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What Does Your Dead Man's Switch Do?
LqdEngineer asks: "How many of you use or have used a Dead Man's Switch designed to perform some action if you don't check in for a certain amount of time? Recently, I decided to put one together using MySQL and some cron jobs, but I wanted to see what others have their switches set up to do in the event you fail to check in. E-mails to loved ones? Send encryption keys to friends/family? Hate mail to your boss? Has anyone ever been on the receiving end of the results of such a system?"
From TFS:
I'll counter with my own ask-ask-slashdot: why would you use MySQL? It's only one more component to fail after you've expired.
My advice: lose the extraneous components; and get a wife, too: they come with a redundant dead man's mechanism.
My deadman's switch is programmed to create a series of new deadmen's switches, each more complex than the last.
delete all the porn!
Monstar L
I've always thought that a Dead Man's Switch held too many problems. Unless you have people that are 'out to get you' and your switch is your leverage, then it's not much use.
What happens if you get into a severe accident and end up in the hospital without the ability to 'check in' with it? What happens if you are stranded at an airport with a snowstorm? What if you are stranded at a ski lodge in the mountains in the middle of a snow storm? etc...
If you were ever unable to check in with the switch, then you would probably regret hate mail to your boss or other nasties that you had planned to send to people you hate. It would also be an unwelcome surprise for friends and family to get 'letters from the dead' just to find out that you really aren't dead. It would definitely be a detriment to you if you had it setup to donate all of the money in your bank accounts to charities....
The Dead Man's Switch has too many if's in it. It makes more sense to just put together a will and make sure you entrust someone you deeply trust to execute it.
It's hooked up to my personal suicide machine.
Why not make a system that, after you've passed away, pretends to be you from beyond the grave?
Maybe it checks your email contacts (most people will know you've passed on of course) and sends out randomly generated messages about how great heaven is?
"You'll never believe it! The Mormons were right!!"
If I don't check in with my Jewish mother every few days she'll go crazy and call everyone I might have once talked to.
I didn't set this up, it was genetics.
What if after your death your relatives just walk in and happily unplug your Linux boxes (having no idea how they even work) before your cool scripts even get a chance to run. :S
Ok it sounds paranoid but on several occasions I've met up with someone from the internet.
I usually have a few details about them but given I'm into the alternative scene (and I don't mean music) you don't usually just pass these details to a friend.
Never the less, meeting up with someone like this for these kind of activities is down right dangerous, taking a few precautions is always sensible.
I usually put together a zip file filled with every piece of contact information I have for this person and use a cron job to email this in 48 hours if I dont stop it.
I also send a text message to myself prior to entering anyones house that I am meeting like this - the uk mobile phone companies will store location information for up to 3 years.
Ok its paranoid but I know several people (though usually women) that have been raped meeting like this - worse things could possibly happen as you are taking your life in your hands doing though. I'll admit that being a guy I am probably less vulnrable - but its better to be on the safe side and atleast give yourself some backup.
Its never gone off before... but its nice to know its set up - just in case.
And after all that torture, all that pain and death, everyone who receives the message deletes it as spam....
...
So you won't sell your account until you're dead, huh...
Excuse me, I need to make a few phone calls.
You've got a nice account, by the way. Very nice...
All rites reversed 2010
About six years ago I had the misfortune of working for a company where our lead developer was a complete fruitcake. He wore all black every day, put his cigarettes out on his keyboard, you name it. He was one of those die-hard, born-in-the-soup hackers who started out configuring the household appliances to kill his family.
A genuine genius, and impossible to work with.
Well, one week he had happened to catch some variant on the face-melting death. I'm talking about the kind of influenza which turns your various facial orifices into creeping faucets of mucus. His wife assured me of a fever which would kill a lesser being. Sweat sheeted off his face like a rainstorm on a greenhouse roof. Needless to say he took some time off.
I get a call on Friday afternoon and it's him. The sounds coming from his end of the call were like the elephant throwing up and trying to talk into the little voice scrambling doohickey from the movie Scream. "You have to come get me," he says. "Why?" I reply. "Because I'm in no shape to drive, and I need to login to my computer there." Empathetically, I told him to stay there if he was sick. "You don't understand," he barfed, "If I don't login once a week..."
Yes. He had a DMS on our key development machines. One which he explained would lock up everything tighter than [gratuitous image deleted].
I was unthrilled to say the least, and refrained from chewing him out as he brought his barely clothed mass of plague into my beautiful car, coughed plumes of virii and bacteria into our office, made my boss practically bust a vein in his forehead as I led his nearly-blind ass to his computer-- all because he refused to share his password with us to access and protect company property --then finally have the nerve to croak a child-like plea for McDonald's from my back seat on the way home.
Once he was fully recovered we had the intervention and asked the usual questions, Why do you think this is necessary? What are you hiding from us? How screwed would we actually be if he actually died? Etc. In his paranoid, seen-the-Matrix-too-many-times universe, there was nothing wrong with installing some 'basic security'.
I did mention this guy was a genius, right?
The boss caved completely, and to be honest, we all knew there was no way in heck we could find whatever weird little bombs he'd hidden in our own system let alone the machine he'd practically joined to at the spine 12 hours a day. I quit the company that June, Mr. Maniac is still writing all their code and the company is quite successful.
So, yeah, DMS... Why send email to the unworthy after you're claimed in the Lord's rapture, when you can just grab your entire company by the nuts and twist?
(Posted as AC because I'm at work.)
Maybe it will continue after your death, but considering the fact that the universe is merely a figment of my imagination, I predict that my death will have a greater impact.
"Every Setpember, 16 Mexicans have a great party celebrating the revolution of Mexico but the fact is, that the revolution was not complete. " Is it the same 16 Mexicans every year? If you are one of only 16 Mexicans to attend this great party, you really need a Dead Man's Switch giving some one else your party spot!