Gordon Shumway wrote:
On Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:54:15 -0500, Tom Veatch wrote:

On Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:46:50 -0500, Gordon Shumway
wrote:

Get yourself a news reader and use a news server instead of Google.

I believe the typical news server doesn't archive the content. If
that's the case, the only posts that would be available would be
those within that server's retention policy which varies from
provider to provider.

There may be more complete archives of specific groups, but it's my
understanding that Google Groups is probably the most complete (least
incomplete?) general archive available.



Tom Veatch
Wichita, KS
USA


Tom,

Currently there are over 30,000 posts on Newsguy that match the OP's
criteria. The oldest is dated May of 2005. I have no idea how long
Google retains posts for but I would think it wouldn't be that long.

Well, Gordon, you think wrong. Google Groups is what used to be known as
"dejanews", whose sole purpose to existence was an attempt to archive
_everything_ that had _ever_ been posted on USENET. When Google took over
deja, they had posts going back to 1996. Google has since obtained several
other archives that contain posts going back to 1981.

Where Google went wrong was when they decided to compete with USENET instead
of just archiving it.