Google has 20-year archive of Usenet available

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kranky

kranky

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
21,019
156
106
Noticed that Google has incorporated the 20-year archive of Usenet postings which is now searchable. For those of you who might not be familiar with Usenet, it is a collection of newsgroups based on different subjects, and postings to a newsgroup are propagated to ISPs (mainly) so people can access them. Before the WWW, it was the way to communicate with the world.

Some significant "firsts" were collected by Google and linked here - including the first spam.

I likedthis post about converting a VT100 to a PC for only $1795 ($900 off!). Only the oldtimers will recognize a VT100, though. Woohoo, 64K of RAM! :)

Or this one where the entire map of Usenet could fit in a single post.

Ahh, back when email addresses used ! as a separator.
 
C

Czar

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
28,510
0
0
do they store attachments to?

so like... 20 years of everything illegal on the net on google now ;)
 
A

amnesiac

Lifer
Oct 13, 1999
15,781
1
71
I'm assuming it's just the message text from the posts, not the encoded attachments. I don't think there's enough storage space on earth to store all of it. :)
 
G

gopunk

Lifer
Jul 7, 2001
29,239
2
0
is this the "groups" thing?

i mean, is this 20 year thing new? because they've had the groups for a while...
 
Y

yobarman

Lifer
Jan 11, 2001
11,642
1
0
Wow speaking of which...how much space do you think Google is actually hoarding... i mean they had links to practically every page out there, and most of them are cached. and now this, i mean how much information could they possibly store?!
 
N

Nemesis77

Diamond Member
Jun 21, 2001
7,329
0
0
I espesially like this in the original Linux-announcement:



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



Hurd hasn't been released yet (well, there are some beta-versions aout there). They ARE working on it, but they haven't officially released it yet.
 
B

burnedout

Diamond Member
Oct 12, 1999
6,249
2
0
Excellent post. Thanks for the memories.

I began snooping around Usenet in the late 80s. What a trip it has been.
 
H

hevnsnt

Lifer
Mar 18, 2000
10,868
1
0
First time calling a flame a flame?

Date: 10 May 1981 19:28:09-PDT
From: CSVAX.dmu at Berkeley
Subject: Bits/second unit

Sorry if the flame burns anyone, but I can't think of any other name
for the unit that even comes close. Before Shannon no one understood
how to factor in redundancy, etc.


First Flame
 
Amused

Amused

Elite Member
Apr 14, 2001
56,717
17,219
146
First mention of emoticons:

Mail-from: Arpanet host CMU-10A rcvd at 10-NOV-82 0826-PST
Date: 10 November 1982 1126-EST (Wednesday)
From: James.Morris at CMU-10A
To: csl^ at PARC-MAXC, isl^ at PARC-MAXC, junk^ at PARC-MAXC
Subject: Communications Breakthrough
Message-Id: <10Nov82 112614 JM90@CMU-10A>


Because you can't see the person who is sending you electronic
mail you are sometimes uncertain whether they are serious or
joking. 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.

Since Scott's original proposal, many further symbols have bee
proposed here:

:)-) for messages dealing with bicycle helmets
@= for messages dealing with nuclear war
<:) for dumb questions
oo for somebody's head-lights are on messages
o>-<|= for messages of interest to women
~= a candle, to annotate flaming messages

So you see, bit-map displays are really quite unnecessary :->
 
I

isasir

Diamond Member
Aug 8, 2000
8,609
0
0
Does anyone know if Google is making a profit? Because I sure as hell hope so, since they're definitely a company I wouldn't mind helping support if they needed it.
 
Y

yakko

Lifer
Apr 18, 2000
25,455
2
0
It would be cool if they put the binaries up there too. I am missing some parts of my adult educational films.;)
 
C

Cessna172

Member
Jan 8, 2001
183
0
0


<< Does anyone know if Google is making a profit? Because I sure as hell hope so, since they're definitely a company I wouldn't mind helping support if they needed it. >>



There was a recent article in either Forbes or Newsweek about Google saying how they're one of the few companies that has successfully made online advertising work (using text links instead of banners, etc.).

They're doing quite well, supposedly.
 
V

Viper GTS

Lifer
Oct 13, 1999
38,107
433
136
Anybody besides me notice the generally excellent english that was used back then? I can't help but wonder why that is...

Possibilities:

1) It was a result of the user-base (primarily education/technology institutions)
2) It was a result of superior education compared to what our students have today
3) People hadn't gotten used to the technology (ie it wasn't mainstream), & weren't sloppy yet
4) ???

That's the one thing that struck me.

BTW, this is very cool. I can read stuff from before I was born.

:D

Viper GTS
 
Gunbuster

Gunbuster

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
6,852
23
81
Google really fooked up the dejanews interface, but it's getting more usable as time goes by
 
N

Nemesis77

Diamond Member
Jun 21, 2001
7,329
0
0
What does "Google" mean anyway? I have always thought that it comes from words "Go ogle" :)
 
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