Slashdot Mirror
How Can I Build a Portable "Dead-Man's" Switch?
An anonymous reader asks: "I'm a widower caring for my very disabled child. I have family who check in on me often, but not reliably, and not every day. How can I rig up a 'dead-man's switch' that will alert family or emergency services should something happen to me, so that my child can be cared for? Her medical needs are significant enough that being alone for even an hour could be fatal for her. We do occasionally get out of the house, so a GPS type cellphone and a heart-rate monitor watch would seem to be the ticket, but how to link the two and get the desired dialing behaviour?"
There's this bluetooth enabled Alive Heart Monitor that apparently works with GPS, and with a PDA/smartphone or a server. You'd probably need to write (or hire someone to write) an application to use the data for the actual contacting other people in case of x part, but the hardware seems to exist for what you want to do.
Have you considered a medic alert bracelet for the times when you're out? Or are you in remote, non-populated areas?
May I suggest you visit a medical store? Get a device like those made for hospitals or old folks. Probably easier than posting to slashdot.
If we are talking about a serious system here, you aren't going to be able to do this yourself. Just for starters, think about how complicated this would be if you decide to have a shower. You will have to deactivate the whole shooting match and then get it all back up and running again afterwards. Of course, if you slip in the shower, you're screwed. There are already solutions out there that you can sign up for. One that I have seen is a pendant you wear around your neck that has a button on it. One push, and your relatives are notified by phone. Or, fail to push the button on a regular basis and a phone call comes from the monitoring service, who can also dispatch 911, etc. Finally, at the risk of being harsh, if you truly believe you may die suddenly with no notice at any time, you seriously need to reconsider your current care arrangements. You do not strike me as qualifying to care for some with the needs you imply in your question. Please take this as honest advice, not a flame.
Being disabled and prone to dangerous falls myself, I know this sentiment all to well. Needless to say, I've had difficulty finding something that would not only work within my home, but anywhere I go, without needing to carry a full-blown cell-phone.
Something like a human-based form of OnStar, but with a heart/lung monitor and an accelerometer/impact sensor (to detect the speed and severity of a fall).
8==8 Bones 8==8
Are you advocating peace through censorship? Do you honestly believe that is workable?
Our species survives because most of us are decent. The day that ceases to be true this little experiment called "Man" is over. No "Loose lips sink ships" jibber-jabber is going to prevent that.
-Peter
My aunt uses a device which is medically implanted by her heart. If her heart stops is defibs and logs a report. The same device can be modified to make a phone call and pass along GPS coordinates. Problem is, this requires surgery so it is not a DIY project. It is a nice solution though and water proof too. Talk to your doctor.
-Tim Louden
A valid point. But on the other hand, how DO you build a mid-size engine with scrap type material? That'd be pretty awesome.
Also, this isn't really applicable to terrorism. I read it and thought of that, too, and I was going to tell him to go with the classic-for-a-reason clothespin method, but apparently he just wants other people to know when he's dead. Not particularly useful for killing others.
I don't think hostilies "broke out".
http://www.bash.org/?14750
Upon reading just the title, that actually *was* what passed through my head, followed by trying to come up with what could be a legitimate use for such a switch.
I'd consider this to be either a legitimate question, or a fake one well crafted. It occurs to me that a suicide bomber really wouldn't have the need for GPS anywhere in this system, as the location of someone who has just blown himself up is really rather apparent.
I saw an interesting article in a Japanese newspaper, it relies upon a relatively unique cultural circumstance, but I think you'll be inspired to think of how it can be adapted. The device was invented for one guy's family, but after it got some writeups in the newspapers, the idea was so popular that it went into production, and now lots of people have them.
There are many elderly Japanese people who live alone, some are deaf and can't use the phone, etc. so it's hard to get a way to check in on them to see if they're still alive. But almost every home has a hot-pot, an insulated pot with an electric heater used to keep water near the boiling point, to make tea every day. So some clever guy put a sensor in the hot-pot, if nobody picks it up within a day, it phones a preprogrammed number to alert someone to check in on them. Yeah, these people drink a lot of tea, it was the only thing they could think of that elderly people did EVERY day.
Of course this only checks in once a day, but you could probably think of other ways to adapt this idea.
Needless to say as much as I would have liked to help from a technical standpoint I learned EVEN I can excersise caution when it comes to men in black suits paying me a visit....
And this is why "security" kills more innocent people than the terrorists ever will, not to mention raising questions about who the real source of terror is.
KFG
My usual "dead man's switch" is a live grenade... however it probably wouldn't fit your situation very well. Nevermind. Good for hostage situations and job interviews though.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
There are organizations that support and install this type of thing in other countries (that don't have Homeland Security), maybe it's just your paranoia.
Often the solution is a box attached to a phone line which is used to call a preset number in Emergencies.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
This is not everything, but this type of phone might help-
e r?item=phoneFirst&action=viewPhoneDetail&selectedP honeId=2060
It is normally meant for kids, but it has reduced number of buttons, and a dedicated emergency button...
http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/store/controll
from the site-
Migo from Verizon Wireless is a kid-friendly wireless phone that lets parents and kids stay in touch. It's fun for them, and added peace of mind for you. The Migo phone has a simplified keypad that allows you to program in 4 numbers, an incredible speakerphone and a dedicated emergency key. And with Chaperonesm, you can use your handset or PC to locate your child's Migo. This is the perfect phone to keep kids and parents connected.
Note: I have no interests / investments / work relationship with verizon wireless.
I don't think you need a dead man switch. (I work with dead man's switches all the time in industrial robotics). What you could probably get away with is a vigilance control switch. From Wikipedia:
Vigilance control, also called an alerter, is similar to a dead man's switch, the difference being that a vigilance control system requires that the operator press a button at specified regular intervals. If the operator fails to operate the vigilance control, a warning sounds, and should the driver still not operate the vigilance control the machinery will stop.
I have one of these motorola pagers that my company gave me to carry around. It may only be available in Canada, but I'm sure you can find something similar in your area.
At any rate, you can send a page to it with an email, and then you have the option to reply to the email with a canned response like "OK" or "Will call back soon", etc. I was thinking that you could write a script on a server that would kick off an email to your pager every 30 minutes and if it didn't see a response within 15 minutes, activate some kind of emergency routine like contacting a relative. The timing could be varied to your needs.
It would be easier if you had something that hung around your neck, or a wristwatch that beeped every 15 minutes and required you to push a button to silence the alarm. Not silencing the alarm would somehow trigger your emergency routine. Using a windows mobile device or a blackberry (the API is available for free) you could write a program for one of these devices to do this task and send an email if you failed to respond.
Of course, this only works during waking hours. I don't know if you hire someone to watch your child during the night while you're asleep or not.
I ran across this article. I wonder if it has gone any further than that.
Good luck with the search.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Buy a cell phone. Call your relatives every hour on the hour to chat about your cats (you do have cats don't you?). They'll hate you for it. (Don't worry, they're family.) They'll stop answering the phone. They'll talk about the old lady going senile. But if you ever miss a call, they'll be there in a heartbeat to find out what's wrong.
Some of us are more evolved, and don't believe in Fairy Tales
Your case seems too severe for this solution, and I DO NOT recommend you use it. Seek professional services and equipment.
You could create a dead-man's switch using a computer with a voice modem and a GPS enabled cell phone. First, determine the longest amount of time the child could survive on her own. For my example I will use 18 hours.
On the computer, you set a 12 hour countdown. At any time, you can reset the countdown. If you are going to jump in the shower, just reset it. Whenever the countdown reaches zero, the computer would produce an audible alarm.
If the audible alarm is not acknowledged in something like 15 minutes, the computer sends a SMS or e-mail message to the cell phone. To acknowledge the message, just reply to the sender. That would reset the countdown.
If the message to the cell phone is not acknowledged in an hour, the computer can lookup the GPS information on-line, determine if the phone was moving, call friends, neighbors, family, or even 911. You can use the voice modem to convert text to speech to broadcast a message and even the GPS coordinates to whoever the computer called.
Note: If the computer is used to dial 911, make sure the emergency response center knows that you have automated a message and will be providing GPS information.
On eBay, I recently noticed a cellphone designed for kids' use,
- with-GPS_W0QQitemZ270032251531
;-)
known (in Australia, at least) as an "i-Kids"
K-Mart had the pink version on sale (but each store had only ONE
to sell, when we tried to buy one, so we missed out) for Au$ 35.
See this (or similar) Aussie eBay item listing (of, better, the
web site referred to in it) for details:
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ikids-mobile-phone-Prepaid
In Oz, the thing comes locked to Vodaphone and might not work
with other carriers' (except as a phone, if at all), since its
GPS signals would need a custom base (read: paid service)
to do any tracking.
While not quite the "Dead Man" switch sought in the article,
I'd say it's a short step away from becoming one.
And it just might do - as is - (if there's a nearby network
that can track it) in a pinch.
Let us know how you solve this.
Obviously since I can't make it myself anymore, it's a sign I should just die.
Well, since diabetes is genetic... We all thank you for improving the gene pool.
Stop drinking water. If God has determined that you shall live, you'll live on your own. If He hasn't, you won't.
Please. Try it. If you had any faith, you would.
Just page people every couple of hours, If they dont get a page, they know something is wrong and can track you down via your GPS phone.
Might not be perfect, but better then what you are doing now.
( im sure other professional 'life alert' sort of things are out there with 24/7 monitoring, but doubt insurance would pay for it )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
At last, a lead in the Brian Wells case!
It was you!
--
Actually, type 1 diabetes is only partially genetic. It still requires some sort of environmental trigger. The entire mechanism isn't yet well understood.
There is already one program that I know of that attempts to do this. It is called DMS, but I can not recommend it, it is very flawed. Among the issues I have with the program: It gives no warning before sending out the death notices that you program, no chance for the user to abort it. It will send out the notices and take other actions (such as deleting files) even if the computer has been down for a long time and then is rebooted (assuming that dms is in the start-up directory where it should be), such as caused by hardware failure or even extended power failure. And it needs manual attention to restart it's count down times, it doesn't recognize from keyboard or mouse activity that you are still alive and restart the countdown, so if you ever forget to reset the counter the messages go out with no warning and no chance to stop them.
While the program is flawed, the concept is not. I keep hoping that I will find another version that addresses these problems and can be used for this purpose. I can see that this would be a big help to anyone concerned about the elderly living alone, anyone with a dependent child (or even a pet) who shares your concerns, and many other people.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Talk to your doctor. You do not want a DIY solution when someone's life depends on it.
You may also want to look into a managed care facility. You may be able to get them to accept both you and your child so you could continue to care for the child.
It's very likely that something will render you unconscious or otherwise impair your ability to call for help without killing you. A regular dead man's switch will not help in those cases.
What might work is something that requires you to push a button at regular intervals during daylight hours to verify that you're still alive and well.
The alternative might be to find someone to help care for your child. Easier said than done, I suppose.
If you're feeling like you could die at any moment, maybe you should address any health problems you might have, if any, and work to resolve any safety issues in your home, like slippery floors and showers, sharp corners, and such. And the McDougall diet gets a lot of good reviews from people who don't mind the boredom of healthy eating.
that is the dumbest idea ive ever heard of. you are a typical troll
if the dibility is such that life is at risk after one hour, why isn't the child in a care facility where they receive more than one person's care? Sometimes you think you're doing what's best for your children, but you're not.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
... if her medical needs weren't "significant enough that being alone for even an hour could be fatal for her." An hour is just too small of a window to accomplish anything useful without having so many false alarms that your family won't take the alerts seriously anymore. You really need to re-evaluate your living conditions.
http://outcampaign.org/
This seems to be a strange way to approach the problem. Your worry is that your child won't be able to live for long if you can't provide the proper care for her. Then, wouldn't it be better to give her a way of asking for care to be provided?
Assuming she's old enough, and not severely mentally disabled, this would seem to be the better option. After all, you could be perfectly alive and still be in a situation where you can't get to her fast enough.
If one really needs to make sure that one is ok in 30mins intervals it is way easier to build a system that requires the push of a button to reset a 30mins timer before calling the cops or something.
Smells fishy.......
-- Contradictions only exist in thought - not in reality.
I know I'm responding to a troll, but this brings up a serious point. Millions of people are walking around (and reproducing) who by all rights of nature should be dead. Are we weakening ourselves as a species? I think so...
You don't want a dead-man switch. You want a watchdog: a device which will send a message if you fail to reset it by pressing a button at least once an hour.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
So you're an old(?) person who is worried about kicking the bucket, but you care for an adult(?) child of yours who cannot care for herself, so you need some specialized technology to notify people who don't particularly care anyway?
If this was really important to anyone but you, you would be living with them-- or at least near them, and they would be looking out for you.
I practically live with my in-laws (I like them). I would never dream of living with my own parents (I don't like them). See how this works? Someday my parents will die-- oh well. Someday my in-laws will fall down and I'll help them back up.
Once you die your child will die pretty quickly afterward anyway since obviously no one else really cares (institutionalized living-- bedsores-- infection--death).
Sorry.
As a condolence, everyone dies.
Maybe you could work on a social network instead?
What is the nature of your child's affliction? Merely physical, so that technology could help your child live without you? Or, let's face facts, is your child so mentally disabled as to be nothing more than a pet to you (and obviously you alone)?
It seems that the problem is not that you are going to die, but rather that you child is never going to live.
Your family already checks in-- why not move closer to them? Don't give me crap about your job or your house. We're talking about the life of your child here. Which is more important? Move closer to people who are committed to helping you. Otherwise-- dream on. (cause calling an ambulance will only start the whole institution-bed sore-infection thing).
Not to mention the morons and lunatics now walking around being enabled by political correctness; in a prior era, someone would have long since had enough of their behaviour, and shot 'em.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I've got to agree. If you the affliction of the person you are caring for is so dire that they can die within an hour of no active care, and you are the only person who is available to give that care (that is, you live alone), then that is not a good situation. While I must applaud your desire to not institutionalize this person, sometimes that really is the best situation if you want them to survive beyond anything that might befall yourself. It's a tragic choice to have to make, but what you're really looking at is this: 1. should I continue caring for this person and accept that they might die if something happens to me, or 2. should I institutionalize them and know that they will have continuous care regardless of what happens to me, but that it will be at times impersonal. Personally, I would probably choose the latter if the other person's life was important to me, but then choose to spend as much time as feasible with them at the institution. If you are already giving continuous care, it sounds like you have plenty of time to spend with them as I doubt that you are working outside of the home... Just my $0.02.
I make heavy personal use of Asterisk PBX software. It allows my blacklisting unwanted calls. It also allows my own system of "follow-me" call forwarding to pass calls to my cell if the home extensions fail to answer.
Scheduling a call with the cron daemon is pretty easy. A kind of wake up service is also fairly easy to setup. With a cordless phone for home use, this could call said extension at various times of the day. When you answer the call, you would have to press a number or something to confirm that you are fine. Failing to press the number, it could make second attempts in case there was just fumbling, like a followup call within a minute or two. Failing more than once, it could email people, send calls to people, play a recorded message for each call appropriate for the target of the "notification". With the use of a cell phone, it could even check on you when away from home since it could work like any automated phone call/customer service line. Besides having a phone ring to wake you up in the middle of the night, hampering your sleep, I do not know how much help it would be in the night time hours. The cordless phones out now could cover most of people's small yards as well. It can also be easy to "911" yourself carrying it around with you, and with a little more effort, when you call 911, it could make other calls automatcally for you. Think 911 with a custom menu for types of emergencies with phone and email notifications to work with.
The mutltiple notice to people for multiple types of needs using multiple methods of communication could be of some help. Cell phone calls to my house, being identified as my cell phone via "caller id", I get prompted with a menu to allow me to cause things to happen, when any other call would ring the phones in the house. A cell phone speed dial could be setup to call home and cause functions to occur using said "menus" which are limited by what you can get a pc to execute. (email, phone call outbound recordings, serial cable control for some devices, IR controls of something near the computer with a TV universal remote function....)
Some of these ideas could enable automated response testing, and easy one button emergency notification. The GPS portion could be handled by recorded messages from cell phone orginating "emergency button" to mention the cell phone number/carrier to emergency contacts for use in tracking. Not so automated in that respect, but seems to be a workable solution.
they have some astoundingly well trained, carefully bred and intuitively intelligent real dog brand watchdogs out there now, will help the child from doing anything too stupid. And even save the day, say the parent got incapacitated, kid started a fire, the dog would drag her outside (given a dog switch on the door on the inside) and stuff like that. Also good therapy for any kid. All kids need a doggie,unless they are so allergic that this is impossible, in said case, get a standard poodle, almost allergy proof for people who are normally allergic to dogs. They are smart too, and you don't have to get them lion clipped, they look just fine with an over all neat and even clip.
How about setting up a computer that requires you to punch in a code and hit the "execute" button. You could have it set on a timer... say 108 minutes.
Nowadays, they troll Slashdot.
Some things just can't be done alone. Use the internet to find peope in your region who have similar problems and help them help you. Not only wil someone be looking in on you but they will no exactly what you are going through and know how to care for your child in an emergency. Ask for help and give some back, technology is not the solution for every human problem and is best applied when it works in conjunction with people.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
checking on a person more frequently than once per hour would suggest to me that an intensive care unit might be in order.
Check some of the systems meant for monitoring elderly people and patients.
Some of those might work only at home. http://www.istsec.fi/index.php?lang=eng
4816162342
'nuff said!
There are far better ways to research this yourself. Asking for Slashdotters to come up with something because you are too lazy to do a few google searches for the same websites anyone here could offer you is just...well, just lazy.
I understand you have a child you must care for on an hourly basis, but you obviously have time enough to surf it yourself if you read Slashdot with any regularity. So do so already. I'll go ahead and echo the other sentiments though: You cannot be there all the time and there will come times when you are alive, healthy and simply unable to attend the child you are caring for. This "dead-man switch" is not a solution to your problem, it is a salve for your worry. Get professional around-the-clock care for the child, because that is the only way you can be sure someone is likely to be there the moment the child has a problem requiring professional help. Anything else, anything less, and you are simply waiting for the day you are too busy/slow/tired/distracted and will spend the rest of your life blaming yourself for your child's death.
Look around for real help. It is there and only waiting for you to come asking. Don't let pride stand between you and your child's life.
Yes. Yes we are weakening as a species as a consequence - but the problem lies in trying to find a solution - on what grounds do we decide who lives and who dies? Assuming we seek unbiased, logical rules to decide who lives/dies we can't have a successful debate on the matter because we'd have to open it up for people to defend their lives with argument - and then when we decided they get to die they'll likely not agree with our movement and put up a fight - and then it's just a war - and that's pretty well where humanity has been since the dawn of time (being At War....Dawn of War?).
For example, I think you should die for needing me to spell out this part of the problem for you - I imagine you'll disagree though.
Carry a card in your wallet that says "I am a carer. If anything happens to me, my disabled child will be alone and in need of assistance. Please take the following steps: ... "
-- Nick "Hallo this is Beel Gates, und I pronounce weendows as
Medical Intelligence VPS
I'm not sure it can be programmed to your requirements, but at least it has all the required components in one package: GPS, GSM, ECG
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Friends, lots of them.
Seriously.
If you have this load as a caregiver, just having people around, helping and having someone to kvetch with is not just a good idea, but critical, if only for your own emotional health.
There are other people in the same boat, so perhaps finding or forming a community might be the way to go. Something less collective then a commune, but a structure like http://www.bruderhof.com/ (if christian). Equivalent communities exist in other religious traditions, as well as the religious (monks, nuns and others)associated with a belief structure.
Technolocial measures sound neat, but they have so many points of failure compounded by the people that have to be around to insure that they don't fail, that I would be suspicious of the lot. Not that I feel that way, but I would adopt that attitude by policy.
Consider the call clearing center that an alarm panel calls into: the UL standard calls for redundant systems that fail safe, two levels of backup power generation, duplicated sites, alarm receivers that fail busy so calls can get through, requirement for manual control, full data logging, crisis triage, etc.
A full technology solution is suspect, a hybrid system is probably better, and you have the adventure of searching out the real players from the fakes. Look to the service providers that a hospital might use.
And look carefully at response time: under disaster conditions it probably will swing out past your hour requirement.
Oh, you have to concern yourself with the other side: Are your critical systems on backup power? UPS and autostart generators? Tested each week?
There is a very good reason why the backup batteries in the telcos are usually glass lined lead-acid submarine batteries that (usually) power diesel boats. I don't think the cable co's are quite there yet. Just a guess.
Feel free to email me if required - there are a lot of details I don't know, and a phone call might be needed.
Don't be afraid of the complexity, a few minutes with some brainstorming buddies can cut that down to size. The legwork is a different story!
Best of luck!
This is progress?
God is intervening! He's making the father post on slashdot to obfuscate his devine powers which will be used to safe the child. This IS part of the plan!
I do hope he will make the same intervention for you. You seem to be very confident that you are on the living side of the plan. Don't worry, I will not interfere.
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)
And when I read your subject, I thought you were going to say that this is the sort of thing that homeland security really should be covering... what's the sense of having people on guard to protect the USA from terrorists 24/7 if they can't also double by protecting US citizens having trouble within the homeland? They're already watching, and they're getting mucho-funding, so setting up a nationwide system where people in this sort of situation can push a button in an emergency and have ambulances rush to their house (and notify neighbors and emergency contacts) shouldn't be a huge trouble. I'm sure the DHS could get the cell carriers to provide emergency services like this, possibly without cost.
In all reality, it's pointless to withhold information from anyone, anywhere. If we start doing that, then (the cliche) "only the outlaws will have it" comes into play. Especially today, with the internet, there is no information that cannot be obtained - even in heavily-censored countries like China - without some measure of work, ingenuity, and willfulness to break the law. Some things may be harder to get, but it won't stop anyone in the long run. Just like DRM, all it does is make it more difficult for those who have a legitimate reason for wanting to know to get what they need.
I fail to see the difficulty here...
.profile .bash_logout script that contacts everyone necessary
1) Give her an account on your NAT machine
2) Add "export TMOUT=3540" to her
3) Write a
4) Log her in
If she doesn't whack a key every 59 minutes, it will log her out, thus alerting everyone necessary via email, paging, fax, whatever you like.
"Help! I've fallen, and I can't get up!"
Seriously. It may be marketed to the senior citizen set, but this or a similar service is exactly what you're asking for.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
As others have noted, this is something crying out for a social solution, not a technological one, but I'll indulge the "build your own" technological fetish for a moment.
Monitoring for falls uses off-the-shelf accelerometers. Another poster in this thread mentioned a BlueTooth enabled heart monitor, of which there appear to be several. The hard bit is notification.
Take a look at the Telit GM682 for the cell phone portion of your control. You can get 'em in quantity one from Spark Fun, and probably other places. It's basically a cell phone with a serial port that takes AT style commands, and is great for mobile hacking applications. After that it's just a microcontroller or a Gumstix depending on where your power consumption, weight, and processing power curves meet.
Given my experiences with cell phone coverage and reliability, I'd have your actual dead-man switch on your server somewhere, and have it trigger if it didn't get an "alive" signal from the device you carry every so often, because it sounds like you'd far rather trigger false positives than have a false negative.
Cryonicists want this same sort of device to minimize warm ischemia time, and there isn't anything off-the-shelf that does it. The "I've fallen and can't get up" pendants are a good start. -ejay
You need to make sure that the local EMS and police departments are aware of your situation. Where I live, emergency services has a system called "Are You OK" that automatically dials a list of people (who are homebound) in the town at a certain hour. If they don't pick up the phone, it prints out a report, and the dispatcher tells the police to check on the residences.
I was a police officer for a while, and I had to check several of those non-answered calls. Thankfully, they all were either out-of-town (and failed to notify the police) or just didn't hear the phone, but we did go to their house and didn't leave until we knew what the problem was.
Agreeing with a lot of the previous posters, there really needs to be something a lot more involved than just you caring for the individual. I work in healthcare (MHMR), and a lot can easily go wrong very quickly. You need to seek assistance from local and state services if you need help. In fact, if you are charged for providing care, you are the only one caring for a person that is so disabled, and you cannot provide that care, you could possibly be brought up on charges of abuse. One mistake (you trip and are knocked unconscious) could kill this person. If you are a healthcare professional, you should know better.
Whatever you do, find some assistance; you won't be able to do it all alone.
I don't reply to Anonymous posts; if you have something to say to me, identify yourself or I won't reply.
Maybe I watch too much television, but this just seems... fishy.
I'm wondering if perhaps this isn't some psycho-freak who likes to keep people captive and is paranoid about one of them either dying or escaping and wants to be able to be notified immediately in the event of either happening, so he decided to post a "what if" question to the Slash-Geeks. He wants to be able to monitor his captives without having to be physically present.
Oh wait, nevermind... if this were the case, he would be posting as the anonymous coward instead of me.
Obviously she is in pretty bad shape if she could die if unaided for an hour. Is your desire to have a child so great that you do not care about her suffering or the fact that you are ruining your life as well? The prudent course of action would be to simply let nature take its course. Her suffering and yours will be over. You will have time in your life for a new child that will be able to fulfill all the natural reasons while you desire one so badly.
Vigilance control, also called an alerter, is similar to a dead man's switch, the difference being that a vigilance control system requires that the operator press a button at specified regular intervals. If the operator fails to operate the vigilance control, a warning sounds, and should the driver still not operate the vigilance control the machinery will stop.
Gee, why does this make me think of a certain TV show where people need to enter a special sequence of numbers every 108 minutes or else something very bad will happen?
I need to stop watching so much TV and get a life.
Dunno... one of my acquaintances had a kid with a siezure problem (he would stop breathing and fall over).
Their solution was a Nefoundlander (sp?) -- big hairy dog that drools a lot. One day it happened, and the dog picked the kid up, put him on his back (err... they're like 3 feet tall) and carried him home.
I've been impressed with their manners and abilities, but I am still hesitant with that level of trust. Then again, their son wouldn't be able to participate in after-school sports otherwise...
info on builing mid size engines with scrap type material
I've always fancied building a jet engine but I was thinking of a turbojet made from a truck supercharger (or something similar). I mean really, a PULSEJET! didn't those go out with doodlebugs?
That answer is so stupid it's not even flame bait...
This is your daughters life you are talking about, you seriously want to DIY something together in case the worse happens....
Spend some money and buy something that is proven todo the job from a professional company.
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
Does the entire neighborhood get EMP'd to smithereens?
My bad.
If being alone for an hour can be fatal, this kid needs to have a professional available 24/7. If you happened to be knocked unconscious due to a fall or was in a very deep sleep, she could have a medical emergency that you wouldn't be able to respond to in time.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
I should have been more specific, the fellow in question requesting assitance was IN IRAQ.....During hostilities....I did not make that clear in my post, there are laws regarding aid to the enemy...
Actually, Verizon is getting ready to launch a version of this phone intended for the elderly as well. I understand that it has the same reduced-buttons face, but it comes in less childish colors. I don't know whether they changed the form factor any.
I'm sorry that I can't provide a link or evidence; this is just something I learned from a Verizon saleslady.
I think the most obvious solution would be to have friends. Let your coworkers know too.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
... to be proud to be European. Having the world's biggest economy matters little if people still need to be asking questions like this.
Just because something can be used for evil doesn't mean that it should never be made --- Just about everything ever made has some kind of an evil use -- e.g. paper cutters and 9/11. The best you can look at is immediate use and probable general use. If those come out evil then, yes, I agree that you should walk away. I don't see that here.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
I know I'm responding to a troll, but this brings up a serious point. Millions of people are walking around (and reproducing) who by all rights of nature should be dead. Are we weakening ourselves as a species? I think so...
With the exception of domestic breeds of animals, nearly the entire wild kingdom is in better health than us... I forget the numbers, but the incidents of nearly all genetic-related health defects, such as blindness or diabetes, is drastically less in the animal world.
Society brought about two fundamental sea-changes in the way we breed and grow, and our evolution has been guided by these processes for millenia - and I wonder if the idea of consciousness and society, and these two changes, aren't in fact prerequisite...
The first change was care of the weakest; instead of culling, human cultures began coddling. Hospice care, midwives, and canes were just the beginning. Then came eyeglasses, insulin shots, antibiotics. Now we've got a million ways to keep an organism that will die without treatment alive, all varying according to symptoms and severity. What this means is that, except for the most inconvenient, physically disfiguring, or social / mental impairment, there's no real evolutionary pressure to decrease this dependance on modern medical technology.
The second change was consensual front-to-front (or whatever) recreational sex. We found out we liked having sex, and our new anatomies were really well designed for it. Then we found out we liked it even more if we did it often. Then we found out that we really really liked it when everyone involved chose to do it and was having fun. This gives us an ability to meta-evolve; by preferentially choosing partners that show traits that we find desirable, and one may assume in some percent of cases these are normalized to some societal mean, we have given ourselves the ability to self-direct evolution for future generations, merely by creating a society that values some individuals and doesn't others.
I think we're going to see that now that we're fully conscious, evolution will continue to be less and less about the physical body, at a pace roughly equivalent with increases in medical technology, and will be more and more about creating organisms that function excellently as part of a large diverse society - and evolution starts and ends at sexual desire on this score.
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!