Martin,

> I'm counting 39404 articles since 20030101 from
> c.l.r in my local archive
>
> Is there somewhere a full ml archive for download?

    The full archive for the mailing list is at:
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/ruby/ruby-talk/index.shtml

    According to that archive, the first message of 2003 was 60251, and
your posting was 101371, for a difference of 41120.  This means the
newsgroup has lost about 1716 messages over the last year and a half or
so.

    Wow.

    - Warren Brown