Someone found shiner.mcom.com, our 1995 NNTP server, at an electronics scrapper.As you would expect for a machine generally occupied as a news spool, various copies at various stages of the newsgroup active file are present. They include the default (example?) groups, like acl, control, junk, test and virtual, but also some slightly suspicious internal newsgroups,
mcom.url 0000000000 0000000001 y
mcom.url.bad 0000000000 0000000001 y
mcom.url.bad.bad 0000000000 0000000001 y
mcom.url.bad.bad.bad 0000000000 0000000001 y
mcom.users 0000000000 0000000001 y
mcom.users.clue-impaired 0000000000 0000000001 y
mcom.white-trash 0000000000 0000000001 y
mcom.wreck 0000000000 0000000001 y
mcom.wreck.motorcycles 0000000000 0000000001 yand most famously
mcom.bad-attitude 0000000000 0000000001 y
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
Oh, I do truly miss mcom.white-trash and mcom.bad-attitude.
Whoa. Mention of mcom.bad-attitude takes me back. I think I have a dump of that shit from around the time of the AOL acquisition - '98 or so.
Oh yes I do, and it's hilarious to read now - 'Let's all start an email campaign and send it to suggestions@mozilla.org'
-S
Author here. Thanks for spotting this! However, was this actually at some point Netscape's real NNTP server, not just a test box?
I'm not sure! The name is familiar but I didn't see it pop up in my (incomplete) archive. I've asked someone else who might know. The fact that "mcom.url.bad.bad.bad" and such are on there does suggest that it was in use internally. Back in 1995, I would expect a test box to have just been someone's desktop workstation, not something as beefy as this, but I'm guessing.
I'd love to hear what they say. Meanwhile, if you want the dd image, let me know where to upload it (it's just a simple dump, about 290MB compressed).
Shiner was Apple's code name for that hardware.
Obviously "mcom.url.bad.bad.bad" is in the proud tradition of the various ".word.word.word" newsgroups, such as alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork and alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die.