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Google's 20-Year Usenet Timeline
theRG writes "Google just released its 20-Year Usenet Timeline. Among the highlights: First Mac rumor, first 'me too' post, Tim Berners-Lee's announcement of the Web, and Linus' announcement of Linux."
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given that both the US government and the UN list the Sudanese government as one of the worlds 2 or 3 worst human rights violators, on a par with Iraq's (See, for example, the New York Times, Mar 11 1993
It's incredibly amazing how much insight the poster of the first "Osama bin Laden" usenet post must have had back in 1993. In 2005, among the top stories of the year: USA+Iraq, Tsunami, the Sudan Crisis and the lack of USA involvement.
Sigh...
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
It's not worth a cracker 'cause it doesn't have my first Usenet post, back in December '87.
20-year Usenet Archive and 20-year Usenet Timeline are different things.
PS: There unfortunately was no mention anywhere in Google's archive of Mark Miller's right-shift-one of the Xanadu vocabulary, which turned Project Xanadu into Project Babel.
Seastead this.
Slashdot dutifully reported this three years ago as well, with the same exact link.
I like the Y2K prediciton one. http://groups-beta.google.com/group/net.bugs/brows e_frm/thread/64696a1b035aab72
I didn't realize it was predicted so long ago.
The first impression after following the links is how weird the new google groups look. The whole censorship of the original emails is enough to destroy any sense of "history" in the posts.
I would rather prefer a "perfect" archive, where anyone looking could get a copy of the intact document that was posted at that time.
I wonder if a balance can be achieved between email harvesting and protecting the original documents.
Bill Gates posted to net.micro on July 22, 1983 from microsoft.uucp (from the account of Gordon Letwin, although he signs it as himself) talking about his crazy days at Harvard where he learned to do PEEKs and POKEs (cool, If I was using my Commodore-64 right now I'd do a POKE 53281,6 in honor of Bill)
I'm basing that on several factors. Checking the Alexa rankings over the past few months, Google Groups have gone from about 7% of all Google users down to 1% as of a few moments ago. Granted, Alexa is not the most accurate measurement of a site, but it does give some indications as to overall popularity.
Some of their own statistics show that most groups have low activity: Group-Society Activity High (167) Low (6712) Medium (137)
All of the other groups show low activity as the largest numbers. They simply do not have the eyeballs hitting the groups.
They do not show Adsense ads in groups, at least none that I've found. It's all paid for by ad revenue from other Google areas.
The groups that are not moderated have degenerated into ad spam fests, driving off people interested in those groups topics.
I think that when Alexa shows less than 1% of users, Google will decide it's no longer worth keeping.
I do agree with you that Usenet can be useful for finding answers, I use a combination of Google search and Groups search. I still think Google will rethink Groups, either dumping it, or correcting the problems. (I'm leaning toward them dumping it).
Pete Carr Owner Chatmag.com
This is dispicable, using the Net to solicit business.....
:-)~
From here
Great laugh indeed.
I wonder what this chap would say about how the net is now. Its like net is synmous with solicitation and business.
Nov 4, 1997
This will link to it: http://tinyurl.com/6sz2j
Why is it in a strange language?
First English mention is Nov 14, 1997.
http://tinyurl.com/5snrm
It's only sort of a dupe. The timeline wasn't *directly* mentioned in the original article.
That said, I think we need to award a 5 yard penalty against the editor for not following the proper rules when posting a dupe (i.e. one must post blatant dupes - any attempt to be clever is against the rules and is very much frowned upon).
I'll try and post news here from time to time if it
seems like it might interest people - for instance, it looks as if the HHGG
movie is finally coming after the shelf after 10 years.
This post was made in 1993.
The ______ Agenda
For the lazy, click here
Well, this is great and all, but their archive is way too incomplete to really make statments like this is the first post mentioned this or that. Just looking at my own posts from even 10 years ago I can see huge gaps of stuff they just don't have. Hell, just pick an early thread and look at all the posts that have another post quoted, but the original post is not there.
More than mere navel gazing.
Dude you must be new here:
Some (humble) recommendations:
* First "Pancake Ninja" troll
* First "Ogg the open source caveman" post
* First "Jon Kats Sucks" post
* First appearance of the Bill Gates Borg icon
"The Wright brothers were the first to fly with a heavier-than-air machine, but boy did they have a lousy plane"
$400?!? Holy crap
Send/track messages to 100K people: www.xPressAlert.com
I've been using Usenet since about 1978, I know how it works.
Since it was invented at that time, you must have been one of the first to use it. If you're not making this up. Care to elaborate on how and where you heard about it, and some experiences from that time? Just interested.
petrified natalie portman, hot grits, penisbird (the user), there were other classic early trolls, but those are the only ones I can really remember.