Slashdot Mirror
Send Emails After Your Death
Roland Piquepaille writes "As you all know, the two things in life you can't avoid are taxes and death. But if you will no longer have to pay taxes after your death, you will be able to send email thanks to a new service, Mylastemail.com. The Los Angeles Times (free registration needed) says this service will cost you $9.99 for a three-year subscription. The company says you can update your farewell messages from anywhere in the world, including cybercafes or airports." If it's not a hoax, it's a pretty cool service.
Quick, somebody sign up BSD, they are going to need this soon.
Now, if one could update the messages from the underworld, that might be something worth investing in.
I already have a list of people to send email to about my death in my will. It will be executed for free.
What guarantee do I have that the bulk e-mail to my friends and family won't be snagged by spam filters? That would be the final insult.
I have no doubt that I will be sending and receiving spam messages long after my own demise.
Speak truth to power.
If they don't send the e-mail, can you sue them from beyond the grave?
No longer will a geek have to lie in bed dying they can now crouch in front of they keyboard and with their last breath write.
"Goodbyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"
Fantastic.
Now why don't I ever thing of ideas like that?
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
So this officially depricates going to confront the bad-guy and sending a sealed envelope to someone with instructions like "if I'm not back by midnight, open this letter". We can just use email instead. I can see it now: "I've got the source to your virus Mr. Badguy. If I'm not back to my office in 24 hours, my automated service will email the source to the FBI."
SCO.com uses Linux
So long suckers!
That's a convenient service.
I'll just wait until then to give away the money in my bank account in Nigeria.
At the rate my friends and colleagues change their e-mail addresses, I'd die from exhaustion maintaining two address books -- mine, and the one stored on the remote site.
How about a service to get a "First Post" after your death?
So long and thanks for all the fish.
Let me introduce myself to you.I'm Franka Guei, the former military ruler of ( cote d' Ivoire /ivory coast,). . ,as I confide in you hoping you will never betray me at last.n .com
I was killed on 19/9/2002 with some of my loyalist officers during a cross fire battle between us and government troops in an attempt to seize power through coup de eta in Abidjan on 19/9/2002
At the time of my death, I had the sum of Eighteen million united states dollars only(us$18m) which I still want to move out of here with most despatch despite being dead.
This money was deposited by me before I died in a security company for the purpose of using it to fine tune my administration in the invent that he succeed in the fail coup attempt.
Because of the present situation in my country cote d' ivoire, as well as my being dead, my I need a trust worthy foreign partner who can assist me to transfer the money out of South Africa for investment.
Please, I highly need your assistance both in transferring the money to your country and also investing it in a profitable venture with your kind advice
I have proposed (30%) percent of the total sum of the money for you as your own commission, so as for you to give us all necessary assistance and protection we may need in your Country. Please treat as highly confidential. All the vital documents covering the deposit of the fund in a security company are with me here and will be used to effect change of ownership in your favour for subsequent transfer to any account you may wish to use abroad.
What I want you to do is to indicate your interest that you will assist us by receiving the money on our behalf. Acknowledge this message, so that I can introduce you to my son (MIKE GUEI) who has the modalities for the claim of the said fund. The identity of the finance company where the fund is deposited, will be revealed to you by my son as soon as we recieve confirmation from you on your willingness to proceed, as seeing is believing.
Reach me through this mail box to discuss modalities on how to proceed.Reply to deadpresidentofsomeafricannation@untraceabledomai
Looking forward to hearing from you urgent.
in the case of an untimely death i can email subscription cancellations to all my shell services and porn sites. i wonder if they will ever be able to do a last post, if that day ever comes watch out ./
the concept is cool, but there's one thing that doesn't make any sense.. HOW DO THEY KNOW IF YOU'VE DIED????
According to the FAQ on the site, you need to leave some kind of documentation in a place where someone will find it after you've died. That person is then responsible to contact them and have the e-mails sent. Dumb question: If you have to leave a note behind anyway, why use the e-mail service? Why not write letters in envelopes and store them in the same safe place you'll store this document?
Sounds more like a ploy to take money from the naive. Too bad I didn't think of this.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Sounds very much like the Dead Man's Switch that was covered on Slashdot a while back...
If you don't tell it you're alive every now and then, it can encrypt your files, send email, and post messages on the web. Very paranoia.
I have seen the afterlife...
FIND TRUTH TODAY
1-888-633-3446
I have the usual geek's collection of numerous websites and half-finished projects and have often wondered what would happen to them if the worst happened.
In typical paranoid style my files are hidden behind encryption and various usernames and passwords, and certainly no-one in my immediate family or circle of closest friends has the ability to be able to sift through all the gigabytes of crap I've accumulated over the years and deal with my online commitments (like paying hosting bills, informing people who post on the sites).
This site seems like this could be a pretty decent way of solving this. Only thing I'd worry about is the site going broke, or accidentally sending out these e-mails before my time is up!
Either that or I could program a boot-up message saying "This computer has not been booted in 72 hours, therefore assuming its owner is dead, please take the following steps..."
DEAR SIR / MADAM
My name is Masque and I am writing you from the republic of Heaven to beg your indulgence in the matter
I came to your name through careful study of teh intarweb and u are recommmended as a helfpul and trustworthy person who may be trusted to be helpful and I beleive I can be of help to you in return
BEFORE I WAS FORCED AGAINST MY WILL TO COME TO THE AFTERLIFE I HAD AMASSED A SMALL FORTUNE THROUGH THE LEVERAGING OF MASS EMAIL TECHNIQUES. I NEED YOUR HELP IN TRANSITIONING THESE FUNDS BACK INTO MY POSSESSIONS AFTER BEING SO RUSHEDLY FORCED TO LEAVE MY HOME FOR ASYLUM IN THIS AFTERLIFE....
"Dear world. I was a bastard. I am, however, no more. That plane i was in has crashed into a mountain and my remains have yet to be discovered.
The world considers this to be a great tragedy, but those who knew me can say that the loss of the innocents on-board was well worth my demise.
Feel welcome to defecate on my grave
Thank you.
The deceased."
And a goatse.cx follows...
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
So what happens if there is an "accident" and there is premature news of ones death?
Can you say Opps?
I've also thought about launching a post-mortem service. For a small fee of $14.95, I will assume control of your forum/bbs/email and irc identities and proceed to advocate OSS migration with extreme levels of blind zealotry.
Also, for only $10 dollars extra, I'll destroy your porn directory and replace it with bible quotes.
And lastly, for a tiny fee of $59.99, I'll carve out a terminal window on your tombstone, logged in as root. Thing about it - eternal uptime.
My mod points expired... funniest post in a LONG time.
the give-away was you linking to it twice. Not subtle. very suspicious
...I'd like to spam you just once more before, actually, after I've gone to remind you that cannot escape constant attack on your e-mail box.
Look forward to spim as well.
-=- Many seek good nights and lose good days.
Anyone else see this coming?
From: MyLastEmail.com, on behalf of the late Uncle Kevin
To: My Loving Nephew
Subject: I'll miss you
Attachment: Road Rules for Drunks.ppt (7MB)
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
I think they should build little wireless websites into tombstones. That way anyone with a WiFi or bluetooth enabled phone/pda/computer would get be able to access the dearly-departed's website at the gravesite. The device would consist of a small PDA as the core computer, some storage, the wireless interfaces, a battery, and an external solar panel for power. You could even build a blog/wiki into the tombstone so that gravesite visitors could leave their messages.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
What are you talking about?
That would be great in case you have some stuff that you are holding over some joker to keep you alive..
When you croak, the emails simply go out and notify your comrades that they can either release to the press or trash the incriminating data.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
"Sorry JOSEPH I am died! NoW increase ur size!"
Dude, where's my packet?
I need something like this so I can still tell the Nigerians where to put my millions so that at least my family and pets can have it after I pass.
a simple "BOOO!!!!!"
that should stir up something.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I have a pEnIs.
It would be even funnier if Uncle Kevin died because he didn't obey the "Road Rules for Drunks".
Do spammers know about this yet? I thought that there was one definite solution to spam, but with this I could get 419 spam direct from dead "nigerians" and not just all their friends and relatives.
They should do this for voice messages too. Did you think that "voice mail hell" was just an expression?
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
i do have to give the creators credit for coming up with this idea. i could see a lot of people getting hate mail instead of good byes. who wouldn't want to get the last laugh by sending an email to that boss you always disliked, but never would say it to their face.
How is a link to a pretty good news article a TROLL? Are the editors now modding down links to better news stories becuase its embarassaing that they didn't include the link in the story?
Can I access their service from heaven? I think that's a value-addition they should definetly consider. In that case I will put off signing up till my afterlife.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Are you forgetting where you are? This is slashdot, modding is determined by rolling a 10 sided die. Duh.
From the site info:
"The purpose of this site is to allow you to send mail to yourself or others at a specified date and time.. in the future!
It's a really simple idea. Other sites provide similar services, along with lots of other stuff. This site is simpler, it's not a portal or a content aggregator, that's why it can be so simple. It sends mail to the future and that's all it does."
This is awesome! Now I don't have to go through all the rigamoral of finding a friend to hold snailmail evidence when I blackmail someone. Now I can just say "and if you kill me, the information will automatically be emailed to the New York Times".
The cake is a pie
Yeah, read about it already on the Register. Why would someone want to do this?
That last bunch of bru-ha-ha is the icing on the cake. Basically, this all says "Pay us money. In exchange, we promise nothing, guarantee nothing, but give you a warm fuzzy feeling that everything will be okay if you die... but we don't guarantee or even really hint that you might feel A) warm or B) fuzzy. It's all in your mind. Give us money now, please."
It seems pretty pointless to me. It might be different if A) there was any kind of "real" guarantee and B) e-mail was a more reliable, widely used medium. But the fact of the matter is that there are still millions of people who don't yet understand or even use e-mail, and those who do know that it's not always reliable. If you need this kind of service, pay a live, professional person who knows how to use e-mail, phone, fax, snail mail, etc. to inform those who need to know.
Of course, that won't stop the masses who don't understand e-mail and like warm fuzzy feelings from handing over the cash.
If you read the mylastemail website, they give you a printed document that you keep where people will find it when you die (e.g., with your will). When they receive the printed document in the snail-mail, mylastemail will email out your last messages. So if they never receive the snail-mail, they never send your messages. Whereas with Dead Man's Switch, you have to proactively reset a switch to prevent automatic actions from taking place.
Is it really a smart idea to send a final message via email?
Once you're dead, how will you be able to verify that the recipient actually got your message and read it? What if it was accidentally filtered out by spam blocking software? Or what if there was a worm going around at the time, and for whatever reason, the email could not be delivered to the recipient's computer at all?
While you're alive, these aren't really that big of a problem, since you can just contact the person again to make sure they got your message. Unless mylastemail.com guarantees to follow through on every email sent to make sure they were actually [b]received[/b] (read receipts, recipient's manual confirmation, etc.), it may not be a good idea to assume that your one last message would always be successfully delivered.
It would seem, to me, that something this important should be left in your will and the orders carried out physically, to make sure that your messages do get to everyone you intended them to get to.
I guess the question is, just how much do you trust email?
There was a Windows virus a few years ago that spoofed the sender addy from an infected host's address book. I recall that many people started receiving messages from folks long dead, employees long gone, etc.. The emails included some random documents from the hard drive and occasionally they were combined in coincidentally ominous ways (dead person sends I Love You to living).
It still won't live up to Bill Cosby's idea of having a tape recorder in the casket.
Hi, Bob. How's the wife and kids? Don't I look like myself?
I haven't RTFA because that would against /. posting policy, but I suspect that they subscribe you a mailing list where you get an e-mail with the subject "Are you dead yet?" every day. If you don't reply after two days they assume you are dead and send the e-mail to your list of contacts and promptly sell the same list for profit to the DMA. Because once you're dead, it's not like you can sue them or anything.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
I have little to no contact with my family. I hate writing home. Including e-mails.
Sometimes when I travel I think about my death - I have little social life. My girlfriend doesn't know shit about my family and background.
Several times I've thought of setting up a cron job so if I don't deactivate it in a couple of days, it would notify my direct relatives about my death. Not the best thing to think about when you're about to enter a plane.
There's one specifically set aside so that if it's not updated within a week, we must have had an apocalypse, and the righteous have been removed from this plane of existence, and you can let your family know that it was their lack of faith in the One True God that left them here in wonder.
Can't wait to get that e-mail.
Emacs: for people who just never know when to
Dear Boss,
Susan pissed in your coffee,
John keyed your Jaguar,
and I was the one fucking your wife!
Have a profitable year,
A faithful employee
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
$9.99 for a three-year subscription
Isn't that a little pessimistic?
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
Let me get this straight. I print a document from the web site, give it to my trustee, and my trustee is responsible for contacting the web site to inform it that I have died? I'll just give my final messages directly to my trustee and cut out the middleman.
Not a hoax does not imply "pretty cool" ...
especially in this case.
This is nothing new. Dead Man's Switch http://daisyman.arsware.org/dms/ has been around for awhile and it's free. Dead Man s Switch is a tool, that can carry out three functions at a user specified time: posting to web pages, sending e-mails, and encrypting files. If your live is so dangerous that you`re concerned that you may not return from your next mission, simply set the countdown, and the program will automatically perform the specified actions once your time has come. Farewell email scan be sent, sensitive files encrypted (using Blowfish) and information posted to web forms of your choice. Of course it will also work for less extreme purposes, and you can use it as a simple countdown timer that automatically performs those actions, unless you press the reset button before the countdown runs out. Form posting does not work too well.
Something similar has already been done during the dot com days. I can't for the life of me recall their name, but I seem to remember that they would send you e-mails regularly and you had to click a link to let their server know you're still alive.
I'm sure that company died a miserable dotcom death. Wonder what sort of emails they had set up for that "exit strategy"
Why is it that Roland Piquepaille is the submitter of at least one front page story per day? Can someone please elaborate whether or not Roland Piquepaille has a relationship with Slashdot, or OSDN, or VA, or one of the editors?
This is a genuine and very serious question. I am curious as to why I see the name Roland Piquepaille on Slashdot's front page daily. No one can have a "submissions to accepted" ratio so perfect without something weird going on...
Maybe some slashdotters will subscribe to this service...
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
just kidding. we've all really, up to now, been volunteers in the lop-sided cesspool of phonIE fauxking payper liesense billyonerrors.
I think that your loved ones will appreciate much more a hand written letter to each one of them than a "email from hell".
It's been done for centuries, just hand write a letter to each of your loved one, and put them with your will. They will get distributed after your death.
GFK's
Of course, the cron job could to tuned not to fire off if I'm on holidays but yeah - this website is a neat idea!
I "anonymous coward" of no known IP address, being sound in online connectivity, and over the age of credit card ownership,and knowing the uncertainty of dial-up connections and the certainty of disconnection and wishing to dispose of my possessions and belongings both in the real world and in online gaming communities while in health and strength do make this my will.
After the payment of my credit card debts, store cards and porn subscriptions, I hereby bequeath my slashdot username to be auctioned on E-bay and the proceeds donated to the open source community.
I don't like the fact that they charge you $9.99 for an initial three years, and then if you're still alive you need to keep paying top-ups to keep your account open.
Generally, people don't know that they will die in the next three years. There are exceptions of course but the majority of people, even the elderly, expect to be alive in three years. So the result will be that most people don't sign-up because they're waiting "until nearer the time". What if they get run over? Or they're killed? Well I guess their friends and loved ones won't get that last message because this company decided to charge a subscription fee rather than a one-off payment.
I want to use the phrase "emotional blackmail" but I don't think that's quite accurate. There's certainly something ugly about this service, though.
Quite the useful concept, especially if the server is remote and doesn't belong to you personally. You could get disappeared to Gitmo, for example, and have an automatic email sent to your close contacts indicating that something is going on. Even if the Bushstapo confiscated or destroyed your own computers, assuming the job was setup on a rented machine, it would still fire.
"get reborn soon"
"free graveyard extension"
"100% herbal viagra"
And how long before people start forging a mail's "From:" header to look like it came from this site? Way to make someone's loved ones panic/celebrate unnecessarily.
From: the-late-gudlyf@mylastemail.com
To: <Undisclosed-Recipients>
Subject: Sorry, I died...
Unfortunately, the reports of my death are not exaggerated. ...
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
I can't find the post, but there was a guy a couple of years ago who wrote a program for his computer that, in the event that he didn't log into his machine for n days, would email his friends and post to some bboards saying that he was dead.
--------
It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Or you could just say "hey Joe, send this e-mail for me when I die, ok?"
Save yourself 10 bucks
Comment removed based on user account deletion
pfft.. who needs this when we have cron!?!?
mydeath.net is a free site (set up by writer, artist and ex pop star Bill Drummond of the KLF) where you can leave full instructions for what you want done in the event of your death, write your own obituary, and so on.
Halfway between a service and a conceptual work of modern art, it's got more entertainment value than giving 9.99 a quarter to some venture capitalists, plus you can browse other people's (anonymous) speficications for their demise while you are waiting to die.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
...for when Linux consigns them to the grave.
I wonder what their last email would be:
Dear Microsoft User
Yes, Windows was a piece of crap and we lied to everyone all of the time.
Regards
Microsoft
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
The original post is -1 Offtopic and yet this gets +3 Funny?
you insensitive clod!
I lost her Sept 16th. after 10years. It seams like yesterday. I wish she could answer her emails. I sent her a email after she passed. (It took a day for the sheriff department to find me and tell me.) Worst day of my life. Shi-.t don't know what to tell you all. I still can't get her emails from yahoo. (I'm no hacker.) I can't tell here friends on games.yahoo.com that she's gone. I know a few of them will miss her. She was a regular player on many games of yahoo. She was known as chuyrocks@yahoo.com--- if anyone knows her: I /.== howto notify "cyber" world that your gone? :(without her passwds?) There is no "Obituary"(s). for yahoo or other cybrespace. I want all that know her too know; but it's hard to know who knew her. Can go crazy just thinking albout it.
m shur she wishes all a good life. (as I cry)...
Ask:
Anyway sorry for the bummer post; but just what I'm thinking now.
I don't want a pickle; I just want a Motor-Cycle! A four foot cop arrived with a five foot gun!
Pretty Cool my ass That shit would freak me out if I saw an e-mail with their name on it after they were dead... I guess it may work for some of the people who were in denial of their death..."oh look...see he's not dead...he even sent us a e-mail TELLING us that he's dead"
MY SECRET DIARIES
How do we know this is not just some spammer enticing people to *pay* to provide him with email addresses???
No, this one is actually a decent mod...have you looked at the URLs for the links?
And while on the subject of /.'s erratic acceptance of news stories, Id like to see users have the capability to moderate stories as well as comments. The /.editors do a very poor job of story selection - it happens every week that a story is rejected when it's news, then accepted later when it's not really news anymore. Presumably, when it's submitted by an insider like Roland Piquepaille. There should be a way of tagging the worst editors so that they can be replaced.
along with yOUR 'immortality', comes some serious responsibility to the creators' innocents, including, but not limitdead to helping to disempower unprecedented evile et AL, by yOUR intentions/motives/behaviours.
good wwwork so far. see you there?
My roommate in college had dated, and remained good friends with a girl who decided to kill herself. She was still in high school at the time and simply dosed and large number of pills and laid out on a blanket in plain site on the lawn of our local jc. It was, needless to say, traumatic for many of the people involved. It was only compounded though when the time delayed emails from her aol account arrived in several people's inboxes. They were meant as an attempt to soothe the grieving, but the effect was not that. They mostly said things along the line of "it's not your fault, please don't feel bad, I'm happier now" etc. etc. And maybe in the long run it was a good idea, but I am certain the effect of her emails in the short term was different than she expected. Rather than bringing relief it rubbed salt in a wound that was only three days old. Apparently she couldn't delay email more than a week on AOL? maybe they would have been better a month or two later. The whole notion of someone facilitating this effort is a little unnerving though. I know the last thing I want is an email from a dead friend after they're gone.
You could set yourself up with the fine folks at seemerot.com, then when your last email goes out, the included URL for your very own deadcam allows your friends and loved ones to check in on you from time to time.
Ammunition for the email tax!
is a dead man's switch. Something that will delete all of my porn after I die. Damn, that would be embarassing. No, it's not gay porn, just kinky and some of it involving me and various women who would still be alive and worried.
Is there a program that you can schedule to delete certain files if you don't get back to your computer? They are hidden now, but anybody who knows how could view them.
This is too good not to post, Enjoy!
...
... THE FULL AND RIGHTFUL OWNERS OF THE OPERATING SYSTEM SOFTWARES KNOWN AS UNIX. OUR ENGINEERS HAVE DISCOVERED THAT NO FEWER THAN SEVENTY (70) LINES OF OUR VALUABLE AND PROPRIETARY SOURCE CODES HAVE APPEARED IN THE UPSTART OPERATING SYSTEM LINUX. ... THIS GIVES US A CLAIM ON THE MILLIONS OF LINES OF VALUABLE SOFTWARE CODES WHICH COMPRISE THIS LINUX AND WHICH HAS BEEN SOLD AT GREAT PROFIT TO VERY MANY BUSINESS ENTERPRISES. OUR LEGAL EXPERTS HAVE ADVISED US THAT OUR CONTRIBUTION TO THESE CODES IS WORTH AN ESTIMATED ONE (1) BILLION U.S. DOLLARS. ...
... IT IS OUR RESPECTFUL SUGGESTION, THAT YOU MAY BE IMMEDIATELY A PARTY TO THIS ENTERPRISE, BEFORE OTHERS ACCEPT THESE LUCRATIVE TERMS, THAT YOU SEND US THE NUMBER OF A BANKING ACCOUNT WHERE WE CAN WITHDRAW FUNDS OF A SUITABLE AMOUNT TO GUARANTEE YOUR PARTICIPATION IN THIS ENTERPRISE. AS AN ALTERNATIVE YOU MAY SEND US THE NUMBER AND EXPIRATION DATE OF YOUR MAJOR CREDIT CARD, OR YOU MAY SEND TO US A SIGNED CHECK FROM YOUR BANKING ACCOUNT PAYABLE TO "SCO GROUP" AND WITH THE AMOUNT LEFT BLANK FOR US TO CONVENIENTLY SUPPLY.
Source: article
YOUR URGENT ASSISTANCE REQUIRED
DEAR SIR/MADAM:
I AM MR DARL MCBRIDE CURRENTLY SERVING AS THE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF THE SCO GROUP, FORMERLY KNOWN AS CALDERA SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL, IN LINDON, UTAH, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. I KNOW THIS LETTER MIGHT SURPRISE YOU BECAUSE WE HAVE HAD NO PREVIOUS COMMUNICATIONS OR BUSINESS DEALINGS BEFORE NOW.
MY ASSOCIATES HAVE RECENTLY MADE CLAIM TO COMPUTER SOFTWARES [sic] WORTH AN ESTIMATED $1 BILLION U.S. DOLLARS. I AM WRITING TO YOU IN CONFIDENCE BECAUSE WE URGENTLY REQUIRE YOUR ASSISTANCE TO OBTAIN THESE FUNDS.
MY ASSOCIATES AND I OF THE SCO GROUP ARE
I HAVE BEEN GIVEN THE MANDATE BY MY COLLEAGUES TO CONTACT YOU AND ASK FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE. WE ARE PREPARED TO SELL YOU A SHARE IN THIS ENTERPRISE, WHICH WILL SOON BE VERY PROFITABLE, THAT WILL GRANT YOU THE RIGHTS TO USE THESE VALUABLE SOFTWARES.
KINDLY TREAT THIS REQUEST AS VERY IMPORTANT AND STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL. I HONESTLY ASSURE YOU THAT THIS TRANSACTION IS 100% LEGAL AND RISK-FREE.
"Im not dead I just abandonded my body" join me in the wired
Write an email. Put it someplace where it can be found, but won't be unless directed to (on a web server, in your desk, on your hard drive, etc.) Don't let anyone see it, but put it in your will. Assuming you have family members who love and care about you, there should be no problem.
Should the subscription be $9.99 for the one last email, and not for a 3-year license to die?
That's pretty lame.
stuff |
Come on, you missed "Services"!
Thanks to CowboyNealfor mentioning this story. But he cut my original message, which ended by some questions to Slashdot readers. Here is what is missing. "After reading this overview, could you please answer these two questions: would you use such a service? and do you think the company can be successful?"
It's funny that I had recently been considering doing this myself. In my case, I was just going to set up a script on a web site that would send the mail and have it set so that once a month it would notify me that I have, say 2 weeks, to reply, or it will send the e-mail. I basically keep it from sending it by replying to the e-mail once a month, and once I go a month without replying, it assumes I'm dead and sends the e-mail.
I don't really care for the fact that their service requires you to somehow leave a notification otherwise. I mean, they need to find out your dead somehow, but I like my method better. Also, the cost is ridiculous. I could set up a service to do this and charge a hell of a lot less.
Note to self: Add this to your todo list.
I don't get it... Why did this guy capitalize certain letters?
%> at 'death +1 days' .dyingwish | mail family@localhost
cat
^D
There's a Buddhist adage that goes something like:
"it's absolutely certain that you will die, but completely unknown when."
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
...I'm Yul Bryner and I'm dead now.
Click below to unsubscribe
Then all you have to do is get people to keep responding via email. A lot of people go into a cemetary and chat with a headstone. How many would chat with a custom Eliza? How many would pay for the privilege? How many would never know the difference?
Oh damn, that's a Max Headroom episode. Never mind. B-)
But what a great opportunity for a Turing test?! The first AI that could convince surviving relatives it was the actual person. Later, you could customize it into other lucrative fields like taking 'confessions'. Maybe they could call it 'Deus' or something.
I actually experimented with something like this in AI that was a version of 'Eliza' with Thomas Jefferson's personality and writing style. It was called, what else, 'Tom'.
Short, funny, story. I was a security engineer at an ISP/NSP. The Ops team kept getting support calls from some idiot who swore that we were attacking his computer. He had blackIce and from the logs he thought that our billing web server was trying to hack him (it was just return traffic ;-). Well our patient techs tried explaining that this wasn't true and why, but we wouldn't give up.
No amount of explaining or cajoling this unstable guy would make him stop calling every day or so. Over a beer at lunch I had the idea to repurpose 'Tom' with a tech support engram I called 'Jeff'. We got him to simply use email for his complaints and forwarded them to 'Jeff'. The ensuing email conversation between 'Jeff' and this guy was absolutely priceless. It literally went on for months before the guy quit.
Knowing the lenghts some spammers go to deliver their messages, this may lead to the most bizarre form of spam ever: Someone will just cache a ton of messages to be delivered to a ton of users and then commit suicide.
simply put.
The power of Christ compiles you!
You pay for 3 years??? If you don't die you have to pay again!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Call me crazy, but I've had this for years. I set up a cron job on my university account that checks for the last time I logged in. If that was over 30 days ago, I am most definitely dead, so it emails out my last message. Since most universities let you keep your account forever after you graduate, this is a pretty good option for a lot of people (well, assuming you have access to crontab on your system). University Unix systems rarely disappear...
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
I think if I'm going to spend money to send a message to my loved ones after my untimely demise, I'd like it to be something useful. Like a life insurance policy.
I am NOT a man!
I am a free number!
I'll just run a cron job
Hi Dear,
You know how we always said we wanted to spend our afterlives together? Well, frankly, the only way that's going to happen now is if you start sinning immediately. I don't mean shoplifting, either. Think big. If you go to church again, it better be to burn it down. You've got some catching up to do.
Love,
1nv4d3r
Imagine the shock on your friends and family faces when they get your death email..then you call them on your cell and tell them that the signal strength is great up in heaven..
How do they know when you are dead though? The web site didn't say.
And so far, NONE OF THE CUSTOMERS has complained about their service! Little hard to obtain those customer testimonials, though... seriously, if they don't send the email, who's going to sue them, or even ask for their money back?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
If you don't read /. for more than 24hours your computer KNOWS you're dead. It could then just start sending mails. I bet my linuxbox uptimes beat the lifetime of another startup.
cu,
Lispy
We moved to a different office and didn't take that phone system with us before I could get around to do ing this, but here is what I wanted to do:
1. Leave a message for my boss (who was also a friend of mine) queued for delivery in three months.
2. Every month, cancel that message and rerecord it, again queued for three months out.
So, if I ever died, 2-3 months after my death, my boss would get a voice mail from me. The message would be suitably creepy, of course.
I was wondering if people on the message boards I frequent would notice I was gone if I died. This service was meant for lifeless people like me!
Haven't people done this for years? Just put a bunch of letters into an envelope. Seal (optionally leave with lawyer or in a safe deposit box). And put appropriate instructions in a will.
EVEN WITH this post email service, the person handling your estate has to contact mylastemail.com with a death certificate or letter or something. Besides, email addresses change. Spam drowns out all. And hand written notes are so much more tangible...
Because it's a link to (or so I've heard) a child porn site.
Even worse, your bulk email just might get you caught in St. Peter's spam filter. This of how horrible it would be to be stuck in some junk email list for eternity, while everyone gets to party.
a) Most anti-smoking ads are so smarmy and annoying that they almost make me not only want to take up smoking myself, but to stand outside elementary schools, handing out free packs, as a tribute to the (mostly) blowhard hypocrites and busybodies who create them. Maybe I'm wrong. (Not that smoking isn't negative and harmful in all the ways it's portrayed to be -- just that it gets singled out for special attention precisely because it's an easy target, moral ex-lax, "like coming out in favor of all those things that other people are *against*, like peace, justice, brotherhood, etc.") Like a lot of other things (which is to say, everything) inhaling hot particles of smoke of *anything* is going to hae drawbacks, and it might have some benefits (such as, I dunno, pleasure). But smoking gets special pariah treatment, even by an industry (advertising) full of smokers legal and otherwise.
b) That said, I've seen recently some billboards consisting of anti-smoking propaganda in the form of epitaphs. The idea is trite, phoney, cliche, weak, insipid, derivative (etc), but for some reason, the following slogan (on a gravestone) really made me laugh:
"I'm finally cool."
[dr evil]"It's a double meaning, get it? Two meanings?"[/dr evil]
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I CURSE ZOIDBERG!!
The World's Worst Webcomic!
This is not even true corpsemail because the messages are sent before death, and only queued until after death. Corpsemail will never happen because dead people can't remember passwords for shit.
But premail holds true promise: A tiny keyboard-on-a-stick would really be all a pregnant woman needs to enable her developing fetus get started with prenatal messaging.
But it shouldn't be hard for some enterprising product developer to come up with a water resistant palm device with bluetooth, email, and some prenatal typing tutor software. I've heard that the Japanese are already doing this - that's why you keep seeing those ASL responses that start with -.31 in chatrooms.
------DO NOT WRITE BELOW THIS LINE------
If Tupac can still be making music and movies after he dies, sending e-mails seems weak by comparison.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
In their FAQ, mylastemail makes various claims about the security and privacy of their service. To name one, their security in effect is an 8-byte 3DES encryption. Anyone want to hazard a guess how many seconds it would take to crack that? Also, they claim that at no point in the process their (system) administrators have access to the messages.
I'll post a follow-up if/when I receive a response to the various questions I asked them yesterday.
Actually taxes are avoidable. Death isn't.
I always thought a good idea would be for a company to establish a "living web site" that someone could continually update while they were living, along with a portion or message that could be put up after they passed. While you're alive, you create your own vision of what you think you've contributed or want to share with others and it lives on online after you're gone. Surely, the potential for the long-term solvency of a company that provides this service would be better than those cryogenic operations?
Imagine all the information, impressions and opinions that we form over the course of our lifetime that dissipate? Even the most mundane existance may shed some wisdom for others, if not a laugh. It always seemed like an cool idea to set up some type of trust to maintain something like this. For all I know it's already been done. Anyone know?
Wouldn't this be good for committing suicide? You wouldn't have to worry about people finding your note before you go off and do it.
www.mylastpost.com ? Thinking 24 hours a day!
You write your last mail and decide to insult everyone, what the hell coz you'll be dead anyway right? what if the mail is sent by accident before you die? ;)
Would you do this, to contact anyone you actually cared about? Versus a personal letter left behind for them?
And if you didn't really care about them, why bother?
I have the mental image here of some poor bastard who never had any real human contact in his life, just a bunch of online "friends". It's making me sad just thinking about it.
5 years ago no less.
In a movie called "Save House".
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0120051/
Patrick Stewart plays a retired DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency,the military's equivalent to the CIA) agent who has some damning information on a former military bigwig turned presidential hopeful.
He sets up a deadman switch on a computer that could be "anywhere" and if he doesn't periodically log in to reset the counter it fires off copies of all of the big bad guy's dirt to every newspaper, tv station, and major media outlet on the planet.
The fun really starts when he begins to develop Alzheimer's disease.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
amazing biz concept.. mylastemail.com.. wow
Someone help me. I think I died but I think my soul is trapped in cyberspace!
I looked at the web site, and it says this:
Um, doesn't this pretty much equate to "we hope you die"? I think this is the first time I've seen a company actually say such a thing to its customers, although they are probably not the first company to think it...
> The company says you can update your farewell messages from anywhere in the world, including cybercafes or airports."
Um yeah, that's where I'm likely to be - how about THE FUCKING HOSPITAL??
Even if we kill them they'll still be able to send spam!
read my blog
musings on politics and technol
This is Uncle Jack from beyond the grave... BOOO OO OOo OOOOooOoo OO o oo!!!!
PS. I'll be really fucking pissed if your stupid black list spam filter blocks this.
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
I would not trust their 8 byte "strong" encryption key if my life depended on it. They generate a 48 byte 3-DES key and store 40 bytes of it on the freakin` server - the one who came up with that idea should send his last e-mail - IMHO.
...to the number of books L. Ron "If you really want to make a lot of money, invent your own religion" Hubbard has written and published after he died^Wpassed on^W^Wshed all his thetans, or whatever they're supposed to do.
Besides, the Ebert review of the Tupac movie was favorable, and he's usually got a decent eye for such things.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Use at, not cron.
With cron tables, you have to keep telling the damn thing, hey, look, I'm still alive, don't freak out my family.
With "at <expected return date> + 2 days" it's an easy one shot. Just have a post-it note on your monitor reminding you to cancel the at job when you return.
Besides sending the "if you're reading this, it means I'm dead" emails -- which, frankly, I've always wanted to write, they just sound so cool -- they can also be used for useful tasks like uploading the last set of patches, posting the current working version of code, newfs'ing /dev/pr0n, etc, etc. The possibilities are endless.
The extra couple days on the at(1) timer are to allow time for delayed/canceled flights. Would suck for your gf to get the "email with the black masts" just because a storm blew through Topeka, Kansas during your layover.
Hm, I'm gonna have to try this next time I travel. :-)
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
I'm not dead yet! Please dig me out.
Take care...
may be i can try it after I got BSOD :)
I bet this joke of a business plan won't be around much more than 3 years. By keeping the subscription length low they can stop accepting submissions and then sell off what crippled remains they have left while they shut down operations without risking lawsuits from customers while their subscriptions run out.
The sole "challenge" to this business is getting MySQL to have a database of the subscribers e-mail, all their intended recipients, and the letter itself. And then writting a PHP script to fire off the e-mails when it's time.
As far as hosting concerns, all you need is a 256K DSL line that doesn't block port 25. I can't imagine they'll be sending more than 60GB worth of e-mails a month.
So really, the only challenge is marketing.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Address from resume:
89, rue de l'Eglise
75015 Paris - France
Phone: +33 1 45 57 49 61
Mobile: +33 6 78 88 71 28
Email: pique@noos.fr
Judging from his resume, he's in his 50's. So he's just some old fart with nothing better to do than use /. to boost his image in the "consulting business" he's been trying for the past year.
By the way, why is his resume online if his business is doing well?
It also seems he's got a a weblog.
Is this by any chance a Microsoft-owned company?
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I SEE DEAD PEOPLE'S E-MAILS.
-
Roses are #FF0000, Violets are #0000FF, find / -name '*base*' |xargs chown -R us && mv zig greatjustice
Enlarge your corpse's pen1s! Go out with a surprise in your funeral pants! Get it NOW for only $99.95! www.DeadButBig.com
Table-ized A.I.
Oh come on, send a funny message like "help I am stuck in here let me out" or that favorite "I have with me $50,000 in cash buried in here with me" and then just have a note pinned on your corpse that says "Phyche!"
My last email would read:
Dear Fred,
remember that bet we had on that footbal game in hcollege?
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
Good luck getting your 50 bucks now!!!!!
~Chris Hammond
no text
#14750 +(112)- [X]
<gee-1> we should market heart monitor devices that're like implanted. so if you die, it'll remotely run a program, to like make your computer log in, get on irc, and msg your friends that you're dead
Burn the land and boil the sea, you can't take the sky from me
ok.. I'm starting a new service: "Mylastlawsuit.com"
Isn't V.C. Andrews still emailing in his novels? Elron Hubbard is still tapping away after death, too.
I can just see it now... someone hacks their server and releases all of these secret messages to everyone's wives, bosses, ex girlfriends, mothers... it'd be a freaking mess. Heck, even the owner of the service could decide to be a bastard one day and release them all for fun. I can't begin to fathom the sheer horror. Drew