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Ghost Sites 33
----- GHOST SITES #33 [December 8, 1999]
----- by Steve Baldwin
(steve_baldwin@hotmail.com)
Well, the grueling Netslaves book tour is over, and we've re-installed
ourselves in the midden heap of rotting, rusting Cyber Junk - the same
wintry wasteland that's been our default Existential Directory for as
long as we care to remember. One of the book tour's highlights was
hanging around with Archive.Org's Marlita Kahn, a brilliant, graceful
woman who kindly showed our Skeleton Crew around the facilities of The
Internet Archive - a project dedicated to preserving the WWW for the
21st Century and beyond.
The fact that we're no longer desperately whoring ourselves to the West
Coast Media means that our sepulcheral researchers have more time to
prepare Dead Web Sites for burial, which is good news for all who follow
this morbid column. Thanks again to the many tipsters who've used the
Ghost-O-Meter in the last month. We couldn't do this grim job without
you!
Related URLs:
http://www.archive.org/
*---- FILTERING FACTS ----*
----- http://www.filteringfacts.org/
James S. Tyre sends word that Filtering Facts, one of the leading
bastions of Net Decency, closed down for good on November 5th, 1999: In
its day, Filtering Facts was a central touchstone for those dedicated to
rousting indecency from public libraries, upholding the honor and
integrity of Censorware Vendors, and debunking the arguments of pro free
speech groups such as the ACLU.
As regular readers of this column know, Ghost Sites is now being
actively censored by at least one prominent Content Filtering System, so
our first impulse upon reading Miller's e-mail was to dance on Filtering
Facts' grave. But historical objectivity demands that we refrain from
nasty, obscene, and defamatory comments about this site, and simply note
that Filtering Facts' president, David Burt, had the good sense to leave
a goodbye note explaining that he abandoned his anti-porn crusade to
spend more time with his family.
Related URLs:
http://www.filteringfacts.org/burt.htm
http://www.filteringfacts.org/goodbye.htm
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, but Well-Preserved
*---- ROCKCITY.NET ----*
----- http://www.rockcity.net/
At first glance, RockCity.Net appears to be a stillborn pop culture
site, but upon further clicking it becomes evident that this noirish
creation of mid-1998 is noting more than a moldy cluster of product
pages promoting a line of oddly-designed PC's built by The Panda Project
that were marketed at something called the "Born-to-Rock Generation".
It's hard to determine exactly what happened to "The World's First Rock
and Roll Computer", but it appears that you can no longer buy one - the
"buy online" link on the site's order page is broken, and its listed
telephone number connects to an inactive acccount on the Easy-Tel
Network (These symptoms usually don't bode well for an e-commerce site).
Although RockCity.Net seems thoroughly defunct, the site provides a
cornucopia of treats for anyone seeking information on exotic, wacky,
and ill-conceived 20th-Century PC marketing techniques, which in this
case include the use of an expensive foreign model (Tracy Bruner), the
artful identification of tech support with hallucinogenic drugs ("Pass
the Bone"), and the rather highly questionable assertion that operating
a Rock City PC was the equivalent of "Sex on the Desktop".
Thanks to bad for pointing out this site, which seems to have been "Born
to Rust".
Related URLs:
http://www.rockcity.net/01specs/01a-overview.html
http://www.pandaproject.com/
http://www.rockcity.net/02news/02a-press_04-06-98.html
http://www.rockcity.net/06order/index.html
http://www.rockcity.net/04gear/04c-model.html
http://www.rockcity.net/05support/05a-sales.html
http://www.rockcity.net/03inside/03a-panda.html
[4 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, Shows Advanced Decay
*---- COUNTDOWN9199.COM ----*
----- http://www.countdown9199.com/
While the world anxiously awaits the arrival of 1/1/00, this strange
site breathlessly ticks down the seconds until the fateful date of
9/1/99 - the moment when "a completely new business model, designed
specifically for the Internet" would ostensibly emerge to clarify all
the confusion.
Unfortunately, this site makes it absolutely impossible to tell what
this wonderful thing was, whether it arrived on 9/1/99, and when, if
ever, it might be back. We are left with a mysterious, enigmatic bit of
marketing-speak that's nothing more than a countdown to an eerie
nothingness.
Thanks to epopt for pointing out this maddeningly peculiar piece of
fossilized Web junk.
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, but Well-Preserved
*---- REVOLTING! ----*
----- http://www.revolting.com/
R.U. Sirius, one of the Net's more important absurdist theorists,
launched Revolting! to serve as "a Weekly World News for hipsters and
netheads with a focus on reportage and commentary about the bizarre, the
grotesque and the conspiratorial". Unfortunately, Sirius's zine doesn't
seem to have produced more than one or two issues before clanking to a
halt (an event which our researchers believe took place sometime in the
Fall of 1997).
Considerable work went into Revolting!'s crazy-quilt collection of
content, which includesan interview with Charles Manson's webmaster, a
feature called "The People's Guillotine", an extensive press section,
and other mischievous stuff cooked up by Revolting!'s all-star editorial
lineup. Sirius himself seems to have written much of Revolting!'s
remarkably inspired marketing literature, a sampling of which follows:
"GET IT! REVOLTING! is a f**king multimedia opportunity. REVOLTING! is
THE brand name for our culture now and for the next ten years and if
that doesn't resonate for you you're already f**king dead."
Unfortunately, the financial resources required to fulfill Revolting!'s
editorial mission on a regular basis seem never to have materialized,
leaving this odd site drifting in the winds like a tattered Grateful
Dead poster.
Related URLs:
http://www.revolting.com/1.2/credits/rubio.html
http://www.revolting.com/1/charlie
http://www.revolting.com/1/guillotine/concept.html
http://www.intrepid.net/~magmedia/PRevolting/Front.html
http://www.revolting.com/1.2/credits/index.html
http://www.revolting.com/1.2/editrants/rurant.html
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum
*---- EVERCLEAR ----*
----- http://www.caprec.com/everclear/
Fans of this Portland-based hard rock trio will doubtless be distressed
by the thick crust of obsolescence covering this band's official pages
on Capitol Records' servers. These pages haven't been updated since
March of 1998 - a long time in Rock & Roll time. Record companies have
generally gotten better about maintaining current information about
their acts, and we hope that a Rock Relic like this is just an oversight
at Capitol, and not a symptom of label-wide Internet Incompetency.
Capitol's Everclear site does fortunately link to several unofficial
Everclear sites that are considerably more current than Capitol's own,
so if you're interested in this band's strain of Northwestern Grunge,
it's best to start there, avoiding this "official" fossil.
Thanks to Chris for this Ghost Site Tip.
[4 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, Shows Advanced Decay
*---- TERRAQUEST'S VIRTUAL ANTARCTICA ----*
----- http://www.terraquest.com/va/
Terraquest bills itself as "the most innovative producer of travel
content on the Web", and the Virtual Antarctica sections of its Web site
were built to archive a South Pole exhibition that occurred back in
1996. Along with the archived photos, logs, and other data culled from
the trip, Terraquest also inadvertently preserved a number of obsolete
interactive forms, among them a ghostly online contest registration
form. The result is a strange temporal oddity that lets users attempt to
win a seat on a cruise that happened more than three years ago.
Other strange digital flotsam occasionally floats to the surface at
Terraquest, including an invitation to join "Next Year's Expeditions to
Antarctica". The "next year" is, of course, 1997.
Thanks to drl7 for this tip.
Related URLs:
http://www.terraquest.com/antarctica/index.html
http://www.terraquest.com/va/register/register.html
http://www.terraquest.com/va/expedition/join.html
[3 GHOSTIES] Site is Dead, but Well-Preserved
*---- WWW.CS.JYU.FI/~ILKLAHT/ ----*
----- http://www.cs.jyu.fi/~ilklaht/
Two issues ago, we reviewed the site of Dr. Frederick Lenz, who
committed suicide some time after completing a vast Web site devoted to
his life and teachings. Just the other day, from faraway Finland, we
received another chilling account of a Web page that's unfortunately
outlived its author, and the text of our correspondent's message is
reproduced exactly as it came in:
"That guy called Ilkka Lahteenmaki was once my room mate. We both
studied in University of Jyvaskyla. He made this homepage:
http://www.cs.jyu.fi/~ilklaht/
Then he moved to University of Helsinki. And later I heard, that he
committed suicide. But as you can see, his homepage is still available."
Out of respect for the dead, I am suspending my usual rating system for
this site. In lieu of humor, I'll insert the obvious observation that
the Holidays are upon us, friends, and that means the Western Word is
heading into Peak Suicide Season. If you know somebody who's in trouble,
do your best to get them help. (And if you don't know somebody who's in
trouble, you're probably not looking hard enough).
*---- RUSSIAN AREA STUDIES ----*
----- http://www.missouri.edu/~ras/
On a much happier note, Scott Burris informs us that his own personal
Ghost Site is now about to celebrate its 5th Anniversary of
Uninterrupted Neglect on the servers of the University of
Missouri-Columbia. Burris's account follows:
"The site first went up July 16, 1994, during the summer session, and
was last updated during Christmas Break of that same year - December 15,
1994. After that I was no longer a student and had no access.
The only reason it hasn't been deleted (as far as I can tell) is because
it's a faculty account. I started the project using a Prof.'s web space.
I'm fond of the old site and even link to it from my modern bio page.
I'm hoping it makes it to December 15, 2004, without being purged. I
plan to pop the champagne if it does".
If Ghost Sites is still around in 2004, we hope to join Burris in
celebrating his having achieved 10 Years of Solid Bit Rot. But we also
hope that we'll have found a more productive use for our scavenging
talents by then.
[5 GHOSTIES] Site is Stuffed, Embalmed, and Ready for Internet Museum
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Copyright 1996-1999 Steve Baldwin Associates.
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