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| | Asunto: | [interredesII] The Basics of Usenet / Un terabyte de conversacion humana / Nacio en 1979 en Duke University / Nuevo buscador para 650 millones de mensajes / Indexa los contenidos de tus grupos automaticamente | | Fecha: | Jueves, 3 de Marzo, 2005 08:02:40 (-0600) | | Autor: | Anahuak Home <redanahuak @...............mx>
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The Basics of Usenet / Un terabyte de conversacion humana / Nacio en 1979 en Duke University / Nuevo buscador para 650 millones de mensajes / Indexa los contenidos de tus grupos automaticamente
The Basics of Usenet
Welcome to Google's Usenet archive. This page explains the basics of searching Usenet and why it's worth learning about, even if you already know how to search the Web. If you've used Usenet before and are merely looking for information about Google's acquisition of the Deja.com archive, you might try reading this press release. Otherwise, read on for a quick guide to one of the oldest and most interesting parts of the Internet.
1. What is Usenet and where did it come from?
2. Navigating Usenet
3. Avoid getting flamed
Where did Usenet come from?
Before the Web and web browsers, and before email became ubiquitous, online communication meant posting text messages on electronic bulletin boards where others could read and reply to them. Usenet began as a collection of these bulletin boards (now called discussion forums or newsgroups) started in 1979 by Steve Bellovin, Jim Ellis, Tom Truscott, and Steve Daniel at Duke University. Over the years, the number of such newsgroups has grown to the thousands, hosted all over the world and covering every conceivable topic about which humans converse.
While there was incredibly valuable information available in the discussions taking place on newsgroups, finding that information could be an exercise in frustration and futility. Someone would start a topic with a posting on a bulletin board. Someone else would reply. This initial post and response now constituted a "thread" on the topic. The thread might grow to include dozens or even hundreds of individuals responding to the first post or any that came after it. They might start threads of their own as offshoots of the original discussion. Think of that initial post as a single cell dividing again and again, mutating and expanding geometrically with no predefined direction. The result is likely something you'd find in a low budget horror movie. Finding a specific bit of information in Usenet was an equally horrific task. To make it more complex, almost all newservers expire messages after a few days or, at most, a few weeks. Expired messages are deleted from the live discussion forums and aren't viewable or searchable by users.
In 1995, Deja News was created to provide a user-friendly interface to Usenet. Deja began archiving and indexing messages so they could be searched and sorted, turning an ephemeral and unmanageable resource into a reference tool that was fairly easy to use.
In February 2001, Google Inc., a company dedicated to providing access to all information online, acquired the Usenet discussion service from Deja.com, including its entire Usenet archive of more than 500 million messages -- over a terabyte of human conversation. Google has expanded accessibility to the Usenet database through deployment of improved search and browsing tools and integration of the full archive with more recent postings. The combined database of more than 650 million messages already constitutes the largest collection of Usenet data on the Web and is growing at a rapid pace.
Navigating Usenet
Usenet is like a river with thousands of tributaries. The main forks in the river lead to the top-level discussion categories (such as "alt"). Follow one of the river's forks and you'll come to smaller branches (such as alt.animals), which lead to tributaries containing messages divided into even more specific topics (such as alt.animals.dogs). Ultimately, your journey will take you to the smallest part of the data stream; the part containing messages from people who are interested in one particular topic (such as alt.animals.dogs.beagles).
The different parts of a newsgroup's name are always separated by a period, a traditional categorization symbol in the computer world. Each newsgroup contains threads made up of messages (also referred to as 'articles' or 'postings') that look like e-mail between one user and another, but can be read by anyone accessing that particular newsgroup.
Avoid getting flamed
It turns out there is such a thing as a stupid question. It's the one that gets asked right after someone answered it for the 100th time in a newsgroup discussion. Most discussion forums have a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) section where commonly asked questions are posted and answered. You'll likely want to read this first upon entering a new group, to ensure your question isn't treated like spam (junk mail). Spammers frequently receive flame mail (heated retorts of a personally demeaning nature) directing them to please read the FAQ. One way to find the FAQ, is to enter "faq" and the name of the discussion forum in search box. You should get back a list of results containing the FAQ if one exists.
As you can probably tell by now, Usenet is full of its own terms (like FAQ) that you need to know to pass for a native. For definitions of words like cross-posting, nuking and netiquette, check out Google's Usenet Glossary.
http://groups-beta.google.com/support/bin/static.py?page=basics.html
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