Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

How the Wayback Machine Works

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the very-big-hard-drive dept.

tregoweth writes: "O'Reilly has an interview with Brewster Kahle about how The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine works, with lots of juicy details about how the biggest database ever built works."

9 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Successfully crashed by SilentChris · · Score: 3, Funny

    Ok, we have successfully Slashdotted the Wayback Machine. Screw history! :) Let's move on to bigger and better things.

  2. Ewwwww! by NeoTron · · Score: 3, Funny

    And I thought I'd erased all my old embarrassing HTTP handywork....until I discovered my old website nicely archived - bleargh!

    Ah hell, may as well keep it there - it's even got my old web-based Curriculum Vitae on it too - perhaps in some way I've now been "immortalised"?? :)

    I've not touched HTML ever since those first abortive attempts I made 5 years ago, cause I realise now that I'm pretty crap at it - I'll stick to Unix admin, what I know best ;)

  3. OS - Original Slash by SanLouBlues · · Score: 2, Funny

    Wow! You really weren't trying too hard back in the day, were you Taco?
    :)

  4. They haven't got http://web.archive.org/ by Rentar · · Score: 5, Funny

    They don't seem to think the history of their site would be interesting: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://web.archive.or g/ lredirects you to their index.html! boring!

    Now, that would really be a test for their apps. Same as if Google indexed www.google.com (entirely).

  5. What? by Ezubaric · · Score: 2, Funny

    I thought it was going to tell us how Mr. Peabody's wayback machine worked. You know, like the flux capacitor diagrams that made everything clear . . .

    --

    ----------
    I am an expert in electricity. My father held the chair of applied electricity at the state prision.
  6. Pretty amazing ... by CDWert · · Score: 4, Funny

    Id say is pretty amazing, I actually was able to retreive content I thought lost years ago.

    My sites go back to 95, and yep theyre archived starting 96, this is too cool.

    I wonder how much of the goverments docs that were pulled off post Sept 11 are still on this ?

    A really funny note is it seems like all the p0rn is intact staring in 96, gotta archive the porn.

    But seriously , I was unaware of this, Im gonna use this thing like hell as a sales tool if nothing else. Its also great to find certain content thats been pulled.

    --
    Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
  7. Noooooooooo !!! by morzel · · Score: 5, Funny
    Please please please please do _NOT_ google it... It was embarassing enough when google acquired dejanews, and put the old usenet archives on-line. :-)
    I just visited some sites from which I hoped that they dissappeared completely from cyberspace. The only defense I've got now are the old cryptic URLs of these monstrosities... Indexing that database would be a disaster, especially with an unusual name like mine...
    (Yes, I was stupid enough to use my real name ;-)
    Damn you, wayback :p

    --
    Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
    [Zappa]
  8. Biggest ever? I don't think so! by Proud+Geek · · Score: 4, Funny

    I once worked on a site with a 25 year old database that was much larger.

    The ancient magnetic storage took up several warehouses. Beat that, for biggest database ever!

    --

    Even Slashdot wants to hide some things

  9. You know what is SAD? by dood · · Score: 3, Funny

    Slashdot looks the exact same it did 5 years ago!

    WHEN is this site going to be updated? Forget the wayback machine, if I want ancient web history I visit slashdot.

    --Dood