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Usenet Archives

usenetarchives.com

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Re: Usenet Archives

#21

Post by nobleach »

It's always fun to realize that USENET is still out there humming along. I still remember the thrill of working on my ancient Delphi/Object Pascal projects, and posting questions... waiting a few hours and checking back for responses. There was no "instant gratification" in those days. (I wasn't really using IRC).

Opening this, and just searching "Delphi" I see that USENET never did get that "censorship" that I always assumed would eventually happen. The group names alone are truly unhinged. The Wild West is still.... wild!

Re: Usenet Archives

#22

Post by sumtechguy »

turblety wrote: post #5

It's so disappointing that we could have had Usenet, but instead have centralised/corporate/ad/spyware invested Facebook/Reddit/Xitter/Tiktok.

spam murdered it.

It got ridiculous pretty quickly. The overhead to spam was so low as the protocol was designed to be low friction for posting. The system then took care of carrying the payload everywhere in a reasonable time. People fought back with filters and kill lists. But was not really enough.

Once the ISPs decided they did not want the added cost of running the servers usenet tanked pretty quick. Still alive here and there. Not even close to what it could have been or even was.

Surprised someone has not made a mastadon to usenet transfer protocol. It almost fits both projects goals.

Re: Usenet Archives

#23

Post by mghackerlady »

Usenet archives have helped me tremendously. For example, I'm looking for info on an old (non-xenix) Unix for the apple Lisa and it gave me a name (and after a bit of digging, an address) of someone who was trusted with the remaining stock after the company that made it went under

Re: Usenet Archives

#24

Post by emmelaich »

kseistrup wrote: post #19
OhMeadhbh wrote: post #18

weird, it seemed like the search index didn't go back past 2003. And then I tried a few more searches and found some hits. So I guess the index is a little spotty? But try a few search terms, you might find what you're looking for.

I easily found one from 1999: https://usenetarchives.com/view.php?id=dk.edb.programmering....

I found some of mine from 1992

Re: Usenet Archives

#25

Post by tptacek »

cowmix wrote: post #6

Usenet is the main reason I started my own ISP in ’93: to have a reliable USENET feed. I loved it then, and I love it now. Even back then, though, it was always under attack by spammers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Sie...

I ran the tech side of the most popular independent ISP in Chicago (I guess they were mostly all independent back then) in the mid-late 1990s, and Usenet was the biggest nightmare we had to deal with. We were solid at it, too (Freenix-ranked, independently worked out the INN history cache, &c). Nothing we did had more fussy hardware associated with it.

The problem for us wasn't spammers; it was binaries. That's what killed Usenet.

(I loved Usenet, but also: good riddance.)

Re: Usenet Archives

#26

Post by cmacleod4 »

sumtechguy wrote: post #22
turblety wrote: post #5

It's so disappointing that we could have had Usenet, but instead have centralised/corporate/ad/spyware invested Facebook/Reddit/Xitter/Tiktok.

spam murdered it. It got ridiculous pretty quickly. The overhead to spam was so low as the protocol was designed to be low friction for posting. The system then took care of carrying the payload everywhere in a reasonable time. People fought back with filters and kill lists. But was not really enough. Once the ISPs decided they did not want the added cost of running the servers usenet tanked pretty quick. Still alive…

Spam fell off drastically after Google Groups disconnected from Usenet a couple of years ago.

Re: Usenet Archives

#27

Post by tptacek »

turblety wrote: post #5

It's so disappointing that we could have had Usenet, but instead have centralised/corporate/ad/spyware invested Facebook/Reddit/Xitter/Tiktok.

What we have today is drastically, unquestionably better that what Usenet offered. The very fact that we're conversing in real time in a coherent thread where everyone sees the same messages is a basic task Usenet was not fit to provide.

Re: Usenet Archives

#28

Post by tptacek »

sumtechguy wrote: post #22
turblety wrote: post #5

It's so disappointing that we could have had Usenet, but instead have centralised/corporate/ad/spyware invested Facebook/Reddit/Xitter/Tiktok.

spam murdered it. It got ridiculous pretty quickly. The overhead to spam was so low as the protocol was designed to be low friction for posting. The system then took care of carrying the payload everywhere in a reasonable time. People fought back with filters and kill lists. But was not really enough. Once the ISPs decided they did not want the added cost of running the servers usenet tanked pretty quick. Still alive…

Binaries killed Usenet, not spam.

Re: Usenet Archives

#30

Post by mfro »

cmacleod4 wrote: post #11

I had tried this site a year or two ago and found it unusable then, but it seems greatly improved now. I found posts as old as 1982, but recent coverage seems to stop around April 2022. Crucially, it supports full-text search on posts within a specific group - something which my own site https://newsgrouper.org cannot do. I find the user interface a little awkward, but it does now appear to be a really useful resourc…

Where are you seeing full-text search for groups? I can filter the post titles on the current page of listings, but this is completely useles...
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