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Google Expands Usenet Archive to 20 Years 499

Posted by chrisd from the alt.pave.the.earth-archive dept.
Paul Boutin writes "The Ghost of Usenet Postings Past has returned to haunt many more of us: Google just announced the expansion of their Usenet archive back to May 3, 1981."Check out the past on Groups.google.com
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Google Expands Usenet Archive to 20 Years More

Google Expands Usenet Archive to 20 Years

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  • Oh dear (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous DWord ( 466154 )
    Ahh, to be young and brash again... oh, wait. Noooooooo!! Glad I've changed my email address since those long-(best)forgotten days. It wasn't me, I swear!

  • Yes! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Skyshadow ( 508 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @03:47AM (#2685975) Homepage
    Awright! Just think of all the old porn that awaits my eager stare! No sleep for me tonight.

  • That darn Google... (Score:5, Funny)

    by edashofy ( 265252 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @03:51AM (#2685986)
    I don't think ANYBODY should be held liable for Usenet postings they made when they were 14 years old...it's like having naked baby pictures of yourself stapled to your forehead when you walk around...

    On the other hand, you can now go back and see who REALLY won all those flame wars you were involved in :)

    • Re:That darn Google... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by aussersterne ( 212916 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @06:17AM (#2686231) Homepage
      *sucks in air*

      No doubt. I just went and had a read at a whole bunch of posts from 10-15 years ago in which I was often a real prick [and strangely enough, in which I seem to have more technical/coding prowess than I have now!?!]. There's nothing like humble pie and complete red-eared embarrassment at three in the morning -- embarrassment first at how one was acting, and second at no longer being able to fully understand technical discussions from one's own teenagehood!

      I'm in my late twenties now. I'm an author. My name is out there and is unique. Now, when people type my name into Google, they're going to pull up stuff I posted via free BBSs and tech bars when I was a prick of a teenaged punk-rocker in the '80s who [it would seem] really had a problem or two.

      *cringe*

      I'm going to go hide my head in the sand for a while, then quickly ink-jet myself a "live and learn" t-shirt.

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

      • St. Peter Effect (Score:5, Funny)

        by mindpixel ( 154865 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @07:22AM (#2686331) Homepage Journal
        I think this should be called the St. Peter Effect... you see, cuz when we go to heaven, St. Peter will Google us, and pull back everything we have ever thought, said or did - ranked by relevance or date... Just be glad that mere mortals are limited to 20 years of newsgroup postings!

        BTW: If you search on my name and find stuff about LSD, it was another Chris McKinstry.

      • Re:That darn Google... (Score:4, Redundant)

        by tetrad ( 131849 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @08:08AM (#2686385)
        I just went and had a read at a whole bunch of posts from 10-15 years ago in which I was often a real prick ... Then, as soon as the sun comes up, I'm heading downtown to change my name.

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

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

        • Re:That darn Google... (Score:4, Interesting)

          by eXtro ( 258933 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @09:24AM (#2686508) Homepage
          Being able to remove your own articles from a public forum beyond the "Oh shit! I hope I can cancel that before it propogates" devalues the archive and makes me lose a lot of respect for the people behind google.com. I've posted things I wish I wouldn't have on usenet before. Big deal. There was a bit of embarassment when my dad discovered how to search for my name on groups.google.com, but there were a lot more things that he was proud of. He didn't necessarily understand them, but he could see that they were well received.


          If you do things in public then you shouldn't be able to excise them from the publics memory, even if the thing you did was make a spectacular ass of yourself.

    • Oddly, some of the newsgroups seem to be missing. In the 80's rec.arts.startrek was the most prolific group in the entire usenet and it absolutely does not exist in its original form (it was eventually broken up).

      Perhaps the original groups that were broken up before 1995 have not been added to the new archive. If so, this is a pretty major oversight. Or perhaps some of the groups were deemed irrelevant?

      • A LOT is missing.

        I not only can't find any of my old posts, but I can't find any of my NEW posts now.

        When I search on various combinations of my name, all I find is signature taglines quoting me...
    • Wow. There is really lots of interesting historical context in there, and doing a quick scan for my quaint and curious forgotten posts, it looks like most of them are there.

      Until computer networks were overrun by the multitudes, they were populated by mostly research and development sorts of folks, and the signal to noise ratio of the posts was a bit higher. But that only lasted a few minutes.

      Here's one of my first posts [google.com], from 1981.

  • Hmmmmm.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by GoRK ( 10018 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @03:53AM (#2685992) Homepage Journal
    So that means that this [google.com] is currently THE first post!

  • Nostalgia (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Lunastorm ( 471804 )

    It's nice to browse through the archives and read my various posts [google.com] over the years. How I've grown. :)

    It should be noted that not all groups are archived. I recently checked out one of my favorites and after the name of it, it said (This group is no longer archived). That's a shame, because I would love to read the older stories of alt.sex.stories.

    I wish that one can access the Google Groups through a news reader such as Pan, because I really don't like the interface Google provides, and one reallly can't change any of their account settings for posting. I was hoping these things would be fixed in beta, but I guess it's OK as it is.

  • What the Timeline Missed... (Score:5, Funny)

    by jackal! ( 88105 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @03:55AM (#2685997) Homepage

    That's a neat timeline, but what it's missing that I'd love to see:

    First Spam

    First Metoo

    First Flamewar

    First MLM/chain letter

    You know, the really important historical stuff.

  • If you doubt this is worthwhile... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Boiling_point_ ( 443831 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @03:56AM (#2686000) Homepage
    Remember when alt.sexy.bald.captains [google.com] still had Star Trek in it?? These days, it's all alt, sexy, and probably bald - but that's about it :(

  • Kinda cool (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bryan1945 ( 301828 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @04:00AM (#2686012) Journal
    Younger folks probably won't find this too interesting as it will be more like history to them rather than us old farts re-living younger days...

    I went to the Google link where they have a list of firsts:

    First mention of Microsoft; not even the oldest post!
    IBM PC.
    CDs, in 1982! Shit, now I realize how old I am!
    C64, Lisa and Mac, AIDS (a purely homosexual disease?!?!- really weird 'cause I just found an old copy of Discover magazine that had a first mention of AIDS; blew me away due to difference in info we know now)

    I love the "WorldWideWeb - Executive Summary" link under the Google link:

    A bit of the text-
    "
    Making a web is as simple as writing a few SGML files which point to your existing data. Making it public involves running the FTP or HTTP daemon, and making at least one link into your web from another. In fact, any file available by anonymous FTP can be immediately linked into a web. The very small start-up effort is designed to allow small contributions. At the other end of the scale, large information providers may provide an HTTP server with full text or keyword indexing.

    The WWW model gets over the frustrating incompatibilities of data format between suppliers and reader by allowing negotiation of format between a smart browser and a smart server. This should provide a basis for extension into
    multimedia, and allow those who share application standards to make full use of them across the web.

    This summary does not describe the many exciting possibilities opened up by the WWW project, such as efficient document caching. the reduction of redundant out-of-date copies, and the use of knowledge daemons. There is more information in the online project documentation, including some background on hypertext and many technical notes.

    Try it
    "

    SGML! Does anyone remember this! "Try it" indeed! Wow, when I thought Usenet was the shit... hehehe!
    • Just wanted to mention this after reading my post- I am not blasting gay people at all- it's just that back then AIDS really was first thought of as a "gay only" disease.

      Also- you folks who weren't born at the time beginning of this archive... bah! You try and debug assembler!
    • Younger folks probably won't find this too interesting as it will be more like history to them rather than us old farts re-living younger days...

      Well, I think I'm more into the "younger folks"-category (although, when I look at the age of some dot-com-millionaires I think I might not; at least I was alive, before the first post ;-) but I still find this quite interesting. Especially reading the Linus vs. Tanenbaum dispute (which I already read before, but not in the google-view, which I got used to for up-to-date infos ;-), or the problems in the First Post (tm). They are quite fascinating. And I allways knew that Usenet is much older than "the Internet" but this is something else, you get to feel that this is an old beast (in web-years only, of course).

  • Anyone notice the milestones listed on the page? I was quite charmed by the 'Stallman announces GNU' post -- mostly by the fact that like Torvalds on Linux, his tone is very modest (well, unlike what morphed later-- speaking in comparative terms only).

    Anyway.

    • Anyone notice the milestones listed on the page? I was quite charmed by the 'Stallman announces GNU' post

      Reading this post, I was more impressed by another point:

      To begin with, GNU will be a kernel plus... [Stallman, 1983]

      Then, in Linus' announcement (eight years later):

      I can (well, almost) hear you asking yourselves "why?". Hurd will be out in a year (or two, or next month, who knows) [Torvalds, 1991]

      Some things will never change. When do they play to release the Hurd again?

  • Disaster waiting to happen (Score:3, Funny)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @04:03AM (#2686015)
    Just imagine if someone creates alt.history.usenet_archive that would contain the archive of all usenet messages (including alt.history.usenet_archive, (including alt.history.usenet_archive, (including alt.history.usenet_archive, (including alt.history.usenet_archive ...)))) ...

    Good thing Google made a Usenet archive without using a news server !

    • Re:Disaster waiting to happen (Score:4, Funny)

      by IntelliTubbie ( 29947 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @06:34AM (#2686254)
      Just imagine if someone creates alt.history.usenet_archive that would contain the archive of all usenet messages (including alt.history.usenet_archive, (including alt.history.usenet_archive, (including alt.history.usenet_archive, (including alt.history.usenet_archive ...)))) ...

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

      Cheers,
      IT

  • well, I just submitted this, soo.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anthony Boyd ( 242971 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @04:03AM (#2686016) Homepage

    Since my article submission is doomed for rejection, let me at least post some of extra stuff I had mentioned. First, check out the monolithic kernel debate between Andy and Linus [google.com] for yourself. Second, in my article submission about Google, I also mentioned that Alexa now archives the Web, too. Try their Internet Archive Wayback Machine [archive.org]. I found they had an archive of my old WEBsurf magazine from 1997 [archive.org]. Hilarious.

  • So, I did what any person does-
    I went and searched on my name and now defunct emails to see how far back I go, how complete their records are, and what an idiot I was when I posted newbie questions on Caldera OpenLinux 2, apparently after having given up on RH 3x.

    At least I learned my lesson. There also appear to be a few stray posts I made about BeOS, and trying to sell an old BMW.

    If this is all I have to worry about staying on the internet forever, I think I'll be okay.

  • Wow (Score:4, Funny)

    by jpatters ( 883 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @04:05AM (#2686021)
    Now I can browse all of my anti-Mac rantings from the comfort of my Powerbook G4.

    • Re:Wow (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Sivax256 ( 221355 )
      This comes within half a month of covering my whole life. That I think is very cool now I can go back when I am 90 years old and see what went on 15 days after i was born.

  • Straight to the point (Score:5, Insightful)

    by squaretorus ( 459130 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @04:29AM (#2686052) Homepage Journal
    Don't you love Google? This item took some decent reseach, holds genuine interest for many of us, is presented in a light format with no banner ads and is actually interesting.

    If only Google could take over the WWW as well as usenet we'd all be better off!

  • Lesseee Here! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jeremiah Cornelius ( 137 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @04:41AM (#2686075) Homepage Journal
    Every post from alt.pave.the.earth [google.com]
    and
    alt.culture.electric-midget [google.com]

    This is the stuff that really bears the test of time! Not to metion the great AOL flood of 1995 [google.com], and the annual rites of September [google.com].

    What else? 20 years of tjames [google.com] and kibo [google.com].

    1.1 Why pave the earth?

    There are several advantages of a paved Earth over a non-paved Earth, the only really important one is the ease of driving though. Today roads are narrow, you have to turn, and most governments frown at ground travel over Mach1. With endless blacktop in every direction, there will be no restriction to your movement, and rocket powered hypercars will whiz in all directions. We will be able to amuse ourselves with endless driving at incredible speeds while drinking beer and eating wonderfully juicy burgers.

  • When I searched Deja a few years ago I found a lot of very, very old posts I made to FidoNet "echos" before I had Internet connectivity. These were a serious blast from the past... right back to my childhood.

    Back then nobody I knew had access to "the internet", although a few people could get limited janet access (a Uk academic network), and I'd love to reread some of them.

    These posts don't seem to be on google. Does anyone know if they're lost forever or hanging around somewhere?

    Thanks.
    • There! I was wondering for the same. I'm only 21, but seven years ago that's where I was - the local Dutch echos of FidoNet, and Fido-alike networks. First, I was a 'point' (iirc, for example the 1 in 2:212/3.1 ) and I used the DOS-program BlueWave to receive the newest echo packets, creating my own messages and sending them to the world via my phone line. A friend of mine had a BBS (he would have been 2:212/3) where I called in. He had "Remote Access" running (he always called it RA), with a cracked copy of FastEcho 1.30 ordering the mail for every point. The BBS synchronized itself with the rest of the network by calling to a hub every night, etc. As I became tired of BlueWave, I installed FastEcho (the mailsorter), GoldEd (a mailer, TimEd was also nice) and Terminate 3.0 (the calling program, something shareware like Telix.. The only thing I remember about it was that it was coded by a Dane and it had copyright notices *everywhere*. Of course I ran the cracked version.) Ahhh, history..
      Now I read e-mail instead of 'netmail'. I'm using Pine instead of GoldEd. I tend to think that GoldEd was better than pine. I want [->] as "Next Message" again in 'full message view' format. No, that's not the same as pine's arrow-mode.. tin, pan, whatever.. golded is the way I'd want to read newsgroups. Maybe I should check out goldedplus [mik.nu]. It's even a Debian package. But it looks not too easy to set up.
    • Hm, now I told a big story and I didn't answer your question.. :)
      In Fidonet, there weren't such things as 'archiving all discussions'. In 1990 that would cost way too much hard disk space. I really wonder how Google did this: some mad freak must still have archived a lot. Is there a submit page somewhere on Google? Maybe someone else has relevant archives of FidoNet echos.. strange idea that you might even get money for keeping those backups around.. :)
      The only chance that those messages are saved is that someone - a point, BBS, hub, whatever - made copies of these public posts and wants to submit them to Google. If that 'academic network' of yours wasn't part of FidoNet, that chance is even smaller.

  • A trip down Slashdot memory lane (Score:5, Insightful)

    by IntelliTubbie ( 29947 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @04:44AM (#2686078)
    It appears that this is the first message mentioning slashdot.org [google.com].

    This one is the first post by Rob Malda [google.com].

    First mention of Jeff "Hemos" Bates [google.com].

    First mention of CowboyNeal [google.com] (is it the same guy?).

    Awww, you guys...

    Cheers,
    IT

  • Back before I realised anybody actually archived this stuff, man did I make a bunch of stupid posts.


    Do a search for "Peter Buchy" and you'll find all kinds of weird shit.


    The amusing part I think was in my high-flying "I'm an amazingly spiritual Christian out to save you" phase. Now I'm a far more sedate Christian, but still (as you'll note) a D&D player.

  • Since Google updated their archive, a search for USENET posts I have made [google.com] turns up a big fat zero even though this same search pulled up ozens of posts just last week.

    Even more surprising, I looked up a certain newsgroup only to find it contained zero posts [google.com] when just last week there were several posts available via Google Groups.
  • " I bought the latest computer;
    it came fully loaded.
    It was guaranteed for 90 days,
    but in 30 was outmoded!
    - The Wall Street Journal passed along by Big Red Computer's SCARLETT"

    Back in September 1989... I didn't think my 286 was outmoded back then... of course, I was only 7 at the time, wtf did I know? All I needed was Sopwith, Centipede, and Nyet!

  • Can Google be declared historic landmark? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anthony Boyd ( 242971 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @05:04AM (#2686103) Homepage

    Now that Google has a historian's wet-dream of actual writings by actual humans as they experienced historic events, such as the falling of the Berlin wall [google.com], what are the odds that someone at some point moves to ensure that this information is preserved? I think Google may be thinking very smart here. Their product could become so important that people might actively try to preserve the company, too.

  • Microsoft, please bring xenix back!

  • Linus - (Score:2, Funny)

    by hatchet ( 528688 )
    Linus Torvalds has new computer See for yourself here [google.com]

    • Hey, Linus - (Score:5, Funny)

      by wirefarm ( 18470 ) <jim@mmdCOWc.net minus herbivore> on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @07:30AM (#2686341) Homepage
      The card I have is a VG-2000 by DFI
      with 512kB video ram, supposed to be able to do almost anything (well
      1024x768 16 colours anyway). The problem is - it doesn't.

      Hey, buddy, quit bitching and just use it in VGA mode, like everybody else.
      If you don't like it, why don't you just go write your own drivers? While you're at it, why don't you go write your own Operating System???
      (Heh heh... Sure told him a thing-or-two...)

  • Oldest one (Score:4, Funny)

    by Legion303 ( 97901 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @05:13AM (#2686115) Homepage
    From: bl3003@arpa
    Subject: Booya!
    Date: Jan 01, 1981
    Newsgroups: alt.flame,arpanet.general

    First Post!

    --

    Ah, those were the days.

    -Legion

  • I'm gone from the archive. Like I was never there.

    effugas@best.com, dankamin@cisco.com, Dan Kaminsky ... I can't find any evidence of my existence on google.

    It's actually somewhat disorienting, like looking at your fingertips and seeing a smooth clear reflection staring back at you...

    --Dan
    • (Yes, this is the third time I've tried to post this. Damn Slashfilters :-)

      Accusations of ego surfing will be ignored. It's always interesting to see where you came from...

      --Dan
  • Hey,
    I used to have a bunch of posts on groups.google.com but now none of my old correspondence are there. Wierd, anyone else see themselves as missing?

  • some thoughts about it in comparison to ./ (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dario_moreno ( 263767 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @05:50AM (#2686179) Journal
    like almost everyone else, I typed my "real name"...and found 293 articles dating back
    to april 1992. Excepted for my most private
    and personal life, you could guess almost
    exactly who I am, what is my career, hobbies
    and so on... On ./, anonymity and disguise
    seem to be more prevalent than on Usenet.

    Amazing also to see that before 1994 or so,
    there were only educated, polite, informative
    people on the face of the earth (and I looked
    like a bad-taught puppy in comparison to them).
    At this point, with AOLers and non-academics
    appearing, something definitely changed.
    • You are almost right, although you are one year off. Before 1993, Usenet tended to get a mass of idiot postings in September. However, September 1993 was the September that never ended. Try searching for "September 1993" AND Usenet.

      Actually, I believe it was bad even earlier than that. In April 1993, Gene Spafford posted this:
      http://groups.google.com/groups?as_umsgid=1rpq88 IN Njlk%40ector.cs.purdue.edu&hl=en

      This is IMO one of the best - if also depressing - posts I've seen on Usenet, which I have been using since about 1991. That message for me marks the end of the "good old" Usenet. I'm glad I had the chance to see it live before it vanished.

      -Lasse

  • !mcvax!moskvax!kremvax!chernenko (Score:4, Interesting)

    by wirefarm ( 18470 ) <jim@mmdCOWc.net minus herbivore> on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @06:03AM (#2686207) Homepage
    I'm surprised that nobody mentioned this one yet.
    Still a favorite of mine:

    USSR on Usenet [google.com]


    Of course, now nobody thinks twice when they see a Russian address, but back then it was a big deal.
    (To the younger readers: They were the bad guys back then, the "Evil Empire"...)

    And now, let's open a flask of Vodka and have a drink on our entry on
    this network. So:

    NA ZDAROVJE!

    Cheers,
    Jim in Tokyo

  • IRC (Score:3, Funny)

    by ThePilgrim ( 456341 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @06:03AM (#2686208) Homepage
    I just thank god no one seems to have archived IRC :-)

  • Say thanks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by augustz ( 18082 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @06:04AM (#2686212)
    Hey Folks,

    A lot of fun and a great job. Christ it's a laugh to look up first mentions of things.

    Why not send a little thanks to google and the folks listed on their page that THEY give thanks to. For the lazy:

    comments@google.com
    bjones@wmhosting.com
    faq-admin@faqs.org
    magi@csd.uwo.ca

    Doesn't take but a few minutes... So go on and drop them a note. Probably matters more than you think :)
  • I'm no tech historian, but I have a feeling that History of 20th Century Information Technology will be a big growth field in the humanities. And if in 2020 I had to write a book on, say, the rise and fall of Microsoft, I would love to be able to read all of the insightful comments on Slashdot (especially those by a certain Dr. Spork). So here's my question: Has everything on Slashdot been archived? Who decides what happens to it?

    Another question, while we're at it: It's inevitable that historians will include sometimes extended citations from Google's usenet archives in books they sell (much like Katz did for /.). Is it right that Usenet authors will contribute their ideas without their consent and without compensation from those who profit from their work? Do historians know any precedent in cases like this? I mean, I know that personal correspondence is often quoted by historians, but always after the author is dead (or explicitly gives persmission). I know usenet is not like personal correspondence, but it's not exactly like publishing, either. I'm not a social scientist, so I don't know what protocol applies here, but I'd love to hear about this from someone who does know.

    • Is it right that Usenet authors will contribute their ideas without their consent and without compensation from those who profit from their work?

      This is the standard practice in all sciences: information is to be shared freely. I don't see any problem with this. How could I "own" my Usenet posts anymore than I could own a public domain program I released on the net?

      But then again the world seems to be breeding more and more people who wouldn't let other people pick up their dog's feces lest they should profit from it.

  • My past osama's (Score:2, Interesting)

    by deathcow ( 455995 )
    Advanced google groups search yields Osama from Feb/19/1994

    Text: In The Statement Sent To Several Saudi Newspapers, The Bin
    Laden Family Members Said They Want To Disassociate Themselves
    From Osama Bin Laden.

    Osama Bin Laden Is Believed To Be Living In Sudan And Is Said To
    Have Been A Main Financial Backer Of The So-Called Afghan Arabs.
    They Are Muslim Arabs Who Fought Alongside The Afghan Mujahedin
    Against Soviet Forces In Afghanistan.

    The Bin Laden Statement Was Signed By Bakr Mohamed Bin Laden,
    Osama Bin Laden'S Brother. In Their Statement The Family Said
    All Family Members -- Whose Number Exceeds 50 -- Would Like To
    Express Their Regret, Denunciation, And Condemnation For All Acts
    That Osama Bin Laden May Have Committed, Which, In Their Words,
    We Do Not Condone And Which We Reject.

    Osama Bin Laden Has Been Specially Mentioned In Connection With A
    Group That Has Committed Several Acts Of Violence In Yemen. The
    Bin Laden Family Comes Originally From The Southern Part Of
    Yemen. Some Family Members Emigrated To Saudi Arabia Decades
    Ago. (Signed)
  • I'd like to see something like "There are more usenet posts in one day in 2001 than in all of the 1989s.

    I remember sizing a server in 1993 to be a news server and setting aside 350 megs for the news spool and then being pissed off when I got it because news traffic was up to 20 megs a day. The stats back then showed exponential traffic growth.

    How much crap is in a typical full feed today?

  • Spoiler Alert! (Score:5, Funny)

    by fastdecade ( 179638 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @08:30AM (#2686407)
    It should be safe to read these now :-)

  • scary (Score:2, Insightful)

    by aCC ( 10513 )
    It makes me nervous to find texts about people
    having been abused and writing about it. And
    that's by searching for their names and what
    they've done technically the last years.

    The Usenet was IMHO never as public as the web,
    but had much more a private character, where people
    could say what they only wanted to know certain
    groups.

    Just imagine, your name is well known (e.g. Linus Torvalds)
    and suddenly someone who searches for it finds
    texts you wanted to keep more or less private.

  • I FOUND IT! (Score:4, Informative)

    by someone_took_my_nick ( 542977 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @08:39AM (#2686418)
    The famous post, i have seen it quoted so many times. So here it is in the flesh, posted by Linus Benedict Torvalds himself to comp.os.minix, 08:53:28 PST 5th October 2001. Subject: Free minix-like kernel sources for 386-AT http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&th=8ed1169d0 b48c9b8&rnum=2
  • I found some of my earliest postings migrated from FidoNet to the Usenet groups. My jaw dropped when I saw the domain:

    My.Name@p0.f860.n6007.z87.FIDONET.ORG

    No wonder when the Web hit, people wanted Short Domain Names.
  • ...if one could actually reply to those old postings. Esp. the one asking about MS-DOS, and if someone has more information about it. :-)

  • Given that this archive now stretches back to 1981, I'm left wondering how this will affect some of the younger politicians with aspirations of getting elected to grander seats of power. Politicians who follow in Clinton's footsteps, for instance, might have much more difficulty convincing people that they didn't inhale, if they have a long posting history to rec.drugs.cannabis.

  • A bunch of collective dumb-asses (Score:4, Funny)

    by Sabalon ( 1684 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @09:50AM (#2686574)
    Man...I was just looking at some of my old posts (which I don't even remember how I made them).

    I think we can have a collective opinion that when we were younger, we were a bunch of dumbasses.

  • When I think old Usenet, I think Serdar Argic, the prolific anti-Armenian cross-poster who was widely suspected to be a bot. Was the reality or artificiality of Argic ever definitively determined?

    Makes me want to pull out my old "Howling Through The Wires World Tour" t-shirt.

  • First mention of slashdot (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jonearth ( 257681 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @10:01AM (#2686600) Homepage
    First mention of slashdot

    http://groups.google.com/groups?q=slashdot&hl=en &s coring=d&as_drrb=b&as_mind=17&as_minm=1&as_miny=19 97&as_maxd=11&as_maxm=8&as_maxy=1997&rnum=5&selm=5 cr9je%24j2i%40mirrors.cellnet.com

    :P

  • First (and only?) post by Bill Gates (Score:4, Interesting)

    by toast- ( 72345 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @11:14AM (#2686969)
    First post (and not even under his own account) can be found here.

    Maybe other celebrities can be found in the archive..

    Find the article
    here [google.com]

  • Fascinating -- check it out! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by drix ( 4602 ) on Tuesday December 11, 2001 @04:20PM (#2688817) Homepage
    This is really fascinating, almost like a time capsule! Can you even imagine a time when everyone in the entire online world didn't know what an emoticon was?! Witness this extraordinary paragraph:
    Recently, Scott Fahlman at CMU devised a scheme for annotating one's messages to overcome this problem. If you turn your head sideways to look at the three characters :-) they look sort of like a smiling face. Thus, if someone sends you a message that says "Have you stopped beating your wife?:-)" you know they are joking. If they say "I need to talk to you :-(", be prepared for trouble.
    You read these phrases like, "A company called Microsoft," or "A new virus called AIDS"; what a throwback. Very cool!

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