Where Is The Wiretap Archive? 95
cfusion asks: "Veterans of the Internet should remember the Wiretap Electronic Text Archive, at one point hosted by wiretap.spies.com and later by wiretap.area.com. It was a gopher/Web site that covered EVERYTHING under the sun, a digital library of sorts, with incredibly rich content. (A quick search of Yahoo for "Wiretap" will reveal the breadth and depth of their archives - everything from U.S. historical documents to texts about UFOs) Anyway, I recently went back to ">wiretap.area.com and found a message saying "No, we don't know where it went." It's gone. My question is really threefold: Where did it go and why? Are there any other Internet-based libraries that host as large a wealth of textual content? Couldn't someone write to the former curator of the site and offer to host it on their own site? Then turn it into a collaborative effort that maintains the sharpest digital library online. Perhaps my question is not so much about Wiretap, but about digital libraries in general. Although I do want to know where Wiretap went, and why someone else can't host it." This is a cool concept. Hopefully it, or something like it, will turn up again on the Net. Update: 04/25 8:45 by J : "It's back up for good," says its maintainer. Hooray!
http://wiretap.area.com/
A similar site (Score:2)
Gutenberg Project (Score:3)
i'll help host (Score:1)
-neil
FreeNet (Score:1)
Goods at: (Score:2)
Good stuff.
A good alternative (Score:3)
www.textfiles.com [textfiles.com] is a great archive when you are looking for anything text related these days. They all those old BBS text files, ranging from all that H/P/V/A/C stuff to ASCII porn. Check it out!
It probably became a world-wide-cobweb... (Score:1)
It's happened already to many sites on the internet...
aftermath.net (Score:2)
Me too! (Score:3)
I never got a reply.
Does anyone have a copy of wiretapped lieing around?
greg@linuxpower.cx
Re:i'll help host (Score:1)
ha.
sorry.
Sixpack
www.textfiles.com (Score:1)
a great, nostalgic site for textfiles (Score:1)
Maybe Stick It on FreeNet? (Score:1)
Re:A similar site [correction] (Score:1)
Re:Gutenberg Project (Score:1)
I'll tell ya where it went! (Score:3)
Re:A similar site (Score:5)
I think E2 is probably the best bet we've got for something like this in the future. The ability for all the users to add content makes it easier and faster to get information in there, since you don't have to wait for some group to get around to it. The system of nodes and writeups allows commentary to be put up with the text, and makes it much easier to find.
Besides, it's run right alongside Slashdot - what do you think those [?] symbols are in the stories? They're links to the term on everything2, because Slashdot is using Everything as a dictionary [everything2.new].
There are already a number of public domain texts that are there, and more are being added constantly. I think this should be the best location for any information...
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text archives... (Score:2)
A friend, for instance, runs infidels.org [infidels.org], a secular website with about 6000 documents in its library.
Anthology (Score:5)
Anyway, I'm working on a site (anthology.org [anthology.org] -- not much to it yet) that will be a directory of online texts. Though, more and more it seems that some sort of active involvement is necessary to support this type of thing -- rather than just cataloging. Shouldn't be horribly expensive as far as major philanthropic activities go $2000 for a RAQ server and $300-500 a month to host it.
BTW, let me know if there are archives missing from my anthology.org list.
========
h2g2 (Score:3)
Wiretap Mirror (Score:1)
I miss wiretap (Score:1)
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Re:A similar site (Score:2)
That was just the default theme, and it appears to have been fixed - I had the same problem for a long time, but now I can use that theme.
If you still have the problem, all you have to do is wade through it long enough to get yourself registered as a user and change the theme to something more readable.
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Re:A similar site (Score:1)
Rob w/ grunts: will we have E3 before saturday? =)
Re:h2g2 (Score:2)
I've actually tried it, but I found www.everything2.com to be much more interesting, user-friendly, and just all-around better. Heck, they've started adding Project Gutenberg stuff to it - last I checked, there was a lot of freely-available texts that had been entered, from the KJV Bible, to like a third to half of Shakespeare's works, to a lot of Edgar Allen Poe, and even Alice in Wonderland (I forget the actual exact title) - and tons of little stuff besides.
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Pagan and Wiccan Text Files Resource (Score:1)
I maintain a website called Omphalos [omphalos.net] which contains some 18Mb or so of text files relating to modern Wicca, Paganism and the occult. The files are divided into 26 categories and are accessible from the menu on the bottom left of the main page. There are also humour files, SCA stuff, etc.
This is all stuff from the old BBS days preserved from when I closed down my Fidonet/PODS BBS and moved to the internet. The materials used to be maintained in a website called Atho's Pagan Files Collection but I have since consolidated the two websites.
Re:A similar site (Score:2)
Yeah, everything is neat, but the main problem with it is that there is no editing. Do a search for Mr T Ate My Balls [everything2.com] and then tell me what you think of Everything as a legitimate cataloging/archival site.
Yes, this is a definite plus, under certain circumstances. You can avoid the tyranny of The Editor as he prunes away the dross [everything2.com].
darren
Cthulhu for President! [cthulhu.org]
Text Subculture (Score:2)
Search for texts, textz, text archive, etc.
I could host these (Score:1)
books.mirror.org has many (most/all?) (Score:5)
There also was a Wiretap mirror at wiretap.spies.com [spies.com], but I can't tell if it is still there since it seems to be SlashDotted.
Re:Pagan and Wiccan Text Files Resource (Score:2)
Nice to see a few of us still around! We have revived some of the PODSnet Echos as Onelist mailing lists...just go to the site and search for PODSnet...
ttyl
Farrell McGovern
Solsbury Hill BBS
you know.. (Score:1)
off-topic: Process-Tree (Score:1)
========
This is very disturbing (Score:1)
Wiretap was *NOT* Gutenberg (Score:1)
Literature.org (Score:1)
I emailed the curator... (Score:1)
Screw the dot-coms and the whole psuedo-information movement. Wiretap is an internet classic. It should have community support. The more of these types of sites that disapear, the poorer the internet becomes. If this keeps up, it'll just be interactive T.V. all advertising, all the time; no content.
Re:Pagan and Wiccan Text Files Resource (Score:1)
I used to run The Cauldron BBS just north of you in Pembroke Ontario. Then it moved to Saltspring Island, BC (my hometown). I remember you from the old days...
Archiving Universal Search Engines (Score:5)
The main problem with history editing is disappearing history. This has been true from www.deja.com's bit-decaying Usenet archive all the way back to the Library at Alexandria.
The only real way to address the disappearing history problem is a shift away from:
Storage capacity just isn't expensive enough to justify anything but redundantly archived versions of everything ever published on the Web and Usenet. The indexes of such versioning archives are quite similar to the data structures needed for compression anyway, so this is a natural marriage.
I know the Xanadu cover story on Wired a few years ago ended by saying "somethings are best forgotten" but then that article was written by the kind of guys it is generally best to disobey at every opportunity.
Re:A similar site (Score:1)
-j
Re:Gutenberg Project (Score:1)
Re:Maybe Stick It on FreeNet? (Score:2)
This is a significant part of the kind of stuff is what FreeNet is meant to provide access to. And of course, the popular files will propagate around the freenet quickly.
Re:Gutenberg Project (Score:1)
Attrition hosts the defaced web page archive seen on HNN [hackernews.com], in addition to having zillions of text files. They also have a huge movie archive [attrition.org] which includes every funny/disturbing movie that ever landed in your inbox.
Check it out, its a great resource.
peas,
-Nick
wiretap (Score:1)
ftp://wiretap.area.com
Metalab is still kicking (Score:1)
Re:wiretap (Score:1)
Re:This is very disturbing (Score:1)
I've got about a gig's worth of archived sites on my hard drive. My interest is the weird stuff: UFOs ate my dog, I am schizophrenic, Jesus moved to Asia, whatever. If someone puts out a weird pamphlet, the odds are relatively good that someone somewhere will archive it. But with a website -- well, one bad Visa day and it's gone, right? So what I figure is that someday, my hard drive will be worth something (for interest' sake, not $) to researchers -- whether university types or just freaks like me.
Now sure, this was all done when I had a cable modem and I could suck down a site in ten minutes. But since the subject here is text, you won't need a whole lotta bandwidth for image maps, MIDI files and the like -- just a half hour of your time. Take matters into your own hands! Make your own mirror! Just look at all the posts marked "informative": half or more are from people who kept their own copies.
No offense to the poster who said a centralized library was the solution, but nuts to that: multiple, redundant backups -- if for no other reason than to avoid copyright issues. (I still haven't figured out how to avoid that question in my plan to eventually donate my hard drive to a university for archival.)
Bigger issue: dependancy - web sites can disappear (Score:1)
I once had a favorite site that I used for all kinds of references. One day the maintainer died. Since he stopped paying his bills, his ISP closed his account and erased his files. I've never again seen a copy of these files :( Since then I suck down entire web sites that are valuable to me and archive them to CD, if they fit. This seems like overkill, but what else is there to do?
This simple method doesn't work for sites like Slashdot that have their data in a database, rather than in separate web pages that can be sucked down by a web bot. If Slashdot suddenly went away, how could we resurrect it? I wonder if we could.
Re:wiretap (Score:1)
-s
Re:Wiretap Mirror (Score:2)
Of course, I might just be paranoid
"The axiom 'An honest man has nothing to fear from the police'
Wiretap Version 2.0 (Score:1)
It's not there anymore because there's a new version 2.0 of wiretape. It's called the World Wide Web.
Seriously, isn't this pretty much what the web is about, with a little more organized index? And a lot smaller.
Just some thoughts.
Jason
Re:www.textfiles.com (Score:1)
-Patrick
Am I on crack... (Score:5)
Am I missing something here? I can get on. (Score:1)
But... wiretap.area.com appears to be online! (Score:5)
If it goes offline again, perhaps this old address could reach someone: I found that address in the comments at http://wiretap.area.com/Gopher/Libr ary/Classic/ [area.com], dated June 24, 1994 -- the P.O. box may or may not still be valid...
Everything seems fine... (Score:1)
and everything seems to be up and running (perhaps some of the content is missing, I didn't have time to look around too much). I know this could be considered redundant; there was a reply to another message that mentioned something similar and several people have mentioned that it's still working through gopher, but I figured it might be useful to point out that the web server seems to be fine in the main thread. Moderate as you will.
- Wombat
or, old school BBS style, WôMBÄT
Re:Pagan and Wiccan Text Files Resource (Score:1)
ttyl
Farrell
Na-bis-co.. *ding* (Score:1)
TOTSE (Score:1)
Anyhow, one of the "80's BBSes that wouldn't die" is Temple of the Screaming Electron at http://www.totse.com/ They have a fair amount of textfiles.
Re:ascii cows (Score:1)
Used to be "text.com", then it disapeared.
I hope they have ascii cows,
I love ascii cows for some reason... And "Deep thoughts by jack handy.."
Then green on black brings me back to VT-100 memories....
Please moderate the above HOAX as TROLL (Score:2)
This is as stupid as those "please forward this to everyone you know" virux hoaxes. These moderators need a bitch slap.
Digital Libraries (Score:2)
I find that a lot of the work out there is very research oriented, and conducted by library science folks really, really concerned with "getting it right". It's a little *too* anal for my purposes, but you have to admit, all the 'i's are dotted and the 't's crossed.
I just wrapped up design on an object-oriented framework for a Digital Library project (modeled on my earlier work for Early English Books Online http://wwwlib.umi.com/eebo [umi.com]), and I found the work being done at Cornell very valuable as an inspiration. The Making of America II project is also an excellent overview of a well-thought-out Digital Library project.
So, for those interested in a little theory and practice, check these links out:
Digital Library Links and Resources:
http://www.ifla.org/II/diglib.htm [ifla.org]
Cornell Digital Library Research Group
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/cdlrg/ [cornell.edu]
Making of America II
http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/MOA2/ [berkeley.edu]
FEDORA (an architecture for information storage and retrieval, *very* nice).
http://www.cs.cornell.edu/cdlrg/FEDORA. html [cornell.edu]
NASA COSMIC software library? (Score:1)
(Readers of "Lucifer's Hammer" may remember that a copy of COSMIC was one of the treasures which was mentioned)
[Partly?] merged into Project Gutenberg (Score:1)
Take a look at this classic title [unc.edu] to see what I mean (it's in the paragraph beginning "October, 1993 [Etext #85]").
It's not gone! (Score:1)
It's at http://wiretap.area.com/. I don't currently have a gopher client, so I can't say if the gopher version is up, but I can see it through the WWW. [area.com]
Or am I missing something somewhere?...
http://wiretap.area.com/ is alive and well (Score:3)
The above is a paragraph from the home page. My guess is that ""No, we don't know where it went." is their 404 Error... due to a temporary outage or something like that.
Check it yourself.
y2k info - http://www.ecis.com/~alizard/y2k.html
Re:wiretap (Score:3)
Gopher! [area.com]
My proxy at work has that service blocked but from the looks of it it ought to work...
Re:books.mirror.org has many (most/all?) (Score:1)
pasteur:~ > nslookup wiretap.spies.com
Server: *************
Address: 192.26.80.2
*** can't find wiretap.spies.com: Non-existent host/domain
WFM (Score:1)
Works for me. The link was fine, and entering the site, it looked like everything was there.
Is there a problem?
Not offtopic: (Score:1)
In theory, it is the most complete library imagineable. In practice, well, not everyone contributes so its reach is finite.
However, they plan to develop handheld, wireless devices to access the h2g2... with Don't Panic written soothingly on the cover. Maybe they'll make a springboard device.
So instead of complaining that there are no good digital libraries, just contribute everything you know to h2g2 and it will be more complete than any other.
Re:This is very disturbing (Score:1)
Oh, absolutely. I have no illusions about having the One True Archive that allows mankind to rebuild civilization after nuclear war. Rather, I'm taking inspiration from a book called Extremism in America: A Reader (Lynn Sargent, ed). It's based on one university's archive (can't rem. which), which was in turn started when one grad student turned over to the library a cardboard box full of stuff he'd collected on his own time: mostly fringe far-right stuff that hadn't been archived elsewhere. Now it's one of the premier collections of its kind. That's the sort of thing I'm interested in anyway, and I suspect there's few enough people archiving this stuff that it would be (more or less) valuable to either academics or amateurs like me.
And as for IP...yeah, that's the kicker. The only thing I've thought of so far is putting it in a box with instructions to open a century after my death, say -- long enough that any IP issues should be moot (I'm not archiving The New York Times, after all). But then, how do I make sure it can be read? Bit rot, obscelence -- hell, I'll have trouble making sure its readable in ten years unless I constantly back it up onto newer media.
Perhaps part of the solution is to find/start a company that will do exactly that: preserve stuff by constantly copying it onto new media. But how in hell could you make a profit -- and thus ensure that the company would be around in a century? And who besides me would need or want that service?
Sigh. More than a little off-topic here anyway...
Found it all, appears intact (Score:2)
Re:I'm suprised.... (Score:2)
remember when schools had gopher sites, and no web sites?
remember ftp-by-mail?
Keyboard not found.
Re:A similar site -- WARNING slashdotted (Score:1)
Try actually looking for the index.html (Score:3)
The first time I tried, I got the 404, then I messed around a bit. It seems to be some kind of web foible. FTP works, Gopher Works, and ...
I'm glad it's not gone.
(IANAL) What Gutenberg & co. will never get (Score:1)
Re:Text Subculture (Score:1)
Re:Pagan and Wiccan Text Files Resource (Score:1)
Thanks for the compliment on the site. As you can see it also offers a slashdot-like message interface (entirely original PHP3 and [php.net]mysql [mysql.net] code BTW), a directory of links to over 375 Wiccan and Pagan websites, and - most recently - a true search engine that indexes the content of the websites listed in the directory (currently we have indexed over 21000 pages of material).
Omphalos [omphalos.net] was probably the first Pagan directory when it was originally created back in 1997 or so, and as far as I can tell its now the first true search engine (most sites index only their own sites contents).
Now if I can just get the word out to folks to let them know the site exists....
A good starting point... (Score:1)
well well (Score:1)
w i r e t a p (Score:1)
jerkcity [jerkcity.com]
brutal [brutal.com]
What about copyright? (Score:1)
The Internet content economy as it exists today revolves completely around traffic and advertising/sponsorship revenue generated from that traffic. Search engines that store pages locally are already affecting the number of visitors on a site, eating away the sustainability of free, commercial content on the Internet.
Re:Am I on crack... (Score:1)
Where is the wiretap archive? (Score:1)
Where forwarded jokes reside (Score:1)
Re:i'll help host (Score:1)
http://wiretap.area.com/Gopher/Library/ clicky here [area.com]
Re:I hate you (Score:1)
But I've sent the cookie to my workplace so I can continue there...
Re:It's not gone! (Score:1)
and Lynx, too.
Re:off-topic: Process-Tree (Score:1)
========
Re:What about copyright? (Score:1)
Everything has no editors? Not quite... (Score:1)
Everything embraces everybody.
Or close to it. Some nodes will be killed with extreme prejudice. The general rule? If a node contains absolutely no information or stylistic flair, the Everything editors will strike it down. But, quite frankly, it's edited with a very light touch. We'll allow most anything on. Because it's part of Everything, you dig? (Or, at least, most of us edit with a light touch. Dem Bones, he gets his panties in a wad, and suddenly he's Charles Bronson fron Death Wish. 'Stick 'em all in a concentration camp...')
The end result? Jump randomly to the story about H.L. Mencken's bathtub hoax to a node of feminist/light-bulb jokes to a node about how a girl lost her imaginary cat when she was 6, with a detour where a guy is going after the 'ultra-liberal media'. It's Everything. At least, it will be, if you join and start adding all your worldly knowledge.
Sorry. I'll shut up now. Other Everythingers know I'm longwinded by nature.
discofever, Everything2 Editor
Re:What about copyright? (Score:1)
Re:Digital Libraries - full GPLed system (Score:1)
distributed by the New Zealand Digital
Library project may suit your needs.
see http://www.nzdl.org
though it may be down - power cut.
In short, it works. You feed it input text and
a configuration file; it builds you collections
that you can serve on-line or on CDROM. If you
have specialised docment formats, you can write
plug-ins (in perl) to handle them. You get all
sortsof extra functionality for free.
Disclaimer: I work there.
Ask Slash: Is there Anything hotter than Britney?? (Score:1)
Re:A sim... (ok, it's a response to an OT rant) (Score:1)
It is not the case that everyone knows about E2. Maybe everyone who was on
Also, THE SLASHDOT OWNERS DO NOT GIVE OUT KARMA. It's slashdot users. Someone must have thought my post was insightful.
Maybe it was someone who had been to E2 in the last little while - someone who knows about the vast variety of public domain stories and poems that are on E2. See something missing? Node it.
Please do not insult me again. Also, anyone who calls for moderation of a post, while posting as AC, is an asshole - if you don't like a post, make a reply to it - the moderation categories are there for a reason.