A New BlogShares Economy: Two players cash out for real dollars

So this is like too unreal: BlogShares.com, a fantasy stock market simulation based on blogs, is going to go commercial for those "geeks" who are heavy into this kind of stuff. Maybe this is the Dungeons and Dragons of the 21st century. Already taken is the domain name BlogDayTrader.com. Details on the plan. 

Mitch Kapor Quit Groove Networks Board of Directors

NY Times: Software Pioneer Quits Board of Groove. Mitchell D. Kapor, a personal computer industry software pioneer and a civil liberties activist, has resigned from the board of Groove Networks after learning that the company's software was being used by the Pentagon as part of its development of a domestic surveillance system.

Digital Dark Age: Digital Data Loss and Preservation Resources at the Long Now Foundation

The Long Now Foundation maintains a library of stories about "Digital Dark Age: Digital Data Loss and Preservation Resources"

Feds pull suspicious .gov site

Feds pull suspicious .gov site. In a move that raises questions about the security of governmental domains, a .gov Web site has been yanked pending an investigation into the group that controlled it. By Declan McCullagh, Staff Writer, CNET News.com. [Source: CNET News.com]

CipherTrust's Spamarchive.org

CipherTrust wants your spam. The company is calling on surfers of all stripes to help it wage a fight against spam by sending their unsolicited mass mails to its new Web site. The name of this Web site is Spamarchive.org. It should prove to be an interesting electronic repository for the future. [CNET News.com]

Dead Media Projects Still Living

The original Dead Media Project, a brainchild of writer Bruce Sterling, is alive and well. According to its opening page, another Dead Media Project, is hosted by Griffin Multimedia and originated with students of the Vancouver Film School, but is itself moribund or in stasis.

The more elaborate Media History Project is hosted by the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota. Of specific interest is the Net Links: Computing page that will connect you and your funnybone to dismal digital disasters, along with many more positive aspects of computing history.

Photographs of Old Computers Virtual Exhibit by Arthur Lavine (Computer Museum of America)

For the young ones, myself included, who may not have seen these behemoths in action, here's an online exhibit of black and white photographs by Arthur Lavine of the Chase Manhattan Bank (New York City, NY, USA) from the Computer Museum: Old Computers Exhibit [Slashdot]. The Computer Museum of America (San Diego) contains many other virtual delights.

From Wired News, June 5, 2002, comes this inspiring story, "Dead Men Tell No Passwords", by Michelle Delio:

The man in charge of archiving and maintaining electronic copies of Norway's most important historical documents is dead and so is access to those archives. 

So the director of the Norwegian cultural center is pleading for
hackers to help him crack the center's password-protected database.

The story goes on to relate how some hackers use a program by Aryeh Holzer called "Dead Man's Switch." If the program is not reset at scheduled intervals, it will encrypt or delete files, and inform your family and friends by e-mail and other computer communications that you are gone. One individual noted that he had gone on vacation, forgotton about the switch, and found himself to be "dead" and his "adult entertainment files" deleted.