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

Comments

Yes!

[Skyshadow]

Awright! Just think of all the old porn that awaits my eager stare! No sleep for me tonight.

Re:Yes!

[jackal!]

Awright! Just think of all the old porn that awaits my eager stare!

Yeah, all the porn in ASCII...

That darn Google...

[edashofy]

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 :)

Re:That darn Google...

[aussersterne]

*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.]

Re:That darn Google...

[tetrad]

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 ... Then, as soon as the sun comes up, I'm heading downtown to change my name.

Good news for reformed pricks, you don't have to change your name! Google lets you remove your articles from its archive.

(Of course, the articles may still be in some other archive...)

Re:That darn Google...

[eXtro]

Being able to remove your own articles from a public forum beyond the "Oh shit! I hope I can cancel that before it propogates" devalues the archive and makes me lose a lot of respect for the people behind google.com. I've posted things I wish I wouldn't have on usenet before. Big deal. There was a bit of embarassment when my dad discovered how to search for my name on groups.google.com, but there were a lot more things that he was proud of. He didn't necessarily understand them, but he could see that they were well received.

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.

Hmmmmm....

[GoRK]

So that means that this is currently THE first post!

What the Timeline Missed...

[jackal!]

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.

well, I just submitted this, soo....

[Anthony Boyd]

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.

Wow

[jpatters]

Now I can browse all of my anti-Mac rantings from the comfort of my Powerbook G4.

Straight to the point

[squaretorus]

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!

Lesseee Here!

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Every post from alt.pave.the.earth
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.

A trip down Slashdot memory lane

[IntelliTubbie]

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

Can Google be declared historic landmark?

[Anthony Boyd]

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.

Oldest one

[Legion303]

From: bl3003@arpa
Subject: Booya!
Date: Jan 01, 1981
Newsgroups: alt.flame,arpanet.general

First Post!

--

Ah, those were the days.

-Legion

some thoughts about it in comparison to ./

[dario_moreno]

like almost everyone else, I typed my "real name"...and found 293 articles dating back
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 ./, anonymity and disguise
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.

!mcvax!moskvax!kremvax!chernenko

[wirefarm]

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

Re:!mcvax!moskvax!kremvax!chernenko

[Dahan]

Well the original kremvax (in the post you refer to) was an April Fool's joke... although when the USSR did get on the Internet years later, someone named a machine kremvax in tribute :)

Say thanks

[augustz]

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 :)

Re:Disaster waiting to happen

[IntelliTubbie]

Just imagine if someone creates alt.history.usenet_archive that would contain the archive of all usenet messages (including alt.history.usenet_archive, (including alt.history.usenet_archive, (including alt.history.usenet_archive, (including alt.history.usenet_archive ...)))) ...

There's an easy solution: just create an archive of all archives that do not contain themselves. Oh wait ... stupid set theory.

Cheers,
IT

Re:ok, so how do we delete our posts?

[dair]

Read the FAQ, or use the Automatic Removal Tool.

-dair

St. Peter Effect

[mindpixel]

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.

Hey, Linus -

[wirefarm]

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...)

Spoiler Alert!

[fastdecade]

It should be safe to read these now :-)

• Return of the Jedi Spoiler
• ET Spoiler
• Cocoon Spoiler
• Ultima II Spoiler
• BTF Spoiler

I FOUND IT!

[someone_took_my_nick]

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

A bunch of collective dumb-asses

[Sabalon]

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.

Re:massive copyright violation

[Tassach]

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.

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.

First (and only?) post by Bill Gates

[toast-]

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