PC-DOS 3.3

[Jules Richardson]

Jim Leonard wrote:
> Jules Richardson wrote:
>> Even if they've used a munged email address, as most people posting to 
>> Usenet do these days? I can't imagine teams of Google staff reading 
>> every single message posted daily to Usenet and sanitising 
>> spam-trapped email addresses for the purpose of their archives.
> 
> All I know is that I was able to spend 4 minutes tracking down someone 
> based on the email they used in a 1997 USENET posting and they replied 
> (somewhat surprised).  It can be done.

Yes, many people don't change private email addresses often - can be quite 
different for corporate ones though, or addresses that people have munged to 
avoid the spammers (which is most Usenet users these days apart from the ones 
using Google's interface - which seems to post with users' real addresses)

>> And what if you locate someone in a post from ten years back who's no 
>> longer on that address? 
> 
> Then Google revealing the address wouldn't help you anyway.  Your point 
> again?

My point (again) is that say fred at somecompany.com posted something a few years 
back and I want to contact Fred. In the past, if mail to fred at somecompany.com 
bounced, I'd find an alternate contact address (email / phone / whatever) for 
somecompany.com and contact them to see if Fred was still there, just on a 
different address because the company's chamged their email format.

Google revealing the full address *is* useful in that case; if it's masked 
sufficiently then attempted contact is impossible.

I've used that method to successfully contact people quite often in the past; 
when you're doing historical work it can come in quite useful. No longer 
possible since Google changed the interface.

>> What bugs me is that Google have taken a useful archive and taken 
>> functionality away from the user. 
> 
> The google USENET archive isn't useful or functional?  You seriously 
> think that?

I said "taken functionality away", not "not useful or functional" - although 
it's not as functional as it used to be (the fact that the new interface isn't 
as logical or easy to navigate is a separate issue)

> As for being "the only game in town", they expanded their USENET archive 
> at considerable expense above and beyond the old dejanews archives

Yes, and for a while it was awesome and every credit was due. Then they took 
functionality away by changing the interface, which is what I'm annoyed about.

cheers

Jules