This group is no longer archived). That's a shame, because I would love to read the older stories of alt.sex.stories.
I wish that one can access the Google Groups through a news reader such as Pan, because I really don't like the interface Google provides, and one reallly can't change any of their account settings for posting. I was hoping these things would be fixed in beta, but I guess it's OK as it is.
You die too easily.
Younger folks probably won't find this too interesting as it will be more like history to them rather than us old farts re-living younger days...
I went to the Google link where they have a list of firsts:
First mention of Microsoft; not even the oldest post!
IBM PC.
CDs, in 1982! Shit, now I realize how old I am!
C64, Lisa and Mac, AIDS (a purely homosexual disease?!?!- really weird 'cause I just found an old copy of Discover magazine that had a first mention of AIDS; blew me away due to difference in info we know now)
I love the "WorldWideWeb - Executive Summary" link under the Google link:
A bit of the text-
"
Making a web is as simple as writing a few SGML files which point to your existing data. Making it public involves running the FTP or HTTP daemon, and making at least one link into your web from another. In fact, any file available by anonymous FTP can be immediately linked into a web. The very small start-up effort is designed to allow small contributions. At the other end of the scale, large information providers may provide an HTTP server with full text or keyword indexing.
The WWW model gets over the frustrating incompatibilities of data format between suppliers and reader by allowing negotiation of format between a smart browser and a smart server. This should provide a basis for extension into
multimedia, and allow those who share application standards to make full use of them across the web.
This summary does not describe the many exciting possibilities opened up by the WWW project, such as efficient document caching. the reduction of redundant out-of-date copies, and the use of knowledge daemons. There is more information in the online project documentation, including some background on hypertext and many technical notes.
Try it
"
SGML! Does anyone remember this! "Try it" indeed! Wow, when I thought Usenet was the shit... hehehe!
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Anyway.
========================================
Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
This comes within half a month of covering my whole life. That I think is very cool now I can go back when I am 90 years old and see what went on 15 days after i was born.
and
alt.culture.electric-midget
This is the stuff that really bears the test of time! Not to metion the great AOL flood of 1995, and the annual rites of September.
What else? 20 years of tjames and kibo.
1.1 Why pave the earth?
There are several advantages of a paved Earth over a non-paved Earth, the only really important one is the ease of driving though. Today roads are narrow, you have to turn, and most governments frown at ground travel over Mach1. With endless blacktop in every direction, there will be no restriction to your movement, and rocket powered hypercars will whiz in all directions. We will be able to amuse ourselves with endless driving at incredible speeds while drinking beer and eating wonderfully juicy burgers.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Now that Google has a historian's wet-dream of actual writings by actual humans as they experienced historic events, such as the falling of the Berlin wall, what are the odds that someone at some point moves to ensure that this information is preserved? I think Google may be thinking very smart here. Their product could become so important that people might actively try to preserve the company, too.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
And legally, those postings are not in the public domain and Google has no right to republish them beyond the purpose that their authors originally implicitly gave permission for: temporary distribution on USENET.
base64 is part of MIME from the start of the 90'ties, and wasn't really used on Usenet before mid 90'ties. Before that we used uuencode, however there was very little pr0n back then, and low quality. ASCII art comapred favorable to it. You couldn't upload much with 2400 baud modem.
We loved it, though!
like almost everyone else, I typed my "real name"...and found 293 articles dating back ./, anonymity and disguise
to april 1992. Excepted for my most private
and personal life, you could guess almost
exactly who I am, what is my career, hobbies
and so on... On
seem to be more prevalent than on Usenet.
Amazing also to see that before 1994 or so,
there were only educated, polite, informative
people on the face of the earth (and I looked
like a bad-taught puppy in comparison to them).
At this point, with AOLers and non-academics
appearing, something definitely changed.
Google passes Turing test : see my journal
What is it with you people? An marvellous and unique archive like this will become completely useless if people like you want to start censoring it.
Take the responsibility for your posts!
I'm surprised that nobody mentioned this one yet.
Still a favorite of mine:
USSR on Usenet
Of course, now nobody thinks twice when they see a Russian address, but back then it was a big deal.
(To the younger readers: They were the bad guys back then, the "Evil Empire"...)
And now, let's open a flask of Vodka and have a drink on our entry on
this network. So:
NA ZDAROVJE!
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
*sucks in air*
No doubt. I just went and had a read at a whole bunch of posts from 10-15 years ago in which I was often a real prick [and strangely enough, in which I seem to have more technical/coding prowess than I have now!?!]. There's nothing like humble pie and complete red-eared embarrassment at three in the morning -- embarrassment first at how one was acting, and second at no longer being able to fully understand technical discussions from one's own teenagehood!
I'm in my late twenties now. I'm an author. My name is out there and is unique. Now, when people type my name into Google, they're going to pull up stuff I posted via free BBSs and tech bars when I was a prick of a teenaged punk-rocker in the '80s who [it would seem] really had a problem or two.
*cringe*
I'm going to go hide my head in the sand for a while, then quickly ink-jet myself a "live and learn" t-shirt.
[Then, as soon as the sun comes up, I'm heading downtown to change my name.]
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Is it only me who has a hard time imagining people born in the 80's being able to walk and talk? Imagine that there are people using computers today who weren't even around when the C-64 was introduced! Heck, a person born at the same time as the Amiga was born would be 17 years old today!! Damn, I feel old.
Advanced google groups search yields Osama from Feb/19/1994
Text: In The Statement Sent To Several Saudi Newspapers, The Bin
Laden Family Members Said They Want To Disassociate Themselves
From Osama Bin Laden.
Osama Bin Laden Is Believed To Be Living In Sudan And Is Said To
Have Been A Main Financial Backer Of The So-Called Afghan Arabs.
They Are Muslim Arabs Who Fought Alongside The Afghan Mujahedin
Against Soviet Forces In Afghanistan.
The Bin Laden Statement Was Signed By Bakr Mohamed Bin Laden,
Osama Bin Laden'S Brother. In Their Statement The Family Said
All Family Members -- Whose Number Exceeds 50 -- Would Like To
Express Their Regret, Denunciation, And Condemnation For All Acts
That Osama Bin Laden May Have Committed, Which, In Their Words,
We Do Not Condone And Which We Reject.
Osama Bin Laden Has Been Specially Mentioned In Connection With A
Group That Has Committed Several Acts Of Violence In Yemen. The
Bin Laden Family Comes Originally From The Southern Part Of
Yemen. Some Family Members Emigrated To Saudi Arabia Decades
Ago. (Signed)
Their list is great to browse through, but there are some real gems off the beaten path as well...
For instance, google points you to: "October, 1991 Linus Torvalds's Linux announcement"
But you can also find a quite interesting, more preliminary announcement from him a few months earlier: "What would you like to see most in minix?"
You can also read about Rob Malda's "Weird Problem while booting...", which is also the first time he calls himself 'Commander Taco' on Usenet. (October 1995)
Post your interesting finds!
P.S. I deleted all that stuff I said about your wife when I was real drunk.
-Kevin
Here's where you should dig for prior art references.. it would be nice to tailor your query like "Where date[some patent date]"
www.bigattichouse.com
If you do things in public then you shouldn't be able to excise them from the publics memory, even if the thing you did was make a spectacular ass of yourself.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
Given that this archive now stretches back to 1981, I'm left wondering how this will affect some of the younger politicians with aspirations of getting elected to grander seats of power. Politicians who follow in Clinton's footsteps, for instance, might have much more difficulty convincing people that they didn't inhale, if they have a long posting history to rec.drugs.cannabis.
First mention of slashdot
n &s coring=d&as_drrb=b&as_mind=17&as_minm=1&as_miny=19 97&as_maxd=11&as_maxm=8&as_maxy=1997&rnum=5&selm=5 cr9je%24j2i%40mirrors.cellnet.com
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=slashdot&hl=e
:P
First post (and not even under his own account) can be found here.
Maybe other celebrities can be found in the archive..
Find the article
here
His first post. It was posted in 1991.
I think this is kind of scary (if it's abused like what I am doing here)
Where in the world did they dig this data up from? Were these tapes that Deja had somehow acquired, but never read in, or did Google actually root around and restore backups from way back when, and if so, from who did they get the tapes from???
I figure that Google has to be getting these posts from trusted sources, or else you could inject false data into the historical archives. Anyone know for sure?
I gotta say, it's weird seeing how much I used to post. Of course, it was back when USENET was actually useful, and not clogged with spam and idiots... The funny thing is, that AOL used to be the same way (back when that was one of the few ways outside of academia to get something like an e-mail address, remember bitnet?) but that was even farther in the past...
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Q: Who posted this question back in May 1995?
A: The same guy who posted this request a few days earlier.
And look where we are now.