Real Life Puzzle -- Searching Google Groups
Leroy Quet
decided to post it here as a "puzzle".
I have posted THOUSANDS of posts to rec.puzzles and sci.math over the
last decade. I wanted to read an old post from several years ago, so I
tried to find it with a search on Google Groups.
Well, first let me tell you that, even though I sign all my messages
with "Thanks, Leroy Quet", doing a search for "Leroy Quet" has not
worked at all for at least a year or two now.
But I noticed that one can "Search for posts by this author", which
worked a month ago at finding most of my old posts, the ones I posted
through Google Groups anyway.
But now, even clicking on "search for posts by this author" brings up
only one or two posts.
Even if I do an advanced search with Google Groups, and set the search
to find all posts between 1999 and now, only one or two posts come up.
WHERE ARE MY POSTS!!???
Google has been no help, of course. And I don't know if a newsreader
will allow me to view posts that are ten years old.
Anyone have any knowledge or suggestions about what is going on??
Thanks,
Leroy Quet
Nick
The consensus on alt.english.usage is that Google groups search is badly
broken. What seems to happen is that if the servers are busy they just
silently fail to return anything. So repeating the search at different
times gives different answers!
Try searching for a shorter time period and you might get /more/ results!
--
Online waterways route planner: http://canalplan.org.uk
development version: http://canalplan.eu
Leroy Quet
are still there, but the search is undergoing technical problems --
does Google even know about the problem, and if they do, do they care
enough about it to fix it???
That is the question.
Thanks,
Leroy Quet
Phil Carmody
> I cannot get any help from Google (of course) on this problem, so I
> decided to post it here as a "puzzle".
>
> I have posted THOUSANDS of posts to rec.puzzles and sci.math over the
> last decade. I wanted to read an old post from several years ago, so I
> tried to find it with a search on Google Groups.
>
> Well, first let me tell you that, even though I sign all my messages
> with "Thanks, Leroy Quet", doing a search for "Leroy Quet" has not
> worked at all for at least a year or two now.
Google groups sucks. That's basically all there is to know.
The puzzle is why anyone still thinks otherwise.
Phil
--
Any true emperor never needs to wear clothes. -- Devany on r.a.s.f1
Chip Eastham
Hi, Leroy:
I've also noticed that Google Groups search
breaks intermittently. In the paat I've
used the link under Google Groups "Help"
to report outtages that last more than a
couple of days. It might help them if we
kept a consistent tracking of when search
is broken. I'd guess it's something the
company cares about, and knowing extent
of breakdowns would result in additional
resources being allocated.
One thing that I noticed in doing a few
experiments is that searching for game
and leroy finds more hits than game and
quet (in sci.math newsgroup). It seems
search may be hindered by the engine's
suspicion that "quet" is a misspelling
of "quest".
regards, chip
Chip Eastham
> > doing a search for "Leroy Quet" has not
> > worked at all for at least a year or two now.
>
> Google groups sucks. That's basically all there is to know.
> The puzzle is why anyone still thinks otherwise.
Hi, Phil:
Is there another repository of Usenet posts
going back two or three decades?
regards, chip
Phil Carmody
Google groups doesn't even go back months reliably. Google's
repositories were not archived by google themselves, but by
many other parties, who shared them with google as a matter
of good will. To see google shit on them so is a disgrace.
If you still blindly and stupidly believe that google groups
is a reliable archive for usenet posts, then tell me how many
times I've said "google groups sucks" in a usenet post in
the last decade. The results will be out by a factor of 10-100,
I bet you.
I dare you to put your height as 5cm on your passport application,
or age 1234. Errors of that magnitude are simply not to be brushed
off with "well, they're the best there is", they're to be treated
with derision.
Phil, feeling dirty having to pull a google groups post out
of his mark-read filter in order to reply to it.
OwlHoot
Aren't sci.math posts copied to math.forum.org or a site called
something like that?
Mind you, I don't suppose they would be archived even there for
"two or three decades", because the Web is nowhere near that old
(although I guess older posts could have been copied there when
that site first became active).
Cheers
John Ramsden
Duncan Booth
Google Groups isn't that old, but Usenet (which is what a lot of Google
Groups piggy back onto) most certainly is. The oldest usenet article
archived in Google Groups dates from 11th May 1981:
http://groups.google.com/group/net.general/msg/205f828a7595fc94
See http://www.google.com/googlegroups/archive_announce_20.html for
pointers to some of the more interesting old posts.
--
Duncan Booth http://kupuguy.blogspot.com
Phil Carmody
Picked randomly, the first mention of IRC:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sources.d/msg/2576f73a03a8ba3f
Contains the words:
"with orion.cair.du.edu as the master server"
Yet:
Your search - "with orion.cair.du.edu as the master server" - did not match any
documents.
Google groups scores zero out of one. In fact it scores zero out of
practically any finite number. Google groups sucks. Wake up and smell
the kool-aid.
Marshall
wrote:
>
> Google groups scores zero out of one. In fact it scores zero out of
> practically any finite number. Google groups sucks. Wake up and smell
> the kool-aid.
Yes, Google Groups sucks, and the searching is broken
for a while now and no fixes seem to be forthcoming.
And yet with all of that, your vitriol still comes off as
wildly hyperbolic.
Marshall
David Bernier
Finding older posts is often not easy. For the newer ones, there's
archivum , mathkb , etc.
Wired had an article on Google groups:
< http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/usenet/ >
Leroy Quet
>...
Interesting article. Comments below the article point out that Google
is devoid of any competence or concern when it comes to Usenet
archiving because it is a publicly traded company, and Usenet does not
make enough money for it.
It sure would be nice if SOMEONE (possibly a nonprofit, possibly the
Library of Congress) would take over the archiving of Usenet.
I have posted thousands of posts over the years, mostly to sci.math
and rec.puzzles. The math posts contain some of my only published math-
results. I would absolutely hate if all my work with math over the
years was for nothing simply because Google is concerned only about
money!!
Thanks,
Leroy Quet
James Dow Allen
wrote:
> Chip Eastham <hardm...@gmail.com> writes:
> > On Nov 8, 10:14 am, Phil Carmody <thefatphil_demun...@yahoo.co.uk>
> > wrote:
> >> Google groups sucks. That's basically all there is to know.
> >> The puzzle is why anyone still thinks otherwise.
>
> > going back two or three decades?
Whatever its limitations, Google's Usenet archive is,
by definition, the *best* archive if it's the only one.
(If it *is* the only one, I cry "Negligence!" I think
I'd have seriously considered maintaining an archive if
I'd been managing a large news server. No, I don't have
an estimate of how many magtapes I'd have needed, though
it shouldn't be *that* many if binary groups are excluded.)
What was the legal status of DejaNews? Is there a way to
force the archive into public domain via litigation?
The Wired article mentions Henry Spencer's archive.
Does he still have that, or did Google somehow get
exclusive rights?
One of the wierdest Googleisms I know is the way their
illegal copying of *millions* of books was condoned.
An argument heard most often was that the copying was
legal because copyrighted books would be available,
without charge, only to Google computers and Google
employees! In other words, a Might Makes Right doctrine
implies that Google employees are exempt from
obeying the law because of the "importance" or wealth
of Google Inc.!
We're taught that intellectual property rights acrue as
a reward for creativity. The most creative thinking
involved in Google's illegal copying of millions of books
was understanding that in American Might-makes-Right
capitalism, their crime would *not* be prosecuted.
> Phil, feeling dirty having to pull a google groups post out
> of his mark-read filter in order to reply to it.
I hope I've not comitted an etiquette violation by replying
to a poster who announces he won't see my reply! If I've
said anything interesting I hope someone will quote it
so Phil won't have to feel dirty.
James Dow Allen
OwlHoot
This may sound rather OTT; but isn't there a case for
preserving usenet archives as a social record? This
is an obligation which Google took upon themselves
for profit reasons (nothing wrong with that) but is
now evidently neglecting.
If so, perhaps Google could be prevailed upon to make
the full archive available for some non-profit group
to download for future ages.
Or even private individuals - A 2 Tbyte disk is little
more than $150 now, and I imagine a handful of those
would be ample to store a complete archive of all the
sci and alt groups, with a simple compression scheme,
or even uncompressed.
Heck I'd download a copy myself if the facility was
readily available. I have several 2 Tbyte disks already
for my vast ebook collection, and there's ample space
to squeeze in a mere copy of the usenet archive!
Cheers
John R Ramsden
David Bernier
> On Nov 9, 1:53 am, Phil Carmody <thefatphil_demun...@yahoo.co.uk>
> wrote:
>> Chip Eastham <hardm...@gmail.com> writes:
>>> On Nov 8, 10:14 am, Phil Carmody <thefatphil_demun...@yahoo.co.uk>
>>> wrote:
>>>> Google groups sucks. That's basically all there is to know.
>>>> The puzzle is why anyone still thinks otherwise.
>>> Is there another repository of Usenet posts
>>> going back two or three decades?
>
> Whatever its limitations, Google's Usenet archive is,
> by definition, the *best* archive if it's the only one.
> (If it *is* the only one, I cry "Negligence!" I think
> I'd have seriously considered maintaining an archive if
> I'd been managing a large news server. No, I don't have
> an estimate of how many magtapes I'd have needed, though
> it shouldn't be *that* many if binary groups are excluded.)
>
> What was the legal status of DejaNews? Is there a way to
> force the archive into public domain via litigation?
> The Wired article mentions Henry Spencer's archive.
> Does he still have that, or did Google somehow get
> exclusive rights?
I think Harry Spencer can only transfer/license to Google
what he owns or has a license to use.
I think one basic principle is that the author of a post has
the rights to the post, unless the author has forfeited the
rights or the equivalent.
When posting through Google Groups, the fine print says something
like: "the author gives a perpetual license to reproduce the author's
post on a royalty-free basis [...] ". But that doesn't mean necessarily
that there's a transfer of all rights if a poster posts through Google
Groups.
When not posting through Google Groups:
anything that I posted, which was through an ISP with
NNTP service, I'd consider to be mine, with no licensing to Google or
others given, unless the ISP (or they) can prove otherwise.
For Deja News, those who used it agreed to something, but I don't know
what. Generally, I believe the rights given to Google would depend on
the poster's agreement with the posting provider.
So I believe I could request that some articles I wrote be removed
from Google's archive, [while I may copy
my own writing at will] as in many cases I gave them no license.
But unless millions of Usenet people band together, nothing much
is likely to happen.
So Google can't claim a right they were never given.
Then there's the question of the threading, article headers
and the rest.
David Bernier
David Bernier
There's a Class Action suit: Authors Guild v. Google .
I read the allegations in count 1 at least, around page 6 of
"Authors' Initial Complaint", Sept. 2005.
Then I skipped to Google's response in
"Google's Answer to Authors' Complaint"
It's not a glorious response ...
Cf.:
http://www.authorsguild.org/advocacy/articles/settlement-resources.html
David Bernier
David Bernier
There's more to the story of the proposed Google Books Settlement;
WILLIAM F. CAVANAUGH
U.S. Department of Justice
Deputy Assistant Attorney General
Antitrust Division
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
was a co-author of a brief to the Court. This proposed settlement is a
big deal. Probably more important at this time than Google groups
problems.
Cf.:
STATEMENT OF INTEREST OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
REGARDING PROPOSED CLASS SETTLEMENT
at:
http://www.authorsguild.org/advocacy/articles/settlement-resources.html
Key Legal Documents:
--> Department of Justice Statement of Interest (September 18, 2009)
David Bernier
David Bernier
The terms are there in the "TAOS", paragraph 11:
"11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content
which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.
By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a
perpetual,
irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to
reproduce,
adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and
distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through,
the Services."
Google Services "Terms of Service" Agreement, paragraph 11 here:
< https://www.google.com/accounts/TOS >
N.B.: "royalty-free" : that should mean that they could build a
Premium Google Groups Archive, paid through by
subscriptions, and that a Google Poster, while holding
the copyright to "short stories" or poems, for example,
couldn't get money from Google. Also, if they made an e-book
from the "Anthology", or even translated it,
and made money, it seems to me that they could do it without
compensating the author or authors of the pieces in the
Anthology; the enabler here is/are the TOS themselves.
As for "non-exclusive license", I think it means you could let
your friends try to make money by selling your poems,
just by giving them a license. Then, they could
have a contractual obligation to pay you royalties as
the Author (depending on the terms of the license you
give your friends). But you could never force Google
to pay you royalties, because (a) you gave them a
royalty-free license, and (b) the license to Google
allows this:
- reproduce,
- adapt,
- modify,
- translate,
- publish,
- publicly perform,
- publicly display and
- distribute [ content from You].
Actually, "modify" is a puzzler for me. How much "modification" is
allowed? Since the TOS seem at first-hand vague on that, it might
end up in "bargaining" through lawyers, or as a civil suit
You v. Google ...
David Bernier
David Bernier
> David Bernier wrote:
>> ...
>>
>> Wired had an article on Google groups:
>> < http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/10/usenet/ >
>
> Interesting article. Comments below the article point out that Google
> is devoid of any competence or concern when it comes to Usenet
> archiving because it is a publicly traded company, and Usenet does not
> make enough money for it.
>
>
> It sure would be nice if SOMEONE (possibly a nonprofit, possibly the
> Library of Congress) would take over the archiving of Usenet.
I think the US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)
has the right values, but probably not the mandate or job,
since arguably all of the Usenet archives aren't so important,
and probably more importantly NARA deals in US Gov. documents.
But combined with the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA),
I think NARA does a decent job of balancing public access,
privacy matters and dealing with classified or restricted
writings (and diagrams, etc) .
"Restricted" applies for example to nuclear
weapons technical information --probably best treated
with extreme care with respect to FOIA requests.
Cf.:
< http://www.archives.gov/about/ >
David Bernier
Matthew Russotto
Leroy Quet <qqq...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>I have posted thousands of posts over the years, mostly to sci.math
>and rec.puzzles. The math posts contain some of my only published math-
>results. I would absolutely hate if all my work with math over the
>years was for nothing simply because Google is concerned only about
>money!!
Why not dig them up and save them while you have the chance?
--
The problem with socialism is there's always
someone with less ability and more need.
Richard Heathfield
wrote:
> In article
> <f38a5b60-af6d-463a...@b15g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,
> Leroy Quet <qqq...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>>
>>I have posted thousands of posts over the years, mostly to sci.math
>>and rec.puzzles. The math posts contain some of my only published
>>math- results. I would absolutely hate if all my work with math over
>>the years was for nothing simply because Google is concerned only
>>about money!!
> Why not dig them up and save them while you have the chance?
Because he can't find them!
For heaven's sake, Google - if you can't fix your search engine, just
scrap it completely and use grep instead. It's not hard. And since
it's our data, not yours, why not make it available for bulk
download? If you really care about Usenet, you'll want the archival
task to be shared around because redundancy is just a cruel word for
backup. And if you don't really care about Usenet, you've got no
business deciding the fate of its archives, whether by conscious
decision or neglect.
--
Richard Heathfield <http://www.cpax.org.uk>
Email: -http://www. +rjh@
"Usenet is a strange place" - dmr 29 July 1999
Sig line vacant - apply within
Leroy Quet
Thanks,
Leroy Quet
Ted Schuerzinger
> Amen, Richard!
>
> Thanks,
> Leroy Quet
>
> Richard Heathfield wrote:
>> [31 quoted lines suppressed]
How typical of Giggle Groups to set the post up for top-posting, *and*
leave the .sig in. At least this time it didn't leave in the "show
quoted text" and "hide quoted text" links.
--
Ted S.
fedya at hughes dot net
Now blogging at http://justacineast.blogspot.com
David Bernier
> In <PbKdndAcBeUo3WfX...@speakeasy.net>, Matthew Russotto
> wrote:
>
>> In article
>> <f38a5b60-af6d-463a...@b15g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>,
>> Leroy Quet <qqq...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>>> I have posted thousands of posts over the years, mostly to sci.math
>>> and rec.puzzles. The math posts contain some of my only published
>>> math- results. I would absolutely hate if all my work with math over
>>> the years was for nothing simply because Google is concerned only
>>> about money!!
>
>> Why not dig them up and save them while you have the chance?
>
> Because he can't find them!
>
> For heaven's sake, Google - if you can't fix your search engine, just
> scrap it completely and use grep instead. It's not hard. And since
> it's our data, not yours, why not make it available for bulk
> download? If you really care about Usenet, you'll want the archival
> task to be shared around because redundancy is just a cruel word for
> backup. And if you don't really care about Usenet, you've got no
> business deciding the fate of its archives, whether by conscious
> decision or neglect.
>
I tried to use the "GET" command in Linux to fetch a web page containing
an individual post of mine, this page:
< http://groups.google.com/group/rec.puzzles/msg/0a4d5499aa83d2c7 >
I succeeded in "getting" something and re-directed the output to a file
as follows:
bash$ GET
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.puzzles/msg/0a4d5499aa83d2c7 >
post001.txt
What I got was all except content ...
[snip html/scripting ]
<blockquote>
<H1>Forbidden</H1>
Your client does not have permission to get URL
<code>/group/rec.puzzles/msg/0a4d5499aa83d2c7</code> from this server.
<p>
</blockquote>
[snip remainder of html/scripting ]
The Web page code I got renders in a web browser as:
"Google Error
Forbidden
Your client does not have permission to get URL
/group/rec.puzzles/msg/0a4d5499aa83d2c7 from this server."
How come my client has no permission to "get" what I wrote yesterday?
David Bernier
Matthew Russotto
David Bernier <davi...@videotron.ca> wrote:
>
>How come my client has no permission to "get" what I wrote yesterday?
Google refuses to allow command-line clients to get from groups.
wget -U Lynx http://groups.google.com/group/rec.puzzles/msg/0a4d5499aa83d2c7
works, however.
Aslam Siddiqui
aslam
Leroy Quet wrote:
> I cannot get any help from Google (of course) on this problem, so I
> decided to post it here as a "puzzle".
>
> I have posted THOUSANDS of posts to rec.puzzles and sci.math over the
> last decade. I wanted to read an old post from several years ago, so I
> tried to find it with a search on Google Groups.
>
> Well, first let me tell you that, even though I sign all my messages
> with "Thanks, Leroy Quet", doing a search for "Leroy Quet" has not
> worked at all for at least a year or two now.
>
> But I noticed that one can "Search for posts by this author", which
> worked a month ago at finding most of my old posts, the ones I posted
> through Google Groups anyway.
>
> But now, even clicking on "search for posts by this author" brings up
> only one or two posts.
>
> Even if I do an advanced search with Google Groups, and set the search
> to find all posts between 1999 and now, only one or two posts come up.
>
> WHERE ARE MY POSTS!!???
>
> Google has been no help, of course. And I don't know if a newsreader
> will allow me to view posts that are ten years old.
>
>
> Anyone have any knowledge or suggestions about what is going on??
>
>
> Thanks,
> Leroy Quet
>
Leroy Quet
work earlier for me.
Thanks,
Leroy Quet
Virgil
Aslam Siddiqui <asid...@iupui.edu> wrote:
> WHERE ARE MY POSTS!!???
Holding up the barbed wire around the back forty?