Copy Link
Add to Bookmark
Report
Ghost Sites 30
----- GHOST SITES #30 [September 7, 1999]
----- by Steve Baldwin
(steve_baldwin@hotmail.com)
Well, it's been a long, hot Summer, and we hope you got a nice break
from your FTP Client, your "What's New" page, and all the other
brain-numbing details of keeping whatever Web presence you have
up-to-date.
If not, don't worry too much about having your decaying Web Wreck
spotted by our Ghost Team in the next few months. Our Skeleton Crew
isn't actually going AWOL from Watch Duty, but we'll probably be
distracted by events connected with the rather bizarre success of
NetSlaves, which will have many of our researchers travelling around the
U.S.A., promoting this nutty book.
Don't get the idea that we'd let a silly little thing like a book tour
get in the way of our Ahab-like quest to chronicle Web Decay, Failure,
Entropy, and Ennui. We'll continue to do or Virtual Body Count from
sleazy motels and Greyhound bus stations across America, and will do our
best to keep cranking out this odd column on time, every time. So please
keep those Dead Site Tips coming in!
Related URLs:
http://www.disobey.com/netslaves/
*---- NIEDERHOFFER INVESTMENTS, INC. ----*
----- http://www.niederhofferinvest.com/
Picture, if you will, a man who had everything - a Harvard Education, a
flinty will to rule the Universe, bold and unconventional bold views on
sports, sex, and financial speculation, and you'll have an accurate but
very partial picture of Victor Niederhoffer, whose site received its
last update almost two years ago.
Now picture financial tragedy stopping the heart of this digital shrine
to the greatness of the man - his peerless professional associations,
Squash championships, private libraries, a loving family, and most of
all, his relentless passion to win. Imagine the moment when the value of
tens of millions of dollars of "Put" options vaporized in an unexpected
500 point drop in the stock market in late October, 1997. That's the
moment when time stopped for Niederhofferinvest.com (not to be confused
with Niederhoffer.com; a site actively maintained by Victor's brother).
This frozen site is right out of Bonfire of the Vanities, with a touch
of Citizen Kane, Icarus, and An American Tragedy mixed in for good
measure. It's a chilling cyber-snapshot of the Icarus-like tragectory of
a man who had so much, and lost so much - in a matter of minutes. Of all
the Ghost Sites I've seen, its content is most quintessentially American
- the scorched cinders of a spectacular financial flame-out.
Thanks to the enterprising tipster (who wishes to remain anonymous,
because he's in the investment biz) for sending this extraordinary find
on to us.
Related URLs:
http://www.niederhofferinvest.com/vicsusa.html
http://www.niederhofferinvest.com/educat.html
http://www.niederhofferinvest.com/seebohm.html
http://cnnfn.com/yourmoney/mutualfunds/9710/29/niederhoffer/
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum
*---- CYBERWIRE DIGEST ----*
----- http://www.cyberwerks.com/cyberwire/cwd/
One of the boldest, baddest reporters to emerge from the Web's early
days was Brock Meeks, whose CyberWire Digest provided a much-needed
electronic hotline for everyone beleagured by The Communications Decency
Act, a proposed Federal Law which threatened to throw writers, editors,
health professionals, and pornographers into prison for publishing any
Web content that a 10-year old might find "annoying".
Brock hasn't uploaded any new CyberWire Digests for many months,
because, he says "he's a lousy Webmaster". But it's also true that
today's post-CDA is a much less hysterical (although no less ominous)
era, where threats to free electronic speech are less easily localizable
in something as brutish, stupid, and ill-conceived as the CDA.
Consequently, firebrand columnists like Brock seem to be out of fashion
now (unless they write about IPOs, of course, or serve up tabloid pap
for television-level IQ's).
But Meeks avers that Cyberwerks "is no Ghost site - just highly
inactive." Which means that CWD may be back some day -- to level
withering fire against any enterprising politician stepping too close to
the First Amendment with a lit blowtorch.
Related URLs:
http://www.cyberwerks.com/cyberwire/
http://www.drudge.com/
[2 GHOSTIES] Site is Dying in I.C.U.
*---- LOS LOBOS ----*
----- http://www.wbr.com/loslobos/
Somehow, we've managed to get through life without developing a strong
opinion on Los Lobos - a five piece Tex-Mex band based in East Los
Angeles. And we would probably have continued to enjoy our blitheful
ignorance forever, had it not been for Dugwa, who pointed out that the
band's official Warner Brothers Records site hasn't been updated for two
and a half years.
Warner Brothers can probably be forgiven for keeping this ghost site
alive long past its prime - the site isn't even referenced from
WBR.com's home page (although it's obviously still being indexed by Web
spiders). Odds are that the record company is probably too busy trying
to sabatoge the MP3 Free Music Movement to spend time purging obsolete
band pages from its servers.
[4 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, Shows Advanced Decay
*---- ROCK 100.3 ----*
----- http://www.wrqc.com/
"Something's Coming..." reads the home page for ROCK 100.3 - a
Minneapolis radio station transmitting on the 281 meter band. But what?
A big fat zero, according to Ghost Sites tipster CELang:
"This site was originally set up to promote the giveaway of a car at the
1998 Minnesota State Fair. Shortly after the Fair ended (Sept 1998), the
site was reduced to its present state. Rock 100.3 no longer exists,
having recently dumped their rock format. The "something's coming"
notice is vague enough that I suppose it could mean Christmas, Y2K,
and/or eternity. What probably ISN'T coming is a new web site."
After the August, 1999 format change to "Classic Hits" (which resulted
in the merciful discontinuance of shock jock Howard Stern's syndicated
feed in Minneapolis), WQRC became WLOL.We can only hope the last three
letters of its Call Sign mean "Lots of Luck" (not "Laughing Out Loud").
[4 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead. Shows Advanced Decay
*---- MONDAY MAGAZINE ----*
----- http://goodppl.hypermart.net/mon.html
This peculiar relic was found one morning by Morbus, Disobey.com's
Webmaster, as he was sifting through some of his old links.
Monday Magazine is a rather amateurish-looking, business- oriented zine
which ran out of steam almost a year ago, after running for about six
months. In its short run, it served up a megadose of pragmatic,
no-nonsense articles on entrepreneurship, taxes, and other grim stuff
that's very much in-fashion these days with the Cash Generation, so it's
a real mystery why it went sank (although we suspect that it's really
ugly design might have had something to do with it).
Monday Magazine's Media Kit contains a mission statement pledging that
it would cover "articles of persisting importance for businessmen and
entrepreneurs". Unfortunately, to let articles persist this long without
being updated certainly diminishes their importance.
Related URLs:
http://goodppl.hypermart.net/mon_presskit.html
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum
*---- THE GEEK CODE ----*
----- http://www.geekcode.com/
This charmingly ancient effort to quantify one's Personal Geekiness
Quotient dates from March, 1996, and it's a useful yardstick to measure
the progress of Geek Culture, whose particular fixations may have
changed in 3 years, but whose general attitudes, core preoccupations,
and modes of being have held as rock-steady as Gibralter.
It seems that one of the tongue-in-cheek goals of The Geek Code's
author, Robert A. Hayden, was to produce an actual line of code
contained within a PGP-like "Geek Block" of text which, once properly
decoded, would reveal one's own Geekiness quotient in exactly the sort
of maddeningly granular detail which is the bread and butter of the true
Geek. (Does this guy have too much time on his hands, or what?)
This is funny material which is still funny 3 years after it was posted,
although many references to various USENET Oracles, DOOM, CypherPunks,
and Babylon 5 exponents seem a bit dated. The fact that Hayden's grand
plan never became a universal fixture of E-mail SIG files doesn't
detract from the grandiose novelty of his ur-geeky vision.
Any enterprising Geeks out there care to give Hayden a hand appending
the Geek Code for the New Millenium? You'd probably be elected a God in
no time.
Thanks to ship3918 (a Geek, perhaps?) for this tip.
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum
*---- PER'S MANIFESTO ----*
----- http://idt.net/~per2/index.htm
Per's MANifesto was a monthly electronic newsletter which ran from May
of 1996 to October of 1998. It billed itself as "the premier webzine on
man-bashing and feminist intolerance", and is depressing reading for
anyone who hasn't already declared Total War on the opposite sex.
We don't know why the MANifesto isn't still being published, but we
doubt it's the result of some evil FemiNazi plot. Perhaps Per got weary
of hammering out this sort of content, month after month, did some
soul-searching, and became a consciencious objector in the Gender Wars.
Maybe he met a nice gal on Match.com and forgot the whole thing.
We'd speculate more, but we find the whole subject too depressing. Maybe
we're just a bunch of wimps around here who don't have the guts to arm
ourselves for the Great Sexual Apocalypse to come, but we'd like to
think that the Great Webmaster in the Sky had grander plans for humanity
than to let the whole thing degrade into this kind of pointless verbal
shooting match.
Thanks to Kevan Whitten for this tip.
Related URLs:
http://shell.idt.net/~per2/manifest.htm
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The website edition includes images, a nice design, and all the latest
news about Ghost Sites. Go there to read the latest:
http://www.disobey.com/ghostsites/
Copyright 1996-1999 Steve Baldwin Associates.
Webdesign, hosting and publication by Disobey.
http://www.disobey.com/
TO SUBSCRIBE: majordomo@disobey.com BODY: Subscribe GhostSites
TO UNSUBSCRIBE: majordomo@disobey.com BODY: Unsubscribe GhostSites
------------------------------------------------------------------------
