Old usenet news?

From: Chuck McManis <cmcmanis_at_mcmanis.com>
Date: Thu Dec 9 02:07:45 1999

At 09:23 PM 12/8/99 -0600, John wrote:
>At least with old news, you can know there's only a finite amount.
>I seem to remember that in 1983 or so, all of Usenet news was only
>pumping a meg or two a day. Can anyone confirm this, or supply
>any other data points along this curve? How many megs of Usenet
>posts might there be in this gap between, say, 1983 and 1995?

In 1984 I could read every message posted in every news group before lunch
every day. This was a time when commercial use was still strictly verboten
if you went through any DARPA links and the Usenet "cabal" was that
mysterious underbody that could create new groups and remove systems from
the Usenet. I helped maintain intelca which made my address
...!ucbvax!sun!intelca!cmcmanis. I remember around 1992 when the number of
new messages posted in one day exceeded 10MB. I had long since stopped
being able to read everything. Then there was John Gilmore's revolt against
the Cabal and alt.* was born (late 80's IIRC)

--Chuck
Received on Thu Dec 09 1999 - 02:07:45 GMT