Google Groups
Google GroupsGoogleGroups is a feed from UseNet and its own set of discussion groups. It provides extensive searching capabilities, and also, with free registration, allows you to post messages to the newsgroups. Like the original DejaNews, it is amazing, sometimes embarrassing, but very very scary. [Note: GoogleGroups actually acquired the DejaNews database.]
Amazing because you can finally answer those nagging, but completely pointless questions like "Who coined the term CowOrkers?" if not definitively, at least to some greater degree of accuracy than before.
Embarrassing because in amongst those posts, are the first things you ever said when you were a newbie. Embarrassing as hell, and waiting to be discovered by the GhostOfUsenetPostingsPast.
Very very scary because those posts can be used to get an idea of what a person thinks and believes in. This is scary because it may not be, what the person actually thinks and believes in. Maybe
And why should this be scary, unless people are in the habit of saying things irresponsibly, believing that they will be able to pretend they never said those things if there's a problem? -- DanielKnapp
At 21 years old I feel one of the first of the Internet generation - parents were involved in IT and early adopters so I've had access as long as I can remember. I think teenagers say a heck of a lot of irresponsible things which they probably shouldn't be accountable for too much once they've 'grown up'. I've got logs of pretty much all my instant messaging conversations going back to when I was about 12/13. I seem to live in a strange situation where I daren't read them for fear of realising what I was like...but I daren't delete them for fear I might want to know what I was like. ~JT
How can people play DevilsAdvocate if everything they say has to make sense? Wouldn't it be better if people say wrong things, no matter how wrong, and for correction to be possible, than for them to go on believing them without being subject to correction? This confuses deliberate errors and accidental ones.
LocalQuickQuestions
Q. How do I quickly find the thread number for a search result?
I use GoogleGroups a lot to find posts, but I find the URL for a desired thread to be extremely long. Ideally once the thread is located I only want a thread number, so I can bookmark it in Word to come back later on.
A. Do this
I get confused by how sometimes Groups at Google string together. Take http://groups.google.com/groups?th=bfecad51b4833caf for example. Thread 3 and 4 are more than 2 years apart from 1 and 2, and thread 3/4 refer to post by mizwhite that does not seem to be anywhere. Anyone knows the answers?
The Google phenomenon of threads with long gaps in them apparently happens because Google considers any two posts with the same subject line as belonging to the same thread. If you post a message with subject "Wiki" and i post an unrelated message with the same simple subject line two years later, Google will consider them the same thread. HTH -- Philip Reed
EditText of this page
(last edited November 23, 2014)
or FindPage with title or text search