Slashdot Mirror
Not Life After Death -- Email After Death
Rick Zeman writes "Wanna send that one last email after you're dead and gone? CNN has an article about a service that will give the 21st century equivalent to a old-fashioned note in a drawer except that this could be more targeted '...by offering people the chance to write one last e-mail, complete with video clip or photo attachments, and send it to loved ones, friends or even enemies after the person who wrote it is dead.'"
Aaarrrrghhh....!!!!
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
This will last about a week until people start using it against each other and for jokes...
I thought these were only popular in the mid to late 90s. Hm...
Omg, how are they going to send me mail when they're dead!? They must have been revived.
So how do we prosecute these dead guys?
It has GOT to suck when you miss one of these because it got sent to the spam folder and deleted.
Nothing disturbs me more than blind loyalism towards some unrealistic and over-idealistic notion of one's nationality.
That's almost to the point of obsession/weirdness. Now what exactly was wrong with a letter? First post... woohoo!
Who is going to guarantee that the company in question won't go belly-up before you do?
born too late
died too early
I send you this in order to have your opinion.
Please send this to 10 of your friends and Bill Gates will pay for a trip to Disney World and Donald Trump will send you a voucher for a free enema.
This sig isn't original enough, it's time to come up with something witty...
w00t, FP... anyh00t, more on topic: yeah, im sure all of us have some sort of enemy that picked on us for being that intellectually gifted kid on the block. sorta like a really cruel way to say "I told ya so!" (of course assuming your intellectual gifts followed through and actually DID achieve something)
They will make more money from the estate to not send the emails.
Serial Experiments Lain anyone?
Creative Demolition
Although, it at least took almost a year...
And no, I don't go checking for these things. I have a good memory.
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
Tell the truth and you won't have so much to remember.
that's a record latency between CNN and Slashdot frontpage latency...say hello to unsightly rambus relatives =)
But how could you get first post after death?
THAT would be worth getting your offspring into debt for.
Waiting for an amusing sig.
Slashvertisment.... Jesus. Slow news day? This is even "interesting"? Slashdot: where you shill your web site...
A statement or decree in a will to email certain people would serve the same purpose, I would think, plus it would legally mandate the email be sent (the service could forget that the person died and not send it).
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
Someone took the dead dot.com thing a little too seriously...
-B
....I have a contract for cryostasis upon legal death with Alcor, and I plan to post on Slashdot soon after I am revived.
I wonder if my gmail account will be full?
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I used to get the feeling that email, because it was even further removed from face-to-face contact that it was more impersonal than hand-written mail. Hand-written mail being closer because it requires a personal effort to physically write the words.
Would your loved ones want to read a "final email" rather than a goodbye letter that was written onto parchment? I don't know.
The video and audio are good ideas, but realistically, that kind of thing was done before with video cameras and cassette tapes. The digital fidelity of such a message would be much lower than the analog fidelity of VHS or cassette tape.
This seems like one of those silly projects that eventually disappears, like "DotComGuy" and other misbegotten web pioneers/ideas. Spend a couple bucks on a nice pen and some really fancy paper and write out your last words. Leave it with your lawyer to be handed out to your loved ones when the will is read. So much more personal than an email from beyond the grave.
Dancin Santa
...I am dead. Being a lonely nerd, /. is my next of kin. Fare thee well, all.
or make a fone call from your grave using this casket fone booth
email is not very personal.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
repeat story
Personally, I'd rather leave an instruction with a lawyer to send that 'last email' (if I were so inclined). This .dom is likely to pass well before I do.
Dear Friend;
It is quite disconcerting to contact you in such a manor however I bring terrible and rewarding news. If you are reading this email than I have in-fact died. I am Mr.Michael Shaw, the son of the former Liberia finance minister (Mr. Emmanuel Shaw) under the past government of Charles Taylor. In my will you have been left a large portion of my property and cash holdings. This totals the sum of 10,000,000 US dollars which is rightfully yours. You are receiving this email because you are the direct descendant of me. This email was sent with advanced software that was able to inform you after my death. Please forward of your back account numbers with routing numbers to me accountant Sir Richard Webber to begin the transfer of funds.
Regards, Mr. Michael Shaw
I can think of a few people I will be glad to recieve this e-mail from.
Last Post! Buwahahahaha!
And no, I don't go checking for these things. I have a good memory.
Now we can do it via e-mail. Huh. What a century we live in.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
... or even enemies
Reminds me of a cartoon that was in Playboy many years ago. A florist delivery guy, whose truck bears the slogan "Say it with Flowers," is delivering a humungous wreath with a banner that says "GO TO HELL."
Ahh, the yocks we got outta that one. We won't see days like those anymore...
Could you imagine what would happen if someone hacked into this (and you can be sure that they will)? Chances are, it's going to be chock-full of dark secrets and admissions of crimes. Just the kinds of things you don't want in anyone else's hands. This is a bad idea.
G
when you can live on
in the web
Death Is The Ultimate Trip
Dupe
Seen stuff like this before.. worse I've seen is trying to get terminally ill people to remember a message to give to someone else in Heaven.
It's just a way for people to exploit the desprate. If you MUST get someone a message old fashion pen and paper is MUCH better then electronic means. Plus if it's a loved one the paper will have your person writing on it and if it's been in your house a long time it'll smell of you too. Which alot of people find reminds them of good times with them.
Remember data doesn't last forever but a well kept letter will.
I like muppets.
It's all fine and good until a jr. sys admin mistypes an account ID and accidentally sends out your final emails before you're dead... either to your enemies, as suggested (thereby now contributing to your death at their hands), or to your ex-girlfriends (just making you wish you were dead). So yeah, caveat emptor and all that. :-)
Somehow I think it'd be much more touching to leave behind CDs or DVDs of video clips, audio, or whatever message is to be given to someone digitally, as the recipient can store it in The Real World as opposed to on some hotmail account somewhere. It just seems tacky to send e-mail this way. One would even be assured of having enough storage space on the medium for the contents, and not being filtered out by a broken e-mail server.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
And for those who cannot afford the price of the full service, take the cheaper version with targetted ads:
...
...
...
-----------
Dear Joe,
I know I'm gone, but I wanted you to know one last thing I love you
___Click here for free VIAGRA___
very much and if you reach a time in this life where you don't know what to do or where to go
__Free vacation to Florida Only $299 Deposit__
remember I am right beside you, near your heart
___Cheap Pharmacy Prescriptions___
Good bye.
___Click here to send a loved on a letter when you die ___
Um, only the client has access? Not sure how they expect to be able to send out the mail in that case. Of course when they realize that after their first client dies the client won't be earound to notice they failed to provide the service.
Last post!
ok, that's really bad.. I apologize...
But don't think it is on-topic.
I misread your post as saying that the email itself would act as a will rather than a statement in the will requiring the email to be sent.
Off-topic, yes. Important to consider, YES.
Dead Man's Switch
/ 0,fid,23183,00.asp/
We use our computers for almost every aspect of our lives; shouldn't they help smooth our passing as well? Dead Man's Switch can protect or pass on your data and inform key persons of your untimely demise. You can set Dead Man's Switch to perform a number of tasks if you don't log on to your computer for a specified period of time. It can send out e-mail, encrypt or delete files, and post to web sites.
Remember to reset the time allowed on the switch before you leave on vacation. You don't want to scare anybody
http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description
Between leaving a Video Will and this? I wont pretend to know the legal matters involving legal wills, but I'm sure you can leave a 'last' message to everybody all the while giving out your goods or not giving them out, depending on your situation.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Maybe I'm just a bit old fashioned, but I think a letter is much more personal than an email. A letter captures a lot more about you. It captures your handwriting, how you may even mis-spell certain words, (if you are sure you are going to die soon) small warping of the paper from teardrops, hell even the paper you write it on may have a personal touch. It is easier to connect with the dearly departed. An email could have been sent by anyone, it just sits on a computer or gets printed out on bleached paper.
Thanks, but I'll just stick to good ol' fashioned communication models and leave emails for the "when the hell was that meeting" domain.
Monstar L
Dear Boss,
Now that I am dead, I can say anything I want without getting fired.
You are a horses ass. No, wait. You are a bleeding hemmoroid of a horses ass. You steal everybody's ideas, you read stupid magazines and then follow every management fad known to man. You don't listen to my warnings and then blame me when the warning comes true.
You hold meetings just so you can be the head cheese, but you say nothing and know nothing of importance.
Further, your kids are ugly and stupid, just like their father. And, a similar email has just told your wife about that affair you had with Lisa.
See ya in hell, Mike the Corpse.
Table-ized A.I.
It was posted here a few months back.
... we guarantee you won't regret it!
I told you the vogons were coming!
Best. Webhost. Ever. Dreamhost.
I think it would be more useful to create bodybags with Internet access so that people who weren't really dead could still come and post something here at slashdot or call someone on IRC to dig them out. I wouldn't like to wake up one day and find myself inside a bodybag 8 feet below the earth, but if it happened, an Internet connection could be really helpful.
Now about the topic: sending a "letter from hell" to all my femaly and relatives would be nice too, but since unfortunately I wouldn't be here to enjoy the fun (or maybe I would), that service would be rather useless.
"I'm dead, biotch! (beep beep)"
Programs like this scan message boards and automatically post replies on the pet subjects of whoever wrote them.
"Dear Slashdotters,
next time you gang rape someone's server you wanna check that they're not standing beside it?
Sincerely,
[some fried webmaster]"
...to having the last word
...the email I got from "BSD" this afternoon...
The actual link to the service is thelastemail.
I call "bullshit", how are they going to release the email if they do not have access to its content?
Of course the "Web site" has access.
I will do a virus for it to send.. when I die. :p
Wonder what happens when they make mistakes... i.e. they make a mistake in data entry, and your admissions of guilt get sent out before you actually die.
You actually READ playboy?
King Arthur : Look if he was dying he wouldn't have bothered to carve 'Aaaaauuuggghhh' on the rock he would of just said it.
Galahad : Maybe he was dictating?
King Arthur : Oh Shut up.
King Arthur : Well does it say anything else?
Brother Maynard : No, just 'Aaaaauuuugggghhh'
[knights making groaning sounds]
Sir Bedevere : Do you think he could have mean, 'Camaaaauuuuggghhhh'?
Galahad : Where's that?
Sir Bedevere : France I think.
Sir Lancelot : Isn't there a Saint 'Iiiiivvvveeeesss' in Condor?
King Arthur : No that's Saint 'Ives'
Sir Bedevere : Whooooouuuuaaa!
Sir Lancelot : No it's 'Aaaaauuuugggghhhh' from the back of the throat.
Sir Bedevere : No I mean, 'Whoooouuuuaaa!' as in surprise and alarm.
Sir Lancelot : Oh you mean like, 'Auuuuhhhhh!'
Sir Bedevere : Yes that's it. Auuuuuhhhhhaaa!
Sir Lancelot : Auuuuhhhhhaaa!
Brother Maynard : It's the legendary black beast of Aaaaauuuugghhhh!
King Arthur : Run Away! RUN AWAY!
Sir Lancelot : RUN AWAY!
I can code an AI web-based or IRC-bot chatting proggie to resemble my personality. So, after I die people will be able to chat with me! (?)
I read your e-mail, from here where I am.
PS: This is really a post scriptum, if you understand me.
Personally I know a number of people who dont send out worms/viruses simply becauses of the consequences, but if your dead whats going to happen to you?
Check out Dead Man's Switch. If you die, it can send out e-mails to those of concern and delete all of your hardcore porn so not as to destroy your family's last image of you.
"All art is quite useless." -- Oscar Wilde
ISTR thinking that was pretty stupid at the time, but if the idea is being used by other companies, *someone* must be using these services. Though actually, mylastemail.com seems to be down right now, so maybe not. There's a Google cache of it, if you care.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
Dear Mum,
I told you I was ill
Spike
Dead Man's switch is an app someone thought up a few years ago to automate email, message board postings, and removal of files if it does not recieve user intervention within a set period of time.
http://www.net-security.org/software.php?id=138
It sure is hot down here
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
Are you sure you don't want to not run the test or are you not sure?
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
199.99 ?/Lifetime Enrollmen
You receive 5 MB of space
http://www.thelastemail.com/plans.aspx (aspx, BLEAH!)
When the webspace prices go down... find a clever way to sell 5MBs at high price.
it would be much cheaper, or even free, to set-up a password-protected website. Then write a script so that the website will be automatically unprotected when you fail for 2 days to send a specially formatted email to a special secret email address.
simple, cheap and creative.
Use finger info, compare last login date with current date, if greater than X then send-last-email then rm -rf /
Meh. I, am a frog.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/22/125020 7
Try it. Send only to 9 other people. You will live, but you will have wasted minutes sending 9 stupid emails.
Do not believe in Internet scams. It is a collosal Waste of time.
I suggest you read Slashdot
quote /quote
"We're getting some 200 hits a day, of which an average of two become clients," Iriarte told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from the company's office in Brazil.
Not today....
I remember that story too! Fortunately I'm not the only one, and it appears you beat me to the punch :)
I *knew* it was a dupe. I just thought the original subitter had died...
Jesus. These people deserve to get bilked out of their money.
crib
Please don't read my journal
As cool (no pun intended) as it is, do you seriously think that you have the slightest chance of actually waking up after death?
Paying money for this stuff is barely one step above putting Jim Bakker in one's will.
But I think you did it. I know all about your affair with Jim. I know about your little trysts in bathroom by the auto department in Walmart. I know you wanted to marry him so you've been trying to knock me off. I know about the insurance policies and that you want to take a trip to go llama-ranglin' in the Andes mountains as some kind of weird romantic vacation.
But don't worry. Things will be fine. All you need to know is I made a giant fertalizer bomb in the basement, and there is some C4 in your car (thanks paramilitary-supplies-4less.com!). They are both on time-bombs and will explode if I haven't checked in within the last 24 hours. But because I'm a nice guy, the code to disarm them is "83vj2985ah". Just enter that and you'll be fine. You can save the bombs to kill Jim when you get tired of him and want to marry Paul (yeah, I know about him too).
It was "nice" knowing you.
--Bob
PS: too bad you never checked your e-mail ;)
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
What the fuck was that all about?
Dear Mom and Dad,
Thanks for everything.
PS That's not my porn.
Pfft...
I'm in Stuart running on UPS...
Dupe, or was this set to send when the original sender died?
Jutta Degener, creator of the Halfbakery (down due to hardware problems), had an idea almost exactly like this called Delay.com. According to the HTTP headers of the page, it was last updated on September 25th, 1995.
....Your mother's a big whore...And I spent everything. Suck it losers.
... if it had been sent to the submission desk USING the service in question.
Someone had to do it.
Of course, among all the scientists in the audience are a few industry bigwigs who represent the powerful, monied status quo. They are obviously VERY upset with this disruptive technology, so they decide to silence me before I can spill the beans the next day.
Well, they succeed in murdering me, but unbeknownst to them I had set a 24hour deadman switch that didn't get reset so it automatically emailed all my notes to thousands of people in places high and low. The evil is exposed, the world is made a better place, and I get to be the martyred hero in this fantasy.
The big hole in this story (in hindsight) is that most presentations wouldn't span more than one day, and even if it did it'd make more sense to let loose all the details upfront so there's no way of putting the genie back in the bottle. Burn some DVDs and be done with it.
--
Power to the Peaceful
An email about your husband who died in plane crash will advertise plane tickets.
This was either posted before or something similar was. At any rate, it is, uh... cool?
I've thought about this a lot as I've acquired a lot of friends in remote places and ones that I only know over various services.
;-).
It wouldn't be too hard to set up a deadman's switch cron job on a server that would unpack a tgz file and execute a number of scripts. That way you could target a large number of folks, and not simply via e-mail. IM, e-mail, SMS, web sites, etc could all be updated.
The only drawback is that chance you forget and prematurely tell everyone what you think of them
p|_|Ch3s3 ch34p v1agr4 cli| h3re for det4ls
shoe camera horse goat
1. Write post-mortem, famous last e-words
2. Die
3. ?????
4. Profit!
A couple from Minneapolis decided to go to Florida to thaw out during one particularly icy winter. They planned to stay at the very same hotel where they spent their honeymoon 20 years earlier. Because of hectic schedules, it was difficult to coordinate their travel schedules. So, the husband left Minnesota and flew to Florida on Thursday, with his wife flying down
the following day. The husband checked into the hotel.
There was a computer in his room, so he decided to send an e-mail to his wife.
However, he accidentally left out one letter in her e-mailaddress, and without
realizing his error, he sent the e-mail.
Meanwhile...somewhere in Houston, a widow had just returned home from her
husband's funeral. He was a minister of many years who was called home to
glory following a sudden heart attack. The widow decided to check her
e-mail, expecting messages from relatives and friends. After reading the
first message, she fainted.
The widow's son rushed into the room, found his mother on the floor, and
saw the computer screen which read:
To: My Loving Wife
Subject: I've Arrived
Date: 16 May 2003
I know you're surprised to hear from me. They have
computers here now and you are allowed to send e-mails to your loved ones.
I've just arrived and have been checked in.
I see that everything has been prepared for your arrival tomorrow.
Looking forward to seeing you then!
Hope your journey is as uneventful as mine was.
P.S. Sure is hot down here!
----- End forwarded message -----
First off, cryonics is not a scam. Period. No one has ever made a damn off of cryonics, although it is filled with libertarians who all used to think it would be quite lucrative someday. And it probably will be, although it is nowhere near that now. Instead, it has bankrupted a few people. You need to understand that cryonics companies are not nonprofits with the monies in a trust. Cryonics members are heavily involved in the operation of these companies themselves. It is quite a political thing....trust me!
As for the chances of success: yes, I think it somewhat likely that I will be revived someday in some form via some type of futuristic neuroarchaeology.
As far as I can tell, all of what humans are is in the brain, stored as some sort of information. Whatever you know or remember or think or feel, it all comes from your brain, or nearly all of it.
So, if you lose one brain cell tonight when you sleep, are you not the same person tomorrow? What if you lose 1000 cells? A million? Where is the threshold? IF you lose the memory of your first football game, as you no longer the same person?
So, if what you are as a person is stored as information, and not all of that information is needed to be the same person, can enough of that information someday be recovered through neuroarcheaology in the distant future?
Surely not tomorrow! 10 years from now? 100? 1000? 10,000 years? Once you get into the Liquid nitrogen, chemical processes for all practical purposes stop. You can last for thousands of years unchanged.
So, if the technology to recover your "information" is not available in N years, then wait K years, and try again. Increment time interval and repeat until done.
Anyway, at least it does ease the sting of death. When I breath my last, I will go knowing that there is a chance I will wake up in a future where people live thousands or even millions of years. And why not billions of years? Who knows what fate awaits the universe? We do not even yet understand what the universe really is....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
mistake there--of the three operational companies, two (the two largest companies) are definitely nonprofits, and the other I am not sure.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Seems like the next trend in suicide notes to me.
"By the time you read this I will be gone. Having jumped- having plummeted off the River Winter Bridge."
-=(Lord Crosis)=-
One common tactic of cryonics skeptics is to say that during freezing, the brain cells are destroyed by ice. Not true! I guess these skeptics have never heard of cryopreservative solutions (sophicsticated antifreezes). They are perfused into the brain and inhibit ice formation to a great degree.
Besides, even if ice crystals do form, during revival, technologies yet undeveloped should be able to deduce the former brain structure from what is still there.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
"I told you I was ill!"
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
Dear Sir or Madame,
If you are receiving this email, you should be ashamed of yourself. For days, then weeks, then months, then years... I awaited to hear from you, and you never called! Not once. I left messages. I offered you a drink or a dinner here and there. All I wanted was someone to talk to, someone to confide in.
Well my gig's up, and for your lack of concern for my well-being, I have only one thing to offer you for the rest of the miserable days of your human lifetime: if there is an afterlife, rest assured that I will expense every fiber of my being haunting your sorry ass.
Therefore, if I do not haunt you and make the rest of your days in misery, live in fear of death for the rest of your life knowing that your consciousness, your existence, your everything will be wiped clean and you will be forever lost to oblivion soon after you breathe your last breath.
Yours,
[......]
Been sort of hoping it would be implemented on the scale I read about before my lifetime expires.
I have some interesting plans for it.
--- last minute desparate solutions to impossible problems created by other fucking people.
you pay monthly installment payments for life insurance policies and dues. Total usually about $60-150/month.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
http://www.mylastemail.com
If some of the brain structure is destroyed, then obviously the information contained within that structure is not recoverable.
However, there are two points to consider:
1. what defines destruction? If I write your name on notepaper and then tear the paper in half, is the information destroyed? How about into 10 pieces? 1000 pieces? 1 million? How about if I tear it into 1 billion pieces and then put it in a vault for 100 years. Is the information on the note still lost, or can the technology of that age recover your name from the billion pieces.
So what I am saying is that "destruction" is defined by the technology of a particular place in time. And when in liquid nitrogen, time is on your side.
A particular damaging freeze may indeed render a part of a brain effectively "destroyed" in the year 2500 A.D. But what about the year 10,000 A.D.? What about 25,000 A.D.
Destruction and recovery are only relevant to a particular time. And time, as you may have noticed, tends to move on. As does technology.
2. Destruction of PART of the brain may not preclude eventual revival, even if the destruction is indeed complete for ALL time periods. We know little about the brain, but from what we do know, it seems likely that not all of the brain is irreplacable with respect to "personhood".
If a certain brain part A is lost irreparably, perhaps that part can be replaced with a generic functional substitute. Not all of our brains are likely to be unique. Plug and play may be viable for some parts.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
With any luck I'll be back in 3 days anyway.
At my last company, I used to get in very early, before most everyone else got in. I checked my Outlook inbox, and saw an announcement from our HR VP, with the name of an employee as the subject heading. I was stunned by the contents: The person named in the email had "died suddenly" the night before. I had just reimaged a demo laptop for him a few days ago, working with him in my office GHOSTING a new image to it via the network. Still in shock, I went up to his office - his laptop was still there, and on. IIRC, the office lights were on, too. I came within a hair's breadth of going onto that laptop and composing an "out of office" message, something like, "Hi this is *** *** I am currently deceased and unable to answer emails - permanently. If you require assistance, please resend your note to my manager, ****." Dark humor for a dark moment, but good sense prevailed, and I simply went back to my desk to continue with my work and with my life.
I'm not dead yet.
-Ben
"Spock, Bones... Since you are viewing this, we will assume that I am dead, that the situation is critical, and the ship is in extreme peril..."
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
At my former employer, whenever someone left their supervisor had to send an email to a special mailbox named "terminated", which would then forward to IT, HR, Payroll, etc.
I sent my own "terminated" notice.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
--
Try Nuggets , the mobile search engine. We answer your questions via SMS, across the UK.
I'll be sure that they get A/C here before you arrive!
http://chrono.posterous.com/
... the butler did it.
As title.
A simple method will be having the system requiring the user to login periodically to ensure they are still alive.
However this will impose a large time lag btw the actual death and the email sent. If you shorten the renewal period it will annoys users.
How they do it then?
Yet another way to release all George's secrets after I'm gone.
Let's see: I've got the lawyers with sealed envelopes spotted all over the country, and the safe in the basement with the key on a chain around my neck, and now - AFTER DEATH EMAIL!!!
You guys are gonna love this shit when the time finally comes....
Sincerely, Dick Cheney.
hidden cron file at your hosting company.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Net result: when you die, your boss gets a voice mail from you one to two months later.
Perhaps, but if that part of the brain is what contains who I am, my memories and my experiences, and that is destroyed, then as far as I'm concerned, I'm dead.
Even if my brain is salvaged, the resulting person that happens to have my cerebellum, medulla and occipital lobe is no more me than someone to whom I've donated by kidneys.
As for time being on my side, you are assuming that these cryo companies/trusts/entities will have live that long. Pharaoh Rameses was buried with all kinds of stuff to help him in his afterlife... the Egyptians' beliefs aside, that stuff sure did not last tens of thousands of years.
Why would people, in the future, bother waking you up?
Don't get me wrong, I see that it might be interesting for them from an archeological perspective. But it would be an awful lot of work to wake everybody up. Your coffin (and your remains) might get destroyed in a nuclear war, or lost, in the meantime. As soon as we get those warp coils or infinite improbability drives working and start exploring the galaxy, your coffin might end up abandoned on a planet. How would the future civilization know that they are the ones to wake you up?
If I was to request to be frozen when I died, I wouldn't expect to be thawed and resurrected, ever.
The alt.suicide.holiday people have tabs on services such as these. They're nothing new.
When is this no longer going to be a news story?
Not Life After Death -- Email After Death
On September 25th, 2004 with 194 comments
Send Emails After Your Death
On November 15th, 2003 with 271 comments
Mine would have a really nasty virus attached to it and a note that says, "Now you can fix your own damned computer!"
Anybody interested in a related service to provide First Posts(tm) from beyond the grave?
While I agree with others that leaving an actual letter with a lawyer is more practical for saying goodbyes to loved ones....this could be a lot of fun. I think we all have people in our lives whom we email occasionally but rather dislike. Bosses, coworkers, exes who keep sending us chain letters. Foreknowledge of creepy, post death, emails could provide a lot of amusement as death approaches. I know I've had coworkers I'd love to have receive an occasional email of "I saw what you did Thursday. I see everything now. Woooooooooooo.". And on TLPD, one could even have a slight variation "Yar, I'll eat yer soul for that day you didn't refill the coffee pot!".
Everything will be taken away from you.
Hope this karma thing works!
With as slow as my corporate network is, any message I send might show up after I'm gone....
megabytes of storage
all the info (pictures, text, etc) you want
instructions to send file X to recipient Y
update the media as required
don't forget to finally have that close-up picture of your cock sent to the lady next door to remind her of all those times she was peeking through the window.
I think if Classmates.com offered this service, it would be an even bigger hit.
Oh, and this is one of the things I hate about Anime Fans...they see anime in everything and see everything as being ripped off or inspired by anime. GAH. That and the abbreviating of titles. There are plenty who wouldn't have even bothered breaking out the title from the acronym.
Dear XXXX,
If you are reading this, it is because I am dead. And in a very short while, you will be too... I have arranged for my estate to be liquidated and the proceeds given to someone eminently qualified to kill you. You will know fear, and you will know pain and then you will die.
By the time you read this, i am dead. My friends and family really need the cash, so i am sending you this last letter because i really think you could use some viagra or get yourself out of debt.
If you want to remove yourself from this mailing list, you are shit out of luck because you cannot.
But i promise you, this is DEFINITLY a one time mailing and you wont hear from me again.
In the internet era, our friends CAN'T know that we died. They'll just start wondering what happened when they didn't see us online.
This has bothered me for YEARS. What happens if I die? What happens to my webpages? My online friends? What will happen to the friend that maybe needed my help and didn't know I was gone for good?
In your home they'll know you're gone, but thousands of miles away?
Bravo for this service. I think it's really needed now.
You can charge the dying lam3rz a fortune, and then have no one to back it up.
"Uh, I never got that email..."
We're getting some 200 hits a day, of which an average of two become clients," Iriarte told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from the company's office in Brazil.
Wohoo. I bet their server will die before me.
Sad news today, guys. I got this email from Stephen King...
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
he would of just said it.
would've. short for "would have"
Let's see... suicide note, revenge after I'm dead, confession after I'm dead, secret money stashes told to loved ones AFTER I'M DEAD...
... they will think.
I just KNOW the police are gonna get their hands on it one way or another. I'd be CRIMINAL almost not to
Im bot dead I just transended my body.
As far as I can tell, all of what humans are is in the brain, stored as some sort of information. Whatever you know or remember or think or feel, it all comes from your brain, or nearly all of it.
then what is this 'soul' everyone keeps talking about.
What if you lose 1000 cells? A million? Where is the threshold?
hmm, dunno. maybe you should go ask Keith Richards.
You guys are assuming that the /. "Editors" check for dupes. Well, in a way they do. They post the submission and let the readers do the searching for them. Kind of social-distributed processing.
... And thanks to technology, I'll be able to explain why. Whee !
...make a timer bot that sends the death e-mail after a week after the timer has started, but then you reset the timer every day.
The problem being that if you forget to reset the timer, your loved ones may get a "I'm dead" e-mail from you too early.
Surely someone is going to turn it on sooner or later, and can then report it to the rest of your family...
Unless one of your arch enemies finds it first, or unless you put it on your laptop, and it is crushed with you in a freak accident causing your death.
But then again, even with the "envelope in your drawer" idea, if your house burns down with you, it may not help much.
Discerning the Judeo-Christian-Moslem religion (as it is essentially the same), I have to point out that serious research is done on the subject of life after death despite all crazy religious nuts out there (representing a majority of people, actually and most likely includes the current reader). There's plenty of suggestive material for life after death. Just thought I'd point out, for example, Dr. Ian Stevensons work at http://www.childpastlives.org/stevenson.htm or the numerous other sources. However, deicidephobia (or in latin; fear of having to kill God or a complete change of belief-structure) is something we all suffer from. It is perhaps humanity's greatest bane that truth must go through the three different stages. I'm sure you know which ones, upheaval, denial and finally complete acceptance. The above mentioned research is actually in stage 2. For some of us, it is leading to stage 3. For others, well, did I say trolldung? Sorry. I'm a spiritualistic netnerd. This is what I'd like to call "insightful trolldung". :)
to a lifetime membership that allows for unlimited e-mails
For a service that is for after you die, what use is a lifetime subscription! hahahah no I get it, really I do...
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
"God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life"
(John 3:16 NIV).
I'd have too much fun, which would be traumatizing for relatives;
"WOOO! I'm dead! A corpse I am. Send me pictures!"
Surely there is a way of automating the process, rather than requiring users to leave a document that specifies the death certificate to be posted to the service.
I mean, there are online death registers and the like.
It must be possible to search these registers for the user and then send email based upon the result?
---
http://www.reeb.freeserve.co.uk
Think about it. When your mother in law/boss/something else is dead.
PARTY!!!!
**You got mail**
Hello employee!
Please write -somememo- by 4pm mmmkay! Is that my stapler? Ill just take that mmkay!
**end email**
And a small flame is tarted in the basement...
you wrote:
Perhaps, but if that part of the brain is what contains who I am, my memories and my experiences, and that is destroyed, then as far as I'm concerned, I'm dead.
Well, we already know that personhood is distributed at least somewhat. We know this from people who have had brain damage. What happens thes is that you might change or lose some functionality. But there is no one special part that is go/no-go for personhood.
Even if my brain is salvaged, the resulting person that happens to have my cerebellum, medulla and occipital lobe is no more me than someone to whom I've donated by kidneys.
Well, that is just plain wrong! Your brain IS YOU! Your kidneys aint you!
Puhleeze!
As for time being on my side, you are assuming that these cryo companies/trusts/entities will have live that long. Pharaoh Rameses was buried with all kinds of stuff to help him in his afterlife... the Egyptians' beliefs aside, that stuff sure did not last tens of thousands of years.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
you wrote:
Why would people, in the future, bother waking you up?
Why do we bother to save people nowadays? If some person without a friend or relative in the world collapses in front of a hospital in America or Europe or many other places in the world, they are brought inside and emergency procedures are initiated. But why?
As a frozen person from the past, the future people will OWE ME. I helped build the world they inhabit.
Don't get me wrong, I see that it might be interesting for them from an archeological perspective. But it would be an awful lot of work to wake everybody up.
Well, their science will be more advanced. In the 40s, how much would it have cost to do many of the computative tasks that our computers do today? Thousands? Millions?
Your coffin (and your remains) might get destroyed in a nuclear war, or lost, in the meantime. As soon as we get those warp coils or infinite improbability drives working and start exploring the galaxy, your coffin might end up abandoned on a planet.
Why bother to get out of the bed tomorrow? You might as well just get run over by a bus? Why bother to do anything?
How would the future civilization know that they are the ones to wake you up?
Well, I am pretty sure we will be part of history. I'm not really worried about that.....
If I was to request to be frozen when I died, I wouldn't expect to be thawed and resurrected,
I am not worried about that.
But there are real concerns about storage--natural disasters, social unrest, a mixture of pandering politicians and religious fundamentalists, etc.
These sorts of concerns tell me that revival is certainly no sure thing....but cryonics sure does beat the hell out of the alternative....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Just what we need, dead people clogging up the mailing lists.
"Look out honey, 'cause I'm using technology" -- Search and Destroy -- Iggy Pop
You totally ignored my point. I explicitly mentioned my cerebellum, medulla and occipital lobe. I figured that since you present yourself as someone who seems to know what you are talking about, I figured that I could leave it at that. I guess that I was wrong.
The Cerebellum is the part of my brain that masters coordination, balance etc. The Medulla is the part of my brain that controls involuntary functions, like heart beat. The occipital lobe is part of the cerebrum that processes images and visual input. While you are correct in that "personhood" is somewhat distributed, I feel reasonably confident that if all of my brain was lost except these parts, pretty much who I am is also lost, similar to if my kidney was all that was left.
A set of personal, handwritten letters left nearby your will makes more sense in this context.
plain and simple :
WAHA!
My brother is the only one in my family who'd ever find my porn. And I trust him not to tell anyone else but rather view it as a sort of... inheritance.
Freedom: "I won't!"
My dad died very unexpectedly in December 2000. He had been involved in a whole series of business negotations for various tech support contracts. Suddenly - where is this guy?!? I set up Outlook Express to produce a set, automatic reply to all incoming emails, something to the effect of, "This is R_ W_, D_ W_'s son. I am sorry to inform you that... Please contact L_ Corporation at xxx.yyy.zzzz if you need further assistance."
I think of all the people I email, and not just for fun, but to get stuff done. Committees, colleagues, publisher(s). What would my wife do if suddenly she had to handle all this?
It's actually a serious issue.
Dearest Friends,
You think you could get rid of me so easily?
You think a little thing like death would put me down?
Oh no,
I'M BACK !
Mauuhahahahahaha
You'll have to maintain the message with every changle of computer (your family will not start the 50 year old computer they found in your basement, which might not even work anymore!)
But if you fear that your house might burn down, write it in clay and burn it. This way it will survive even burning-down of your house.
Of course, it's still unlikely they'll find it afterwards. But at least, there's a chance that archaeologists find it in a few thousand years.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
With such technology, I'm surprised they aren't offering pre-written 'after death' notes. With this option, the user wouldn't even have to write their own contents. Simply click on the note that is most appealing to your situation. It would be on-par with the 1-click shopping feature at Amazon. There could be the 1-click Suicide Note, simply with the contents "Goodbye cruel world.". What about the 1-click Vengeful Sibling Note, which reads "Haha! I'm dead now and didn't leave you a single penny in the will!" The possibilities are really endless.
And what of the legal consequences if someone happens to be murdered, and they have a subscription to this service? Could the e-mails be considered evidence if, for example, they were updated within the last week or two?
I usually move all my personal stuff from my old computer to a new one. Or at least the most important personal stuff.
If you're going to leave a message on a computer, you wouldn't leave it in a computer and then not use that computer for 50 years.
(Hmm, or maybe you would. I guess human memory can only go as far.)
Email is a broken thing,
so any attachements would be stripped.
All the receivers would have other accounts.
Why not just arrainge to have DVD made, or
a super 8 tape.
What a waste.
Oh, and you can name a star after yourself too.
BFD
Maybe you are already dead and you just don't know it.
n/t
Dear family and friends: You wouldn't believe the bandwith you can get in heaven. Make sure you are good, because in hell all you get is dial up. 9600 baud. Write back! --And then everybody would be freaked out
Free Flat Screen
Now THAT does mean after some nuclear incident I could get a truly lot of spam. What a mess...
There you are, staring at me again.
what makes you think they'll believe you when you're dead?