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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
Interesting, but I'm not sure I want to dig through all that stuff to find anything cool.
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
Awright! Just think of all the old porn that awaits my eager stare! No sleep for me tonight.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Awww yeah, 20 years of pr0n binaries to start sucking down!
Seriously, won't this take many terabytes to store? The ISP I used to work for was keeping a dedicated T1 saturated 24x7 just to keep up a newsfeed. And they only keep stuff around for 14 days I believe.
Insane.
Were binary groups around back then? If so, I'd love to see what kind of stuff was being posted back then. I can understand Google not posting the actual binaries, but couldn't they at least post zero files or some such?
Pax Digitalia
I don't think ANYBODY should be held liable for Usenet postings they made when they were 14 years old...it's like having naked baby pictures of yourself stapled to your forehead when you walk around...
:)
On the other hand, you can now go back and see who REALLY won all those flame wars you were involved in
Thats from before I was born.
So that means that this is currently THE first post!
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.
That's a neat timeline, but what it's missing that I'd love to see:
First Spam
First Metoo
First Flamewar
First MLM/chain letter
You know, the really important historical stuff.
Who moderates the meta-moderators?
Remember when alt.sexy.bald.captains still had Star Trek in it?? These days, it's all alt, sexy, and probably bald - but that's about it :(
"If you create user accounts, by default, they will have an account type of Administrator with no password." KB Q293834
there's nothing deep in this comment, but I just want to mention how awesome this collection is. I was going to be thoroughly impressed with an archive back to 1990. Thank you, Google. Man, I wasn't even born when this archive started.
It's great to trace this stuff. Now people can write their disserations with this as a superb trail of thoughts and ideas.
I loved Deja. It had so many memories. The first time I installed linux I found all the answers to my questions in the archives. It's amazing how the entire usenet(which is a great part of the Internet) goes unnoticed by most people. Maybe this will help some people new to the net find their answers, without attracting even more usenet spam.
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
Good thing Google made a Usenet archive without using a news server !
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Since my article submission is doomed for rejection, let me at least post some of extra stuff I had mentioned. First, check out the monolithic kernel debate between Andy and Linus for yourself. Second, in my article submission about Google, I also mentioned that Alexa now archives the Web, too. Try their Internet Archive Wayback Machine. I found they had an archive of my old WEBsurf magazine from 1997. Hilarious.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
So, I did what any person does-
I went and searched on my name and now defunct emails to see how far back I go, how complete their records are, and what an idiot I was when I posted newbie questions on Caldera OpenLinux 2, apparently after having given up on RH 3x.
At least I learned my lesson. There also appear to be a few stray posts I made about BeOS, and trying to sell an old BMW.
If this is all I have to worry about staying on the internet forever, I think I'll be okay.
Now I can browse all of my anti-Mac rantings from the comfort of my Powerbook G4.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
Looking at these historical posts with great interest, I couldn't help noticing that Usenet used to be primarily a news medium--they were actually news groups where you could find news, but today it hardly fills that role. It would be interesting to see how along the way newsgroups involved more into a forum/discussion group role. Nowadays the last place I'd go to find news would be a newsgroup :)
I also wonder how sites like Slashdot have negatively impacted the level of newsgroup usage. I imagine that with more and more Slashdotlike sites springing about, there must be less people using newsgroups to vent opinions and stuff. Especially since Slashdotlike sites typically perform the task of actually delivering news (don't want to get deep here)
--
Am I a hipster-doofus?
Some very interesting computer history to check out. "Oldest post in the archive", "First mention of Microsoft" etc., very cool.
Will work for bandwidth
Don't you love Google? This item took some decent reseach, holds genuine interest for many of us, is presented in a light format with no banner ads and is actually interesting.
If only Google could take over the WWW as well as usenet we'd all be better off!
well, not excatlly, but excuse me for having a big head ;p
The problem as I see it is that I have no personality of my own.
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=nuclear+weapons+ lost+greenland&hl=en&rnum=2&selm=4eitaj%24o2p%40vo dka.intele.net
It is really good to hear that 50 miles from my house here is a lost nuclear sitting under a few feet of water slowly releasing radiation.
how many of us looked up our first-ever post, or the first flamewar we lurked at?
Ahhh, those halycon days of USENET.
"Never bullshit a bullshitter" All That Jazz
Usenet was established in 1979, and I wonder if it's even possible to find those first messages made back then? That would be some interesting reading, in a way.
Will work for bandwidth
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..."
When I searched Deja a few years ago I found a lot of very, very old posts I made to FidoNet "echos" before I had Internet connectivity. These were a serious blast from the past... right back to my childhood.
Back then nobody I knew had access to "the internet", although a few people could get limited janet access (a Uk academic network), and I'd love to reread some of them.
These posts don't seem to be on google. Does anyone know if they're lost forever or hanging around somewhere?
Thanks.
0daymeme.com: Great stuff.
Actually, this is the first post. It's *9* days older! =)
It appears that this is the first message mentioning slashdot.org.
This one is the first post by Rob Malda.
First mention of Jeff "Hemos" Bates.
First mention of CowboyNeal (is it the same guy?).
Awww, you guys...
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Nowhere to hide.
My God, it's full of posts!
They have me back to 1988. Thankfully, pre-1988 don't seem to have propagated to whatever unholy archive these came from.
Da Blog
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=slashdot&start=3 0&hl=en&scoring=d&as_drrb=b&as_mind=17&as_minm=5&a s_miny=1981&as_maxd=11&as_maxm=12&as_maxy=1997&rnu m=33&selm=5cr9je%24j2i%40mirrors.cellnet.com
it is just in an e-mail address, but first is first.
The problem as I see it is that I have no personality of my own.
Back before I realised anybody actually archived this stuff, man did I make a bunch of stupid posts.
Do a search for "Peter Buchy" and you'll find all kinds of weird shit.
The amusing part I think was in my high-flying "I'm an amazingly spiritual Christian out to save you" phase. Now I'm a far more sedate Christian, but still (as you'll note) a D&D player.
The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. - G.B. Shaw
And what does he do in the past?
Since Google updated their archive, a search for USENET posts I have made turns up a big fat zero even though this same search pulled up ozens of posts just last week.
Even more surprising, I looked up a certain newsgroup only to find it contained zero posts when just last week there were several posts available via Google Groups.
" I bought the latest computer;
it came fully loaded.
It was guaranteed for 90 days,
but in 30 was outmoded!
- The Wall Street Journal passed along by Big Red Computer's SCARLETT"
Back in September 1989... I didn't think my 286 was outmoded back then... of course, I was only 7 at the time, wtf did I know? All I needed was Sopwith, Centipede, and Nyet!
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Hey this is actually very cool - 20 years of postings archived (as long as they're not used against you). Hopefuly google will try as hard as possible to make them more complete; some people were complaining of no alt.binaries groups, and hopefully will archive them (all the legal ones that is) to make a complete data set.
Hopefully some public body could sponsor google for this service to make sure it doesn't disappear again. I mean apart from the historical bit and the info for us geeks, I don't see how they make money out of it. Maybe buying shares in Google will help them, since we all know its the best.
http://saveie6.com/
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 &
http://saveie6.com/
There's crap in there I posted more than a decade ago. Those were the days... to forget. :) It seems like only yesterday I breathed a sigh of relief when that old stuff disappeared from the archives.
Just when you thought it was safe.
it was spelled pr0n back then so that it could not be found by search engines (of all kinds). that was of course when nobody knew about it (unlike today).
keep it simple.
Now is a chance to point to the useful parts of Usenet and get them to try it. If you want to learn about XML/SGML, Perl, PHP, Java, apiculture and so on, it's the place to look.
Find some interesting newsgroups. Start with lurking and nettiquette.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Linus Torvalds has new computer See for yourself here
Subject: Booya!
Date: Jan 01, 1981
Newsgroups: alt.flame,arpanet.general
First Post!
--
Ah, those were the days.
-Legion
I'm gone from the archive. Like I was never there.
... I can't find any evidence of my existence on google.
effugas@best.com, dankamin@cisco.com, Dan Kaminsky
It's actually somewhat disorienting, like looking at your fingertips and seeing a smooth clear reflection staring back at you...
--Dan
(Yes, this is the third time I've tried to post this. Damn Slashfilters :-)
Accusations of ego surfing will be ignored. It's always interesting to see where you came from...
--Dan
Hey,
I used to have a bunch of posts on groups.google.com but now none of my old correspondence are there. Wierd, anyone else see themselves as missing?
Douglas Calvert
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!
even some (of my own) I posted in 1985, now that's scary. And an argument (that I don't remember) from around the same time about what may have been one of the first warez postings
Usenet is a public network so anything you write there is public. If you don't like people seeing your old posts, well tough luck. Perhaps you should have thought about it before posting.
Any opinions on the new Commodore 64 computer. I've seen it and it looks pretty neat.
...
(viii) it uses the same Microsoft BASIC as the PET. They say they will have Pascal for it soon.
I'm feeling so dirty now. The C64 was the first computer I used.
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
How sweet is that? I look at the date and it is my very own birthday. Do I get a cookie?
:D
I have alot of reading to catch up on, I didn't start until 1995 or so.
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!
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.
In which case given that the archive appears to be in the USA it would appear to be trivial for any authors who object to have them taken down. (Or we get proof that the DMCA is only for corporates and thus is voided by the US constitution anyway.)
No. But I do expect other people not to make money from my postings, and I do expect that people don't engage in massive copyright violation and redistribute large collections of postings with expiration dates of a few weeks after 15 years.
If you don't like people seeing your old posts, well tough luck. Perhaps you should have thought about it before posting.
I see. And you apply the same reasoning to all copyrighted works? Microsoft shouldn't publish software if they didn't want people to pirate it?
Besides, the effect of your kind of attitude is that there is no space for informal discussions on-line without pseudonyms, because everything can be republished. That's a shame, although in 2001 it is enough of a reality that many people are using pseudonyms.
(In case you were wondering, no, I didn't post anything on USENET I have to be ashamed of. Some of my USENET postings actually got republished as printed articles. But that's not the point.)
Point #1) You have just blabbed away your right to gripe when the RIAA and MPAA attempt to time-limit your use of "their" copyrighted material.
Point #2) This very question of the copyright status of public postings has been tried and precedent has been set: Your Usenet posts aren't really copyrighted.
How do I know? When I wanted my Usenet tracks covered and DejaNews wouldn't comply, the EFF referred me to an attorney who had tried the actual precedent-setting case.
Suggestion #1) Adjust your expectations of privacy downward.
Suggestion #2) Adjust them downward once again.
Suggestion #3) Schedule monthly privacy-expectation adjustment sessions.
Psycho babble: Your posts are just as much a part of you as the events in your life. Embrace them as part of your humanity. I love you. No USENET post will ever change that.
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.
I just thank god no one seems to have archived IRC :-)
Wouldn't it be nice if schools got all the money they wanted and the army had to hold jumble sales for guns
I don't see Microsoft publishing their software on a public part of the net.
Hey Folks,
:)
A lot of fun and a great job. Christ it's a laugh to look up first mentions of things.
Why not send a little thanks to google and the folks listed on their page that THEY give thanks to. For the lazy:
comments@google.com
bjones@wmhosting.com
faq-admin@faqs.org
magi@csd.uwo.ca
Doesn't take but a few minutes... So go on and drop them a note. Probably matters more than you think
Regarding the C64:
"At $600 for 64K in the USA, I expect we'll see a lot of these"
Now I'm going to be up all night reading all 20 years of this!
Those postings were made in the expectation that they were part of an informal, temporary discussion group, not a permanent archive searchable by anybody and everybody in perpetuity.
Were your expectations set by policy or wishful thinking? I've been posting to UseNet since 1990/91 and I've never had a feeling that my comments would cease to exist. Each server in the distributed UseNet has always set its own policies, time horizons, groups to propogate, etc. When you've got thousands of those servers, each with different interests and resources, it's pretty natural to think that some of them would try to keep articles around longer than others.
AFAIK, Google's Groups function is part of USENET -- and there has never been a standard for length of cache on a USENET server.
:)
I think this is great - so much more information that can be indexed, searched, and relearned without the same old Q&A.
As for "temporary" -- no data is ever permanent: it's all a matter of perspective.
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
No. It's exactly thoughts like this that allow privacy to be eroded.
Example, do you have anything to hide? No? Well then, you won't mind me setting up a camera trained on your garden, monitoring whatever you do for 24 hours a day and sending that information to me. Same principle - what you are doing would be visible from a public location, so it's in the public domain forever, right?
What would actually happen if I did that is that you'd become less comfortable using your garden, and what was once a nice place would become a worrying place where you had to be on your guard. OK, so describing Usenet as a 'nice' place might be pushing it, but it does mean that a once useful, informal discussion area would become the a worrying location where you self-censored everything written in case of future use.
I find it ironic that the many of the people currently saying "yippee! 20 years of Usenet with no ability to delete" would be outraged if the post was about their employer logging everything they typed and storing it forever...
Cheers,
Ian
Now when I try to search for "getting rid of windows" I'll get information on getting rid of Windows 1.01?
I found it hard enough reading a huge thread of articles and noticing at the end they were talking about Red Hat 5.3 or something of the such.
On the other hand... I hope my parents never find this, because I've got lots of d rug posts. I've since changed my mind, but I was younger then (of course) and under their 'rule'
It sounds cool, but I want to boycott for some odd reason.
Get your Unix fortune now!
I found this piece from Linus' original posting on comp.os.minix pretty amusing:
;-)
"I can (well, almost) hear you asking yourselves "why?". Hurd will be
out in a year (or two, or next month, who knows), and I've already got
minix."
So, is there anyone out there who will admit to asking themselves "Why?" because of the Hurd?
Read the FAQ, or use the Automatic Removal Tool.
-dair
Those of us who read into the record, as it were, creative stuff, not keeping copies, will find it wonderful to have a chance to recover some. With
14k posts in Google Groups, I feel on the whole happy to have the chance to be embarrassed by the past... and find things lost poems.
Another question, while we're at it: It's inevitable that historians will include sometimes extended citations from Google's usenet archives in books they sell (much like Katz did for /.). Is it right that Usenet authors will contribute their ideas without their consent and without compensation from those who profit from their work? Do historians know any precedent in cases like this? I mean, I know that personal correspondence is often quoted by historians, but always after the author is dead (or explicitly gives persmission). I know usenet is not like personal correspondence, but it's not exactly like publishing, either. I'm not a social scientist, so I don't know what protocol applies here, but I'd love to hear about this from someone who does know.
Moderators: someone expressing a different opinion from you is not a "Troll".
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)
I never expected that my comments would "cease to exist": of course, there were backup tapes. However, there is a big difference between archiving them on some tape somewhere and republishing a massive database of comments 15 years after the fact.
None of that has any bearing on the question of copyrights. For example, just because TV networks broadcast stuff and lots of people tape them doesn't mean you can freely redistribute those tapes before the copyright is up.
Wish someone would mode this up, and hope others say thanks as well. These folks put some serious time in, usually unpaid, that made for a useful service then, and some great moments now.
I don't see why. First, there is a difference between personal use and commercial redistribution. Second, if the RIAA and MPAA rules are the law of the land, I expect Google to play by them as well when it comes to my content.
This very question of the copyright status of public postings has been tried and precedent has been set: Your Usenet posts aren't really copyrighted.
Oh? Would you care to share the case law?
Adjust your expectations of privacy downward.
I have, as have most other people. But the on-line world is poorer for it, because if every word is "on the record", people either post anonymously or they don't engage in informal discussions. You just can't have informal on-line conversations with friends if everything is recorded.
so now we have 20 years' worth of posts instead of just six with which employers can perform ad hoc background checks on potential employees -- their political statements, sexual practices, bad teenage poetry, etc.
sure, historical context is cool, but at what price?
Other people said they couldn't find themselves. My guess is google had some technical difficulties reindexing the archive or something, but it all seems to be there now. Try again.
I think this should be called the St. Peter Effect... you see, cuz when we go to heaven, St. Peter will Google us, and pull back everything we have ever thought, said or did - ranked by relevance or date... Just be glad that mere mortals are limited to 20 years of newsgroup postings!
BTW: If you search on my name and find stuff about LSD, it was another Chris McKinstry.
Going through the archives is certainly interesting (and embarrassing) but I was disappointed to discover that you can't go into a specific newsgroup and browse all the way back to the beginning.
If you want to find old posts (other than the 'milestones' Google has selected) you have to search for them. That's great if you know what you're searching for. Unfortunately, most of my old stuff was under a variety of pseudonyms that my alzheimers won't let me remember.
I think it would be cool to see all the messages in a group, in order, and browse through them.
The card I have is a VG-2000 by DFI
with 512kB video ram, supposed to be able to do almost anything (well
1024x768 16 colours anyway). The problem is - it doesn't.
Hey, buddy, quit bitching and just use it in VGA mode, like everybody else.
If you don't like it, why don't you just go write your own drivers? While you're at it, why don't you go write your own Operating System???
(Heh heh... Sure told him a thing-or-two...)
-- My Weblog.
I remember sizing a server in 1993 to be a news server and setting aside 350 megs for the news spool and then being pissed off when I got it because news traffic was up to 20 megs a day. The stats back then showed exponential traffic growth.
How much crap is in a typical full feed today?
boy! the kids over at google sure are pro-macintosh, aren't they... :)
P.S. I deleted all that stuff I said about your wife when I was real drunk.
-Kevin
Are you absolutely sure that you want to do this? [ny]"
-Kevin
It makes me nervous to find texts about people
having been abused and writing about it. And
that's by searching for their names and what
they've done technically the last years.
The Usenet was IMHO never as public as the web,
but had much more a private character, where people
could say what they only wanted to know certain
groups.
Just imagine, your name is well known (e.g. Linus Torvalds)
and suddenly someone who searches for it finds
texts you wanted to keep more or less private.
The famous post, i have seen it quoted so many times. So here it is in the flesh, posted by Linus Benedict Torvalds himself to comp.os.minix, 08:53:28 PST 5th October 2001. Subject: Free minix-like kernel sources for 386-AT http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&th=8ed1169d0 b48c9b8&rnum=2
I was also surprised to find my old posts out there, but no one ever promised me they'd disappear.
What you can do is (1) go to Google and find out how to request the removal of your old posts, and (2) set "X-NO-ARCHIVE" on your future posts (or something like that - Google tells you how to do that also)
I think the Usenet archives are a fascinating snapshot of history, but I can understand why a lot of people wouldn't want to see their old posts there.
I found some of my earliest postings migrated from FidoNet to the Usenet groups. My jaw dropped when I saw the domain:
My.Name@p0.f860.n6007.z87.FIDONET.ORG
No wonder when the Web hit, people wanted Short Domain Names.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
...if one could actually reply to those old postings. Esp. the one asking about MS-DOS, and if someone has more information about it. :-)
[--- PGP key and more on http://www.root42.de ---]
Here is another handy little link at google:
http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html
It gives overall search trends for the prior week, and a few more specific graphs displaying what the author thought were important sub-trends.
(Karma = auto -1)
Though this one is from May 1st...
M.
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
Gotta love those bang-path addresses converted to mailto: links!
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
If they delete all the SPAM from their databases their storage capacity would probably double it's size :o)
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
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.
are belong to us.
and this is the first AYBABTU quote I could find. One of the most important posts in the geek history, for here is where all the AYBABTU annoyance started...
What ? Me, worry ?
Many, many Usenet newsgroups have kept permanent archives over the years.
There's a header field in NNTP: X-No-Archive. It's been around for a long, long time. Google obeys it when it's present.
Just because you have no clue about Usenet's actual structure doesn't mean Google's not performing a valuable - and valued - service.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Now I can go back and read all those Minas jokes
Only oldtimers will remember Minas, I think
The silly rantings on technology...
Intel vs. Whomever...
Microsoft vs. Whomever else...
And all that silliness on rec.games.mecha...
So glad that's ... er ... changed ... and um ... behind me ...
Couldn't happen on slashdot, could it?
Nah....
Still, gotta go look up that new coal-tech battlemech I drew with ascii art, that was pretty cool :-)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Strange. You'd think google would be able to just do a select min() from their DB, though.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Man...I was just looking at some of my old posts (which I don't even remember how I made them).
I think we can have a collective opinion that when we were younger, we were a bunch of dumbasses.
When I think old Usenet, I think Serdar Argic, the prolific anti-Armenian cross-poster who was widely suspected to be a bot. Was the reality or artificiality of Argic ever definitively determined?
Makes me want to pull out my old "Howling Through The Wires World Tour" t-shirt.
-
Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
I was a grad student in English at the time and had only been using Unix for a few months—I was evidently unclear about which man section this belonged in. It's not quite as funny as I remembered it being, but it stands up reasonably well. Though an updated Litcrit with lots of new buzzwords and options is obviously needed...
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
If it's not on Google, then it doesn't exist.
www.sguil.net
The Analyst Console for NSM
This probably won't get mod'd up because it's really just a "me too" post, but...
It was SO COOL to type in my old, original email address that used when I first got Internet access. It returned almost 800 hits! I sorted the list by date and found some postings dating back to late 1993. Not too old for some, but I find it impressive!! What a blast from the past!
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
As a percentage of all the porn that exists today, it was very small. But expressed as a probability that I would be able to get my rocks off, the amount of Usenet porn in the early to mid 90's was what I would call "sufficient".
Hate trolls? Troll 'em back...at home!
Until computer networks were overrun by the multitudes, they were populated by mostly research and development sorts of folks, and the signal to noise ratio of the posts was a bit higher. But that only lasted a few minutes.
Here's one of my first posts, from 1981.
- In article <1991Apr12.185342.4699@news.iastate.edu> vancleef@iastate.edu (Van Cleef Henry H) writes:
It's amazing what a difference a decade makes.>I recently downloaded the IBM PC demo from plains to send to a Cobol
>Wizard who wants to learn Minix and build a Cobol compiler for it.
Right. And don't forget about Ada - we need that too. And, oh let's see now, perhaps a good relational database system....
The possibilities boggle the mind, chill the blood, call for a stiff drink, and make one check the calender to see April what, now?
John Nall
I mean, I'd love to know my great-great-great-great-grandchildren will be able to know through the USENET archives that I lived in a world where I could see BARELY LEGAL TEENS on THEIR WEBCAMS! Or that I could MAKE $50,000 in 10 WEEKS! Or I could have VIAGRA shipped to MY DOOR for REALLY LOW PRICES!
Technology's amazing, ain't it?
There is no escape from The Muffin.
So I take it I cant keep my personal record of archived posts on certain newsgroups over the past few years because you didnt mean them to be archived.
First mention of Bill Gates
First one who want to kill Bill Gates
First mention of Linux by Linus Torvalds
The main use for this is to demonstrate to the youngsters the greatest troll of all time
-- the most controversial site on the Web
Sonofabitch. You don't say. And when exactly was that first documented?
I was dissapointed that the time line didn't cover any of the antics on alt.religion.scientology which lead to a great deal of lawsuits. And IIRC, ended in some pretty scary pre-DCMA descisions being made.
Myddrin
The advantage of the internet, its immediacy, is its greatest shortcoming. Homepages, email, and message postings evaporate faster than newspaper pulp in this electronic world. At least with newspapers and other artifacts, there is an effort to save them. But as servers close down or move, homepages change and email is deleted, everything we create here will disappear.
So what is needed is some museum or library of the internet. It should save both in hardcopy and on servers, samples of first homepages and other content of the net deemed important. It will be a huge undertaking, but so were real museums and libraries.
The first announcement of perl 1.0 is here . Patches (a new concept!) followed shortly after that.
-Wayne
Just think, 10 or 15 years from now, maybe slashdot will be long gone and someone will make the old archives available. Then you can gripe about how your rant on slashdot was intended to be part of an informal, temporary discussion group, not meant for the public domain.
That will give you something to do every decade or so, perhaps you can work on applying for that copyright in the meantime.
Oh great, I'm so proud that my Elvis Lamp posting in the Friends newsgroup will be preserved for posterity.
Stop whining. You posted your comments to a PUBLIC forum. The fact that someone has found a way to make money off of a archive of public messages does not give you any kind of legitimate grievance. There's nothing stopping you from doing the same thing if you wanted to. If you really feel so strongly that your copyright has been infringed, put your money where your mouth is and file a copyright infringement suit against Google.
If you spray-painted a bunch of grafitti around your town, then someone came around and took pictures of it and published a coffee table book of your art, you would have a VERY hard time convincing a court that you were due a cent. While IANAL, I would be suprised if there was not ample precedent saying that by placing your original work in a public forum you are releasing it to the public domain.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Think of the server storage space they'd gain if they deleted these posts.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
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
but still, I'm sure there's some doozies in there . . .
hawk
I've seen plenty of people complain about the fact that they could find their old posts. Is there anyone else out there like me who couldn't find any old posts? I made plenty of usenet posts in my day, but you would never know it by searching google for them. I am sure that some of my old posts are better off forgotten, but I remember some of them were pretty good too. Wah.
More Star Wars Questions
;)
Some guy discussing how Darth Vader can't be Luke Skywalker's father in 1982, mentions how they named TK-421 differently in the book vs the movie. Woo.
"TK-421, why aren't you at your post?"
Hi . . . but I think I've got you beat by a couple of months with this link.
Wanna cup of Prior Art?
I did a search for some of my old email addresses. After reading old posts, I've come to the conclusion that I've actually gotten stupider over the years. I blame all the beer I drank during the dot-com years.
_______
2B1ASK1
Your words will come back to haunt you.
My first Usenet posts were in early 1996, looking for possible sources for a high school project. A later post showed how much of an ignorant Windows user I was, bashing the fuck out of Mac users.
Funny, now I own no computers running Windows, use a Mac exclusively, and my home NAT box is a Linux box.
My, how 6 years of using computers have changed me.
--Bernie
Hmm. This looks really scary:
http://info.net.uni-c.dk/newsstat/newsfeed/www/
Or is there some unknown magic to interpreting these numbers?
I'm glad ya'll are enjoying it. Google no longer shows any of the Usenet postings I've made (except for one), which is funny because I posted all of them using Google. It's strange, but I'll get over it. I just wish I knew why I wasn't important enough to archive ^^;;
[o]_O
...google were a publicly traded stock. It is things like this that make me want to invest in a company that I believe is doing a good job at what they do.
Google provides me with a tool that helps me in my job, allowing me to search for fixes to problems that I run into. No other service provides me with the flexibility and capability that google provides.
If I could purchase stock in this company I would purchase it in a heartbeat.
If you want a temporary, informal discussion, set up your own SILC server, and ask your friends not to log. Otherwise, quit whining.
you, btw, did a great joob too!
you effectively subscribed these guys to couple more spamlists...
What are you trying to say?
You just can't have informal on-line conversations with friends if everything is recorded.
Google's latest release of old usenet postings had me laughing and hooting like a crazy ape. 1984 was a hell of a year for me. I was a quarter century old, and still a damned idiot.
Don't walk around with a stick up your butt... I just don't care who is listening in anymore.
Oh yes, I am a crazy ape.
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)
I went looking for a couple of long-lost messages, but they are clearly not in the archive. Search for "Bean-Hill-Influence Lad", a parody of a bad comic book called the Legion of Super Heroes, and you will find quite a few messages quoting and discussing the original post, but no copy of the original.
Similarly, I looked for the original discussion of the resemblance of Star Trek's Ferengi to traditional anti-Semitic stereotypes in sf-lovers, and found that it is also not extant in the archives.
It worries me that the two messages I went looking for are both not present, in that it seems to imply quite a few holes in the archive. Still, perhaps I can be content with the 8,280 posts containing my name.
Tim Maroney
the first USENET censorship case
I helped Osama bin Laden fix a problem with his Megahertz PCMCIA modem... The terrorists won way back then:
e %22&hl=en&rnum=7&selm=315d73a8.3864303%40news.esca pe.com
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22sean+burbidg
Mmmm... Pistol Whip...
At least 1996. I thought longer, but maybe I was wrong. Anyway, this is the earliest reference I could find: a post on Google which quotes all of a post that talks about this header.
I did find a couple of apparent posts from 1995 that appeared to refer to the header.
It's not in any RFCs, but there haven't been any Usenet RFCs really since the '80s.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
Thanks a million, Google!
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
And I seemed smarter than I remember being. Most odd.
Jessica "Eaten By A Bengal Tiger" Cohen, if you're reading this, go make some toast and stop wasting time online. GUMBY BRAIN SURGERY!!
Mr. Ska
with all the nostalgia from three years ago. If I read one more post about how "young and innocent" someone was when they were 16 (IN 1998!) I'm going to bust a seam...
First Drudge Report
I remember our school made a big deal about this... Ok, it was just our dept.. :)
:)
Basically the Oxford English Dictionary added an entry for spam to include Spam as it relates to the internet. They said that students in the Computer Science department at the University of Southern California first made the association with the Hormel Meat Product as a way to describe e-mail. I can't remember the exact way it was worded, it was too long ago. But the fact that my dept actually got credit for it was cool
Now we can have ascii movies of pOrn! Now where was that tape...
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
I know its not perfect, but if you dont want your posts on usenet to show up, you can ask google to take them down.
Im not sure why one would want to do this, as this archive is a great resource for all kinds of things. Is it better to have it there or not?
I've been reading Douglas Adams since I was in speech club. Cool huh?
to alt.fan.douglas.adams
what a dumbass...
YES, there is a McDonald's in Hanoi Square.
Looking at the context, they are claiming that lots of people answered, yet Google only keeps 5 posts in the thread.
It seems that the archives are very incomplete.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
I wish Lucas & Co. would get the thing going a little faster. I can't really imagine waiting until 1997 to see all nine parts of the Star Wars series.
--circa 1982
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 can't seem to find the thread:
"I AM ELEET! SEND ME WAREZ" or I will get medevial on your ass!
I'm not sure how "eleet" was spelled, I think it predated 31337 or whatever.
All I want is just to re-read one little thread and they can't even get that right.
Computers. hrrmph.
Hey, maybe we can form a club of all the people who actually posted to that thread, assuming there was more than two of usand just just a lot of aliases.
I'm pretty sure I get to take the credit for that one - something like it would certainly have existed eventually, but this is the earliest discussion (by ~5 months) that even mentions anything like it, even if I did suggest it as X-NoArchive instead.
I just wish I'd saved the original email as well.
fencepost
just a little off
but /. didn't let me write:
What?? no caps???
AlL iN CaPs
How about:
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog it's too dark to read. - Groucho Marx
You missed my attempt at sarcasm. Some people are complaining about having all their stuff back to 1981 available and the response was about the x-no-archive header. Well, as you said, it wasn't created until 1995 or so, so people posting before that date have no means or choice on whether to let them live on or not.
and sort it by date, old to new?
YES, there is a McDonald's in Hanoi Square.
I could be wrong (I, too, am not a lawyer) but I'm pretty sure, in Canada at least, everything is by default copywrited - you have to _explicitly_ state otherwise.
"Sanity is not statistical", George Orwell, "1984"
Except that Google has a take-down link. You can contact them to have your stuff removed.
Also, there were archives even back in 1981. This isn't new: it's just that the web makes it easier to access.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
So, with so much of our past now logged, will this be the "I didn't inhale" of the Teens and '20s?
"Why yes, I did occasionally scan alt.pictures.binaries.bestiality, but I didn't *download* anything..."
______
Once: you're a philosopher. Twice: a pervert.
Date: 21 November 1982 05:51-EST
From: "James Lewis Bean, Jr."
Subject: The Corvus Concept
Does anyone have anything good to say about one of these machines?
I went to see one at a "Computer Store" and seemed to know moreabout the machine than the sales people did, oh well. It looks great! The price is great. The problem seems to be there is no documentation on the software that exists. And there doesn't appear to be much software for it.
For those of you who do not know what a corvus concept is...
The concept is an under $5K workstation.
68000 based with 256K standard.
15 inch 35mhz video
Bit mapped 720x560 display.
120x56 in landscape mode
90x72 in portrait mode
Two serial ports.
One omninet interface (1mbps serial rs422)
Detached Keyboard with lots of extra keys.
Anyone know where I can get unix for it?
I was one of the first dozen or so Americans to log into an "open" BBS in Moscow (and, AFAIK, the whole Soviet Union) back in the late 1980s in a direct phone hookup, after I heard about it on Relay.
I've noticed quite a few of the old posts and threads from the late 1980s are just plain missing. A bunch of the old sf-lovers stuff, for example.
More importantly, here's the first mention of Natalie Portman .
Personally, I think this is the coolest thing ever. History will never be the same. To be able to go back and re-live events and discussions is like going back in time. It's incredible.
was the crossposting flamewars between a.p.t.e and a.d.t.e (alt.destroy.the.earth). The pavers just wanted everything turned to asphalt for their driving pleasure, while the destroyers seemed to be much more creative in finding ways to totally obliterate the planet. Every now and then they'd start arguing. Very amusing. And then alt.devilbunnies would somehow get in the middle of it and things just went wierd from there :)
Yeah, thought about that. But these addresses were on the web in that form already and you have to beleive if google links from one of their pages to these then they'd be crawled anyways.
perhaps you can work on applying for that copyright in the meantime.
I am pretty sure that you dont apply for copyright, it just happens. So, if I create a song, and put it down someplace in some sort of form (on audio cassette, or written in musical notation) then it is copyrighted. You might actually have to put a copyright notice on the piece of information to make it copyrighted, but you dont have to 'apply' for it like you do a patent. I may be wrong though, im not a lawyer..
Zeno
Do you understand that UseNet exists entirely because articles are COPIED from server to server and kept around as long as possible? There's nothing centralized; by the time you read a posted article, it has been COPIED many many many times and exists on many servers simultaneously, for as long as each server cares to keep it around. That might be forever. In any, case UseNet relies on COPYING articles (not propogating them, like e-mail for example). Google Groups is a great place to get UseNet articles from -- it's currently the strongest node for UseNet content and I'm happy about it.
Tell me about it, that message delayed my first posting to USENET by 4 years.
Oi! Wow! I just did an ego-search and boy was that embarrassing...
I found some posts from November 1992, three months after getting my very first UNIX account!! (I must remember to make a note about that, it's soon to be ten years since, so some celebration is in order). I believe I asked for Calvin & Hobbes graphics in rec.arts.comics.misc. And later, I asked for a scanned copy of the Einstürzende Neubauten logo, hmmm, in the wrong group.
Two years later, the WWW started forming. I wasn't very impressed. You could actually have sort of a map of the thing in your head. It was so small, only a couple of hundred places to go, and not very well connected. Mosaic was the thing to use. It didn't use a cache so it was painfully slow. Everyone put their "hotlists" on the web (things hasn't changed very much, have they?).
The World Wide Web Worm! Does anyone remember that one? That was the first search engine that I came across.
Then everything exploded, the web expanded even more and many places went commercial. Later everybody merged and went bankrupt. Now it just stinks.
It's 11pm, do you know what your deamons are up to?
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Ive thought about this for a bit, and I do not think you are right at all.
When you posted to USENET, you knew that the message you were typing was going to be copied to many many newsgroup servers out there. Im pretty sure when you did post that you didn't get any message that said this post will not be archived.
So, when you posted a message, it was copied to many many different servers. Back then, did they ask you if it was ok if they did this? No, it was part of the usenet system, and everyone that was using *should* know what is going to happen.
And anohter thing. Your second sentance "Those postings were made in the expectation that..."
Maybe your expectation was different then my expectation. Maybe I expected these posts to be here 15 years down the road. What im trying to get at, is its your fault for expecting something that wasn't explicitly said. Do you go to mcdonalds, and when you get your big mac meal, do you bitch because you EXPECTED a 5 star meal?
Now, when you get into this legality thing. Who said that those posts were part of a TEMPORARY DISTROBUTION? Who defines temporary. Maybe temporary means 30 years, maybe it means 10 seconds. Temporary is a relative term needs some more defining before labelling it as a 'set amount of time'. So, I wonder where you are getting this legally part from. I am not a lawyer myself, but I doubt if you were to say, "I EXPECTED this to be temporary" that would not get far in court.
This leads me to my last question. What on earth do you not want people to see? You know by asking this, us curious folks are gonna look you up just to see what your trying to hide. Anyway, I feel that you had made some bad assumptions back in the day, and you are mad that your assumptions did not turn out right. I may be wrong in all this, as I was not really posting to usenet until about 1990, so im not sure how they portrayed all this stuff prior to then. I can say when I posted in 1990 I didn't think that usenet would go away, and my posts would just disappear, I EXPECTED them to be there 10 years down the road. And they are =).
Zeno
Shocking, but true - thousands of first posts are being cast into the oblivion on a daily basis.
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.
this is the earliest message I can find, but I know there's been earlier ones...
c or ing=d&as_drrb=b&as_mind=17&as_minm=5&as_miny=1990& as_maxd=11&as_maxm=10&as_maxy=1991&rnum=4&selm=199 1Oct5.054106.4647%40klaava.Helsinki.FI
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=linux&hl=en&s
What do you think of EULAs that say, "By opening this package, you agree to all the terms and conditions contained herein," without knowing SQUAT about what the terms and conditions say? No one is clairvoyant, and no one posting back in 1984 had even an inkling that the messages they posted would become part of a massive, easily-searchable archive. It's one thing to tell someone the rules first, and then let them decide if they want to participate, but don't change the rules mid-game and expect them to blindly accept it.
Some of my early technical group postings are there, but my early recreational stuff on rec.arts.comics is all missing -- that group doesn't appear to be archived before 1989.
I also sent in a correction; Cantor & Seigel were the first commerical all groups spam, but not the first all groups spam, that occurred in Jan 1994 with Clarence Thomas IV, "Global Alert for All"
I've just spent the whole morning reading usenet posts relating to significant events in US history of the past 20 years. Fascinating stuff.
Reading through some of the debates which raged at the time of the US bombing of Libya are particularly intriguing, mainly because of the parallels to the current situation with bin Laden and the Taliban (eg here). (For those not familiar with the history, the US launched an airstrike on Libya in retaliation to a terrorist bomb attack in a German disco which killed two US servicemen. It later turned out that probably Syrian or Iranian terrorists and not Libyan ones were responsible for the attack). The arguments put forward by both sides are almost identical to the current ones (eg these guys arguing over whether the Reagan administration really has evidence of Libya's involvement, or this guy comparing people who comdemn the bombings to Nazi appeasers in 1930s Europe). Hmm, spooky stuff.
OK, enough of the silly unimportant searches.
Where's the FIRST mention of goatse.cx?
That person = internet king.
:-)
Not the public domain (a concept which has very little legal meaning in the USA anymore), but you're probably granting an implicit license to redistribute without restrictions. As for "expires:" headers, these are not a contract as they've always had merely an "advisory" role in the actual code that runs Netnews.
As for people complaining about Google making money of their postings... well, Google doesn't, at least not directly. Note that there are no ads on Google Groups. Anyway, you could level the same complaint against web search engines in general... who are they to make money of my homepage?
WOW! I went and looked and found postings from my self starting in 1982... Some of it was really weird. Based on my postings I am not the same person I was 20 years ago. At least the things that matter have changed.
Stonewolf
For me, the Usenet is a way for me to look back on college and what a stupid idot I was back then. All the embarrassment -- and the funny stuff -- is now back online.
My wife is really flustered. She refuses to let me read what she wrote back then. I did anyway, and honestly, it's no stranger than some of my rants.
First time I met the woman who would become my wife, she was talking about how she had the "Internet" thing. I mentioned I was a minor-minor Usenet celeb. Turns out she read my posts.
The Usenet also was responsible for my first online girlfriend, my first (and last) dotcom job, and a few other embarrassing moments. Reading it is like reading your high school journals -- you find that you have changed, but the things you don't like about yourself haven't changed at all.
Yes, in the US everything is copyrighted by default the moment it is created. However, I suspect that publishing your work in an uncontrolled public forum would be considered an explicit relinquishment of your copyright, especially if you did not include an explicit copyright notice to the contrary.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Who can find the oldest extant BIFF posting?
I have this one from 1989.
But this one in late 1988 refers to BIFF.
According to this, BIFF was originally created by Joe Talmadge , also the author of the infamous and much-plagiarized "Flamer's Bible". The BIFF filter he wrote was later passed to Richard Sexton [q.v.], who posted BIFFisms much more widely
BIFF (not B1FF) was created by Joe Talmadge (of "Ten Rules for Flaming" fame) of HP in 1988. Joe posted three postings by BIFF from his account, and shortly after Richard Sexton began sending out BIFF@BIFF.NET postings for about a year until he lost interest.
I can't find the original 1988 Talmadge postings on Google. I've tried various versions (and MISPELINGZ) of the BIFF addresses.
Da Blog
A friend of mine and I were competing on who did the first usenet post, before today he had won this by a few days, but now I'm off by more than 1.5 years: 04.04.94 vs 24.12.95 :-)
Good ol' Fidonet.
my first post -1988-11-02 - BEAT IT.
Over 10 years ago Linus said this:
"I can (well, almost) hear you asking yourselves "why?". Hurd will be out in a year (or two, or next month, who knows)"
10 years have passed since those words were uttered. Where is Hurd? "Oh, it's coming! just wait for it!"
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
Couldn't resist...
Mr Malda learns about Linux?
You already know that people are going to Google you. Save them the trouble by doing what I did -- tell them about the skeletons in your closet. Remember, it can't be used to blackmail you if it's already public record...
I think we should all take this time to re-read the tanenbaum v. torvalds debate. It speaks more then anything else. Tanenbaum speaks like every CS professor I have ever had, "This new tech will change everything". In the end it changes nothing, the new tech gets pulled in to the old or is quickly discarded. The debate is classic, Infact I have seen this renacted in community theater (read: Univerity computer class) more then once. Each time the professor is dead set he's right, and proven wrong in history.
I guess the old addage still holds true: "Those who can do, those who cant teach"
I wish Lucas & Co. would get the thing going a little faster. I can't really imagine waiting until 1997 to see all nine parts of the Star Wars series.
neither can I.
It really stirred some memories to read about the first rumours about Amiga, written in 1984. So weird that I can now read postings that speculate about computer that I didn't even see myself until two years later, and I definitely didn't even know about Usenet back then. Now, if only some company would put all the Games Machines, Computer & Video Games, ZZAP 64 etc. magazines online as eg. PDFs, I could start living totally in the past. ;) (I have quite a few of all those, but scattered around here, around my parents house etc...) Geez, I'd really like to see all those Mercy Dash comic strips that I have possibly missed.
Everyone who makes generalizations should be shot.
It seems that Google Groups can become an interesting resource (or one that can haunt you from the past) for more than your own postings, see this article on John Walker's postings.
Within 15 minutes people are talking about calling the FBI, and later other people forward it to their postmasters, etc.
As has been said before, the social consequences of this history can be utmostly harmful. Think of all of the ways that this can be used to destroy privacy, beyond just the job sphere. Who is going to be wrongfully accused of actions based on their past rants? Who is going to be the next victim of our government's domestic terrorism/COINTELPRO raid? How many of you are facing your past angst, anger, fear and rebellion where looking back feels like you are watching "Welcome to the Dollhouse" once again?
When i started posting on Usenet, it never dawned on me that it would be accessible beyond my beloved geek community. I was too young to consider what the differences between public and private are. And besides, what physical public spaces are recorded, searchable and everpresent? There's a certain value to the ephemeral aspect of the public sphere.
How is this data going to be used in the future? We already know that our messages are valuable, as Deja made millions. As data is becoming more and more aggregated, who is going to use these posts for what purposes? Do you really want your archived messages to be factored into your current reputation?
I am fully well aware that the removal of posts destroys the value of the archive. It's exactly that reason that i would encourage everyone to entertain themselves and then purge the past. Deja respected our pasts by only archiving forward; make it clear to Google that we expect the same level of social responsibility. It may be funny right now, but it may not be so humorous when you have no control over your information and must continue to pay for your past.
Now I can see all my old porn posts. I feel so ashamed.
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58.0% slashdot corrupt
They do ... Green Card Lottery- Final One?
I never had Usenet in my youth. I had Fidonet keeping me off the streets and out of the sun. I wish they could pull 20 years of all Fidonet postings out of a hat but those babies are gone.
To look over my immature rantings would be bliss. Maybe some of my insights I could publish as a coffee table book and make money there, but instead I'll have to trawl this new usenet archive looking for anything I can sell to the tabloids.
PRAEst76
the hyperlink to the first mention of AOL even.
i remember 3 years ago searching back through ancient posts on dejanews.
;)
then google brought the archive (well over a year ago) and took it down the majority of it. this is not something new, it's just that they have FINALLY put it all back up again.
in fact dejanews.com is still a valid url (but points straight to groups.google)
& IMHO the deja search and viewing pages we much better
I am posting this (30 times) for the same reason why I do not want people to be able to read my posts from ten years ago. Damn, I was an idiot...
PS: I am compiling mysql 3.23.44 on a pII 200, so I have time to burn