The Internet Archive Wayback Machine is a service that allows people to visit archived versions of Web sites. Visitors to the Wayback Machine can type in a URL, select a date range, and then begin surfing on an archived version of the Web. Imagine surfing circa 1999 and looking at all the Y2K hype, or revisiting an older version of your favorite Web site. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine can make all of this possible.
How large is the Archive?
The Internet Archive Wayback Machine contains approximately 1 petabyte of data and is currently growing at a rate of 20 terabytes per month. This eclipses the amount of text contained in the world’s largest libraries, including the Library of Congress.
That’s fantastic Underwriter. My employer shut down his office permanently at the end of last month as well as suddenly and unexpectedly shutting down the company website. He told me he would let me retrieve some of the many articles I wrote for the firm that were posted on our website, but he was lying. I used the waybackmachine and. . . voila. . . screw the boss, I don’t need his help anymore, because I can retrieve most of the materials myself. It didn’t work perfectly, but I’m very happy with it so far. Thanks.
Ok, maybe I was a little overly exuberant. Apparently the way it works is at various random dates in history someone/thing will extract all the data off a website and put it into storage on the waybackmachine.
For the URL I looked up they had done that about two dozen times in the past, dating back to April 1999. Unfortunately, they never did that in 2005. Additionally, most of the data they saved in 2004 is not currently available to me. I clicked on 8 or 9 dates in 2004 from which they purportedly have data, but each time I got hte following response:
I will take their advice and try later. I did access the website from some dates in early 2004 and 2003, but I’m hopeful it will work later and allow me to access later data. :s
Took the Wayback machine to see the early days of forumosa. There was a poster called CMXIV who kept talking about Biggus Dickus, and there was lots of Caesar bashers. Then Mr. Peabody said Sherman had to go home and do his homework.
