Goodbye alt.* Andrew Cuomo claimed that his office found child porn on 88 newsgroups--out of roughly 100,000 newsgroups that exist. In a press release, he took credit for [Verizon's] blunderbuss-style newsgroup removal by saying: "We are attacking this problem by working with Internet service providers...I commend the companies that have stepped up today to embrace a new standard of responsibility, which should serve as a model for the entire industry." Verizon eliminates the entire alt. subset of usenet. Today, the alt.* hierarchy is by far the most populous on Usenet.
posted by caddis on Jun 12, 2008 - 143 comments

Read it sideways. The first smiley was posted to usenet on September 19, 1982. Almost twenty years later, the original posting is uncovered on an old tape backup (after a search that smiley-inventor Scott Fahlman has dubbed the “Digital Coelacanth Project”). Of note: Mr. Fahlman thinks that AOL’s and MSN’s penchant for replacing the smiley-string with little pictures “destroys the whimsical element of the original.”
posted by sherman on Sep 13, 2002 - 26 comments

Here's a simple example of a potentially interesting art project. Fill a Usenet post with words specifically chosen to create art based on Google's search word highlighting. Not sure if it's art or spam, but I am waiting for the first ASCII artist to step up to the plate and do something complex like the Mona Lisa.
posted by willnot on Jul 21, 2002 - 10 comments

RIP Jim Ellis. Jim was one of the co-founders of Usenet. Today's a sad day, between Michael's death and Jim's... Why is it that net pioneers die so young...
posted by TNLNYC on Jun 29, 2001 - 7 comments