Comments on: Comments on 13044

Post number 13044

viama — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 05:58:42 -0800

It looks like Google groups is finally out of beta. As well as the archive they bought from Deja, they have also added posts dating back to 1981. The timeline here demonstrates this feature, showing the first mentions of MS-DOS, AIDS, and Madonna on Usenet.

By: beagle

beagle — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 06:10:41 -0800

Use the advanced search to zero in on messages from a particular year.

By: davehat

davehat — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 06:27:56 -0800

At $600 for 64K in the USA, I expect we'll see a lot of these.

By: sawks

sawks — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 06:38:52 -0800

davehat, you just warmed the cockles of my heart :) time to go reminisce

By: o2b

o2b — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 06:52:06 -0800

nice to know that the first response to the very first spam was cynicism.

By: XiBe

XiBe — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 06:55:43 -0800

First post containing the word "sex" (June 5, 1981). Man, was I young, pure and innocent...

By: luser

luser — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 07:01:30 -0800

Usenet post from bill gates using Gordon Letwin's account.

By: dlewis

dlewis — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 07:04:43 -0800

Anyone know when the first troll was? I'm trying to find the start of the infamous "Oh how I envy American students" thread...

By: Mid

Mid — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 07:17:38 -0800

My first post -- 11/7/91. Pretty boring -- I was having some sort of problem with ANSI emulation and z-term.

By: internal

internal — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 07:20:10 -0800

Google says this is the first mass spam, but who can forget this gem from Feb 9 1990? Oh, if I had only listened then, I would be so rich now... Earliest mathowie reference. This is apparently my first post. OK, now show us yours!

By: crog

crog — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 07:20:11 -0800

Hmm... I could have a LOT of fun searching this archive for things like the First Mention of Nintendo, or.. . who knows...!

By: elvissinatra

elvissinatra — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 07:25:51 -0800

First mention of Winamp?

By: dogmatic

dogmatic — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 07:30:07 -0800

Wow. I spent a lot of time on RASSM in college.

By: crog

crog — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 07:40:40 -0800

... I couldn't resist looking for the First Mention of Metafilter on Usenet back in March 3, 2000. Kind of odd, I thought I might find something older than that, but I sure didn't...

By: Armitage Shanks

Armitage Shanks — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 07:54:21 -0800

Hmmm. Looks like everything over a year old is offline again...

By: precipice

precipice — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 08:01:03 -0800

Zoinks. Archives are great and all, but do they really need to keep my alt.test posts from 1990?

By: tomplus2

tomplus2 — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 08:07:49 -0800

I see that my first post was oin April 30, 1993. My next post was 8 months later about 3dStudio R3 and mach32 drivers.

By: terrapin

terrapin — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 08:11:22 -0800

Not my first post, but the one of which I enjoyed most. I was having a discussion with David Gans (host of the Grateful Dead Hour) about whether or not releases of Dead shows after Jerry Garcia's death should be pieced together from different concerts or if they should be released warts and all from the same show. After some discussion we both had convinced each other of the other's point of view. Here is the comment where David agrees with me. Moments before I had just e-mailed him off-list to say that I was wrong and I should be glad the Dead put anything out rather than complaining about what they put out.

By: nstop

nstop — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 08:22:52 -0800

Ah memories! I found all my old posts to alt.music.alternative, then alt.music independent when that group was created to escape the absolutely unbearable volume of traffic about Pearl Jam and other mainstream bands.

By: MiguelCardoso

MiguelCardoso — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 08:40:01 -0800

Yikes, a lot of people have been yakking about me behind my back. I like the fourth entry: "is a monarchist who likes Ian Curtis, girls, gays, Beckett, sociology..."

By: NortonDC

NortonDC — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 08:45:57 -0800

I'm still not sold on it. The earliest return on a search for "am.elite give.me.warez" is in 1995, a time when it was already legend. Anybody got a better search tack on this or other eternal threads?

By: kindall

kindall — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 08:49:12 -0800

From one of my early Usenet posts: For now, I just modified my ProDOS to always turn off the 5.25" drive motor before calling the UniDisk device driver. Works like a charm. Oh, those were the days.

By: pascal

pascal — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 08:58:48 -0800

Very cool. I haven't posted on usenet since 1997, but back in the day Macs and funky music were my thing. Not much changes.

By: bkdelong

bkdelong — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 09:11:53 -0800

OK, now show us yours! Hehehe. We're all dating ourselves. I KNOW I posted on FIDONet 10 years earlier then my first post....but I don't remember what name/nickname I used or the BBS' I frequented.

By: bradlands

bradlands — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 09:26:13 -0800

Hehehe. We're all dating ourselves. Probably because back in the day, some of us spent so much time as USENET geeks, no one else would date us. </guilty>

By: Hildago

Hildago — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 09:26:35 -0800

What I find most hilarious is that on the first post about AIDS, some guy is already telling everyone how it's old news. Maybe he saw it on fark. Hahaha.

By: joemaller

joemaller — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 09:47:04 -0800

This¹⁹⁹⁶ is¹⁹⁹⁶ humiliating.¹⁹⁹⁴

By: Berend

Berend — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 09:47:52 -0800

What I find most hilarious is that on the first post about AIDS, some guy is already telling everyone how it's old news. Maybe he saw it on fark. Hahaha. Actually his reply is not in the first thread on AIDS. The first thread on AIDS starts December 20, 1982. His reply is from November 27, 1983. This is a problem of google, it combines threads that have the same Subject, within in the same group, even if the threads are yeasr apart. Still very very nice to have the archive go back so far. This stuff will be worth gold for historians one day.

By: headspace

headspace — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 09:52:08 -0800

I am mortified. I don't remember having an obscenely large sig. I don't remember spending that much time on alt.romance giving advice. That's it. I'm certain some of these have been forged! Positive! Excuse me while I wander away in shame...

By: xyzzy

xyzzy — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 09:55:42 -0800

Brings a tear to my eye... all my cute little sigs with political statements... Fight the CDA!

By: corpse

corpse — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 10:09:37 -0800

I don't remember posting this.

By: kokogiak

kokogiak — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 10:30:59 -0800

WTF? I was posting about Peanuts Characters in 1995? I am so proud of my first post, I answered a lost soul's profound query. Snif.

By: Iberaband

Iberaband — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 10:32:36 -0800

Hey, what's a kremvax?

By: ph00dz

ph00dz — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 10:59:52 -0800

God, this is frightening. I was a pretty obnoxious kid back in 1993.

By: warhol

warhol — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 11:06:24 -0800

Hey, what's a kremvax? Sigh. Kids. It was purported to be the Kremlin's VAX. You know, 'VAX' as in DEC. as in... ah, never mind. My oldest post. Although, I was pretty sure that the Freenet stuff that we had set up at Case Western in the late 80s had a usenet feed...

By: jeremias

jeremias — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 11:32:46 -0800

Whew, I'm glad my posts to alt.drugs.psychedelics were made under a pseudonym . . . Also, won't future time travelers use this information to pinpoint a user's precise location in history? Think about it.

By: xyzzy

xyzzy — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 11:40:49 -0800

As in it's easier to hack root on an AIX using -froot than it is to change directories on VAX/VMS? ;) My friends always said such amusing things. Damn I was a horrible geek.

By: youhas

youhas — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 11:51:27 -0800

I made a half-hearted attempt to help someone with a brain teaser. I'm sure that future generations will be ever-so-pleased to reap the rewards of my efforts.

By: mourning-glory

mourning-glory — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 11:53:14 -0800

(cringe) Oh, god, they've got...everything....all of it...I thought it was dead and gone and no one would know what a blithering idiot I was in those days. My first post here is in 1988. Am I that old?

By: gen

gen — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 12:02:25 -0800

May 1992 was my first post, at least as far as Google goes. I was into motorcycling, mountaineering, photography, snowboarding, Toyota trucks, other stuff...still am I guess :)

By: Shadowkeeper

Shadowkeeper — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 12:20:21 -0800

January 1995, looking for Returned Peace Corps Volunteers who served in Boliva, a month before I left for the saidsame nation. My address is "shadowkeeper@prostar.com ". Try as I might, I can't ever remember having and ISP called "prostar' ...

By: Yogurt

Yogurt — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 12:22:58 -0800

Posting on behalf of Grum whose work machine won't let him post:
* The first Microsoft sucks (Dec 1990).
* The first reference to Osama bin Laden (Feb 1994, from Voice of America.)
* One of the first references to a certain intern (Jan 1998). I have to quote this one: Monica Lewinsky doesn't exist...at least not in the "mainstream media". Not a single mention anywhere this morning either in print or on the tube. Patience, buddy...

By: sugarfish

sugarfish — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 12:45:04 -0800

my first post. hey, i really liked peeps, okay? my god, how embarrassing. i don't even eat them anymore!

By: ahughey

ahughey — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 13:14:25 -0800

I still haven't tracked down my first post (too many old email addys!), but I did find an old AOL overhead account of mine in an old post to alt.hackers.aol.sucks. It's fun to be a target!

By: skallas

skallas — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 13:36:05 -0800

I love their remove this post policy. Just email us from that account and we'll remove it. Umm, the UNIX server I dialed into in 92 probably doesnt even exist anymore let alone my account. Considering how nicely google removes webpages they should have a more reasonable policy to remove posts. Fax them an ID or something if you used your real name.

By: danec

danec — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 13:36:14 -0800

Looks like this is Matt Drudge's first post to the Usenet... funny.

By: jeremias

jeremias — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 13:45:55 -0800

Wow, one could get lost in this morass of 5 year old nostalgia easily. But anyone remember alt.religion.kibology? Well it seems that James "Kibo" Parry himself wrote this note and introduced one of the first uses of "dot bomb" My favorite quote from this page . . . Also I was the one who told Mike that some Web browsers allow animated background images, hence his little moving starfield

By: zempf

zempf — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 13:50:29 -0800

Oh wow, first post from a CWRU Freenet account 6 years ago to misc.test. Ah, the memories.

By: NortonDC

NortonDC — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 13:53:55 -0800

Am i really supposed to believe that "newbie" was never uttered on Usenet until 1988? That, combined with it's inability to find any use of "give me warez" predating 1995, makes me wonder what's going on.

By: luser

luser — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 13:56:11 -0800

The beginning of the end of music on vinyl.

By: tranquileye

tranquileye — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 13:58:01 -0800

My first post from Google, though there is a reply to another, earlier post about a book I don't remember reading. Dead Can Dance, anyone? Is there some indication from Google as to the holes in their archive?

By: luser

luser — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 13:58:07 -0800

This is fun. The first appearance of our President is his alleged involvement in some slimey Persian Gulf oil scandal.

By: luser

luser — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 14:16:14 -0800

Ok, I need to stop now. But I think there is a hole in the archive -- I can't believe AOL didn't suck until 1994.

By: yerfatma

yerfatma — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 14:19:15 -0800

So it only took 50 or so comments before it occurred to me to search for my college email address. There's nothing interesting (msotly video games), but I had forgotten all about the name on my email account. It does seem like you can remove items that were posted from an old email address.

By: yerfatma

yerfatma — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 14:20:31 -0800

I can't believe AOL didn't suck until 1994. I can't believe an AOL user got on a news group back in 1994.

By: malphigian

malphigian — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 14:30:03 -0800

My first post was in alt.music.independent as a college-indie-rock-snob trying to sell Pavement to someone. *sigh*

By: nstop

nstop — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 14:46:00 -0800

sugarfish: I also posted to alt.food.peeps! Hahahaha...

By: GrahamVM

GrahamVM — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 17:27:26 -0800

at least you lot managed to stay clear of the *.flame groups. Eek. I wish I could go back to 1992 and tell myself "stop flaking off on Usenet and study, you punk!" ... because otherwise you'll be cringing at what you wrote in ten years time. Heh.

By: internal

internal — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 18:36:34 -0800

luser and yerfatma: AOL first got a Usenet feed (and FTP)in 1994. Before Feb 1994, they had no Internet access other than e-mail. I know this because I was unfortunate enough to use it for a few months right after I graduated from college (before I found a real ISP). AOL having access to Usenet, IMHO, was the final nail in the coffin. Yes, it had been going downhill for a few years, but the S/N ratio got so bad after AOL unleashed a bunch of netiquette ignorant users, that save a few groups, it was awful... -sigh-

By: Grum

Grum — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 19:08:56 -0800

On a serious note, this post from January 20 1999 in misc.activism.militia is frighteningly prescient about terrorists and civil liberties (Terrorism is escalating to the point that Americans soon may have to choose between civil liberties and more intrusive means of protection," says Defense Secretary William S. Cohen), and is also the first use of the phrase "then the terrorists have already won" on Usenet (according to Google). It doesn't appear again until September 12th 2001.

By: ODiV

ODiV — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 21:01:47 -0800

Man this kicks ass! I don't have much of a history, but it was fun looking back on the month that I posted to usenet. Here's my first post. An ascii face. ah... memories. Although it seems like there are a few missing... or maybe I'm just thinking of things I wanted to say. :)

By: ODiV

ODiV — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 21:44:12 -0800

By: ODiV

ODiV — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 21:44:57 -0800

damnit... sorry. delete and disregard if you could.

By: Neale

Neale — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 23:36:29 -0800

Here's mine, at least that I can find. I'm talking about something I no longer understand, I swear.

By: stavrosthewonderchicken

stavrosthewonderchicken — Wed, 12 Dec 2001 01:18:49 -0800

Am I the only long-time geek that never ever used Usenet? Weird. Like a missing part of my brain or something....

By: crasspastor

crasspastor — Wed, 12 Dec 2001 03:57:48 -0800

Looks like it's been worldwidewebdotted.

By: crasspastor

crasspastor — Wed, 12 Dec 2001 04:01:23 -0800

Oh yeah. I forgot to mention I'm working on mirroring it. Stay Tuned!

By: stbalbach

stbalbach — Fri, 14 Dec 2001 04:27:10 -0800

We will have an entire generation of geeks unable to run for public office with this kind of history left to haunt them.