[ih] USENET Archives [was Re: evil umpire?]

[Miles Fidelman]

On 2/29/20 6:51 PM, Bill Ricker wrote:
> Tangential reply ...
>
> On Sat, Feb 29, 2020 at 3:02 PM Miles Fidelman via Internet-history
> <internet-history at elists.isoc.org> wrote:
>>   (My Google Foo doesn't seem to be working today, or
>> it happened too long ago to be indexed.)
> I don't think it's you.
> As you're probably painfully aware, the DejaNews archive that Google
> bought is mostly inaccessible now (since 2015), alas.
> AFAIK there is not equivalent mirror on-line.
> (One hopes Henry Spencer or UT kept a copy of the Usenet 1981-1991
> that he sent Google in 2003.)
> So it's not /your/ Google-Fu that's lacking, it's Google's.
>
> (Which is a shame for history and research, but may have prevented
> quite a few careers from being cut short by youthful indiscretions
> resurfacing. I don't think /mine/ were CLM but ... there's something
> to be said for EU's "Right to be Forgotten", as well as plenty to be
> said against it. I wouldn't be surprised if the impossibility of
> compliance with that EU directive may be why DejaNews qua Google
> Groups no longer does the Usenet for which Google doesn't have a
> user-agreement for each account.)
>
> I gather the Smithsonian Inst. has some of Usenet as well as snapshots
> of important Dot.Com pages archived for posterity
> (we were informed our Dot.Com had been included! :-D)
> but AFAIK they're mostly offline.
>
> // Bill

Damn.  Now doesn't that just suck.

Another case of Google being Evil, I guess.

Sigh...

Miles


-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra

Theory is when you know everything but nothing works.
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why.
In our lab, theory and practice are combined:
nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown