19 Nov
2019
19 Nov
'19
7:01 p.m.
The Early History of Usenet, Part I: The Technological Setting:
https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2019-11/2019-11-14a.html
The Early History of Usenet, Part II: Hardware and Economics:
https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2019-11/2019-11-15.html
The Early History of Usenet, Part III: File Format:
https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2019-11/2019-11-17.html
Fun reading. Bellovin is another person we should try to get
to join this list.
Enjoy,
Arnold
21 Nov
21 Nov
3:14 a.m.
Yeah, I'd be super happy if he joined the list. I enjoyed reading
those, wished he had gone into more detail.
On the Usenet topic, does anyone remember dejanews? Searchable
archive of all the posts to Usenet. Google bought them and then,
so far as I know, the searchable part went away.
If someone knows how to search back to the beginnings of Usenet,
my early tech life is all there, I'd love to be able to show my kids
that. Big arguing with Mash on comp.arch, following Guy Harris on
comp.unix-wizards, etc.
On Tue, Nov 19, 2019 at 09:01:39PM +0200, Arnold Robbins wrote:
The Early History of Usenet, Part I: The Technological
Setting:
https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2019-11/2019-11-14a.html
The Early History of Usenet, Part II: Hardware and Economics:
https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2019-11/2019-11-15.html
The Early History of Usenet, Part III: File Format:
https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2019-11/2019-11-17.html
Fun reading. Bellovin is another person we should try to get
to join this list.
Enjoy,
Arnold
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm
3:18 a.m.
there is a big US bias in the archives of USENET. All I could find
preserved (before Google deleted it) was my updates to the maps for
York.ac.uk. In collecting history, the US erased most of Europe and
Asia basically. Our timelines are artificially compressed into the
modern era.
UCL gatewayed a lot of stuff into other news/forum spaces. So, our
view of the world was a disjoint set of UK news, USENET news, European
news, VMS news, BITNET lists. The world was an amazing place. Kuwait
camel breeders association operating online in teaching hospital email
lists in 1985
On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 11:14 AM Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
Yeah, I'd be super happy if he joined the list. I enjoyed reading
those, wished he had gone into more detail.
On the Usenet topic, does anyone remember dejanews? Searchable
archive of all the posts to Usenet. Google bought them and then,
so far as I know, the searchable part went away.
If someone knows how to search back to the beginnings of Usenet,
my early tech life is all there, I'd love to be able to show my kids
that. Big arguing with Mash on comp.arch, following Guy Harris on
comp.unix-wizards, etc.
On Tue, Nov 19, 2019 at 09:01:39PM +0200, Arnold Robbins wrote:
The Early History of Usenet, Part I: The
Technological Setting:
https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2019-11/2019-11-14a.html
The Early History of Usenet, Part II: Hardware and Economics:
https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2019-11/2019-11-15.html
The Early History of Usenet, Part III: File Format:
https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2019-11/2019-11-17.html
Fun reading. Bellovin is another person we should try to get
to join this list.
Enjoy,
Arnold
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm
3:28 a.m.
On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 11:18:10AM +0800, George Michaelson wrote:
there is a big US bias in the archives of USENET. All
I could find
preserved (before Google deleted it) was my updates to the maps for
York.ac.uk. In collecting history, the US erased most of Europe and
Asia basically. Our timelines are artificially compressed into the
modern era.
Can you explain this a bit? When I was on Usenet, 1980-1990 or so, it
was very small, my guess is maybe 10,000 people that posted, maybe less.
My memory is I could post a question to comp.arch or where ever, and I'd
wake up in the morning and someone from Australia or some other place
over the pond had an answer. It was usually a grad student or a prof
or someone really smart.
So is this an archive thing? Because in my memory, it was not a Usenet
thing, smart people from all over the world posted.
As an aside, I remember being on a canoe with my dad, a physics researcher
and prof, and trying to explain Usenet to him. I said something like
"it is so cool Dad, so many cool people, everyone should be on it". And
then AOL happened and it went to shit. If my thoughts helped that along
I am _so_ sorry. It was awesome when it was small.
This list is sort of like early Usenet, smart people, people who know the
history. Lets keep it small but Steve should be here.
--lm
8:56 a.m.
uk.* and eu.* seem to be unfindable. Stuff from before the great
USENET re-org is mostly unfindable. cross posting to lists, only
partially visible. I've tried to find my own rants, its like I was
born into the world in 1996. What happened to 1982-onward? It just ..
evaporated.
If things have improved, I'd be happy to wish it true, but what I
recall is the archives were bootstrapped from tapes held by people who
felt it was the best they could do, in a time where people didn't
really keep ephemera, and alas, the stuff wasn't all, it was the view
of all. which some people saw.
I think uk.* never left the island. Maybe this is one of those
definitions things: we used the A and B news protocol, we used UUCP,
we were on USENET, but if we weren't in the backbone cabal, its like
we didn't exist.
People love to talk about shebang addressing (me too, and VMS a::b::c)
but Honey-Danber, was the shizzle. They made the world so much
simpler, by doing the obvious flattening of the pathspace into
namespace, with path dealt with elsewhere. moving to a@somewhere was
god-given help to morons. Shebang paths sucked.
(It would not surprise me for a hk.* and jp.* and su.* and the like to
say: "brother, you have no idea")
On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 11:28 AM Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 11:18:10AM +0800, George Michaelson wrote:
there is a big US bias in the archives of USENET.
All I could find
preserved (before Google deleted it) was my updates to the maps for
York.ac.uk. In collecting history, the US erased most of Europe and
Asia basically. Our timelines are artificially compressed into the
modern era.
Can you explain this a bit? When I was on Usenet, 1980-1990 or so, it
was very small, my guess is maybe 10,000 people that posted, maybe less.
My memory is I could post a question to comp.arch or where ever, and I'd
wake up in the morning and someone from Australia or some other place
over the pond had an answer. It was usually a grad student or a prof
or someone really smart.
So is this an archive thing? Because in my memory, it was not a Usenet
thing, smart people from all over the world posted.
As an aside, I remember being on a canoe with my dad, a physics researcher
and prof, and trying to explain Usenet to him. I said something like
"it is so cool Dad, so many cool people, everyone should be on it". And
then AOL happened and it went to shit. If my thoughts helped that along
I am _so_ sorry. It was awesome when it was small.
This list is sort of like early Usenet, smart people, people who know the
history. Lets keep it small but Steve should be here.
--lm 
9:40 a.m.
On Thu, 21 Nov 2019 16:56:13 +0800 George Michaelson <ggm(a)algebras.org> wrote:
uk.* and eu.* seem to be unfindable. Stuff from before
the great
USENET re-org is mostly unfindable. cross posting to lists, only
partially visible. I've tried to find my own rants, its like I was
born into the world in 1996. What happened to 1982-onward? It just ..
evaporated.
Check out the archive,org link I provided earlier. I found a
couple of posts from you in net.lang.c some time in 1984.
9:51 a.m.
I shudder to think how naive, arrogant or both they are. But, thank
you for your detective work. I exist, I am not a number is a glorious
feeling.
What this says, is that where our posts into the world crossed outside
closed (national) namespaces in UUCP backed services, they did get
archived as much as any other did. But I think my other strand remains
true. The body of posts I and others made into uk.* is probably now
lost forever. Ephemeral data preservation is chancey. A future
digital archeologist will be looking at these bits, inferring stuff
which in some sense is true (the US was the centre of much discussion
in this space) and not true (the absence of data states about other
places is not strongly indicative of their richness and intensity,
because they were not preserved)
-G
On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 5:41 PM Bakul Shah <bakul(a)bitblocks.com> wrote:
On Thu, 21 Nov 2019 16:56:13 +0800 George Michaelson <ggm(a)algebras.org> wrote:
uk.* and eu.* seem to be unfindable. Stuff from
before the great
USENET re-org is mostly unfindable. cross posting to lists, only
partially visible. I've tried to find my own rants, its like I was
born into the world in 1996. What happened to 1982-onward? It just ..
evaporated.
Check out the archive,org link I provided earlier. I found a
couple of posts from you in net.lang.c some time in 1984. 
11:16 a.m.
On 21 Nov 2019, at 09:56, George Michaelson <ggm(a)algebras.org> wrote:
(It would not surprise me for a hk.* and jp.* and su.*
and the like to
say: "brother, you have no idea”)
And it.* and many other “local” groups from unis but also companies, ;)
What about clari.net? Anyone remember them? They had groups for “real news”, financial
info, etc. on a subscription basis.
Arrigo
3:34 a.m.
On Wed, 20 Nov 2019, Larry McVoy wrote:
On the Usenet topic, does anyone remember dejanews?
Searchable
archive of all the posts to Usenet. Google bought them and then,
so far as I know, the searchable part went away.
See
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/net.sources/84CTdvAdlb0/gTkGJnbS…
Click the drop-down arrow in the search field.
You can also use keywords in the search form.
Here is another example
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/net.unix/dmr$20AND$20before$3A19…
3:39 a.m.
I'm finding source that I posted in 1986. And I'm finding that I was
a cocky jerk back in the day :) Thanks for this Reed!
On Wed, Nov 20, 2019 at 09:34:54PM -0600, reed(a)reedmedia.net wrote:
On Wed, 20 Nov 2019, Larry McVoy wrote:
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm
On the Usenet topic, does anyone remember
dejanews? Searchable
archive of all the posts to Usenet. Google bought them and then,
so far as I know, the searchable part went away.
See
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/net.sources/84CTdvAdlb0/gTkGJnbS…
Click the drop-down arrow in the search field.
You can also use keywords in the search form.
Here is another example
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/net.unix/dmr$20AND$20before$3A19…
3:40 a.m.
On 11/20/19 10:14 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:
Yeah, I'd be super happy if he joined the list.
I enjoyed reading
those, wished he had gone into more detail.
On the Usenet topic, does anyone remember dejanews? Searchable
archive of all the posts to Usenet. Google bought them and then,
so far as I know, the searchable part went away.
If someone knows how to search back to the beginnings of Usenet,
my early tech life is all there, I'd love to be able to show my kids
that. Big arguing with Mash on comp.arch, following Guy Harris on
comp.unix-wizards, etc.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/comp.arch
Then a combination of date-based filters and searching for messages
should get you closer. I've used it before, it's a huge pain in the
ass, but it's better than zero.
--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU chet(a)case.edu http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/
3:42 a.m.
On Wed, Nov 20, 2019 at 10:40:48PM -0500, Chet Ramey wrote:
On 11/20/19 10:14 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:
Yeah on the pain in the ass, is there a way to search all of Usenet or
is it per group only?
Yeah, I'd be super happy if he joined the
list. I enjoyed reading
those, wished he had gone into more detail.
On the Usenet topic, does anyone remember dejanews? Searchable
archive of all the posts to Usenet. Google bought them and then,
so far as I know, the searchable part went away.
If someone knows how to search back to the beginnings of Usenet,
my early tech life is all there, I'd love to be able to show my kids
that. Big arguing with Mash on comp.arch, following Guy Harris on
comp.unix-wizards, etc.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/comp.arch
Then a combination of date-based filters and searching for messages
should get you closer. I've used it before, it's a huge pain in the
ass, but it's better than zero.
3:50 a.m.
On 11/20/19 10:42 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:
Yeah on the pain in the ass, is there a way to search all of Usenet or
is it per group only?
If someone knows how to search back to the beginnings
of Usenet,
my early tech life is all there, I'd love to be able to show my kids
that. Big arguing with Mash on comp.arch, following Guy Harris on
comp.unix-wizards, etc.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/comp.arch
Then a combination of date-based filters and searching for messages
should get you closer. I've used it before, it's a huge pain in the
ass, but it's better than zero. From the groups interface, it seems to be
group-at-a-time.
--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU chet(a)case.edu http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/
3:51 a.m.
In reading my old posts, I found this as my .signature in 1986, I know
people will argue with it but I still agree, I get that there is Rust
and Go and whatever. The programmers that I hang with still like C.
"If you are undertaking anything substantial, C is the only reasonable
choice of programming language" -- Brian W. Kerninghan
3:58 a.m.
On Wed, 20 Nov 2019, Larry McVoy wrote:
In reading my old posts, I found this as my .signature
in 1986, I know
people will argue with it but I still agree, I get that there is Rust
and Go and whatever. The programmers that I hang with still like C.
"If you are undertaking anything substantial, C is the only reasonable
choice of programming language" -- Brian W. Kerninghan
It still is! XD
-uso.
3:50 a.m.
On Wed, 20 Nov 2019 19:14:23 -0800 Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
Yeah, I'd be super happy if he joined the list.
I enjoyed reading
those, wished he had gone into more detail.
On the Usenet topic, does anyone remember dejanews? Searchable
archive of all the posts to Usenet. Google bought them and then,
so far as I know, the searchable part went away.
If someone knows how to search back to the beginnings of Usenet,
my early tech life is all there, I'd love to be able to show my kids
that. Big arguing with Mash on comp.arch, following Guy Harris on
comp.unix-wizards, etc.
I have occasionally downloaded some mbox.zip files from
https://archive.org/details/usenet
But there are too many files there. Would be nice if there
was a collaborative effort to organize them in a more usable,
searchable state. Pretty much all of it (minus binaries
groups) can be stored locally (or using some global
namespace.
3:52 a.m.
On Wed, Nov 20, 2019 at 07:50:53PM -0800, Bakul Shah wrote:
On Wed, 20 Nov 2019 19:14:23 -0800 Larry McVoy
<lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
So is that all of Usenet?
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm
Yeah, I'd be super happy if he joined the
list. I enjoyed reading
those, wished he had gone into more detail.
On the Usenet topic, does anyone remember dejanews? Searchable
archive of all the posts to Usenet. Google bought them and then,
so far as I know, the searchable part went away.
If someone knows how to search back to the beginnings of Usenet,
my early tech life is all there, I'd love to be able to show my kids
that. Big arguing with Mash on comp.arch, following Guy Harris on
comp.unix-wizards, etc.
I have occasionally downloaded some mbox.zip files from
https://archive.org/details/usenet
But there are too many files there. Would be nice if there
was a collaborative effort to organize them in a more usable,
searchable state. Pretty much all of it (minus binaries
groups) can be stored locally (or using some global
namespace.
3:58 a.m.
On Wed, 20 Nov 2019 19:52:46 -0800 Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
Larry McVoy writes:
On Wed, Nov 20, 2019 at 07:50:53PM -0800, Bakul Shah
wrote:
Probably not. Too many files to check but I think most or all
of dejanews stuf is there.
On Wed, 20 Nov 2019 19:14:23 -0800 Larry McVoy
<lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
So is that all of Usenet? Yeah, I'd be super happy if he joined the
list. I enjoyed reading
those, wished he had gone into more detail.
On the Usenet topic, does anyone remember dejanews? Searchable
archive of all the posts to Usenet. Google bought them and then,
so far as I know, the searchable part went away.
If someone knows how to search back to the beginnings of Usenet,
my early tech life is all there, I'd love to be able to show my kids
that. Big arguing with Mash on comp.arch, following Guy Harris on
comp.unix-wizards, etc.
I have occasionally downloaded some mbox.zip files from
https://archive.org/details/usenet
But there are too many files there. Would be nice if there
was a collaborative effort to organize them in a more usable,
searchable state. Pretty much all of it (minus binaries
groups) can be stored locally (or using some global
namespace. 
8:36 p.m.
On Wed, 20 Nov 2019, Larry McVoy wrote:
If someone knows how to search back to the beginnings
of Usenet, my
early tech life is all there, I'd love to be able to show my kids that.
Big arguing with Mash on comp.arch, following Guy Harris on
comp.unix-wizards, etc.
I think I'd be embarrassed over some of my early posts... And yeah,
Guy Harris was brilliant, and always helpful.
-- Dave
24 Nov
24 Nov
2:19 a.m.
On 2019-11-20 21:14, Larry McVoy wrote:
Yeah, I'd be super happy if he joined the list.
I enjoyed reading
those, wished he had gone into more detail.
On the Usenet topic, does anyone remember dejanews? Searchable
archive of all the posts to Usenet. Google bought them and then,
so far as I know, the searchable part went away.
Deja News was a customer of the data center I worked at back in '97-'99,
smartnap.net. My usenet server fed directly into theirs, which made all
of my other customers (and several other people on the net) want to peer
with me, since one of the ways some people judged how "good" a usenet
feed was was how quickly a post could be viewed on dejanews.com. They
took up about 1/4 the space of our ~12k sq ft facility.
My current boss was one of the news admins there. As I understood it,
they had pretty much everything from when they started, plus had donated
tapes of older stuff that they would periodically load up and add to the
online bits. By the time Google bought them, they'd dropped the 'News'
part of their name and were focusing on being a product search engine
under the name "Deja." All Google was really interested in was the
usenet archives.
If someone knows how to search back to the beginnings
of Usenet,
my early tech life is all there, I'd love to be able to show my kids
that. Big arguing with Mash on comp.arch, following Guy Harris on
comp.unix-wizards, etc.
Searching for an old username of mine on group.google.com finds posts I
made in 1993, when I first started using usenet in college.
--
Michael Parson
Pflugerville, TX
KF5LGQ
1623
days inactive
1628
days old
19 comments
10 participants
participants (10)
-
Arnold Robbins -
Arrigo Triulzi -
Bakul Shah -
Chet Ramey -
Dave Horsfall -
George Michaelson -
Larry McVoy -
Michael Parson -
reed＠reedmedia.net -
Steve Nickolas