Google Flips Back to Groups Beta (Again)

Email masking... by JPriest · 2004-12-06 02:07 · Score: 5, Insightful

What would be so bad about Email masking?

--
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.

Re:Email masking... by Progman2000 · 2004-12-06 02:17 · Score: 5, Informative

For one thing, it breaks PGP signatures. May be minor, but it *can* be irritating.
Re:Email masking... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 02:18 · Score: 0

What's wrong with it? Now you have no idea who is who. Its just a bunch of random names. Now you have no way of knowing which John Smith is which since everyone has the same name. So when Joe Bob says he has a problem and then another Joe Bob posts in the same newsgroup you won't be able to tell who is who. Names in the same message has at least have different colors I assume?
Re:Email masking... by turnstyle · 2004-12-06 02:18 · Score: 4, Informative

What would be so bad about Email masking?
On occasion, it can be very useful to try and contact somebody that had a similar problem, but a while ago. (ie, the thread is long since inactive)
And I doubt that hiding those emails will have much practical impact on getting less spam. (people often use NOSPAM type emails anyway)

--
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
Re:Email masking... by Lxy · 2004-12-06 02:21 · Score: 4, Insightful

What would be so bad about Email masking?

Every so often I need info a thread that has gone dormant. Since a reply to the thread won't get a response, it sometimes makes sense to e-mail the author(s) directly. I have done this a few times, and even though sometimes the thread is almost 2 years old, I still get useful replies.

I agree that public listings of e-mail addresses is a good way to get spam, but it is useful enough that I hate to see it completely removed.

--

There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Re:Email masking... by HeghmoH · 2004-12-06 02:22 · Score: 4, Insightful

It's bad for two reasons. First, you're changing the contents of the post without notification and without the consent of the author. Second, e-mail masking can cause problems with false positives. For example, in Objective-C, there are several keywords that start with @, such as @interface. Some archives of Objective-C mailing lists have e-mail blockers, and so you see weird stuff like:
<E-MAIL REMOVED> MyClass : NSObject { .... }
I doubt if Google's e-mail blocker will be that stupid, but you never know what kinds of false positives it could find.

There is also no purpose to it. Every single post ever made to usenet has already been harvested by spammers, so what's the issue with making them public?

--
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Re:Email masking... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 02:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

The bad thing about e-mail masking is that it makes it hard to send mail to an author who has put an unmunged email address on their messages. These authors have put their mail addresses on a public forum (or decided to mung their addresses themselves, or put an invalid address) so why should Google go out of their way to "protect" people that don't want to be protected?

I've received mail before from people who have found a post of mine on Google groups and wanted to ask me a quick question and I've always been happy to respond.... Why should google stop those people from mailing me in the future?
Re:Email masking... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 02:35 · Score: 0

Programatically filtering email, while processing it through an interpret is a VERY bad idea.

I'd laugh my ass off if someone used sprintf to print, and interpret the text of an email message while filtering it. Same goes for Object-C's processing.

Do not interpret that which you cannot trust.
Re:Email masking... by Beetle+B. · 2004-12-06 02:42 · Score: 2, Interesting

I have nothing against their not displaying email addresses.

However, I should still be able to search for them. Very often I want to search for a post written by someone with a very common name, and do so because his/her email address is unique and not even near being common.

They should allow us to search for the email address and return the all the results, even if not displaying the actual addresses.

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Beetle B.
Re:Email masking... by Jugalator · 2004-12-06 03:05 · Score: 2, Insightful

Every single post ever made to usenet has already been harvested by spammers, so what's the issue with making them public?

New posts in their new proprietary Google Groups will also get harvested.

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Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Re:Email masking... by Cyblot · 2004-12-06 03:08 · Score: 1

You can still search for the addresses. Just type them as a search and it returns all posts with that address. Or you can use it as an author search.
For instance: http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?q=abuse%40hom e.nl&qt_s=Search+Groups turns up everything with abuse@home.nl
Very interesting tidbit: check the results page and you see unmasked e-mail addresses. Check the actual post and you see masked addresses. Doesn't seem like much of an anti-spam measure.
Re:Email masking... by pinkocommie · 2004-12-06 03:16 · Score: 2, Insightful

The only valid reason as someone else commented is to provide value to users posting using google groups. But again if you have a google account they can make that a default option that you could unselect. Also they arent exactly the gatekeepers of Usenet so kinda pointless if they're trying to protect the unwashed masses
Re:Email masking... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 03:22 · Score: 0

Actually, as far as I can tell, google groups 2 lets you reply straight to the email address. So as long as the person posting is usi ng a real email address (and with the masking there's no reason not to) you can still contact them.
Re:Email masking... by 1u3hr · 2004-12-06 03:29 · Score: 0

What would be so bad about Email masking?
If it worked. But the fucking idiots still post your address to usenet, where it can be harvested, though they hide it in their web interface. I remember how good dejanews was, then how much it sucked when they tried to make it into a portal, then how happy I was when Google took it over, though they fucked up a few things. Now they really look like they're trying to do an "embrace, extend and extinguish" on the whole usenet, to make it into the Google Web BBS. Fuckers.
Re:Email masking... by BReflection · 2004-12-06 03:41 · Score: 3, Informative

When you reply to a post it gives you the option to e-mail that person.

--
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Re:Email masking... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 03:42 · Score: 2, Insightful

And I doubt that hiding those emails will have much practical impact on getting less spam. (people often use NOSPAM type emails anyway)

Every single additional website increases the amount of spam you will get. No single spammer has all the email addresses already and a resource like that is pure paradise for these people, especially because the site is /popular/. Popular web sites are grabbed first.

When I publish my email address on my personal web site it will usually take months until it is made unusable by spammers. If I publish another perl module on CPAN.org though, I can be sure to receive tons of spam in only a week. CPAN doesn't care about publishing email addresses. It's why I don't publish anything there anymore.

Also, they should leave the choice to publish email addresses up to the user. Since they can not, they have no right to publish.
Re:Email masking... by ikea5 · 2004-12-06 03:50 · Score: 5, Informative

I can't belive no one mentioned this:
You can see the email address in Google Groups if you click on the 'Reply to Author' link.
Re:Email masking... by HeghmoH · 2004-12-06 03:54 · Score: 1

Then they can spamproof addresses posted to their private area, and leave stuff that comes from Usenet alone. Surely the geniuses at Google could figure out how to apply an e-mail filter selectively.

--
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Re:Email masking... by singularity · 2004-12-06 03:59 · Score: 1

I began posting to Usenet back in about 1994. Once Spam hit the Internet, it was very common knowledge that harvesting from Usenet was a favorite email-gathering tool of Spammers.

As such, if a person has their actual email address on top of their post, it was pretty much a de facto acknowledgment that "yes, I understand I will get Spammed on this address."

Yes, you can certainly argue that some people did not know that, but...

There was a lot of discussion in Usenet groups about what sorts of address-masking you should do. Most people who want to avoid Spam who were posting to usenet on any regular basis were masking their real email address anyway.

Google seems to be breaking that for no good reason at all.

--
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
Re:Email masking... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 04:11 · Score: 0

Oh. So people using Google Groups as a reference need to sign up AND reply to a several year old post in order to e-mail a poster about a long-forgotten thread?

Hmm.. The existing way still seems a lot more elegant :-)
Re:Email masking... by Lawrence_Bird · 2004-12-06 04:24 · Score: 4, Interesting

As the poster said, it can be useful to contact people directly, in particular when a thread is outdated and it may be unlikely the original author would see your followup. I have had people contact me about posts I made over 10 years ago. However, I have contacted google and told them they have violated the DMCA by engaging in unauthorized modifications to my copyrighted usenet postings. At no time did I give any right to google, or anyone else, to modify my postings of the past 14 years in any way. It is my right, not googles, to include my email address in my postings. To those who say 'but it will stop spam'. If you don't want to risk spam from usenet postings, use a fake or otherwise hidden email address. I would further add that acceptance of this sets a horrible precedent. What will be next? Filterning of certain news groups that might be deemed 'inappropriate' by some political groups? Editing or exclusion of posts based on keywords? Its a slippery slope and while this change might seem minor it goes completely against what usenet is about.
Re:Email masking... by Beetle+B. · 2004-12-06 04:40 · Score: 2, Interesting

Actually, I tried that and it doesn't work very effectively.

Some examples:

I know someone who's had a number of addresses over the years, however, all the addresses had the same userid (say jkdoe@...). He frequently looks for old posts he's written, and so all he did was search for "jkdoe" and he'd get all his posts from all his addresses.

Now that doesn't work, even if he types that in the Author search field.

In fact, I compared with the old Google Groups (at UK) and even used a specific email address in the Author field. Or in the search field. I tried a whole bunch of permutations - the old Google Groups always gave more results.

Heck - I just tried inputting his full name in both - forget the address search. 191 using Beta, 271 using the old Google groups. For whatever reason, the Beta search is not getting all the results it should.

--
Beetle B.
Re:Email masking... by _randy_64 · 2004-12-06 04:54 · Score: 5, Funny

For example, in Objective-C, there are several keywords that start with @, such as @interface. Some archives of Objective-C mailing lists have e-mail blockers, and so you see weird stuff like:

But surely you and the other guy using Objective-C know each other and your email addresses by now?! ;-)

--
I mod down all the "free iPod"-sig losers.
Re:Email masking... by Beetle+B. · 2004-12-06 05:03 · Score: 1

UPDATE: I take some of it back, but am left with even more troubling conclusions.

Apparently, it does search the email fields if I just do a regular search (such as typing in the userid in the search field). I found a thread where the guy had made a post, and his userid showed up only in his From: field, and not in his sig o in subsequent replies. So it seems that Google Groups Beta is searching those as well.

However, a search for that userid, which the particular individual has used (albeit with different domains) for years gives over 500 hits in the old Google Groups, but less than half that in Google Groups Beta.

Is the search engine just plain bad?

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Beetle B.
Re:Email masking... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 07:13 · Score: 0

GOOGLE IS OUR LEADER.

GOOGLE IS GLORIOUS.

GOOGLE IS OUR FATHER.
Re:Email masking... by rcastro0 · 2004-12-06 07:14 · Score: 1

There is also no purpose to it. Every single post ever made to usenet has already been harvested by spammers, so what's the issue with making them public?

The issue is Barriers to Switch.

Well, if you make them public the email message can be forwarded to another email group system without any loss of content. So, if you want to migrate your group from, say, GoogleGroups to NewSuperGroups all you would need to do is signup GROUPNAME@NewSuperGroups.com and everybody would be there already. Plus, it would be easier to harvest and transfer the email archive to do same transfer. I havent used GoogleGroups, but with YahooGroups, at least, none of the above would work. So were stuck in it, as a group.

--
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
Re:Email masking... by poena.dare · 2004-12-06 07:59 · Score: 1

The reply link no longer allows you to see the author's address.
Re:Email masking... by vsync64 · 2004-12-06 08:46 · Score: 2, Insightful

Do you not understand that these people have already published their email addresses to the world? Google Groups is not the sole Usenet agent.

--
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
Re:Email masking... by vsync64 · 2004-12-06 08:50 · Score: 1

Because, idiot, Google Groups is not the only interface to access Usenet.

--
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
Re:Email masking... by intermediate_represe · 2004-12-06 08:55 · Score: 1

BUT, they also mask email addresses in postings, consider this job posting posted on Dec 05 2004, Date: Fri, 03 Dec 2004 14:31:34 -0800 Subject: Job at Apple Computer Cupertino, California Apple Computer High performance and Numerics engineer position for Mac OS X math library development. ---snip--- Please email your resume to: k...@apple.com Now, How do i reply to that person ? Because he has not posted it on the moderated group comp.compilers, but the moderator bunches up job postings and sends them together.

--
Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the human race.
Re:Email masking... by BobTheLawyer · 2004-12-06 09:20 · Score: 2, Insightful

Hello? The DMCA?
Re:Email masking... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 10:02 · Score: 0

Now, How do i reply to that person ?

You read news the old fashioned way, is how you do it. In my day we used a news server and if your ISP didn't provide a good one, you found one that did. You don't need a web interface for everything.
Re:Email masking... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 10:41 · Score: 0

What the hell are you talking about?
Re:Email masking... by ahknight · 2004-12-06 14:38 · Score: 1

My guess would be that if you need that functionality you should use a real reader. Google Groups is more centered around search and minor discussion than being a full interface to USENET.

Just a thought. :)

boo by Quasar1999 · 2004-12-06 02:08 · Score: 5, Funny

I can't believe that you removed a FREE service that I liked and used and replaced it with another FREE service with lesser features... I'm sure you will release the old service as a pay service... how DARE you try and make money...

signed... disgruntled freeloader.

--

---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.

Re:boo by gowen · 2004-12-06 02:10 · Score: 3, Informative

I can't believe that you removed a FREE service that I liked and used and replaced it with another FREE service
Well, considering that they don't have any explicit right to reproduce everyone's copyrighted Usenet postings, they'd be really hard pushed to charge for this service anyway. In this case, the freeloading cuts both ways.

--
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Re:boo by grumpygrodyguy · 2004-12-06 02:21 · Score: 1

My petition post:

Please understand that it's been the technical user base that's supported your product from the start. We have told our friends and family to use google over yahoo or other popular search mediums because it was _spare_ and it did its job well.

Trying to pave a commercialized highway through usenet postings is a fantastic way to alienate your 'grass roots' fanbase. There are _many_ of us who are very displeased with the recent 'dumbing down' of google groups.

As soon as you let marketing types make feature decisions rather than computer experts, it will mark the beginning of the end for google. Maybe you're all selling out and planning for retirement, but I'm hoping you'll realize that _not selling out_ was what made google truly special.

Please restore 'google groups' to it's _original_ configuration, and if you _insist_ on changing it consult users rather than marketers.

I knew this would happen when they went IPO. *sigh* one more reason to hope P2P and HTTP merge soon.

--
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Re:boo by BillyBlaze · 2004-12-06 02:23 · Score: 3, Insightful

I think it's clear that when you post something to Usenet, you understand that it will be copied, without any further permission requested from you, onto news servers and to news clients around the world. If someone doesn't like that, they shouldn't have posted - they have no right to tell Google whether or not they can charge people for their interface (one of many) to access the newsgroups. (Obviously, one can only licence their own copyrights, so I'm not saying you can share other people's copyrighted stuff.)
Re:boo by Slayback · 2004-12-06 02:26 · Score: 1

Are you serious? They're reproducing it just as much as Outlook Express reproduces the posts. If you were to follow that same logic, then newsgroup providers are stupid for charging for NNTP access to groups, and the makers of reader software are stealing by charging for their software.

Given the number of ISPs that actually provide (real) newsgroup access, anyone that provides better or full access should be able to charge.
Re:boo by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 02:26 · Score: 0

Yes - fortunately neither Microsoft nor Epson/HP have any explicit right to reproduce my resume, so I will now go down to my local store and take what is rightfully mine: some new printers and the latest copy of Office

That's not the same thing and you know it. There's a ton of posts archived there that predate google's existence.

Anyways, without getting into it, Google is vilating copyrights, but assumes people don't care in order to maintain the archive (which, I think, is generally a good assumption). You can, however, request any individual post be removed from the archives and they will of course oblige you - things would be pretty serious if they didn't.

The wayback machine at archive.org has the same issues. Just because you publish something online, doesn't give anyone the right to archive and redistribute it. Archive.org also has a form for you to request removal of your stuff from their archives.

And NO, a lack of robots.txt is not giving permission by any means.
Re:boo by Viol8 · 2004-12-06 02:27 · Score: 1

Since when did you last use your printer to publish your CV on the internet? Idiot.
Re:boo by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 02:31 · Score: 0

It may be a free service, but they have no product to sell their advertisers if we all use something else...
Re:boo by Ubergrendle · 2004-12-06 02:36 · Score: 4, Funny

They would be charging for the service, not the content. Usenet is public domain... you can archive 10,000,000 gb of information if you wish on your home data storage array too if you'd like.

--
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
Re:boo by PalmKiller · 2004-12-06 02:36 · Score: 1

Its more like, how dare the library have an archive of copyrighted information with easy reference capability and charge me a nominal fee to check out said information.
Re:boo by TheGreatGraySkwid · 2004-12-06 02:41 · Score: 1

That's bollocks. Google Groups, and Deja-news before it, are both News servers. The only thing that makes them extraordinary is that they have a web-only interface to the spool, and they have an effectively infinite expiry date. When you post to Usenet, you're granting the rights to have your post published to the entire Usenet system, regardless of the article expiry dates built into the respective servers. Anybody running NNTP is perfectly justified in keeping your precious little posts as long as they like. As far as I know, there's no actual legal obligation to discard posts with an X-No-Archive header, and it's just nice of Google (or whomever) to do so. For that matter, you can ask them to retroactively remove all posts from a particular e-mail address, if you like.

--
The Humblest Mollusk on the Net
Re:boo by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 02:43 · Score: 0

signed... disgruntled freeloader.

Nope, signed user who will no longer be generating add revenue.
Re:boo by WoodenRobot · 2004-12-06 02:45 · Score: 2, Funny

Maybe he printed it out, scanned it, OCR'd it and then posted it on usenet?
I know I got pretty bored before I managed to get my current job.

--
---
"I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing and it was everything that I thought it could be."
Re:boo by gowen · 2004-12-06 02:45 · Score: 1

you understand that it will be copied, without any further permission requested from you, onto news servers and to news clients around the world.
... from which it will vanish within a couple of months. Thats how Usenet works. Except, because of google, that doesn't happen.

--
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Re:boo by gowen · 2004-12-06 02:48 · Score: 1

Well, I don't know about the US, but this is *specifically* legislated for in the UK. And I know that in the US the right of you to copy information from library books is still very much controlled by copyright law.

Reference to information is not the same as duplication and redistribution of information.

--
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Re:boo by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 02:50 · Score: 1, Insightful

I can't believe that you removed a FREE service that I liked and used and replaced it with another FREE service with lesser features... I'm sure you will release the old service as a pay service... how DARE you try and make money...
You've missed the point. If there was an alternative to Google Groups, then we'd all go use it now. But there isn't. This is the only usenet archive that is anywhere near being a 'complete' digest of the last two decades of usenet activity. What would librarians say if suddenly the last two decades of newspaper microfilms had to be accessed through some limited, moronic interface? Whether Google likes it or not, Google's usenet archive is a social service by default, in much the same sense the Google search engine would be if it was the only one available. If Google's web search was screwed up like what they've done to Google Groups and we had no choice but to use it, we'd be pretty annoyed. Likewise, those of us who've grown accustomed to relying on Google Groups to search for information are at a lost and very, very aggrieved at Google right now. Google has gone from a darling to being one of the few high-profile tech companies to do something so bone-headed that some people will now actively despise it.

Remember, Google purchased the archive from another party. They didn't have to take on the responsibility.
Re:boo by gowen · 2004-12-06 02:54 · Score: 1

That's bollocks. Google Groups, and Deja-news before it, are both News servers.
No they're not, their web-servers.
Anybody running NNTP is perfectly justified in keeping your precious little posts as long as they like.
But they've no right to redistribute them on the web. Sorry, but Usenet posts are copyright their authors, and those authors have an absolute right to determine the manner in which they are to be redistributed.

--
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Re:boo by gowen · 2004-12-06 02:56 · Score: 2, Informative

Usenet is public domain
No. It isn't. Nothing is public domain unless put there by its copyright holder, or by the expiry of its copyright.

--
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Re:boo by dissy · 2004-12-06 03:21 · Score: 4, Informative

> > Usenet is public domain

> No. It isn't. Nothing is public domain unless put there by its copyright holder,
> or by the expiry of its copyright.

While its true the posts are not public domain, and technically are copyrighted, the authors already granted permission for the usenet network to reproduce the messages and distribute them to usenet clients, simply by willingly posting them.

So google, acting as a usenet carrier/server, has the permission to do this.
Additionally, as long as the people using clients do not reproduce the works outside of usenet, they have the right to obtain and archive the messages as well already (copyright never prevented that)

So google could even charge for this service legally.
I'm glad they choose not to though.
Re:boo by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 03:21 · Score: 0

Google isn't 'free'! Consumers pay for it, like anything else in the commerical world...google isn't some government outfit, their in it for the money.
Re:boo by duffbeer703 · 2004-12-06 03:26 · Score: 2, Informative

Actually, you can revoke that permissiona and request that Google remove your posts from the archive.

--
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Re:boo by geoffspear · 2004-12-06 03:30 · Score: 3, Informative

There is no reasonable expectation that your articles will be removed from servers. Even the Expires: header is specified in RFC1036 as a "suggested" expiration date; compliant servers are no required to delete expired articles with the header, and they're allowed to provide a local policy for how long messages are kept (including forever, if they've got the storage capacity).
The fact that you couldn't imagine in 1987 that anyone running a new server would ever be able to afford enough storage to keep all of USENET available does not constitute an expectation that your articles would be available for a limited time.

--
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Re:boo by 91degrees · 2004-12-06 03:31 · Score: 1

Your point?

Google are not offering google groups out of the goodness of their hearts. They're offering it because they believe they can make money from it through advertising. This is fine by me. They make a profit from offering me something I want. I benefit. They benefit. We're all happy.

Now they change things. This annoys me. I liked the old interface. So I'll complain. They have every right to ignore my complaints. I hope they feel that it will benefit them if they offer me the service I want.

What's wrong with complaining?
Re:boo by moonbender · 2004-12-06 03:31 · Score: 1

So who's to say the authors have agreed to the one but not the other? Since Usenet relies on the redistribution of its authors' content, they give some sort of implicit consent to redistribute their works. To an observer without a technical background, there really isn't a big difference between distributing Usenet posts via NNTP or vie HTTP.

--
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Re:boo by cHiphead · 2004-12-06 03:32 · Score: 1

You are framing the question incorrectly. Its google that is choosing to mirror the data. its still copyrighted to you, and google is altering the data and access to the data. Doesn't sound very ethical or legitimate, regardless of case law or copyright law.

Cheers.

--

This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Re:boo by Mant · 2004-12-06 03:41 · Score: 1

If it isn't useful I won't use it. If don't use it, I won't see the ads.

Ads are how Google makes money, so there is good reason for them to care.
Re:boo by UserGoogol · 2004-12-06 03:44 · Score: 1

I don't think "vanishing within a couple of months" is actually part of the NNTP standard.

--
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
Re:boo by gowen · 2004-12-06 03:53 · Score: 1

I don't think "vanishing within a couple of months" is actually part of the NNTP standard.
No, but nor is the waiver of copyright by the author. So we either understand the way Usenet always worked (implicit waiver of copyright, implicit expiration of articles) or we don't (no expiration of articles, I get to keep my copyright).

You can't have it both ways.

--
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Re:boo by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 03:56 · Score: 0

Hm, they can charge all they want for the service, after all so do about a million other usenet servers, whether you pay for them explicitly or as part of your ISP's service.
Re:boo by eurleif · 2004-12-06 03:59 · Score: 1

outside of usenet
Like on the web, you mean?
Re:boo by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 04:19 · Score: 0

There is no reasonable expectation that by posting to Usenet I allow any company to store reproduce my posts longer than, say, a few months. I am not getting paid by Google, so they have no reason to assume I gave them any rights to my copyrighted works. I own the copyright for my postings and that's the end of it.

For example, when I post to Slashdot, I can expect the posts to stay on this site forever. I am implicitly giving Slashdot the right to reproduce my posts in exchange for the opportunity to communicate to fellow Slashdot users. If Slashdot decided to copy the posts to another site, they would overstep the implied limits to use my copyrighted works.
Re:boo by WaterBreath · 2004-12-06 04:43 · Score: 1

Was there somewhere else all these people were arguing about this before Google made these changes? Or was this just some sort of "last straw"? It seems to me that if Google just shut down the service today to make sure they stayed on the safe side of the law, that there would be a greater outrage among the users than there is currently.
Granted that doesn't make it right, but neither does being illegal equate to being wrong. It seems to me that this service has been a great benefit to the IT society, and I very much doubt it has hurt any "competing" business, such as consulting. I don't think it's wrong.
Re:boo by geoffspear · 2004-12-06 04:51 · Score: 2, Insightful

If you don't agree with the terms of the RFC, don't post on Usenet. It's as simple as that. By posting, you're implicitly giving every single person in the world with an NNTP server the right to distribute and store your articles for as long as they want.

--
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Re:boo by Tackhead · 2004-12-06 05:40 · Score: 1

> If there was an alternative to Google Groups, then we'd all go use it now. But there isn't. This is the only usenet archive that is anywhere near being a 'complete' digest of the last two decades of usenet activity. What would librarians say if suddenly the last two decades of newspaper microfilms had to be accessed through some limited, moronic interface?
And while we're at it, WTF happened to "(xxx messages in thread)"?
If I query "foo bar obscureproduct", and get 100 hits, sometimes 20 of those hits will be to different parts of the same thread, and another 20 will be ("1 message in thread"), indicating some guy had the same problem but had no solution.
Old groups.google.com: I could click the "(47 messages in thread") once, and skip all other threads with 47 messages in them, because they were the same thread. (And I could skip the single-message threads)
Sucky groups.google.com: Now I have to try all 100 hits, because I know nothing about any of the threads until I waste time opening them.
What gibbering fucktard thought this was a good idea, and could someone kindly present me his severed testicles on a platter?
The new groups is semi-useful if you want to post through a web interface. But this change, and most of the other changes, make searching the archive (which is what 99% of us are using the archive for) impossibly harder.
Re:boo by DunbarTheInept · 2004-12-06 05:43 · Score: 1

If you are ignorant of the difference between "this is how it is typically done" (posts expire to save disk space) and "this is how it is defined that it MUST be done" (posts may or may not expire, it's the choice of the admin running the local usenet spool), then that's not our problem.

While it is true that you still own the copyright to the work, it is also true that you gave up the right to stop others from copying that work the moment you chose to put it on usenet. Much like Linus still owns copyrights to his parts of the Linux kernel, but because he already released it he can't turn around and ask for everyone to delete their copies now.

--
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Re:boo by bhtooefr · 2004-12-06 05:53 · Score: 1

No, no, no. He said that he didn't give Microsoft, Epson, or HP permission to reproduce his resume, so he was going to take some of their products - some printers and a few copies of Office.
Re:boo by shark72 · 2004-12-06 05:54 · Score: 1

"Well, considering that they don't have any explicit right to reproduce everyone's copyrighted Usenet postings, they'd be really hard pushed to charge for this service anyway. In this case, the freeloading cuts both ways."

There's planty of precedent here -- there are tons of services which provide paid newsfeeds. Even ISPs often have to pay somebody upstream for raw feeds. A decade ago, it was fairly easy to find a good, free newsfeed, but the sheer volume of data involved nowadays has made that very difficult.

--
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Re:boo by Bitsy+Boffin · 2004-12-06 06:04 · Score: 1

... because it was _spare_ ...

I agree, it's always a good idea to carry a spare search engine.

--
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
Re:boo by fatphil · 2004-12-06 07:22 · Score: 1

News-by-mail was never considered to be "outside" usenet.
Just because the transport protocol is different doesn't mean that the corpus of data has fundamentally changed.

(But I get your point, it's exactly what went through my mind too.)

FP.

--
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Re:boo by fatphil · 2004-12-06 07:31 · Score: 1

"... are both news servers"

Yes, but they are not _just_ news servers. This muddies the waters somewhat.

"...there's no actual legal obligation to discard posts with an X-No-Archive header..."

Yes. It is explicitly merely a suggestion to the server, and was invented by DejaNews themselves - so was never even standardised formally.

For a laugh, I once set up a drone that archived _only_ "X-No-Archive: yes" posts on one of the scientific groups that I read, "just in case".

FP.

--
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Re:boo by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 07:41 · Score: 0

I made a lot of stupid mistakes on Usenet in the early days, thinking that I was using a transient medium. Later I find out that they'd been archived for eternity and made easily searchable! I'd like it if they made their Usenet archive a pay service, so that early stuff could be more--or-less forgotten.
Re:boo by ScrewMaster · 2004-12-06 11:03 · Score: 1

Well, actually government outfits are even less free, meaning they generally cost more tax dollars for a given service than an equivalent one supplied by the private sector. Bitch about Google if you want, but just imagine what a government-owned and operated search engine would be like. Oh sure, the NSA and the like have awesome tech for database mining and so forth, but you can bet that anything designed for the public would be incredibly expensive, slow, ineffective and would require fifteen or twenty thousand government employees to run it.

--
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Re:boo by Snaller · 2004-12-06 13:19 · Score: 1

how DARE you try and make money

by launching an inferior product. Yes that makes sense.

--
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Re:boo by that+_evil+_gleek · 2004-12-06 15:39 · Score: 1

I agree, but techinally usenet is usenet, and web is web. They are both internet, but they aren't the same.
So I'd say it could be argued web is outside of usenet.

Anyway, I hate the new interface, and I think it could hurt Google. If I'm looking for a technical solution
I'd start with web, and if I couldn't find it there, I'd switch to groups, then sort by date.
Re:boo by flonejek · 2004-12-06 15:58 · Score: 1

Well the features are only hiding, click advanced search to see them come out and play, although if you want to pay someone, I'm sure there are several countries like australia (http://groups.google.com.au/) who are behind the times and have the old google groups.
Re:boo by JuggleGeek · 2004-12-06 19:27 · Score: 1

There is no reasonable expectation that by posting to Usenet I allow any company to store reproduce my posts longer than, say, a few months.
Once you post in public, you've made the information available to anyone in the world that cares to look. You are very naive if you believe that everyone in the world is then going to both know and follow your wishes in regards to that post.

On the plus side by gowen · 2004-12-06 02:08 · Score: 5, Informative

... date limited searches are back on the "Advanced Search" page! Woohoo! That was the show stopper for me. Other than that, its nearly all cosmetic changes, and I don't care about those.

--
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.

Re:On the plus side by ajs · 2004-12-06 03:54 · Score: 2, Interesting

It's just typical reactionary UI response. People see something that doesn't do what they expect in exactly the way they expect it, and they cry foul before looking into the advantages.

Things I see that are good:

1. More user-centric (highlighting names, etc.) rather than message centric.
2. The GMail style expando-headers makes for faster drilling down.
3. Much faster page loading (might just be new hardware).

The down-sides:

1. I think the tree mode is the more usable, and yet you have to click to get to it. Suggestion: make it the default (and add it to GMail).
2. Put the "original" link on the page by default, don't require 2 clicks to get to it.
3. It's still Usenet ;-)

What's more: if you really don't like google groups, just stop using it. For pete's sake, you can just use trn or Mozilla or any of a dozen other clients to feed off your ISP. Google has no obligation to provide your favorite UI features to Usenet.
Re:On the plus side by gowen · 2004-12-06 04:03 · Score: 1

What's more: if you really don't like google groups, just stop using it. For pete's sake, you can just use trn or Mozilla or any of a dozen other clients to feed off your ISP.
If you're talking to me (as opposed to just replying to my post to appear high up the page), there are a few important things you've missed :

i) I don't dislike google groups, or the user interface changes. I don't care about those in the least, as they're almost entirely eye candy.
ii) trn, mozilla and all the newsreaders in the world (gnus! baby) won't get you the old deja archive.

--
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Re:On the plus side by ajs · 2004-12-06 04:34 · Score: 2, Informative

I don't dislike google groups, or the user interface changes. I don't care about those in the least, as they're almost entirely eye candy.

I understand that.

Sorry, I thought I was being clear. I was agreeing with you, and further clarifying WHY I think people are responding the way they did (despite your well observed points).

HOWEVER, since my post, I've realized that it's not all good. Some of the tricks they're playing with JavaScript really suck for posting. For example, if you type up a huge post (I was replying to a question in comp.lang.perl.misc) and then submit it then checks to see if you've accepted the new terms of use. If you have not, it directs you to the accept page, and then back to a blank posting form. When you try to go "back" to your post, it's gone.

A few other elements of posting are broken in similar ways and need to be addressed. If I get time, I'll submit a more complete bug report directly to Google.

Folks at Google: remember the old song: JavaScript and a pig just don't mix.
Re:On the plus side by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 06:31 · Score: 0

gnus can read google groups (see nnweb.el)

It Seems To Me... by Opalima · 2004-12-06 02:08 · Score: 4, Interesting

That of all the tech companies plying their wares on the web, Google is one of the few that actively listens to complaints and at least in some measure, acts on them.

Sort by date is back by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 02:09 · Score: 0

Email masking is still here (though more a good than a bad thing, IMHO), but sort by date is back.

Not that bad I would say...

Sucky. by Threni · 2004-12-06 02:09 · Score: 5, Interesting

The new interface is horrible. Is there any technical reason why Google can't provide a 'Classic' view? Is the underlying data going to be that different? It's going to have to show the old, archived data still, which it obviously can with both the old and new systems. So why not continue to offer it?

Failing that, is there another way to look search/view the old Usenet archive?

Re:Sucky. by will_die · 2004-12-06 02:14 · Score: 4, Informative

You can get close to the old format.
Click on a group, then at the top of the messages, click on 'Viewing titles only'. This removes all the text and gives you just a listing of all message titles.
Now insides of a message goto the top, and just above first message you will see a link of 'view as tree'. It still is missing the previous,next links at the bottom. Also it does not have that bar along the side of the tree showing you which messages are in the other frame.
Re:Sucky. by dvk · 2004-12-06 02:31 · Score: 2, Funny

> It's going to have to show the old, archived data still, which it obviously can with both the old and new systems. So why not continue to offer it?

Not sure about the technical reasons, but t the very least, there's also the business reason - any code there is needs to be maintained. Which costs the company money. So any code the company doesn't need won't be maintained and thus will be retired.

This is just a WAG, there could be other reasons too (underlying data / APIs / etc..)

--
"The right to figure things out for yourself is the only true freedom everyone shares. Go use it"-R.A.Heinlein
Re:Sucky. by FreeTheFurniture! · 2004-12-06 03:31 · Score: 1

A temporary solution, but you can still use the old version for the time being by going to an international google site, say Google Canada.
Re:Sucky. by FuzzyBad-Mofo · 2004-12-06 04:24 · Score: 1

Somebody needs to tell Google that Mozilla supports the position:fixed CSS property. I like the idea of the floating topic name and link to top, but that JavaScript timer based implementation simply has to go.
Re:Sucky. by Bitsy+Boffin · 2004-12-06 06:26 · Score: 1

...view as tree...

Man, you're a life saver. That link was so small I didn't even see it there, not the new groups, while still ultimatly being sucky, is much less so.

--
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
Re:Sucky. by PretzelWagon · 2004-12-06 07:58 · Score: 1

Thank you. But, that option will surely be gone soon.
Re:Sucky. by Snaller · 2004-12-06 13:31 · Score: 1

Also it does not have that bar along the side of the tree showing you which messages are in the other frame.

It does here (or perhaps it does now), there is a bar which indicates all of the messages you can currently view, and there is a smaller arrow image which gets adjusted as you scroll up and down in the right pane, so its always pointing at the one you are reading.

It still is missing the previous,next links at the bottom.

Yes this is a gross oversight, i don't know what they heck they were smoking.

--
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating

Not bad enough by wallyghost · 2004-12-06 02:10 · Score: 5, Funny

Thanks to some drunken post-hockey game USENET posting a couple years back, I was really hoping they'd come up with something a lot worse. Hate to retire the email address, but I guess it's either that or live with those posts forever. (Oh, and of course the worst of what I wrote was replied back to me by someone else so I can't unpost it)

Re:Not bad enough by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 04:12 · Score: 0

Don't be a tease - give us a link!

I like it! by shic · 2004-12-06 02:12 · Score: 4, Interesting

I wonder - am I alone in seeing the "Google Groups 2" as a significant improvement on the original?

I like the improved 'posting' speed; I love the 'starred topics' (Though I remain sceptical that the 'new posts' feature works properly - I keep thinking "new since when?"). I like the idea that a thread has become the notional unit searched in the new UI - Google Groups 2 far better suits my needs.

Re:I like it! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 02:30 · Score: 4, Funny

I wonder - am I alone in seeing the "Google Groups 2" as a significant improvement on the original?
So you're the guy who liked Cherry Coke?
Re:I like it! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 02:37 · Score: 2, Insightful

You are not alone. The old interface seemed anything but "wonderful" to me, especially with its truncation of long posts -- as soon as you started to read anything with a bunch of quoted text, the amount of clicking and scrolling got insane. Now they've added "hide quoted text" and "show quoted text" links, and the whole "read more..." business seems to be a thing of the past (though I haven't poked around enough to be completely sure of that).

Also: when viewing a group summary, clicking "view titles only" gives you something similar to the previous interface.

When viewing a thread "view as tree" brings back the old interface for all intents and purposes.

When viewing a message, clicking "show options" allows you to get at an unmasked email address (assuming the poster used one to begin with) and original header.

Finally, the "old" interface is still very much available. It's at http://groups.google.com

Conclusion: this Slashdot story is a big unnecessary whinge.
Re:I like it! by rsidd · 2004-12-06 02:40 · Score: 1

Well, they removed the ability to deep-link directly to a posting.
No, they haven't (to take a random example).
However, I admit that the single-posting link doesn't have an obvious way to get back to the thread. One way, of course, is to search for the text in the posting...
Re:I like it! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 02:46 · Score: 0

Well, they removed the ability to deep-link directly to a posting.

Viewing a message, click show options.

One of the options is show original.

Click it, and you have the original message, headers and all, with a unique URL.

Apart from an extra click, how is that different from the existing deep-linking feature?
Re:I like it! by Ralconte · 2004-12-06 02:49 · Score: 4, Interesting

Well ...
1). The new format wastes screen real estate. The default forces you to view a summary of the posts, with a left sidebar of where you've been lately, and a right sidebar of other messages. I liked it better when I simply got a complete list.
2). Looking at titles only causes the subject text to overwrite the date field, in a jumble of characters. Now, this may be because I'm using Mozilla, on Linux -- Windows with IE may handle the fonts better.
3). The old format had a click on the username, to instantly link to a search for that username on Google groups. I'd never respond to a new usenet posting until it arrived on Google and I was able to do this -- it's crucial to determining who's a troll. Even if trolling is not a problem, the ability to check the quality of the information by what the person's said before is important. You can do it here on /., you know.
4). I liked browsing sci.chem.analytical , comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips , or even rec.crafts.brewing in a clean format. I don't need to join a Google groups clone of Yahoo groups and participate in the newbie love-fest. (If I've missed other sources of web-based Usenet archives, I'd like to hear about them)
Re:I like it! by Stalky · 2004-12-06 02:50 · Score: 1

You *can* deep-link directly to a post. One of the links in the header of each post in the thread listing is "Individual Message", which takes you to a page with only that post.

--
Jeff
Re:I like it! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 02:59 · Score: 0

I think it needs a GUI installer.
Re:I like it! by Cecil · 2004-12-06 03:20 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Everyone I know or have ever met likes Cherry Coke. Maybe not all the time, but it's always a nice change from regular Coke.

Now, Vanilla Coke on the other hand... I'm the only person who likes that. ;)

--
Random and weird software I've written.
Re:I like it! by WhatAmIDoingHere · 2004-12-06 03:23 · Score: 1

Cherry Coke is good and people like it.

You're thinking of New Coke. Which you can actually still purchase in the mid-west. Right next to clear pepsi and Moxie.

--
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
Re:I like it! by richie2000 · 2004-12-06 03:24 · Score: 1

Now, Vanilla Coke on the other hand... I'm the only person who likes that. ;)
*raises hand*
Now, is it just me and Bruce Willis, or did you like Hudson Hawk too?

--
Money for nothing, pix for free
Re:I like it! by boinger · 2004-12-06 03:33 · Score: 1

You've managed to confuse the Midwest (or "mid-west", as you put it) with the South.
Note, we (the Midwest) are not in the South and do not have New Coke.
Also, nearly all of our vehicles have hoods.

--
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
Re:I like it! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 03:41 · Score: 0

New Coke is available in at least Chicago. It's not available anywhere I know of in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, North or South Dakota.
Re:I like it! by mbadolato · 2004-12-06 03:45 · Score: 1

Now, is it just me and Bruce Willis, or did you like Hudson Hawk too?

Intersting... my wife is addicted to diet vanilla coke and LOVES Hudson Hawk.

I'm wondering the correlation
Re:I like it! by SenorChuck · 2004-12-06 03:51 · Score: 1

I live in Iowa and I've never seen Moxie available. Crystal Pepsi (some kind of joke name, I hope?) hasn't been available for many years in these parts..

--
A wise person makes his own decisions, a weak one obeys public opinion. -- Chinese proverb
Re:I like it! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 03:59 · Score: 0

Unfortunatly the south has neither new coke nor clear pepsi.

You managed to fail it.
Re:I like it! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 04:04 · Score: 0

Moxie is an eastern phenomenon, stretching from New England to central PA. It doesn't make it as far as Pittsburgh, where Vernor's exerts territorial dominance.

Moxie. Not quite root beer. Not quite cola. Not quite asphalt.
Re:I like it! by boinger · 2004-12-06 04:34 · Score: 1

Where?
I live in Chicago and have never run across it.

--
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
Re:I like it! by boinger · 2004-12-06 04:45 · Score: 1

You are aware that "Coke II" (not C2 Cola) is just New Coke renamed, right? (as of 1992).

--
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
Re:I like it! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 06:50 · Score: 0

GP: Also, nearly all of our vehicles have hoods.
P: Where? I live in Chicago and have never run across it.

Try the South Side...plenty of hoods.
Re:I like it! by endx7 · 2004-12-06 07:14 · Score: 2, Informative

Finally, the "old" interface is still very much available. It's at http://groups.google.com

Incorrect. Try to go anywhere from there and you just end up with the new interface anyway.
Re:I like it! by fatphil · 2004-12-06 07:50 · Score: 1

What's that magic number in the URL?
Is it part of the message id? Is it an internal google key?
I can't tell, because I can't view the headers of the message to check myself.

That's just plain broken.

Of course, they've broken all the old "selm=[message-id]"-style URLs that people have been using over the last few years.

Google Groups Beta 2 at its best is way more broken than Google Groups and DejaNews were at their worst.

FP.

--
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Re:I like it! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 08:39 · Score: 0

You are correct.

I also missed the unmasked email addresses: to see them, you have to click "reply to poster" and log in to Google Groups. I see that as a good thing, though: it makes it much, much harder for bots to harvest email addresses using Google Groups. (Maybe a moot point, though, since bots have been going straight to newsfeeds for a long time.)
Re:I like it! by khallow · 2004-12-06 09:12 · Score: 1

I'm wondering if it's curable. :-)
Re:I like it! by Snaller · 2004-12-06 13:25 · Score: 1

I like the improved 'posting' speed;

Stopped using it years ago when i realise they stamped the IP number on the post. I trust they still do that on GG2?

--
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Re:I like it! by IO+ERROR · 2004-12-06 13:53 · Score: 1

So you're the guy who liked Cherry Coke?

You mean New Coke, right?

--
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?

Huh? by Otter · 2004-12-06 02:13 · Score: 5, Informative

As of 9:10 am (EST) on December 6:

groups.google.com goes to the original interface, not to the beta.
Following a link to the beta shows that you can now easily search a date range.

Not that Hemos could have, you know, looked before posting this...

--
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...

Re:Huh? by Zorilla · 2004-12-06 02:16 · Score: 3, Funny

This is Slashdot. They were probably referring to a change to Google Beta made in October 2002.

--

It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Re:Huh? by Anonymous+Cowtard · 2004-12-06 02:18 · Score: 1

Interesting because I'm seeing the Beta interface by default a mere 7 minutes after your post.
Re:Huh? by daveschroeder · 2004-12-06 02:21 · Score: 1

I'm seeing non-Beta as the default interface at groups.google.com, but I'm seeing date search capability on the advanced search page of both:

http://groups-beta.google.com/advanced_search

http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search?h l= en
Re:Huh? by blueforce · 2004-12-06 02:21 · Score: 1

As of 9:20 am (EDT) on December 6:

When I type groups.google.com into my address bar, I go to the new interface.

Even if I clear my gmail "remember me" cookie, I go to the new version.

The initial search interface is the same but he results are the new interface.

--
If you do what you always did, you get what you always got.
Re:Huh? by Khyron · 2004-12-06 02:38 · Score: 1

I still see the same interface I always have. I see a link inviting me to try the beta thing, but if I just click on Advanced Search I see the same options I always see and use.
Re:Huh? by isometrick · 2004-12-06 02:47 · Score: 2, Interesting

I've found that Google sometimes changes the content by region and by how old your cookie is. They have a timestamp and a signature inside of the cookie (to verify that it is generated by them), among some other things.

In my experience, users with older (>24hr) cookies see these kind of changes, while the rest have to wait for their cookie to age a bit.

Maybe this will clear up the nonstop "I see it, I don't" posts about Google sites.
Re:Huh? by sphealey · 2004-12-06 02:56 · Score: 1

Plus, when I go to groups.google.com I see the original Google Groups - contradicting the summary.
Google often releases a change to a subset of its servers, then backs it out later. I assume this is a "live beta" strategy.
Even when Google is implementing a change it can take several days for it to work through the entire server farm. You can refresh 2 or 3 times and get different screens each time.
So, at this point we know that there are 2 Groups interfaces out there, somewhat randomly distributed. We don't know which one will remain the primary interface.
sPh
Re:Huh? by CodeArtisan · 2004-12-06 02:56 · Score: 1

However, at least as of 9:43am EST, the advance Search results are presented using the new interface. Even more annoying, even if you select "sort by date" they still appear sorted by relevance. So much for all the Super-IQ talent they are recruting.
Re:Huh? by DrWho520 · 2004-12-06 03:16 · Score: 1

You must be new here...

--
The cancel button is your friend. Do not hesitate to use it.
Re:Huh? by interJ · 2004-12-06 07:04 · Score: 1

groups.google.com goes to the original, but searching from there takes you to the new interface.

It doesn't sound bad at all... by The-Bus · 2004-12-06 02:15 · Score: 4, Informative

...in their press release.

If you read it, it looks like they are really aiming it at the LCD, with key segments like:

Using Google Groups, people can search and participate in a variety of discussions. For example, someone looking to buy a new digital camera this holiday season can search for (digital camera recommendations) and find relevant posts from others about the best cameras to buy. A user can star (bookmark) this topic to watch and subscribe to receive posts from a group such as rec.photo.digital to regularly read more opinions on digital cameras. Similarly, users looking for advice on treating carpal tunnel or disputing a cell phone bill can find discussions from other people who have experience in these areas.

Then again, most press releases are written with their intended audience being 6-year olds. "Ford Motor Company Inc. makes cars! Vroom vrooom! Beep beep! Ford cars!"

--

Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.

Re:It doesn't sound bad at all... by nbert · 2004-12-06 02:28 · Score: 1

Similarly, users looking for advice on treating carpal tunnel [...] can find discussions from other people who have experience in these areas.

I know this is just an example illustrating the possibilities, but wouldn't it be wiser to consult a doctor instead of joining a Usenet discussion to explain your situation (using a keyboard), reply to questions (again using a keyboard), looking for other threads (keyboard)...
Isn't that a little odd?

--
I don't read replies by ACs.
Re:It doesn't sound bad at all... by sam_handelman · 2004-12-06 03:56 · Score: 2, Funny

Doctors are nothing but shills for the pharmaceutical industry! Through UseNET, I'm able to find safe and effective traditional remedies - like the leeches fattening themselves on the backs of my hands, as I type - that keep me happy, healthy and productive.

Also, quite frankly, there are too many drug interactions for any doctor to keep track of. But, through useNET, I learned that chewing cinnabar kills off leeches! So I've switched to an alternative treatment for my social anxiety disorder - electric shocks! They don't bother the leeches any, and after fifteen minutes of 30 volts I'm ready for a leech covered night on the town.

--
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Re:It doesn't sound bad at all... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 04:00 · Score: 1, Funny

"Ford Motor Company Inc. makes cars! Vroom vrooom!"

The jury's still out on that.
Re:It doesn't sound bad at all... by khallow · 2004-12-06 09:10 · Score: 1

I know this is just an example illustrating the possibilities, but wouldn't it be wiser to consult a doctor instead of joining a Usenet discussion to explain your situation (using a keyboard), reply to questions (again using a keyboard), looking for other threads (keyboard)... Isn't that a little odd?
It would be pretty dumb to ask first on the Usenet about the crippling chest pains you're experiencing or why the left side of your body is paralyzed, but it also doesn't make sense to schedule an expensive doctor's appointment for a mild rash. Further if you have a chronic condition, it's cheaper and can be more effective to talk with other people who have the condition, if just to know that you aren't the only person with this condition. Your doctor may not have seen enough cases of your problem to know of all the possible symptoms and dangers. And you should keep yourself informed of your health. The Usenet can help there.
Re:It doesn't sound bad at all... by nbert · 2004-12-06 11:49 · Score: 1

For sure it's a great place to discuss any medical condition someone might experience (if you are aware that most opinions don't come from experts there). However, if you are
working at your desk, trying to ignore the tingling or numbness you've had for months in your hand and wrist. Suddenly, a sharp, piercing pain shoots through the wrist and up your arm.
(quote from this page). It's not so hard to figure out then that it might be related to excessive time spent typing. I never had CTS, but it sounds rather strange to me that someone would actually use the same device, which got him into this condition, to find a remedy. But I'm not saying that it wouldn't happen in real life. Maybe those PR guys at google came up with this example on purpose ;)

--
I don't read replies by ACs.
Re:It doesn't sound bad at all... by khallow · 2004-12-07 05:20 · Score: 1

It's not so hard to figure out then that it might be related to excessive time spent typing. I never had CTS, but it sounds rather strange to me that someone would actually use the same device, which got him into this condition, to find a remedy.
Ironically, I have a couple of relatives who did exactly what you describe above. They had some of the CTS symptoms and used the computer to read up on the illness. They also consulted qualified medical professionals. The "if it hurts, don't do that" school of medicare is pretty useless in real life since we often have to do things which cause us pain whether it be working for a living or paying taxes.

Crappy google groups interface by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 02:17 · Score: 0

Probably some dumbass idea from the VP of Marketing. Take any good product and let marketing have a run at it and they will always fuck it up !

original Google Groups by davron05 · 2004-12-06 02:18 · Score: 5, Informative

Unfortunately, as of December 5th, Google Groups Beta is back and you can't get to the original (wonderful) Google Groups anymore. just visit any regional Google Groups, like groups.google.ch and you can still use the old interface.

Re:original Google Groups by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 02:31 · Score: 0

Thanks you so much.. please, mod the previous post up.
Re:original Google Groups by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 02:54 · Score: 1, Funny

shhssss!! Google Central Command might hear you and ruin those Google Groups access-points too!
Re:original Google Groups by Bugster · 2004-12-06 03:35 · Score: 1

Of course, http://www.google.co.uk/grphp would work best for all disgruntled Anglophones.
Re:original Google Groups by 1u3hr · 2004-12-06 05:02 · Score: 2, Insightful

. just visit any regional Google Groups, like groups.google.ch and you can still use the old interface.
Sure, but for how long? After they've settled down with the American version, they'll translate it and fuck up the others too.
And people keep saying "Click on options" to do this or that. IT DOESN'T WORK IN MY BROWSER.

Huh? by northcat · 2004-12-06 02:19 · Score: 2, Interesting

Can some please translate the summary to English for me? I can't understand a thing from the summary. The summary says "Google backed off its beta of Google Groups" but "you can't get to the original (wonderful) Google Groups anymore". What the hell is there then? Two monkeys and a flying squirell? Plus, when I go to groups.google.com I see the original Google Groups - contradicting the summary. What am I missing here?

It's just like Gmail by stry_cat · 2004-12-06 02:20 · Score: 0, Redundant

Well not exactly like Gmail, but it is a very similar format. Overall I rather like it. You can still get to the orginial format, so I don't see much of a problem here.

My only complaint would be the email masking, since I identify people by their email address instead of what ever happens to be their nick name.

Overall I think it is an improvement.

Some links still work.. by Sinus0idal · 2004-12-06 02:21 · Score: 1

Can still link go the old version from google.co.uk mainpage and from www.google.com/firefox at 14:21...

Great... by Iphtashu+Fitz · 2004-12-06 02:22 · Score: 3, Informative

These changes have completely fscked up links to usenet posts. A web page I know of that documents a lawsuit (won't post here since I don't want it to get slashdotted) provided links to relevant usenet posts. It now points instead to completely different unrelated posts in other newsgroups.

For example, the link http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&ic=1&selm=a n_638071147 used to point to a post in news.admin.net-abuse.email. It now redirects for me to http://groups-beta.google.com/group/it.discussioni .auto/browse_thread/thread/dadced92c14aee94?ic=1 which points to an article in it.discussioni.auto. So Google seems to think there's some sort of correlation between news.admin.net-abuse.email and Italian car discussions???

Re:Great... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 02:33 · Score: 0

Heh, that's funny. Me thinks MSN or Yahoo is going to take the opportunity to attack.
Re:Great... by TheGreatGraySkwid · 2004-12-06 02:34 · Score: 5, Informative

Frankly, that's 'cause you weren't thinking when you copied that URL. The best way to link to a particular Usenet post on Google has always been to link directly to the message ID, like so. It's almost always shorter than whatever it was you had above, and it takes you right to the correct article, without fail, even now...

--
The Humblest Mollusk on the Net
Re:Great... by codeguy007 · 2004-12-06 02:39 · Score: 0, Flamebait

Boo Hoo.

Grow up you pansy. Other sites change from time to time so if you link to them, links get broken. That's not google's fault, it's your responsibility to fix broken links. As a website developer, I don't know all the sites that may link to me. Maybe if I know about some I might accomidate the links but most I don't even know about. And to be honest, I don't really care in most case.
Re:Great... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 03:23 · Score: 1, Insightful

[...]As a website developer, I don't know all the sites that may link to me. Maybe if I know about some I might accomidate the links but most I don't even know about. And to be honest, I don't really care in most case.
Ah, but are the websites you create archives of useful information such as google groups? Also, you may not care about maintaining consistancy and just letting other peoples' links to your work die, but if you want repeat users, then constancy and link permanance could be a good thing, no?

Additionally, as a web developer one does not *have* to be nice and considerate of others, BUT being nice and considerate is a good and polite thing to be. :-)
Re:Great... by scarhill · 2004-12-06 03:35 · Score: 2, Informative

And in fact, http://groups.google.ca/groups?oi=djq&ic=1&selm=an _638071147 still links the NANAE post.
Re:Great... by khallow · 2004-12-06 05:18 · Score: 1

Perhaps it's just me, but shouldn't such a link be available from the message itself, eg, something like "click here to get a permanent link to this article" or even just something like "permalink"? Doesn't show up in the FAQ for Google groups either (er, using the unbroken UK site). I know it's not hard to do (for example, you can copy the link from the "Original Format" link and edit), but it should be really easy.
Re:Great... by fatphil · 2004-12-06 08:04 · Score: 1

Change the .ca to .com:

<a href="http://groups.google.com/groups?oi=djq&ic=1& selm=an_638071147">
http://groups.google.com/grou ps?oi=djq&ic=1&selm=a n_638071147</a>

And if you're like me you'll get something in Italian!

i.e. Google Groups 2 Beta is just plain broken.

FP.

--
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Re:Great... by fatphil · 2004-12-06 08:08 · Score: 1

Woh!
Looks like slashdot was just plain broken - your post was orphaned, and I didn't see the original. Ooops. My bad.
(But great-grandparent's right - there was no need to take a working search query and make it no longer work.)

FP.

--
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Re:Great... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 08:54 · Score: 0

Except your "like so" no longer links directly to the article with that Message-ID, but to the thread that contains it. Highly annoying.
Re:Great... by Buck2 · 2004-12-06 11:51 · Score: 1

Yes, that was a great example. Your link went directly to a thread of 10 messages. It's pretty obvious which one you were pointing out as the important or useful one.

Can you do 'view as tree' then save a link these days? I'm just noticing that now. Maybe it's new since this morning.

--

As my father lik@(munch munch)... ....

In other news... by flatface · 2004-12-06 02:26 · Score: 2, Informative

This probably isn't enough for a story, but Google finally has translation support for Eastern languages... I've tested Japanese, Chinese and Korean. They seem to be a lot like Systran's (babelfish) translations, but not exactly.

You may mod me offtopic now.

Re:In other news... by Dwedit · 2004-12-06 03:10 · Score: 2, Funny

Google translation inhales the sphere of the donkey.
Re:In other news... by bigbigbison · 2004-12-06 03:35 · Score: 1

I haven't tried this specific implimentation, but google's webpage translations are not the same as babelfish's, at least for German. (Even though there are better translators out there, the quick link to "translate this" in search results is often enough to tell me if I should bother dragging out my german-english dictionary)

--
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Re:In other news... by meadowsp · 2004-12-06 04:24 · Score: 1

Terrorist eh?
Re:In other news... by flatface · 2004-12-06 04:30 · Score: 1

How did you know I was Canadian? :/

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2004-12-06 02:27 · Score: 2, Insightful

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Only on google.com by AndrewRUK · 2004-12-06 02:28 · Score: 4, Informative

If you don't like the new itnerface, just use it with a country code domain rather than .com. I've checked the UK, Canadian, French, German, and Australian versions, and all have the classic interface, rather than the new one.

Re:Only on google.com by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 07:52 · Score: 0

But I dont speak French, German, Australian or Canadian! I'd hate to even wonder how you pronounce 'Ukian'.
Re:Only on google.com by harmonica · 2004-12-06 19:59 · Score: 1

... and all have the classic interface, rather than the new one.

But obviously not for long.

However, I'm sure that with enough shouting, they'll give us an additional classic version.

Using it as a Mailing list by codeguy007 · 2004-12-06 02:28 · Score: 2, Interesting

Well I am using it as a mailing list and it works well and better than yahoogroups lately though most of yahoo's problems with some ISPs have been resolved.

However does the Moderation work yet?

I tried to setup an announcement list where the members can make announcements which would be moderated. I attempted to send message that required moderation and was able to moderate the message. No email no mention of the queued messages on the site. Nothing. As such we are still using yahoogroups for that list.

Re:Using it as a Mailing list by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 02:38 · Score: 0

You're using *what* as a mailing list? You do know what Google Groups is , right?

There needs to be an exam for using this thing.
Re:Using it as a Mailing list by gorbachev · 2004-12-06 02:45 · Score: 1

"You do know what Google Groups is , right?"

Apparently you don't.

The new Google Groups is Usenet groups + Google's answer to Yahoogroups, e.g. a web based mailing list interface.

--
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
Re:Using it as a Mailing list by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 02:47 · Score: 0

Google now lets you create your own group and use it as a mailing list, just like Yahoo! Groups does.

There needs to be an exam for using this thing.
Re:Using it as a Mailing list by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 03:12 · Score: 0

Well I am using it as a mailing list and it works well and better than yahoogroups lately though most of yahoo's problems with some ISPs have been resolved.
Interesting. Hopefully more Yahoo Groups lists will use Google's service. I know I get annoyed with Yahoo's insistence on storing a cookie just to look at posts. Their interstitial ads are also annoying.
Re:Using it as a Mailing list by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 04:46 · Score: 0

I imagine google could do a much better job of searching on these groups. Searching in yahoo groups is a joke.

Weird... by kzinti · 2004-12-06 02:32 · Score: 1

I gave the new Google groups a visit for the first time this morning. Under "recently visited groups" it listed gnu.emacs.bug, which is strange because I haven't used the new Google groups before, or the old Google groups in months, and because I have never used Google to visit gnu.emacs.bug. The posts were mostly garbage: a Rolex ad, a Nigerian 401 phish, a via/g/ra ad, one in an Asian font, and the rest in Cyrillic. Only one of the posts listed in the first set was about emacs. This only confirms my belief that Usenet is now mostly worthless spam, rendering the Google Groups debate moot.

Re:Weird... by nogginthenog · 2004-12-06 03:58 · Score: 1

The same could be said about email, but you still use it. I find Usenet to be a gem of information & discussions.
Re:Weird... by antiknijn · 2004-12-06 04:00 · Score: 1

This only confirms my belief that Usenet is now mostly worthless spam, rendering the Google Groups debate moot.

And I believe email is useless because I received nothing but spam email on one account of mine today.

If you'd spend some time on Usenet, you would notice that the amount of spam varies between newsgroups. There are some that are deserted and spam-infested, others are completely spam-clean and useful beyond words.

Couple of interesting new features by gorbachev · 2004-12-06 02:35 · Score: 3, Informative

You can subscribe to Usenet groups and get all the postings to your email address.

There's an Atom feed file for every group.

The about page for each group has group archives available by year and month.

I think once (if) I get used to the new interface this new Google Groups could be very nice indeed.

--
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you

Re:Couple of interesting new features by billchen · 2004-12-06 03:20 · Score: 1

Usenet -> email hasn't worked for...well, since the beta begun. Not for me anyhow... Will

All of them haven't changed yet by Vilim · 2004-12-06 02:37 · Score: 2, Informative

I was wondering what the original post and this one was talking about until I realised that I am in canada and am automatically redirected to the google.ca page. groups.google.ca still has the old interface

--
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it - Sir Winston Churchill

Am I missing something? by SenFo · 2004-12-06 02:37 · Score: 1, Informative

Are you blind or did Google just add back the features you claim they have done away with?

http://groups-beta.google.com/advanced_search

--
My lame blog.

And you can still access the old groups site! by Fepple · 2004-12-06 02:38 · Score: 1

I may be wrong but if you go to .co.uk you still get the old search...

http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?q=blah

So whats the fuss about?

Re:And you can still access the old groups site! by the_lesser_gatsby · 2004-12-06 03:58 · Score: 1

And how long do you think that will last for?
Re:And you can still access the old groups site! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 05:18 · Score: 0

The problem is that when you try to reply to a post from the United States you get this message:

"Unable to retrieve message..."

Google, this is EVIL by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 02:39 · Score: 0

I used Google Groups quite alot for researching information on old rare technical issues that cannot still be found anywhere else. Now, thanks to some ____ (deciding to censor self rather than use bad names for the first time on Slashdot) person who did a Duplo Blocks treatment to it, it is completely useless. This was a very valuable searching resource, and Google has utterly wrecked it.

This new interface is evil. It is completely useless to me. It is a kludge. It is like going from KDE to fsking TWM. I hate it. ARGHDFH@!Q#@$

I suggest someone set up a Boycott Google website to urge the revokation of this attrocious new Google Goops.

Re:Google, this is EVIL by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 05:06 · Score: 0

I suggest someone set up a Boycott Google website to urge the revokation of this attrocious new Google Goops.

What's wrong with you? Why can't you do it yourself? Do you have some special disability that prevents you from setting up said website? Or are you training to become a PHB?

use the URL and not the link and you're fine... by Khyron · 2004-12-06 02:41 · Score: 2, Informative

Perhaps there is some confusion over the fact that the link "Groups" from the main Google pages now points at the beta. However if one goes to "groups.google.com" directly, you see the same old interface and merely a link inviting you to try the beta if you like.

I happen to have been doing some research all last week and this weekend on groups.google.com and have not noticed any strange changes at all. Sounds to me like they just changed a link on their front page to drive traffic to the beta, big deal?

Re:use the URL and not the link and you're fine... by vidarh · 2004-12-06 02:45 · Score: 1

Not so for me. I get the horrible beta interface regardless how I access it.

Posting times. by Shant3030 · 2004-12-06 02:46 · Score: 1

In the older version, it used to take several hours to post a message. I tried posting a new topic today on my favorite board (asby), but the server was down, so I could not test it out. Does it still take hours to have a message posted?

Thanks

--
100% Insightful

Re:Posting times. by Jarlsberg · 2004-12-06 05:37 · Score: 1

I can't image this will be changed in the new Groups, as Google use the Usenet protocol to propagate messages, and sending messages through Usenet is a *lot* slower than, say, sending email (but that's really comparing apples & oranges).

My knee jerk reaction by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 02:48 · Score: 0

I gave them feedback, hope they read it.

"The new interface is horrible. It is confusing, hard to follow, visually distracting and generally a nightmare.
At this point, Outlook Express has just become a better news client."

Posting Anon because I can't remember my damn P/L

Irony of ironies by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 02:57 · Score: 1, Interesting

Does anyone else remember the outcry when Google took over from Dejanews?

At that time, many people were furious that a refined, functional interface had been replaced with a clunky, limited one. They were also furious that all those old dejanews.com links had just been trashed forever.

And the same thing happened during Dejanews' reign as the Keeper of the Archive. Any time the interface changed (IIRC, there were three major overhauls over the life of the site), fans of the old would mercilessly trash the new.

Plus ça change...

Re:Irony of ironies by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 04:07 · Score: 0

Part of the problem is that the engine gets worse and worse with every progression.

The current search is far inferior to the original DejaNews search.
Re:Irony of ironies by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 05:03 · Score: 0

Yes, each change has made the interface worse. What's your point? The original interface was nice and clean and very functional, no matter what type of browser you used. Each successive change has made the interface more aesthetically pleasing yet less usable.

You should go study some topics on usability before you make such comments: users will almost always put up with broken interfaces (no choice, too lazy to find alternatives, ...), so the fact that some people still use the system doesn't mean that the interface is good in any way. Google groups is a case in point, while each iteration is less usable, people have no other choice. They complain for a while and then reluctantly put up with the broken interface, no other choice.
Re:Irony of ironies by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 05:47 · Score: 0

IMO, each change has not actually made the interface worse.

I don't remember the original Deja too well by now, but I do remember that the penultimate iteration was the best of the bunch. Earlier versions, if I'm remembering right, had graphical buttons; later ones didn't. Power searches and viewing options tended to improve over time. Article-posting and removal functionality improved over time. (They didn't exist at all at the beginning.)

Google's first version, which so many are praising today, was a big step down from any version of Deja, although the addition of basic posting functionality did put it ahead of the very first Deja in terms of feature-completeness.

The second Google version, which so many are complaining about today, looks like a step up to me and is at least a match for the final Deja iteration. It removes most of the major annoyances related to the first Google version, while optionally preserving the main elements of that first interface for those who want them. Note that every major complaint regarding functionality (no deep-linking, no email address view, no date search) has either already been resolved (mere hours later) or was never an issue to begin with.

Simply saying that each new version has been less usable than the last doesn't make it so. It's demonstrably wrong.

Thus my point: it's ironic that something people once complained about is now a sacred cow, while its replacement -- a move back towards a more functional predecessor -- is reviled.

it needs work by poptones · 2004-12-06 02:57 · Score: 1

but I still don't see what the complaining is all about. It's called BETA for a reason. If you don't like a feature, time to let them know.

it needs to be able to view the post back in context (ie thread view). other than that I don't see anything here that wasn't before. It's just different - not the same - but not really worse.

I think what folks are most threatened by is google appears to be going after a yahoo type look - ie to make it look more like a web forum and less like usenet.

Can't have all those webteevee-ers hanging about!

Re:it needs work by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 03:54 · Score: 0

It's called BETA for a reason.

But the beta's gone to production, you insensitive clod!

Share your opinion link by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 02:59 · Score: 0

That's gotta be the first time I've seen a web script written in Python.

Re:Share your opinion link by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 03:05 · Score: 0

Google is a big supporter of Python. Gmail's help system is directed to .py scripts.

Ahhh by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 03:00 · Score: 0

The zen of Google Groups Beta is that it doesn't Google at all... it MSN's.

The bright side? by Tylerious · 2004-12-06 03:01 · Score: 1

Am I the only one here who didn't like the old service? Any news is good news as far as I'm concerned. I always found the old Google Groups cramped, cluttered, and confusing. So if they clear it up while killing some things, all the better.

Does anyone remember when Altavista dropped usenet by expro · 2004-12-06 03:05 · Score: 2, Interesting

I really wish they hadn't. It would be nice at least to have a second source. Of course they would have had to eventually limit searches on binary groups they offered, but it was a sad day when they dropped it altogether.

Altavista advanced search capabilities always seemed far more advanced than Google, even now. For example, how, again, in google can I search for an article where a specific word is near another specific word (within n words), to avoid all the false matches of composite content? Google seems to spend most of its efforts determining where 80% would like to go relative to a particular topic rather than any degree of accuracy.

Threaded view? by Malc · 2004-12-06 03:09 · Score: 3, Insightful

Am I blind, or is there really no way to get a threaded view of the headers? The flat view useless.

Re:Threaded view? by anand78 · 2004-12-06 03:12 · Score: 0

the original (wonderful) Google Groups anymore. Are you kidding the original design is gross if I may use a word to describe it.
Re:Threaded view? by interJ · 2004-12-06 07:10 · Score: 2, Informative

You are blind. Click 'view tree' inside the message to get the threaded view. You only need to do this once since it's remembered in a cookie.
Re:Threaded view? by Malc · 2004-12-06 11:34 · Score: 1

Please guide me to it!

1) I go to: http://groups.google.com/
2) Click on "Browse complete list of groups..."
3) Enter "can.internet.highspeed" in the edit box to the right of the "Group directory" title and hit "Directory search"
4) Click on the link to that group
5) ???

Where do I go now? At this point the URL is: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/can.internet.h ighspeed

The word "tree" doesn't appear on the page. If I click on a message I still cannot find that word.

Please open my eyes for me!...
Re:Threaded view? by The+Cisco+Kid · 2004-12-06 13:15 · Score: 1

Upper right, you can click either 'View titles only' or View with message text'

'View with message text' is the default, and 'view titles only' is fairly close to the old display of the index.

Click on either 'read more' (if viewing with text), or the thread subject (title) (if viewing titles only), and this will display that thread.

The default thread display, shows everything flat. Right below the thread title, there should be something like 'All xx messages in topic', and then right next to it, to the right 'View as tree', which will display similar to the way the old interface did. (If you want to switch back to flat, click 'No frame' in the left-hand frame)
Re:Threaded view? by Malc · 2004-12-06 15:46 · Score: 1

THANK YOU.

I had a really hard time finding that! It's good to know it's there, although I find it a little hidden away. I suppose I'll get used to it, especially as there's not much choice ;) Of course daily use I'll be sticking with my dedicated NNTP client and local leafnode server.

Yeah - and use the free Google Desktop Search! by NotQuiteReal · 2004-12-06 03:09 · Score: 1

Archive all of USENET yourself (heh, if your ISP gives you enough USENET bandwidth to even keep up).

Then run Google search on your own data!

--
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.

Deep linking is back by michaelmalak · 2004-12-06 03:10 · Score: 3, Informative

In response to my Slashdot submission a few days ago, a couple of people responded with a non-intuitive way to grab a deep link. But it looks like Google listened, and not only is search-by-date back, but "Show original" is now an option again -- the more intuitive way to grab a deep link.

However, the deep link you get now is a Google article number, similar to the DejaNews article numbers -- which no longer work of course. The old Google deep links encoded the MsgID directly in the URL, thus guarateeing their usefulness in the future.

Re:Deep linking is back by fatphil · 2004-12-06 07:52 · Score: 1

I tried a search by date just a few minutes ago, and it refused to order the results by date. There was a link, but it didn't work.

They might as well have a link that says "don't be broken", that likewise does nothing, and that would be equally useful.

FP.

--
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863

Me too - same old link by NotQuiteReal · 2004-12-06 03:13 · Score: 1

I have advanced search as one of my default tabs.

So - as of Monday 06, 2004 you can still directly link to the old groups...

--
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.

The search results need LOTS of work. by furry_wookie · 2004-12-06 03:15 · Score: 1

I typed "stargate" into the search, and it took until down on the second page of results to find ANYTHING from the newsgroup alt.tv.stargate-sg1

--
-- Given enough time and money, Microsoft will eventualy invent UNIX.

What I worry by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 03:17 · Score: 0

Is that google will realize that 80% of the emails they're getting on this subject are coming from slashdot.org readers, go "hey, we're being hit by a targeted sandbag campaign", and not take it terribly seriously...

Re:What I worry by archnerd · 2004-12-06 08:40 · Score: 1

USENET usage isn't what it used to be. It wouldn't surprise me if 80% of USENETers were also slashdotters.

i was able to get the old google groups... by m2bord · 2004-12-06 03:18 · Score: 1

i just removed the words beta from the url. try it... http://groups.google.com/ i can get to the old groups with no problem.

--
Is it 5:30 yet?

Re:i was able to get the old google groups... by TheLink · 2004-12-06 03:29 · Score: 1

First thing I tried, but it doesn't really work - once you try to do queries you get the new interface.
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- Too many replies beneath your current threshold

Sign-in required for preferences? by nocleverhandle · 2004-12-06 03:19 · Score: 1

The old groups interface would save your preferences (filtering/sort/#hits per page) in a cookie. Now it appears you have to register/sign-in to have your preferences saved :(

Re:Sign-in required for preferences? by JUSTONEMORELATTE · 2004-12-06 03:52 · Score: 1

The old groups interface would save your preferences (filtering/sort/#hits per page) in a cookie. Now it appears you have to register/sign-in to have your preferences saved

Which is actually kind of handy if you use it from different machines (work and home, for example)

Same here. Search has time etc. No feature missing by guidryp · 2004-12-06 03:19 · Score: 1

http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search?hl= en

No change on my end. I still enter a time range on searches.

Someone please call the lawyers back! by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · 2004-12-06 03:23 · Score: 4, Informative

OK, before anyone else posts ill-informed rubbish, please go back and read the previous thread, where this argument was done to death. For those who can't be bothered, here's the executive summary:

Usenet posts are copyright of their authors, automatically and without any obligation to register in most jurisdictions. They do not become public domain, free-for-all content just because they're posted to Usenet.
The reason Usenet itself is legal is because the authors implicitly give their permission to copy the work for distribution around the system when they post.
Since Usenet posts normally expire after a few days, it is questionable whether the implicit permission covers archival usage, and if so, whether that archive is then allowed to be used for further commercial purposes.
Google has no magical rights in law, and does not gain any just because someone didn't put an x-no-archive header on their post or because someone knows that Google Groups exists. (In fact, that header isn't a standard one anyway -- hence the "x-" -- and didn't even exist when the earlier posts in Google's current archive were made.)
In the absence of explicit permission to reproduce the posts in this way, the onus is on Google to demonstrate that implicit permission has been given. If it can't, it's breaking the law.

--
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.

Re:Someone please call the lawyers back! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 04:46 · Score: 1, Informative

Since Usenet posts normally expire after a few days, it is questionable whether the implicit permission covers archival usage, and if so, whether that archive is then allowed to be used for further commercial purposes.

This is complete and utter BULL SHIT. Usenet posts DO NOT normally expire after a few days. Many modern nntp servers do discard posts in _binary_ newsgroups after a few days, but that's simply because of storage limits. In the early days, usenet posts remained on nntp servers forever. There is no expected expiry on usenet posts. Once you make a post on usenet, it is distributed throughout the internet and remains part of usenet forever. It's been this way since the beginning, in fact ALL original newsreaders warned users about this all the time, and nothing has changed.

Your point is PURE FUD.

In the absence of explicit permission to reproduce the posts in this way, the onus is on Google to demonstrate that implicit permission has been given. If it can't, it's breaking the law.

Can you send us a postcard from that Dreamland you're in at the moment?
Re:Someone please call the lawyers back! by DunbarTheInept · 2004-12-06 06:10 · Score: 2, Insightful

OK, before anyone else posts ill-informed rubbish

You're going to beat us to it, just like in the previous thread. Some specific points are brought up below.

2. "The system" of usenet is a system where it is left undefined what the client is that is viewing the posts. When I posted some of my first usenet posts, Microsoft did not have a usenet reader yet. Now they do. Does that mean I can complain that users have no right to use Outlook's news reader to access posts I made back then? No, of course not. Now, what is the definitional, legally enforcable difference between (A) Using a new client I hadn't heard of at the time to access my posts by showing them to the user directly, and (B) using a new client I hadn't heard of at the time to access my posts by showing them to a web browser that shows them to the user? The fact that it shunts through a web browser on the way to the user's eyeballs doesn't really change anything about the setup of who's showing things to who under what rights.

3. There is no hard and fast definition that separates a cache from an archive. An archive is exactly the same thing as a cache with a lot of space and is slow to purge. Therefore if permission is given to cache usenet posts (which it obviously is since that's how it works) then permission is also being given to archive them. The only way to refute this is to come up with a rigid legalistic definition of what the difference between a cache that is open to the public and an archive that is open to the public is.

And note that a usenet news server can legally be open to the public to connect to (and some were, once upon a time when usenet was smaller and cheaper to spool). So that's not a difference either between the usenet system before and after dejajnews/google got into it.

(By the way, posts do NOT "normally" expire after several days. They "normally" expire whenever the local news spool admin damn well feels like making them expire - which is a function of disk space mostly. I've participated in groups where the posts were archived for many months back on the server run by the ISP. How long they take to expire can be set on a per-group basis too - basically it varies from one group to the next even on the same news spool.)

5. The problem is that you have still failed to show the legal difference between what google is doing and what a news server is allowed to do. Therefore the "onus" on Google, while it is true that it exists, is already satisfied by simply pointing out that it is in the exact same legal position as a news server, which is already permitted to do what it does.

--
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Re:Someone please call the lawyers back! by nystagmus · 2004-12-06 06:15 · Score: 1

"In the absence of explicit permission to reproduce the posts in this way, the onus is on Google to demonstrate that implicit permission has been given. If it can't, it's breaking the law."

Oh... so is our society back to guilty until proven innocent? While we're at it, let's go ahead and chop of hands and fingers and pluck out people's eyes. After all, it's only fair.
Re:Someone please call the lawyers back! by khallow · 2004-12-06 09:20 · Score: 1

It's been like this for a long time. If you do something commercial with a copyrightable intellectual work of mine and you can't provide proof that I gave permission for your use of my copyright, then you are in trouble if I should sue you. There's a lot of stuff like this. If I'm driving your car, then I better have obtained permission from you ahead of time. There's no need to resort to anarchy and eye-for-an-eye justice in order to understand what's going on.
Re:Someone please call the lawyers back! by khallow · 2004-12-06 09:23 · Score: 1

Microsoft doesn't charge you to view a Usenet post. Neither does Google. Reading a Usenet post with an arbitrary reader is a valid "fair use" of that post. Charging five cents per article read without any agreement with the original author, is not a valid fair use of a Usenet post.
Re:Someone please call the lawyers back! by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · 2004-12-06 10:55 · Score: 1

Oh... so is our society back to guilty until proven innocent?

No. You're fundamentally misunderstanding what that principle means, and what the situation is here.

In this case, it is clear that Google is copying someone else's copyright material. By default, that action is illegal under copyright law. It is legal to do it only if permission has been given by the copyright holder, or if an exemption included in the copyright law (such as fair use provisions in the US) applies. There is no assumption of guilt here: there is clear evidence that a copy is being made.

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If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Re:Someone please call the lawyers back! by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · 2004-12-06 11:03 · Score: 1

One of us is spreading FUD. It's not me.

Please see, for example, RFC 1036, which has a section all about expiry of Usenet messages. It provides for including an "Expires" header, but recommends against using it except where there's an obvious expiration date (e.g., for announcements, after the thing they announce has happened), with a local default expiration date being the default if nothing is specified in the message. Claiming that "local default expiration date" means "keep it forever" is like claiming that US copyright law should be extended forever to support the big media corps.

I've been using Usenet for more than a decade, and in my experience, no NNTP-server, whether in academia or commercially run, kept messages indefinitely. Local policies on message lifetimes I've encountered have ranged from around 1-4 weeks, with 2 being pretty typical.

Since this is both what the RFC provides for and what has actually happened since forever, claiming that someone is giving implicit permission to do more by posting in the first place is a very weak argument.

--
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Re:Someone please call the lawyers back! by DunbarTheInept · 2004-12-06 11:24 · Score: 1

Your point is true, but I don't understand how you thought it relates to anything I said.

--
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Re:Someone please call the lawyers back! by Snaller · 2004-12-06 13:22 · Score: 1

Usenet posts are copyright of their authors, automatically and without any obligation to register in most jurisdictions. They do not become public domain, free-for-all content just because they're posted to Usenet.

Under what law? There is nothing creative in 99.9999% of all the posts on usenet.

--
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Re:Someone please call the lawyers back! by mysidia · 2004-12-06 16:51 · Score: 1

Are you suggesting an ISP can't charge a-la-carte?

That it would somehow not be fair use of the Web for an ISP to charge 5 cents a load to display a site on the WWW?

Or maybe charging 5 cents per click of a link on slashdot.org

Sure it seems dirty, but actually serving the Usenet article is not the issue: the author by posting has made their text as free as air to serve out for everyone providing access to Usenet, for whatever duration the Usenet providers choose to hold on to the stuff.

This is just the nature of Usenet. If you want to hold tight control of your content, private e-mail or a https server using client side certificates to control access, and a stringent policy guests have to agree to (not share material) are more appropriate, so where the material goes out to is entirely up to you.
Re:Someone please call the lawyers back! by mysidia · 2004-12-06 19:00 · Score: 1

But 99% is not 100%... The game of infringement, if that is what they are playing, seems wrong even if it's just 1% of the articles. Either it's just fair to all, or they shouldn't be doing it at all, IMO.

So far what they are doing seems most perfectly fair, however.
Re:Someone please call the lawyers back! by JuggleGeek · 2004-12-06 19:31 · Score: 1

I've been using Usenet for more than a decade, and in my experience, no NNTP-server, whether in academia or commercially run, kept messages indefinitely.
What, you haven't heard of groups.google.com?
Re:Someone please call the lawyers back! by harmonica · 2004-12-06 19:46 · Score: 1

Charging five cents per article read without any agreement with the original author, is not a valid fair use of a Usenet post.

It's a rather weird way of charging as a news provider, but I don't see why that shouldn't be fair use. The provider charges for its service, and that's the way it should be.
Re:Someone please call the lawyers back! by Minna+Kirai · 2004-12-06 19:48 · Score: 1

# Since Usenet posts normally expire after a few days,

That's false. There have normally been persistent archivers running (on a subset of groups) throughout the active history of USENET. (Not all the way back to the beginning, but far enough back to predate the messages Google Groups contains)
Re:Someone please call the lawyers back! by Minna+Kirai · 2004-12-06 19:55 · Score: 1

Charging five cents per article read without any agreement with the original author, is not a valid fair use of a Usenet post.

Nope. That's not how Fair Use law works. While it's true that profit motive is one of the 5 factors determining whether a certain "Use" is "Fair", it's a rather minor one. Not by itself enough to tip a balance.

Furthermore, Fair Use is irrelevant to USENET. Copying messages from USENET is allowed, because permission was automatically granted by the author when she uploaded the message. Fair Use is a limited exception to copyright, which doesn't matter to someone who already has broad permission.

Pulling out a message to a very different medium, such as quoting it in a newspaper, would require Fair Use however. And of course, If the message included data copyrighted by someone other than the poster, then it's illegal to copy.
Re:Someone please call the lawyers back! by khallow · 2004-12-07 05:05 · Score: 1

Hrmmm, I thought I was replying to the grandparent not your post. Don't know how that happened.
Re:Someone please call the lawyers back! by khallow · 2004-12-07 05:13 · Score: 1

The poster who owns the copywright to the article is also a provider whose work is being exploited by the news provider. Seems like there would be a problem to me.

The inventor of the WWW disagrees with you... by scarhill · 2004-12-06 03:25 · Score: 1

Tim B-L says Cool URIs don't change.

You wrote:
That's not google's fault, it's your responsibility to fix broken links.

It most certainly is Google's fault--they could have put in redirects to the new site if they chose to. (According to the OP, it sounds like they tried to, but screwed it up.)

As a website developer, I don't know all the sites that may link to me. Maybe if I know about some I might accomidate the links but most I don't even know about. And to be honest, I don't really care in most case.

If you don't cere if people's links to your site work, why are you bothering to publish a site at all? (Or if you're working for someone else, why are they hiring a "website developer" who doesn't care if visitors can get to their site?)

Re:The inventor of the WWW disagrees with you... by codeguy007 · 2004-12-06 06:08 · Score: 1

Tim B-L says Cool URIs don't change.

Yeah I read that pile of crap. There is no way people are going to continue to maintain older out of date versions of the their sites because W3C says so.

Information becomes out of date. If I leave up websites for computer parts which I sold 5 years ago I will continue to get requests for that hardware. It needs to be taken down. Websites are dynamic and change frequently and to expect them to maintain all the old links is just unrealistic.
Re:The inventor of the WWW disagrees with you... by doom · 2004-12-06 15:06 · Score: 1

codeguy007 wrote:

"Tim B-L says Cool URIs don't change."
Yeah I read that pile of crap.
Whoa, Some Guy on Slashdot has spoken, forget about Tim Berners-Lee.
There is no way people are going to continue to maintain older out of date versions of the their sites because W3C says so.
Right! Not when Some Guy on Slashdot tells them not to.
Information becomes out of date. If I leave up websites for computer parts which I sold 5 years ago I will continue to get requests for that hardware.
I have an idea: why don't you put a *date* on your web page, and when you discontinue the part, mark the page "Discontinued" at the top, and change the headers to tell robots to stop spidering the page.
Of course that would only make sense if you thought that some of your customers might want to know something about products that they bought from you a few years back. Why would you want to engage in any sort of product support for a product you're not selling any more, eh? You got the suckers money already, why not let them know what you think of them. "But that's obsolete! Time to *upgrade*, Ha, Ha."
It needs to be taken down. Websites are dynamic and change frequently and to expect them to maintain all the old links is just unrealistic.
And google groups is a public archive of information that might reasonably be expected to have a static, unchanging scheme of indexing. This information *has* *not* *changed*. They've just decided to move it all around and throw the old links away.

"un-google" GUI by peter303 · 2004-12-06 03:29 · Score: 1

The old system was terse with single line message descriptions. This was the philosophy of the google home page and many news-readers. Now they throw a couple of pages of message contents at you. I find that cluttered and harder to navigate.

old groups not dead yet by neo0983 · 2004-12-06 03:32 · Score: 0

You can still access the old google groups at http://groups.google.com/

Search by Date seems to be there... by the_pilif · 2004-12-06 03:34 · Score: 3, Informative

... http://groups-beta.google.com/advanced_search it's just right there at the bottom of the form. So for me all this whining around is quite senseless. Without this date-search, google groups would indeed be completely useless (who is interested in answers to tech-questions asked around 1990?) Philip

Re:Search by Date seems to be there... by Kazoo+the+Clown · 2004-12-06 09:27 · Score: 1

who is interested in answers to tech-questions asked around 1990?

People restoring antique tech-gear for one. But then they're probably ONLY interesting in finding answers around that time and would like to filter out later ones. Looks like they've put the date range search back though, so looks like Google got that message.

no longer google over Google by Blitzenn · 2004-12-06 03:35 · Score: 1

They sure seem to be coming up with some pretty convoluted and simply dumb things over at google lately. I guess that's what happens when you get too many overly educated morons in one place. Their desktop search engine is a machine wrecker as it hogs so many CPU cycles and can't be throttled in any way. They wrecked the google groups now, which was my favorite feature for getting coding answers. what next, adopt a yahoo interface for their search engine (one that returns results you don't want at all)?

Re:no longer google over Google by Kazoo+the+Clown · 2004-12-06 09:25 · Score: 1

Their desktop search engine is a machine wrecker as it hogs so many CPU cycles and can't be throttled in any way.

Huh? I've been running it since it first came out and haven't noticed ANY impact on performance. Have you done a virus check lately?
Re:no longer google over Google by Blitzenn · 2004-12-07 06:00 · Score: 1

Of course I virus check my machines, every day with up to date software, that has nothing to do with it. The problem is when you have a large volume of data on a machine, 80+ gigs. The indexing engine hogs a tremendous amount of the CPU clock cycles to try to index it. I have had that problem on 4 different machines. I have a large/huge amount of indexed images and files for business. Google indexing engine is weak to poor in that case.

This goes against Google's corporate mantra by decarelbitter · 2004-12-06 03:40 · Score: 1

This groups-beta goed right against Google's corporate mantra of "don't be evil".

Well, they would become evil sooner or later (all big things do), so I guess this is the time.

Ugly fonts! by ZorinLynx · 2004-12-06 03:44 · Score: 4, Insightful

I hate the new proportional font they adopted for messages. Usenet is meant to be looked at in a fixed-width font! Proportional fonts totally screw up lovingly crafted sigs, ascii art, and so on.

Who was the nutcase at Google that thought Groups needed a facelift? It was FINE AS IT WAS. I don't know what they're smoking over there.

I'm going to use the Canadian Google Groups (google.ca) in defiance for now, but I bet it will go away soon as well.

Arrrgh. Companies can't just leave a good thing alone.

-Z

Re:Ugly fonts! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 04:19 · Score: 1, Informative

Well, I see that you have Lynx in your name. I am using Lynx right now. The new google groups uses so much Javascript that Lynx can't be used to view it at all. GOOGLE HATES BLIND PEOPLE!
Re:Ugly fonts! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 05:12 · Score: 0

Mod parent up.

Could be a DDA (Disability Discrimination Act), or, more likely an ?AWDA (Americans with Disability Act), issue here.
Re:Ugly fonts! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 06:09 · Score: 0

Yes, lets sue google because your decrepid text based browser can't view a modern webpage.
Re:Ugly fonts! by harmonica · 2004-12-06 08:11 · Score: 1

I hate the new proportional font they adopted for messages. Usenet is meant to be looked at in a fixed-width font! Proportional fonts totally screw up lovingly crafted sigs, ascii art, and so on.

I can't understand how anyone who reads a lot of articles can live with fixed-width fonts. It's so unpleasant to look at them. Good screen fonts like Verdana make it much more convenient to read a lot on the screen.

As for ASCII art or correct display of signatures--I don't care about that.

With GG I don't mind the fixed-width font, because I only read articles which were search results--rarely more than 10 or 20 at a time.
Re:Ugly fonts! by ZorinLynx · 2004-12-06 09:09 · Score: 1

I suppose it's a subjective thing, then. In that case, Google Groups should have an option that the user can set; proportional or fixed-width fonts.

-Z
Re:Ugly fonts! by Lost+Race · 2004-12-06 09:39 · Score: 1

My guess is that it's not popular enough among the hoi polloi, so they aren't making enough money from it. They're trying to draw in a larger audience by making it less technical or something. That way they can make more advertising revenue. Maybe the new format is somehow more advertiser-friendly too.
Re:Ugly fonts! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 10:06 · Score: 0

lets sue google because your decrepid text based browser can't view a modern webpage.

Heard of screen-readers? They're the only way some blind people can conveniently browse the internet. And, guess what, if a webpage is difficult or impossible to view in Lynx, it's going to be difficult or impossible to navigate using a screen reader. Ooh, wait, that's illegal, isn't it? Yep, it is.

BTW, I suggest you find a spell-checker. Trolling on Slashdot is so much rewarding if you do it in well-spelled and grammatical English - it makes you look educated, which means you get a better class of angry reaction to your trolls. Badly-spelled trolls often end up being ignored completely, which isn't quite the idea, is it?
Re:Ugly fonts! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 13:25 · Score: 0

Most screenreaders don't process HTML - they integrate into IE or potentially Mozilla.

But, go ahead and pretend there's a law against Javascript. Whatever turns your fantasy crank.
Re:Ugly fonts! by juhaz · 2004-12-06 22:21 · Score: 1

You didn't even try, did you? Just drew a conclusion that hey! javascript, it can't work in Lynx!

Well, here's a newsflash, it does work rather well in both Lynx and Links, probably better than in browsers that do support javascript, but not to full extent Google is using.

The "old" system is still available by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 03:45 · Score: 0

http://216.239.37.104/groups?q=(put keyword here)

(after you load the page this way, searching works normaly: you don't have to enter a
keyword in the URL itself to search again.

Is it just me? I like it! by MarkWatson · 2004-12-06 04:03 · Score: 3, Interesting

I use Google Groups all the time - never did search by date so I don't care about that. I like the new UI.

I used to go to a lot of trouble handling NNTP feeds; since Google Groups was released I don't bother.

A little bit OT: Is it just me, or are some things getting simpler? GMail and Google Groups cuts down my 'overhead time'. The switch from Linux (well, sometimes Windows 2000) to Mac OS X saves me a lot of admin hours each month. The quality and productivity of coding tools (e.g., IntelliJ and LispWorks) is going through the roof: everything seems to be getting easier :-)

Re:Is it just me? I like it! by Blakey+Rat · 2004-12-06 04:12 · Score: 1

Amazing discovery!

Things get better over time! Revolutionary.

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Comment of the year
Re:Is it just me? I like it! by ScrewMaster · 2004-12-06 11:14 · Score: 1

Someone should explain to the parent about "job security". When an occupation gets so easy that "anyone can do it" (or at least where there is a perception among PHBs that anyone can do it) anyone over a certain salary level suddenly becomes a target.

--
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.

MOD UP this response. You CAN reply to poster. by simos · 2004-12-06 04:03 · Score: 1

MOD UP this response. You CAN reply to original poster through Google Groups (BETA).

I would personally not care to receive an e-mail after two years from someone who wants to ask me something about a post that would be obsolete by then. And in return I get reminded everyday by spam that in two years time someone will passingly thank me for THAT e-mail.

Re:MOD UP this response. You CAN reply to poster. by MisterClever · 2004-12-06 07:23 · Score: 1

I would personally not care to receive an e-mail after two years from someone who wants to ask me something about a post that would be obsolete by then
I completely disagree. Every so often I get a email from someone who googlegrouped me up asking me if I'd managed to solve problem XYZ back in 1998. If the problem's been solved I'm happy to help. It's all good usenet karma.
Re:MOD UP this response. You CAN reply to poster. by cs · 2004-12-06 12:17 · Score: 1
I would personally not care to receive an e-mail after two years from someone who wants to ask me something about a post that would be obsolete by then.
1. Plenty of posts don't become "obsolete".
  If your posts are so time sensitive put an Expires: header on them. At least there'll be a clue.
2. You'll get spam anyway. Censoring one archive (eg Goole's) won't change that and even if there were no public archives you'd be getting spam because you've posted in a public space, and presumably been seen. Should I infer from your remark: "in return I get reminded everyday by spam" that you have good stats on which of your spams come from usenet archive harvesting?
--
Cameron Simpson, DoD#743 cs@cskk.id.au http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/

OFFTOPIC? Ignornat moderator alert! by DodgyGeezer · 2004-12-06 04:09 · Score: 1

Which ignoramus of a dumb moderator marked the parent as offtopic? Stand up and be counted you fool!

This is an article about the new Google groups. The parent correctly brought up a relevant point that the left threaded pane is now longer present. Usenet threads aren't linear with just one line of replies, but rather multiple replies per posting, and thus the potential for multiple threads of conversation for each topic. Getting rid of the threaded view is dumb.

Re:I use email to find post authors I enjoy by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 04:10 · Score: 0

If someone always uses their email address in their posts, you can search by that address and read all their archived posts. When you find someone that posts interesting stuff, you can search for posts containing their email address to find more Insightful/Informative/Funny/Interesting posts of theirs to read. It's not Google's job to protect people from having their email addresses harvested by spammers. It's the poster's problem. They should use a throwaway gmail/yahoo/hotmail account to be a sink for the spam which posting on usenet will inevitably bring.
And if google masks the throwaway email address I use in my posts, then how will I use Google Groups to search for my own posts in order to see if there have been any replies?

Warning: Google now tracks where you browse! by bahco · 2004-12-06 04:14 · Score: 1

Google Groups Beta rewrites URLs in UseNet posts. For instance: http://faq.luiemotorfiets.net/ becomes http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http://faq.luiemo torfiets.net/

If you are paranoid, you can cut the original URL from the rewritten one and use that, for now. [*] But what if Google starts rewriting URLs using a scheme like that used by http://tinyurl.com/ ?

[*] IANAL, but US Americans may be violating the DMCA when doing that. :-)

--
-- The best way to accelerate a computer running Windows is at 9.8 m/s^2.

Re:Warning: Google now tracks where you browse! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 05:29 · Score: 0

This is not happening all the time. The web search engine also has been doing this for some time, at random.
Apparently it sometimes selects a victim for tracking and then uses these modified links.
Re:Warning: Google now tracks where you browse! by dbacher · 2004-12-06 08:44 · Score: 1

Just FYI,

Before you get out your tin foil hats, the times that I've seen Google do this for links pointed at my website, it's been either after a period of several days outage or it's been due to a stale URI/URL.

When you do this, Google can try to hit the site first, and then falls back to the archive. I've not checked Usenet in particular, but it's the pattern I've seen in other links it has modified in this way.

--
If your code is acting bloated, and is running rather slow, it's likely and predicted that some loops you will unroll.
Re:Warning: Google now tracks where you browse! by Kazoo+the+Clown · 2004-12-06 09:46 · Score: 1

Google Groups Beta rewrites URLs in UseNet posts.

I've been using Proxomitron (Windows) and Privoxy (Linux) to fix this sort of thing in Hotmail for years now-- it's a no brainer to add Google to the filters...

If it ain't broke by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 04:24 · Score: 0

It's only ironic if you assume the complainers were ultimately wrong. The fact that the horrible successive interfaces survived doesn't necessarily mean they really were better. Considering there is no rival to the Deja/Google Usenet archive I would just consider this a symptom of monopoly control - the monopoly can afford to make as many bad decisions as they want, because where else ya gonna go?

Google Groups 2 is Google's "Windows XP Home".

The Sandwich Analogy (+5, Awesome) by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 04:26 · Score: 0

If a waitress replaces your sandwich that fell on the floor with a sandwich she spit in, is that an improvement?

Here's what I sent to them by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 04:27 · Score: 1, Informative

Just curious if anyone feels the same -

-----

I'm just writing to express complete dissatisfaction with new 'improved' user interface. I realize that UI design is very subjective subject prone to lengthy flames, still I believe it wouldn't hurt to provide the feedback from the masses :)

Few things that are immediately annoying are an overuse of color, stupid star icons all over the place and no obvious way to get a threaded view of a topic. It starts to look like Lotus Notes - fancy-shmancy for no reason.

'Signin/Join' dialog takes too much real estate on the page and it makes me feel pushed into subsribing at something that I don't care about. I DON'T feel a need to login, so there's no need to remind me on every page that I still have that option. Simple 'login' link in corner of the page would've done it just fine.

'Create new group' option also seems out of place, since I don't perceive it as something that I would use frequently if ever. The same goes for 'About' link.

I guess it can be summed up as this - the interface now is 30% of water and 70% of information, whereas it used to be 10%/90%. And this distracts and annoys a lot. From a first (and second) glance, it's a change for worse, and definetly not for better.

Re:Here's what I sent to them by Bitsy+Boffin · 2004-12-06 06:29 · Score: 1

'Create new group' option also seems out of place, since I don't perceive it as something that I would use frequently if ever.

I agree, all that is going to accomplish is to make for lots and lots group rot - that is, people creating groups for the sake of creating them.

--
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings

It makes me harder to contact. by Richard+Steiner · 2004-12-06 04:30 · Score: 1

Why should I be penalized just because I happen to have robust spam filters in place (and can use my real e-mail address on USENET and other forums with very little concern)?

I like making my address visible. It should be my choice, not the choice of the archiving service that is deciding to save and redisplay my messages...

--
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.

Wrapped links remind me of spam by cfortin · 2004-12-06 04:31 · Score: 4, Interesting

I really don't like it when the text for a link doesn't match the target. If you see

"http://sonyelectronics.sonystyle.com/m..."

and then notice that its really

"http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http://sonyele ct ronics.sonystyle.com/m..."

it makes you wonder what use they have planned for those click histories ( tied into those cookies ).

Re:Wrapped links remind me of spam by IO+ERROR · 2004-12-06 14:14 · Score: 1

I use wrapped links to determine what people who visit my site are most interested in (right now it's marijuana, with amazon.com a distant second) outside my site, so I have a better idea of new things to add to the site. That's all. I don't care a bit who's at IP address 1.2.3.4 and I don't even pay much attention to the IP addresses anyway (except when I'm being attacked by an email harvester and need to block it). I don't track cookies, though, and the wrapper script is listed in a Disallow line in robots.txt.

--
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Re:Wrapped links remind me of spam by kozara · 2004-12-07 12:19 · Score: 1

It also opens a new window without permission. The old interface did not. I verified on the UK Google Groups.

Google - Real Ultimate Power by _Sprocket_ · 2004-12-06 04:34 · Score: 2, Funny

After reading the submission's tittle, I can't help but think:

Google can change beta environments anytime they want! Google changes their interfaces ALL the time and don't even think twice about it. These guys are so crazy and awesome that they flip betas ALL the time. I heard that there was this Google developer who was eating at a diner. And when some dude entered a Groups search the developer changed the whole Groups interface. My friend Orkut said that he saw a developer totally undercut some interface just because people were used to it.

And that's what I call REAL Ultimate Power!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re:Google - Real Ultimate Power by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 06:37 · Score: 0

You sir, have reached the end of the Internet.

reverted by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 04:35 · Score: 0

I think they just changed it back, as I was switching froups. Hoorah!

Date searches in Advanced Groups Search by Michael+Ross · 2004-12-06 04:43 · Score: 2, Informative

...its lack of features (date searches)...

Advanced Groups Search (http://groups.google.com/advanced_group_search?hl =en) appears to have date searches. Or was the previous date searching better?

Re: Your sig by feargal · 2004-12-06 05:00 · Score: 1

"There are four lights!!!" (for very large values of four)

--
"A goldfish was his muse, eternally amused"

More Important Than The Human Genome Project by paranerd · 2004-12-06 05:03 · Score: 4, Insightful

Warning: I go off the deep end on this subject. But I'm sincere for all of that.

DejaNews is more important for our society than the Human Genome Project. Just because only Slashdot-types (mostly) understand that doesn't make it less factual. It's wrong to leave it in the hands of one company.

Re:More Important Than The Human Genome Project by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 05:52 · Score: 1, Funny

So? Are you going to just complain about it or do something about it? Hmm? This is what needs to be done:

1. Find lots of disk-space. Lots!

2. Setup a web server that can handle the enormous amount of data and traffic that is required by a usenet archive.

3. Distribute a program to volunteers that will access Google Groups, extract all the articles, and store these in the disk-space from 1.

4. Implement the software to run the usenet archive website.

I'll open-source and donate my version of 3 to you, I'll also implement 4 if you want. All you have to do is come up with 1 and 2.

So? Are you just a whiner or a doer?
Re:More Important Than The Human Genome Project by damiam · 2004-12-06 14:35 · Score: 1

DejaNews is more important for our society than the Human Genome Project.
Wow. You just made a broad, powerful statement completely un-backed-up by any facts. Care to elaborate?

--
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.

One good thing... by Fiver- · 2004-12-06 05:08 · Score: 1

Now the text in the Adobe newsgroups that Google carries (the ones that start with adobe.*) actually wraps into paragraphs instead of single lines that extend seven screen-widths to the right.

SHOCKED, simply shocks are you Google scoffers by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 05:12 · Score: 0

How dare you criticize my GOD! Google is Great! There is no other than Google! Excuse me while I use some paper tissues.

Modifying articles is a copyright violation by Anders+Andersson · 2004-12-06 05:16 · Score: 4, Insightful

I recently retrieved all articles in Google Groups posted using either of the four e-mail addresses I remember having used for Usenet (there were 429 such articles, posted between 1985 and 1997). I never mangled my e-mail address on purpose, but I had mostly stopped posting to Usenet when spamming took off in the mid 90's. Those four addresses have since all been disabled, although I tried to keep them alive as long as possible, as a matter of principle (I preferred using blacklists to silence annoying senders rather than give up my freedom to express myself in public for the convenience of spammers).

Google not only masks the address of each poster, but also anything in the article itself that merely looks like an e-mail address, including Message IDs. When I quote somebody else, referring to the author of that quote by name and e-mail address, Google sees fit to remove that identifying information. I did not approve of them mangling my articles in this way; that was not part of the understanding of how my postings were to be processed when I made them.

Since I retain the copyright to my articles, I have the right to control in what way they may be disseminated by others. I'm perfectly happy with Google or anyone else archiving my articles for future readers, as long as they don't modify what I have written. If someone wants to quote a significant portion of an article rather than all of it, that's fine too, as long as they attribute it to the original author, but that's not an archive, and that's not what Google is doing. Instead, Google is systematically erasing information detailing exactly who wrote what part of each article. What if an e-mail address is used as the sole identifier of the author in an explicit copyright notice, will Google destroy that information too?

As for Google allowing individual authors to opt out from having their articles archived at all, that's fine but it's no excuse for systematic copyright infringement, however small. To make a rough analogy, that's like Napster allowing copyright holders to request their own titles to be removed from Napster's database on an individual basis, while continuing to distribute anything the copyright holders haven't complained about (maybe because they haven't found out about it). For distribution to be legal, copyright requires authors to opt in to it, not fail to opt out. If authors want to opt out from enforcing their rights, they do so by neglecting to sue.

I want to tell Google: You can continue distributing my 429 articles if you like, as long as you distribute them verbatim, without any modifications of what I once wrote. Google however does not provide me with that option. Should I really have to send Google 429 removal requests, and then submit my articles to some other public archive, just to make that point? What a waste.

Re:Modifying articles is a copyright violation by Minna+Kirai · 2004-12-06 19:40 · Score: 1

Since I retain the copyright to my articles, I have the right to control in what way they may be disseminated by others.

Nope. That's not how copyright law works. You control whether people can copy/distribute your messages- but once you give that permission, you have no further authority. If you allow someone to copy something, he implicitly is able to choose to copy only half of it, if that's what he prefers.

Blacking out small parts of a work and then redistributing it is common and legal. Recent court decisions reinforce this view, such as the one with a company that sold censored VHS tapes.

I want to tell Google: You can continue distributing my 429 articles if you like, as long as you distribute them verbatim, without any modifications of

Is that requirement already attached to your messages? If not, too late. By uploading them to USENET, you have implicitly given permission for the content to be replicated widely (since you knew that such copying would occur automatically once you posted)

If you had explicitly required that your posts only be republished in full (or not at all), then you might have a case here.

(Note that such a clause would make it impossible to display the message in the Google Groups interface, since wrapping it in an HTML border and colorizing indents counts as modifications. They could theoretically link to a plain-ascii page, though)
Re:Modifying articles is a copyright violation by Anders+Andersson · 2004-12-06 22:32 · Score: 1

You control whether people can copy/distribute your messages- but once you give that permission, you have no further authority. If you allow someone to copy something, he implicitly is able to choose to copy only half of it, if that's what he prefers.

If I permit verbatim copying of my articles, that's not permission by me also for anyone to copy only selected portions of it. Note that it may still be legal under the "fair use" doctrine to selectively quote my articles, regardless of any explicit or implicit permission, provided this is done in a manner that respects the integrity of the original work. In reality, I don't object to such quoting, as that's part of the way discussions are conducted on Usenet, and even in other media (like here on Slashdot, where I quote you).
What Google is doing, and what I'm objecting to, isn't mere quoting; they are systematically removing specific pieces of information that the authors carefully included, mainly for context but also to give proper credit to other authors. They are not removing all identifying information, since they usually leave proper names as they are, but as others have pointed out, proper names alone are seldom enough to identify a Usenet poster.
I could take your article above, cut and paste it in its entirety into another Slashdot article and repost it as "Anonymous Coward" without referring to you as its real author. I don't know whether you would object to it, but it sure wouldn't be "fair use" of your work. Are you saying that by posting to Slashdot in the first place, you gave me implicit permission to copy "selected parts" of your article (all of it, leaving out your name and Slashdot ID) and run a business offering your article text (but not your name) to others for their entertainment? That's essentially what Google is doing here.

Blacking out small parts of a work and then redistributing it is common and legal. Recent court decisions reinforce this view, such as the one with a company that sold censored VHS tapes.

Did that company specifically censor the credits in the beginning or end of the tape, blacking out names or addresses of copyright holders only? I admit, that information usually does constitute a very small part of the entire videotape, but it's often considered to be highly important information. Since it ended up in court, it suggests the copyright holders did object to the censorship.
Also, when we are getting into specific court cases, we have to consider that copyright legislation isn't the same all over the world. European copyright law generally focuses more on the moral interests of the authors, while American law tends to stress primarily financial interests. Your court case could easily end up the opposite way in a different jurisdiction. I think we should concentrate on the common underlying principles behind copyright, not the peculiarities of national laws.

Is that requirement already attached to your messages? If not, too late. By uploading them to USENET, you have implicitly given permission for the content to be replicated widely (since you knew that such copying would occur automatically once you posted)

When I posted my articles, Google wasn't even around. Perhaps Dejanews was in operation in 1997; I don't remember. I was well aware that my articles would be copied and distributed far and wide using UUCP or NNTP, and I had no objection to either that or to any systematic archiving that someone might engage in without my knowledge. I also anticipated that parts of what I wrote might be quoted out of context without proper credit, but while I didn't approve of that, it wasn't sufficient to deter me from posting in the first place. The fact that I have made my articles available on servers worldwide does not imp
Re:Modifying articles is a copyright violation by Minna+Kirai · 2004-12-07 06:41 · Score: 1

If I permit verbatim copying of my articles, that's not permission by me also for anyone to copy only selected portions of it.

As I already explained, that's true if and only if you only permitted verbatim copying. If you simply uploaded to USENET without specifying what kinds of copying was allowed, you implicitly gave permission for both total and partial copies.

I could take your article above, cut and paste it in its entirety into another Slashdot article and repost it as "Anonymous Coward" without referring to you as its real author. I don't know whether you would object to it, but it sure wouldn't be "fair use" of your work.

Because you are being intentionally untruthful, that's fraud. It's a completely separate crime from copyright infringement, and in fact isn't part of intellectual property law at all. Copyright Law includes no right to attribution.

In this example, you are intentionally trying to trick other people, which is a critical difference from what Google Groups does, because they make their email-blocking obvious and aboveboard. If Google was replacing the addresses with valid-looking but phony ones, or erasing the whole address, or otherwise making it less than obvious that an email address had been there, you might have a point.

I think we should concentrate on the common underlying principles behind copyright, not the peculiarities of national laws.

That'll get you nowhere fast. 1) Google is a USA company. 2) You are probably a USA poster. 3) WIPO is constantly working to standardize copyright law worldwide.

Maybe I violated Google's rights by retrieving them?

Why the total non-sequiter?
Re:Modifying articles is a copyright violation by Anders+Andersson · 2004-12-08 03:43 · Score: 1

Copyright Law includes no right to attribution.

United States Copyright Law, that may be. Still, the right to attribution is included in the Berne Convention (Article 6bis), which the United States ratified after I began posting to Usenet. The right to attribution is part of the author's moral rights, an integral component of the continental European (originally French and German) notion of copyright, which in the past wasn't recognized by the United States. I suppose it doesn't matter to the Berne Convention whether the right to attribution and non-mutilation of protected works is included in the Copyright Act proper, the DMCA, the Constitution, the Freedom of Information Act, the PATRIOT Act, any federal or state statutory law, or even case law, as long as it's there somewhere. If it weren't, then the United States would probably be in violation of the Berne Convention.

If Google was replacing the addresses with valid-looking but phony ones, or erasing the whole address, or otherwise making it less than obvious that an email address had been there, you might have a point.

Google is essentially replacing a valid e-mail address with an invalid one. While experienced users will catch it as a phony address, I suspect quite a few pieces of software that tries to detect e-mail addresses in parsed text will accept them as valid and generate links to them. Since e-mail addresses must be exactly reproduced (save for some letter case conversion) in order to be useful as such, deleting a single letter is effectively the same as erasing the address, leaving only the text "an e-mail address was here" or equivalent. That's a true statement, so it's not fraud, but it doesn't fulfil a requirement of attribution any more than replacing the author's name with "a proper name was here" does.
I guess the real issue is whether the author's name is considered sufficient attribution under the Berne Convention even when the author has provided more specific identifying information. For a major corporate entity such as "Microsoft" or "McGraw-Hill", or a famous author such as "Rudyard Kipling", their names alone indeed seem sufficient. However, corporate entities enjoy no moral rights, only natural persons do, so we should stick to the latter here. Proper names of natural persons are by no means unique, and even if I'd probably be the only claimant to my works, I'm not a famous author and a stranger who reads my articles would be unable to identify me without the address I added deliberately.
Even if the attribution is found sufficient, the issue of mutilation remains, since Google automatically destroys any e-mail addresses in the articles, whether they form part of credits or not. Are they essential to the work as such? It depends. If one or two addresses are mentioned only in passing in an article about gardening, probably not. If they form part of the evidence for a spam report, or examples in an article on electronic mail, they are certainly essential. Since I'm not a gardener, but a computer scientist working with data communications for a profession, my articles tend to be more of the latter kind. I'm probably just as offended by Google censoring my e-mail addresses as a gardener would be if Google replaced every mention of the Latin name of a specific rose variety with the text "some Latin words" (perhaps arguing that their readers don't understand Latin anyway).
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet."
(William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet)

That'll get you nowhere fast.

I'm not in a hurry; I'm merely 43. Given current expiration times, I imagine my rights will remain valid well into the 22nd century, to be guarded by my heirs.

1) Google is a USA company.

Post using alternate email address by anaradad · 2004-12-06 05:23 · Score: 2, Interesting

I sure wish I could use Google Groups to post using an alternate email address. The interface forces me to use my primary gmail account. As far as I can tell, the only way around this is to create a second Google account, which forces me to log out of gmail...hassle.

Your email address is part of your USENET identity by Tackhead · 2004-12-06 05:31 · Score: 1

> What would be so bad about Email masking?
>
>On occasion, it can be very useful to try and contact somebody that had a similar problem, but a while ago. (ie, the thread is long since inactive)

"John" - non unique identifier.
"John " - Unique identifier, telling me which John I'm reading.
"John " - unique identifier with extremely valuable metadata about the reliability (or lack thereof) of John Q. Public's information in the context of a posting in the sci.med.* hierarchy.

Email making makes Google USENET useless.

1985 Again? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 05:40 · Score: 0

New Coke and the IBM PC Junior all over again?

This one's better by al912912 · 2004-12-06 05:48 · Score: 1

I like the new Google groups much more than the old one.

Same old... by kylegordon · 2004-12-06 06:04 · Score: 1

Unfortunately, as of December 5th, Google Groups Beta is back and you can't get to the original (wonderful) Google Groups anymore.

Wasn't the same said of the 'new interface' when Google bought Dejanews...?

Re:Same old... by harmonica · 2004-12-06 20:08 · Score: 1

Yes, but in the end GG created a better interface. Now they've worsened it, for the time being. People worry.

Just wait one minute here... by BastardSonOfRave · 2004-12-06 06:23 · Score: 1

What happened to my Deja News??!!

Some USENET is in the public domain; DejaNews by davidwr · 2004-12-06 06:30 · Score: 1

In the early days of USENET, particularly before 1989 in the United States, if a published work did not have a copyright notice, under certain conditions it could fall into the public domain.

Note that DejaNews.com (later Deja.com), which later sold out to Google, started archiving almost all of USENET except binaries and spam in or a little bit before May 1995. Dejanews and later Google obtained archives predating this, but there is no guarentee they are nearly-complete.

--
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.

Fine then, let me search on Thread Properties by PetoskeyGuy · 2004-12-06 06:34 · Score: 2, Interesting

If they want to limit me to threads, then I want to be able to add the number of replies and authors per thread to my search.

Eliminating threads that have 1 message/0 replies would make finding things MUCH faster. Right now I find tons of threads that are people asking the same question, and not very many where someone provided an answer.

Didn't some student not too long ago research what made a "good newsgroup"? They should put his research into the search parameters somewhow.

Re:Fine then, let me search on Thread Properties by harmonica · 2004-12-06 19:56 · Score: 1

Didn't some student not too long ago research what made a "good newsgroup"? They should put his research into the search parameters somewhow.

Sounds interesting. Do you have a link or some keywords to search for?
Re:Fine then, let me search on Thread Properties by shic · 2004-12-08 01:37 · Score: 1

I'm 100% behind the idea that I should be able to filter threads with only one message... That would be very useful for me too.

Re:Your email address is part of your USENET ident by rpresser · 2004-12-06 06:50 · Score: 4, Informative

Don't know if you noticed, but /. ate the email addresses you tried to embed inside angle brackets in your post.

Direct linking via Message-ID? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 06:51 · Score: 0

Is there now any way to continue linking to direct articles (not threads) via Message-ID? I know you can do it using their internal IDs, but I don't want to rely on that... Message-IDs are universal and can be converted over if someone else picks up a Usenet archive or Google breaks things again.

Wrong by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 07:13 · Score: 0

Don't want your "copyrighted" posts in Google's listings? Tell them, and they'll remove them.

Copyrights only matter when they're enforced.

What About X-No-Archive: Yes ? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 07:13 · Score: 0

Does google obey the X-No-Archive header that Dejanews started? The whole searchable archive of usenet going back now twenty years is the reason I stopped posting. Since other archives don't bother honoring it anyway.

Here's a tip: don't post anything on usenet with a name/email address that a potential employer gets told. Common for them to search google to see if you've done a lot of questionable things in your past.

Re:What About X-No-Archive: Yes ? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 16:07 · Score: 0

Does google obey the X-No-Archive header that Dejanews started?
Yes, at least in terms of the public site. However, Google has contracts and customers that none of us know anything about. Google would be stupid if they weren't invisibly archiving these messages and selling "premium" usenet search access to, say, law enforcement.
Re:What About X-No-Archive: Yes ? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 18:55 · Score: 0

Here's an even better tip: don't post a lot of questionable things on Usenet, and you won't have anything to worry about at interview time. :-P

Yep by bogie · 2004-12-06 07:35 · Score: 1

You know I was going to post something to that effect except for the whole /.ers "don't get it" part. Dejanews's archive has real societal value. I agree that it is wrong to leave it in the hands of one company. What if google decides to pull the plug? There goes a resource that people rely on daily for doing research. There goes an irreplaceable database on any topic you can possibly think of. The data there is invaluable and regardless of what most people would think I would have zero problem with the government taking control of it or forcing Google to allow the Library of Congress to make a complete copy for the public good.
Google alone should not have a monopoly on this important data.

--
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch

For those who missed the reference... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 07:37 · Score: 0

...you may want to click this way (and watch out for the embedded background MIDI)

http://www.realultimatepower.net/index3.htm

Retention of articles by harmonica · 2004-12-06 07:38 · Score: 1

There is no reasonable expectation that by posting to Usenet I allow any company to store reproduce my posts longer than, say, a few months.

Or, let's say, a few decades. The time span is absolutely arbitrary. I don't see why any one should be the default.

He Likes It? Hey, Mikey! by abb3w · 2004-12-06 07:42 · Score: 1

In defense of Cherry Coke... it wasn't that bad, if you added enough bourbon. =)

--
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.

Where's my damn pony? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 07:45 · Score: 0

I hate to be the person who does this, but I just wish just once I'd get Slashdotted. God knows this isn't the first time I've seen something on Slashdot I reported on at every turn. I'm not saying I run the only site that deserves linkage, but just once, it should be my time! my time! my time!
InsideGoogle

Nice by 2names · 2004-12-06 07:48 · Score: 1

Best.....sig......ever......

Seriously. Great sig.

--
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."

Forget finding the cure for cancer... by Daytona89 · 2004-12-06 07:48 · Score: 1

... what we all really need to do is read alt.cancer.die.die.die.

Groups already dying anyway? by Cheirdal · 2004-12-06 08:57 · Score: 2, Interesting

Back in the mid to late 90's I was using the Usenet groups a lot to ask about and research programming questions. I found it was a great source of information and it was an invaluable tool for me at work. The last few years I've noticed a trend where find almost everything I'm looking for programming-wise under a normal Google search before I find it in the groups (if I can find it all in the groups). I could be completely wrong about this but it appears from my perspective that Usenet is going the way of BBSes in light of all the specialized message boards with Google indexed content on the web. Maybe Google is just helping put the final nail in the coffin for a dying Usenet instead of actively killing the newsgroups.

Re:Groups already dying anyway? by twistedcubic · 2004-12-06 16:27 · Score: 1

A friend told me the same thing about 5-6 years ago. I still disagree today. Most of the time, the only way to get results with a high S/N is to do a groups search, especially for searches that include keywords used by lots of advertisers.

Search filtered on post date by Zepalesque · 2004-12-06 09:14 · Score: 1

They added back the filter by post date in the beta.

There's some adjustment for Ascii Art going on... by Kazoo+the+Clown · 2004-12-06 09:34 · Score: 1

Check this message.-- it shows up in fixed-width (note it's in rec.arts.ascii), so there appears to be SOME logic trying to figure out what messages require fixed-width. Here's another that doesn't include Ascii art, perhaps they are using some logic that looks at the use of multiple spaces and concludes that it may be formatting...

I'll bet there's some stuff that breaks it though...

most confusing headline by Twister002 · 2004-12-06 09:43 · Score: 1

Wow, that wins "most confusing headline of the year" in my book. They backed off of Google groups beta and went back to Google Groups after making it manditory for everyone(I didn't get that memo apparently, I was too busy doing my TPS reports).

--
"For a successful technology, honesty must take precedence over public relations for nature cannot be fooled." -Feynman

You can still get the old google groups! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 09:55 · Score: 0

Go to one of the foreign google sites (e.g. www.google.co.uk) The old groups work fine there for now! I use google.fr and I never even noticed the changeover.

Allez sur l'un des sites webs étrangers de google. Là vous trouverez les vieux groupes, et moi, puisque je n'utilise que google.fr, je ne me suis jamais rendu compte que google.com avait remplacé les vieux groupes avec les nouveaux.

My comments... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 10:02 · Score: 0

...as sent via the feedback form.

Subject: Less than impressed with Google Groups Beta changes

I have seen that you have recently changed the facilities available on Google Groups Beta, removing the ability to search for posts by date. I think that this is a severely retrograde step, and request that you think hard about putting this useful feature back in.

Additionally, I appreciate that you are trying to stop spam by removing people's email addresses from being displayed, but I believe that you are here also removing a useful feature - people understand that if they use an email address on Usenet they are going to get spam on it, and take the necessary precautions. Being able to email people about their posts is useful and important. If you will not reconsider this, could you please at least consider replacing the email addresses with images (.png say) of the textual email address, so that at least people can type the address into their email clients.

Please don't let an excellent service be dedgraded by removing useful features.

something else i dont see anyone mentioning... by Antilles · 2004-12-06 10:19 · Score: 2, Interesting

is the lack of seeing "sub-groups" within a group, ie, when i research C# stuff for mono, I look in microsoft.public.dotnet and in that group, at the top, each subgroup within that group was listed; now, most of the time, when new groups were added, i would see the newer groups there, etc. Also, it was great for navigating through the group "tree". Usually, in a large group with a lot of subgroups, i link to the main group trunk, and then go from there when i am looking for something. From this standpoint, this isnt one step back in usability, its three steps back. I hope this isnt a sign of things to come from google, because quite honestly, its pretty lazy in terms of design and testing. Its like removing the "Refresh" button from firefox when that feature has already become a staple of web browser interfaces. /rant

Mandatory? by Pheonix5000 · 2004-12-06 10:30 · Score: 1

It's not mandatory. Try http://groups.google.com/

Re:Mandatory? by The+Cisco+Kid · 2004-12-06 12:53 · Score: 1

For me at least, trying to use that gets us redirected to the new interface - if you are still getting the old one its possible google changed the IP, and your ISP has cached the old one. If you are still able to access the old google groups, please tell us what IP you are getting for it, so those of us whos ISP dns caches have already expired can hardcode it in out /etc/hosts

Browsing by author by Racine · 2004-12-06 10:37 · Score: 2, Insightful

I never realized how much I used this feature until it was gone -

Sometimes if I see that a certain author has a lot of insight about the group topic, I search only his/her posts for a given subject, to see what they've had to say about it in the past.

Now with masking, I can't just click on an author's name and get a listing of just their posts, or do an advanced search by author.

Plus the new interface is just busy clunky - apparently they're forgetting one thing that makes Google so nice to use - simplicity of interfaces.

--
Tcl my Pico! There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

be nice by kayen_telva · 2004-12-06 12:33 · Score: 1

those of you tempted to send feedback, make sure to thank them for the things they are doing right.
google rocks.

And what about IP's when you post from Google by Snaller · 2004-12-06 13:16 · Score: 1

They used to show the IP address of the poster - leaving them poster open to attacks if one said something that others objected to (if you have a permanent number). They could simply encode the IP number if they wanted it for abuse purposes.

--
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating

Mod parent down by Snaller · 2004-12-06 13:27 · Score: 2, Informative

The first page looks like the original but if you search you are in the new interface - no choice.

--
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating

your opinion by kjcdude · 2004-12-06 14:04 · Score: 0

your opinion i like the new blog better

--
http://DiabloHeat.com | http://Kyle.TheOCSucks.com | http://TheOCSucks.com

Death to the newsgroups (yet again?) by shanen · 2004-12-06 15:27 · Score: 1

Or should that be "Death of the newsgroups"? This new version has actually been around for a while, and I'm still unimpressed. It seems like the essential idea is to embrace and replace the newsgroups with an extension along some strange dimension. Vaguely reminds me of Yahoo's groups, which has always been a wasteland.

The real problem Google has to address if they want to restore value to the newsgroups is improvement of the SNR. The amount of garbage posted worldwide has been growing exponentially, but even faster since perpetual September arrived. Even the more technical areas are neck deep in tripe, but most of it is just like Hyde Park Speaker's Corner of the world and/or very cheap advertising.

Abuse of anonymity is one of the largest problems. There are proactive solutions (basically various forms of moderation--shades of /.) if you like that approach. However Google might have the capabilities to do it right, with analytical reaction to take revenge on the trolls. How about deep header analysis combined with personal usage patterns to track the trolls across all of their identities? Then they could offer a killfile feature that would really kill that troll dead!

Also, I'd want a tainting option. I don't even want to see the posts of the people who are suckered into feeding the trolls.

Come to think of it, they should go all the way and evaluate the perspicuity of the posters and use colors to indicate which posters actually know what the devil they are writing about!

Or how about a contagious killfile? There could be an option for killfile conflict resolution and filtering. If one poster has killfiled someone else in the thread, and you have that option enabled, then it would be like you had also killfiled the troll, and you'd have some hope of seeing it like an intelligible conversation. In case of conflicts, where two participants have killfiled each other, first it would check your killfile to break the tie, and if that didn't work, it could show you a few representative posts from each side so you could make up your mind if there's likely to be any signal anywhere in there.

--
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.

boycott Google by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 15:33 · Score: 0

search.yahoo.com

Now the best.

(We're still fsck'd on Usenet, but at least we can begin to fight back.)

$$$$$ (money) by Anonymous Coward · 2004-12-06 15:43 · Score: 0

Apparently Google Groups wasn't making enough of a profit for them. They can't just have Google Groups as a low-profit service. Not anymore. All of a sudden they've got to wring every last dollar out of everything. They're just like any other big company now.

Google and Microsoft are now equally evil.

This is my opinion to google by Taco+Cowboy · 2004-12-06 16:20 · Score: 1

I have sent the following to google:

"I have been a very long time usenet user - and since 1996 I've been using deja, which later became google-groups.

The original interface was working perfectly, and why are you forcing users such as me to use the clunky "google-group beta" ?

I can't check message thread, nor can I check my own usenet messages under the much inferior "beta" interface !

Stop bugging the users !

I am not opposed to advertisement on google-groups, but STOP FORCING THE CLUNKY INTERFACE ON THE USERS !!!"

--
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !

yeah ... but how long will this stay valid ? by Taco+Cowboy · 2004-12-06 16:49 · Score: 1

This is the Original url , which google has given it a Royal Screw at the behind.

Your url may still work, so is this one or this one or this one but for how long ?

We, the users, are SCREWED no matter how you look at it.

--
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !

No place like GG by harmonica · 2004-12-06 19:04 · Score: 1

Anyway, I hate the new interface, and I think it could hurt Google.

Only if a new Usenet archive competitor materializes. Until then, they have a monopoly. Sad, but true.

Posted to Google's support/feedback link by John+Miles · 2004-12-06 19:14 · Score: 1

at http://groups-beta.google.com/support/bin/request. py :

--------------
You need to understand that you do NOT have permission to alter any portion of the text, including email addresses, of the Usenet postings you archive. It is not even remotely OK for you to do this. Under US law, these posts are copyrighted by their authors and may (by longstanding precedent) be archived and distributed in their entirety without alteration or misrepresentation. Usenet posters have always understood that their posts may be reproduced and archived based on the very nature of the medium they're posting to, but there has never been any implied permission for third parties to alter the content or headers of those posts without authorization.

I've included my (spam-proofed) email address in ten years of Usenet posts for a very good reason. NNTP servers do not retain data indefinitely, and making sure that readers can communicate with me with regard to dormant or expired threads is a vital part of the content of my posts. It is nothing short of outrageous that you are censoring this content without my permission.

Please disable your new email-masking "feature" at once. It is of absolutely no use against spammers (who, in case it didn't occur to you, don't exactly use Google for their Usenet harvest feeds) and it is extremely detrimental to the value of the Usenet archive as a whole. As the sole inheritors of the Deja archive, you have a responsibility ("don't be evil") to maintain the integrity and accessibility of that archive.
--------------

I'd encourage those with similar views to my own to express them, politely but firmly, to the Google Groups support address. It's unlikely to hurt.

--
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.

Definition of archive by harmonica · 2004-12-06 19:51 · Score: 1

3. There is no hard and fast definition that separates a cache from an archive. An archive is exactly the same thing as a cache with a lot of space and is slow to purge. Therefore if permission is given to cache usenet posts (which it obviously is since that's how it works) then permission is also being given to archive them. The only way to refute this is to come up with a rigid legalistic definition of what the difference between a cache that is open to the public and an archive that is open to the public is.

You could argue that when a news service by default does not delete postings you have an archive. Google Groups matches that description. They never delete unless a person explicitly asks to have his articles removed.

And note that a usenet news server can legally be open to the public to connect to (and some were, once upon a time when usenet was smaller and cheaper to spool).

There still are quite a few free and even open (as in 'free and no registration required') servers. Nothing reliable and fast with binaries, obviously. But you're fine with text-only groups.

5. The problem is that you have still failed to show the legal difference between what google is doing and what a news server is allowed to do. Therefore the "onus" on Google, while it is true that it exists, is already satisfied by simply pointing out that it is in the exact same legal position as a news server, which is already permitted to do what it does.

I agree with that. I can only hope that no court will make archives (as per my definition above) illegal.

Not the same situation by harmonica · 2004-12-06 20:14 · Score: 1

At that time, many people were furious that a refined, functional interface had been replaced with a clunky, limited one. They were also furious that all those old dejanews.com links had just been trashed forever.

Google took over Deja and they restored an "emergency version" of a Usenet archive. It couldn't be done otherwise because Deja was "over" and had to shut down.

Nobody really gets why Google would remove features on purpose, without any specific necessity. They're not on the brink of bankruptcy (I hope).

A provider's job by harmonica · 2004-12-07 06:39 · Score: 1

The poster is not a provider. He gives his OK with distributing the message around the (net) world. If someone distributing the message charges his clients for delivering that message, that is fine. The client pays for getting a message, the provider has to pay for the infrastructure to do so.

From your point of view, do all newsservers have to be free? Does an ISP exploit a website owner because the ISP charges for transferring that HTML file?

Re:Same here. Search has time etc. No feature miss by kozara · 2004-12-07 12:13 · Score: 1

Once you actually do a search, it uses the new interface.

my comment to GGB by eekygeeky · 2004-12-12 20:31 · Score: 1

GGB is simply horrific to use. previously, navigating to my preferred groups took a few clicks from the start page, and everything was linked in tree, enabling instant navigation from group to subgroup and hierarchy to hierarchy. one-click results for a posting address has vansihed, possibly the most useful link feature out there. subjects and authors are now buried in a morass of irrelevant garbage and uneccessary previews of postings, along with infuriatingly byzantine "options" that I need to navigate in order to make GGB look like GGold, without the latter's functrionality, clarity or logic. i understand that Google is eager to roll out the group creation thing, but for the love of Mike, do it without ruining a superb interface and archive. find the dudes that made that original gem, lay flowers at their feet, and demote the "team" that came up with this ferocious horrora please. carl

Tell google your opinion by beforewisdom · 2004-12-13 02:26 · Score: 1

Tell google, politely, your constructive criticism about their new interface:

groups-support@google.com

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Google Flips Back to Groups Beta (Again)

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