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AMONG THE NUMEROUS and very serious problems with the
Google beta Groups search engine is that messages are
being mysteriously truncated and without providing the
reader any option to view the entire message either in
Google's html format or in the message's original plain
text format. And if that's not bad enough, message links
to google searches no longer function, and the original
message IDs are now being broken with a "...", thereby
preventing the reader from manually searching for the
link's full message ID in lieu of prior functionality.
I've been searching the newsgroups using the new and
hopelessly DIS-improved Google beta groups search to
include all words "google" and "beta", and contains
the word "google" in the subject header:
http://groups-beta.google.com/groups?as_q=google+beta&num=100&scoring=d&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_ugroup=&as_usubject=google&as_uauthors=&as_drrb=q&as_qdr=&as_mind=1&as_minm=1&as_miny=1981&as_maxd=7&as_maxm=12&as_maxy=2004&safe=off
Anyone who wants to complain to Google may do so via:
http://groups-beta.google.com/support/
http://groups-beta.google.com/support/bin/request.py
Of course, those of you who advocate draconian censorship
of the newsgroup archives can write to thank the "folks"
at Google for their wholesale destruction of the archives.
It's claimed they've been working on this for quite some
time, so there can be no question that Google planned to
censor the archives all along. Oh well, at least they're
being fair by censoring the *ENTIRE* archive without any
bias or favoritism.
It'll be interesting to see if any pressure will be put
on Google to revert back to the "old", fully-functional
format. But since Google did this deliberately, they're
unlikely to cave in to complaints from the free-speech
activists and historians. Again, maybe this is just as
well, given the myriads of new & totally free web/blog
sites popping up all over the Internet world--which are
SEARCHABLE in the functional search/metasearch engines.
The downside is that Internet websites and blogs aren't
being permanently archived on public servers like Google.
Contrarily, Google is the only public server that stores
virtually *ALL* non-binary & non-X-No-Archived newsgroup
messages--presumably on a permanent basis. Presumably...
So what's the NEXT step that Google holds in store for us,
to thoroughly delete the archives and take them completely
off-line for all eternity? At the rate that they're going,
I wouldn't put it past them to do JUST that. There's only
one word to describe Google's censorship campaign: TRAGIC!
Which begs the question WHY are they doing it? What motive
could they possibly have to conceal the newsgroup archives
from world-wide public view? Could it be nothing more than
a temporary experiment to evaluate how important newsgroup
contributors feel about losing our oh-so-precious archives?
You know, like a publicity stunt to boost their stock value
by saying "Look! Google owns the MONOPOLY on the archives".
I would that such an innocuous explanation were plausible...
Consider the VAST wealth of information which is archived
presently on Google, dating back to 1981, when there were
about 150 computers linked to the network. Think about that.
Why would Google want to censor it so egregiously and without
warning? If it's a National Security issue to protect the USA
from Al-Qaeda attack, then I could understand why they did it.
But I seriously doubt that this could be the case. If there
were any critically-dangerous messages on the archives, like
detailed plans for building some top-secret doomsday device,
or naming deep-cover CIA operatives and the like, then those
messages would've already been intercepted and deleted from
the archives immediately upon their discovery. Even PGP/Mix-
encrypted messages can be readily decrypted by US Government
intelligence in a heartbeat, and so would've been long-since
deleted from the archives. But these are EXTREME examples...
The overwhelmingly-vast majority of articles and replies on
the newsgroup archives most likely pose little or no threat
to our National Security--or so one would presume. However,
we live in DANGEROUS times under the cloud of another more
deadly Al-Qaeda attack with WMDs. Could this be the reason?
I don't see how it could be. Logic dictates it could NOT be.
Therefore every responsible law-abiding human being who's ever
posted a message to any one or more of the archived newsgroups
should be asking Google WHY they're now censoring the archives.
Even the archived rants of the rabidly-hateful left-wing trolls
should never be censored or deleted from the archives, because
their orchestrated "happy clown" attempts at disrupting in hopes
of discouraging free-speech on the popular unmoderated newsgroups
are a matter of history; thus helped to shape the *response* of
responsible contributors, e.g., inspiring software programmers
to implement all manner of kill filters and spam fighters, etc,
and providing us right-wingers with proper motivation to exact
sweet revenge upon them. It's all a matter of record, or it WAS...
Some wise sage could argue that it's already stored in the akasa,
the psychometric memory of terra firma, the crystalline crust of
Mnemosyne, and they'd be right. But I'd like a hard copy, too...
Those who study history understand the *tremendous* importance
of preserving it for future generations, accurately -and- fully.
So, unless Google does an about-face and stops their deliberate
censorship of these ever-burgeoning newsgroup archives, then the
public at large, the entire free world in fact, will soon lose
an inestimably-valuable historical record of the past 24+ years
of millions upon millions of diverse usenet newsgroup messages
posted to tens of thousands of newsgroups--date stamps and all!
So be SURE to tell Google what you think about their new "beta",
won't you? Again, you can write them at:
http://groups-beta.google.com/support/
http://groups-beta.google.com/support/bin/request.py
In Vigilance,
Daniel Joseph Min
http://www.geocities.com/daniel_joseph_min
http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x2B1CCFE7
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