One of the reasons date search is almost mandatory for usable Usenet searching is that at this point it's essentially a dead protocol. For nearly a decade now t

One of the reasons date search is almost mandatory for usable Usenet searching is that at this point it's essentially a dead protocol. For nearly a decade now the bulk of what traffic still makes it onto Usenet has been spam and a handful of still active pirate networks. Without the ability to ignore more recent results, I've found Google Groups search to indeed be completely bloody useless.