was there a receiver off hook tone called a queue tone?
I think it is unlikely Jim is still looking at this 16 years after initially posting.
-- Andrew Smallshaw andrews@sdf.lonestar.org
Lol... good catch. I almost answered!
Look! It's the amazing Google NecroThread
This just might be the oldest one I've seen to date. About 3 weeks ago in another group I haunt, one came to life (obviously another google groups inspired incident) after 7 years dead.
-- If the door is baroque don't be Hayden. Come around Bach and jiggle the Handel
They go back further. The lefendary thread where Linus announces Linux (and the one where Andrew Tannenbaum argues that Minix is better, if that is a separate thread) has been vandalized in the minix newsgroup, and the announcement is 1991.
In that case, google brought the vandalism on itself. At one point years back they put up a timeline of Usenet, pointing to some "key" threads, which included that Linux announcement. The last time they changed the interface, they "forgot" to keep the ability to reply limited to 30 days (which had always been the case previously), so it allowed the vandalism, and people wanted to leave their mark on important threads. I never did check at google to see if they removed the recent replies or not, I know I complained a bunch of times at the time, including about replies to that thread. Soon/eventually, they fixed that "bug".
But then it happened again when they changed the interface recently, and more vandalism of that thread. INdeed, about the only traffic in the minix newsgroup right now is people replying to that thread, they don't even seem aware of what they are doing.
It's easy to notice these replies to old threads. Suddenly someone is replying to a message you've never seen. Sometimes they even quote the date, other times you just know since it's already happening. Yes, I know messages can go astray, but that happens less and less, unlike the old days. I remember when I was reading some Usenet newsgroups via a local BBS starting in late 1994, and it was relativley common for messages to not make it there, or for a reply to appear before the original post.
The only other reason for seeing a post you haven't seen before is if someone is reading another newsgroup and feels the need to add another one to their reply. It seems to happen a lot less than in the old days.
I think I've seen people reply via google to messages older than 1991, but I'm not certain.
I still can't figure out what someone is replying to an old message. They'd have to do searching going quite far back to find the old message, which then can't be accidental.
Michael
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