Recently one of my close friends died and I found it upsetting that her emails are impossible for her family to access, if only because she left no password behind. She wrote often and I kept correspondence between us.
I keep some letters, but I understand that if I die, my family will discover them. I can censure what I decide to keep. Emails are different in that a password implies that only I can read those emails, so there may well be material which might be hurtful to others once I'm gone.
Unless a family is left a password in a will, those emails should remain private, as they may not have been filtered in the same way as a collection of letters in a shoebox would have been. A family can never be sure if their loved ones would approve.
However, I'm sure historians would sleep more comfortably at night if users were able to opt in to have their emails archived for a hundred years in the event of their death. On the other hand imagine the SPAM they have to contend with!
My advice. Leave passwords in wills.
You're never going to need it. Ebay stuff as soon as you realise you haven't used it in a few months. If it's worth forty quid now it won't be worth anything this time next year. If you need it again, buy another one (probably for less than you sold it for).
They claim the internet cannot be destroyed for this reason, but on September 11th I noticed for the first time that the only thing that brings it to it's knees is mass panic.
Unlikely that Al Quaida would bother to damage infrastructure when large scale terrorism communicated live to the world proves extremely damaging to the world economy (see 9/11) denting the confidence of the USA and causing a huge amount of grief and destruction.
Communications infrastructure is far easier to fix; geeks are employed across the world to cope with these eventualities. Snip big important cables for a large company and I'm sure that if they're not fixed within 2 hours the staff will all have been moved to a duplicate office situated 10 miles down the road.
Although I keep what you might call a blog on my own computer, it's more a private diary or journal than a blog. I kept a diary on paper for 10 years and have moved over to this system for numerous reasons.
I think that blogs take away the integrity of a diary. A good diarist doesn't write for an audience, only for himself. Samuel Pepys' diaries have worth because he writes without the bias you would expect in a blog, where the writer may have an agenda or an axe to grind.
I wouldn't look to blogs for facts and nor would I trawl through one looking for a stranger's opinion when I'm more likely to find the quality and breadth of opinion in a forum.
Blogs seem to me to be there for egotists who feel they have an audience when they post to a webpage - often enough the quality of the writing isn't of a good standard.
Things my girlfriend and I have argued about is an exception however. Well written and very funny.
I can imagine some guy out there will hole himself up in his study for a weekend and write a program to download discussions from site like slashdot - it'll behave like his favourite newsreader used to and ensure he never has to put up with any more spam. Standard XML format so that other sites can use the same software, automatic management of your user id's for each different site, and posts sent in the background so you don't have to wait for ages for responses to come back. Spammers won't have the credentials when they first join to achieve more than a 0 (and will be ignored) and as soon as they're spotted, their whole login will be revoked. And then back to a web-based form if they want to waste more time trying again...
I've sold it to myself now - I'm off to hole myself up in my study for a weekend and write a program to download discussions from site like slashdot....
It has no value any more. I have never found any active discussions inside that maze before, only spam. Dead groups live on seemingly forever, irrelevant, misspelt or vaguely named groups waste my time in my search for a discussion space with a community feel anything like that of the BBS days where people had something to say.
Where is it a good place to interact? Dead and gone...
Slashdot Mirror
Recently one of my close friends died and I found it upsetting that her emails are impossible for her family to access, if only because she left no password behind. She wrote often and I kept correspondence between us. I keep some letters, but I understand that if I die, my family will discover them. I can censure what I decide to keep. Emails are different in that a password implies that only I can read those emails, so there may well be material which might be hurtful to others once I'm gone. Unless a family is left a password in a will, those emails should remain private, as they may not have been filtered in the same way as a collection of letters in a shoebox would have been. A family can never be sure if their loved ones would approve. However, I'm sure historians would sleep more comfortably at night if users were able to opt in to have their emails archived for a hundred years in the event of their death. On the other hand imagine the SPAM they have to contend with! My advice. Leave passwords in wills.
You're never going to need it. Ebay stuff as soon as you realise you haven't used it in a few months. If it's worth forty quid now it won't be worth anything this time next year. If you need it again, buy another one (probably for less than you sold it for).
They claim the internet cannot be destroyed for this reason, but on September 11th I noticed for the first time that the only thing that brings it to it's knees is mass panic.
Unlikely that Al Quaida would bother to damage infrastructure when large scale terrorism communicated live to the world proves extremely damaging to the world economy (see 9/11) denting the confidence of the USA and causing a huge amount of grief and destruction.
Communications infrastructure is far easier to fix; geeks are employed across the world to cope with these eventualities. Snip big important cables for a large company and I'm sure that if they're not fixed within 2 hours the staff will all have been moved to a duplicate office situated 10 miles down the road.
Although I keep what you might call a blog on my own computer, it's more a private diary or journal than a blog. I kept a diary on paper for 10 years and have moved over to this system for numerous reasons. I think that blogs take away the integrity of a diary. A good diarist doesn't write for an audience, only for himself. Samuel Pepys' diaries have worth because he writes without the bias you would expect in a blog, where the writer may have an agenda or an axe to grind. I wouldn't look to blogs for facts and nor would I trawl through one looking for a stranger's opinion when I'm more likely to find the quality and breadth of opinion in a forum. Blogs seem to me to be there for egotists who feel they have an audience when they post to a webpage - often enough the quality of the writing isn't of a good standard. Things my girlfriend and I have argued about is an exception however. Well written and very funny.
I can imagine some guy out there will hole himself up in his study for a weekend and write a program to download discussions from site like slashdot - it'll behave like his favourite newsreader used to and ensure he never has to put up with any more spam. Standard XML format so that other sites can use the same software, automatic management of your user id's for each different site, and posts sent in the background so you don't have to wait for ages for responses to come back. Spammers won't have the credentials when they first join to achieve more than a 0 (and will be ignored) and as soon as they're spotted, their whole login will be revoked. And then back to a web-based form if they want to waste more time trying again... I've sold it to myself now - I'm off to hole myself up in my study for a weekend and write a program to download discussions from site like slashdot....
It has no value any more. I have never found any active discussions inside that maze before, only spam. Dead groups live on seemingly forever, irrelevant, misspelt or vaguely named groups waste my time in my search for a discussion space with a community feel anything like that of the BBS days where people had something to say. Where is it a good place to interact? Dead and gone...