Back again after all these years

[Ronald Farber]

Before /b/ there was here.

I was here 21 years ago this april.

[sniff]

[steve...@gmail.com]

I was too... '93 onwards, alt.bizarre and alt.test

From a distributed worldwide USENET to a single neglected Google site. What once was the grinding text engine of NNTP, email packet messages clearly delineated by explicit protocol...

Now exists as a little shop of Javascript horrors living behind a /#hashtagURL/ and nothing is static any more, it's all served up Just In Time until the day (specifically) Google Groups is no more.

After which there will be NO Pipeline, no Dejanews, no mirrors, no European or Australian branches, no tiny law office in the Caribbean where the senior partner runs SCO Unix and spends 4 hours a night on the modem to Miami updating his local news feed (an old friend, R.I.P.)

I could reach further back into the nether to Compuserve and The Source, further still to the early days of USENET with a handful of .edu and .mil and .ac.uk, or jump off to BBS world with its crawling words and sudden (exciting!) splash of ANSI art and color.

Sure got a good run out of ASCII didn't we? Perhaps its time to go back to EBCDIC.