Googles of delights

From: John Foust <jfoust_at_threedee.com>
Date: Fri Dec 14 15:05:49 2001

I've had a great time perusing the new old Usenet posts
on Google.com. It took me a while to find the various
logins I'd used back in '83 or so, getting on news any
way I could.

I've waited a long time for other people's backup archives
to restore copies of these files to my hands. Thankfully,
I didn't say anything too embarrassing. I think that
aspect will have repercussions. What's the online world
going to be like when your off-hand comments will be
around forever? Search for someone's posts, click on
the link of their name, and presto, you can see everything
they've posted, including that plea for companionship to
net.singles back in 1983.

One fun aspect has been seeing who jumped into threads
back then - before they were famous for other reasons.
For example, I hadn't remembered that Larry Wall hung out
on comp.sys.amiga for a while in the early days.

I have also done what someone else here predicted: look
for people who had old machines to dispose, and ask them
what happened to them. I focused on the Terak, for my
museum at www.threedee.com/jcm .

I also used the archive to find people who worked at Terak
back when. I found several names I hadn't known before.
Given a unique name and a history of working in the computer
business, it seemed I could find current e-mail addresses
for about half of the names I searched. I fired off notes
to find out if they'd kept any memorabilia or disks.

I hope someone builds a historical directory of links to
historically relevant posts. I might take on the task myself.

- John
Received on Fri Dec 14 2001 - 15:05:49 GMT