Slashdot Mirror
How Google Saved USENET
Masem writes: "Salon has a well-written article article on the recent revival of much of the USENET archives from '81 to '90 by Google. It mentions that much of the recovery was thanks to years of work in transferring data off 140-some 10" magnetic tapes (~120megs of data) to a more conventional format in order to recover much of the early posts. Even a reference to the previous Slashdot story is made." Update: 01/07 23:52 GMT by T : btempleton adds: "O'Reilly Network asked me to do an article on similar themes and rememberances of USENET history." Thanks, Brad.
--Chag
--Chag
they recovered the first post ever?
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Sig
Who made backups of Usenet. I want them fired.
years of work in transferring data off 140-some 10" magnetic tapes
;)
That means at least one person spent several DAYS PER TAPE???
Even punch tape 'd faster than that.
Ye Gods!
The modern slashdot nerd trembles in the presence of those ancient USENET nerds of old
A 300 pound slashdot weakling is easily flung aside by the 500 pound USENET god. Who at slashdot keeps taped archives of every post for the nerds of future generations? Truly those were nerds.
i'm a tad concerned about the posts i made in the early 90's when i was an asshole know it all teenager coming back to haunt me... i wish google never uncovered those... i cringe when i read them now...
We must not forget to give credit to Al Gore, the USENET inventor, and the man with the initiative to restore the archives.
Thanks, Al.
In a major university, and I decided to honor his
.. alt.emacs, here I come.
soul and follow his foot steps.
And now, thanks to google, I find myself battling
the flame wars he started.
Better go back and do him and VI and honor
The first "me too" post isn't until two years into the archive. I suppose that says something about the intelligence of the usenet demographic back then.
--
OK, maybe in the 80s there wasn't so much crap, but for the vast majority of it, archiving USENET is like keeping your old toilet paper.
Three tapes for rec.singles desperate
Seven for alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork
Nine for comp.sci compiling late
One for Google's engine dark
In their Linux cluser where the shadows lie.
One engine to search them all, one engine to bind them
One engine to index them all and in the darkness find them
In Google's cluster where the shadows lie.
Carousel is a lie!
How Slashdot Saved Salon
Here is what the first post said:
Hi! How are you?
I send you this file in order to have your advice.
See you later! Thanks
google really should put the Oh How I envy American Students usenet posts in the timeline.
... I was a member of Team OS/2!!! Where is that URL to get postings deleted?
C8H10N4O2 | Developer > Code
I found some 7-8 year old posts I made when I was a teenager. I can't believe how cocky I was, and how poorly I wrote. Very few people ever replied to my posts, and I now understand why. I even found a "me too" (well, almost) post from myself. Wow, that's scary.
I appologize to the whole slashdot community for my teen cockiness in the mid 90's. I didn't mean what I said the way I said it...at least looking back.
One good way to find your old posts is to search for your (old?) email address.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
From a Phil Karn comment in November, 1988...
5. Making the source code generally available is perhaps *the* best way to prod the vendors into fixing *lots* of holes in their systems, not just the ones exploited by the worm.
Face it, we all know how vendors behave -- everyone does the least work possible, subject to the vocalness of their customers' demands. Several people have already stated that they knew of the hole in sendmail for many years and they just chalked it up to the net being composed of benign people. Since it wasn't generally known (I didn't know about it, for example) there was no general cry to fix it, and it lay open long enough for Morris to come along and exploit it.
6. I found it ironic to read that the elder Morris recently submitted a paper on UNIX security for publication, but his employer squelched it. Who knows what was in that paper? Perhaps, just perhaps, maybe it contained a description of the hole in sendmail, among other things. Perhaps, just perhaps, Robert Jr., learned of this hole from his dad. Perhaps if that paper had been published, people would have taken steps to protect themselves before the younger Morris had unleashed his worm.
In sum: SECURITY THROUGH OBSCURITY JUST DOESN'T WORK!
Looking at the history, the first big Usenet spams came at exactly the wrong time- and it badly twisted the subsequent development of the Web.
Spam hurt Usenet by ruining it as a tourist destination right as mass tourism to the Web began. Long-time Usenet users couldn't recommend it to new Internet users ( "Really its a great place, just ignore the trash and the noise and don't give your name because you'll get a zillion ugly mails afterward" doesn't work as tourist advice). And for existing users, reading Usenet meant wading through muck, and then with address harvesting starting, a muck filled mailbox. Between this and the constant interruption of irrelevant ads, people were driven out, the extra traffic made Usenet a burden to ISPs, old users went elsewhere, new users never came. While the rest of the web exploded, Usenet started its long fade.
Arguing alternate history here, but if mass Spam had hit much earlier or later, the damage wouldn't have been as bad, both to Usenet or to the Web overall. Had it been much earlier, perhaps the cancelbots and other technology responses to spam would've been well developed by the time the mass tourism started. "let's ignore the problem and go somewhere else" isn't a solution when there is no 'else' to go to. Had it been much later, higher adoption rates for Usenet (as a % of all Web demand) would mean companies would need to take the Usenet model into account: people might've expected/demanded better spam solutions, more cross-website communications, and less walled-gardens. People would've been less likely to accept 'the only protection you'll get is to stop posting and come to our walled-garden web discussion group' as a solution. Ditto with the loss of shell accounts and open relays.
My prediction: Never.
/engr students were dorks.
Back when usenet was where the action was, (before http), all the future politicians were in law school. And the law school students were way off on the other side of the campus, and thought the compsci
And now, the only people that still post on Usenet are...
Personally, I gave up on Usenet in the early 90's, after following the Clipper Chip debate on comp.org.eff.talk all summer.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox