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What Does Your Dead Man's Switch Do?
Posted by
Cliff
on Wed Jan 10, 2007 02:30 AM
from the in-the-event-of-doom dept.
from the in-the-event-of-doom dept.
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?"
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Wives and Other DMSs (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Wives and Other DMSs (Score:5, Funny)
they come with a redundant dead man's mechanism
they come with a redundant dead man's mechanism
hmmm. Now I think I understand what's in the nightstand drawer.
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Feed the worms (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Feed the worms (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess in this case one is leaving a remnant for some paleopsychologist to analyze how 21st century man was so screwed up.
Plenty of people have left writings with the stipulation that they only be released some time after death. This is just an extension that allows do-it-yourself world interaction after your self is gone.
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Re:Feed the worms (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Wives and Other DMSs (Score:4, Funny)
You've clearly never been married or else you'd realize that the need for a dead man's switch rises dramatically in the years following ;)
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There's only one thing it should do (Score:3, Funny)
My gas pedal... (Score:4, Funny)
Grump
Re:My gas pedal... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:My gas pedal... (Score:4, Funny)
s/55/4
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Halo. (Score:5, Funny)
creates more deadmens switches (Score:5, Funny)
First things first (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:First things first (Score:4, Interesting)
Basically, if it turns out religion is right, you now have some negotiable material to barter with should you wind up going the wrong direction. If religion turns out to be wrong and you just fade to dust, then you aren't in a position to worry about it anymore either.
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Re:First things first (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:First things first (Score:5, Funny)
+1 Solipsist
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Re:First things first (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:First things first (Score:4, Insightful)
World may be meaningless to you. You are dead. You, in effect, do not exist anymore. But the world does not stop existing simply because you expire.
You are not the center of the universe. You are merely an almost infinitesimal part of the big, grand, large, larger than life universe.
Children are naturally egoist. You are 22. What is your excuse?
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Re:First things first (Score:4, Funny)
If they aren't down my life's passion of snuff films, poop sex and tentacle porn then let em starve.
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Re:First things first (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that consequences of your death can't concern you when you're dead, in no way means that reasonably foreseeable post-mortem consequences should not concern you now.
That's why even people who don't believe in any sort of "afterlife" still buy life insurance to take care of their kids.
You don't need any sort of supernatural belief to end up with behavior that most people would call "moral", just some compassion and a reasonable ability to foresee the consequences of your actions.
Which takes me off on a bit of a tangent...
Foreseeing the effects of our actions is of obvious use; if you can't do that to at least some degree, you'll quickly end up dead or institutionalized.
But compassion? What's in it for me, you wonder.
Cultivating compassion expands the self. We're pretty darn sure that the human body known as "Lukas Beeler" is eventually going to stop functioning and in some way dissolve (rot in the ground, be burned up, eaten by squirrels, whatever). If you completely identify "yourself" as "Lukas Beeler", well, then, that's it for you. Maybe you can tickle the pleasure centers of that lump of meat a little bit before it dissolves, but that seems an unsatisfactory goal.
But is identifying "yourself" as "Lukas Beeler" the only option? Throughout history, some people - people who seem to derive a great deal more contentment from life than the average Joe - have suggested that transpersonalization provides a more satisfactory experience. This means identifying "yourself" as more than "Lukas Beeler".
By "more than", I do not mean anything supernatural, I am not speaking of a "soul" or anything metaphysical like that. But what if, for example, you were to invest a portion of your own concept of identity into your family? Unless all your relatives are childless, your family will outlast your body, so that "you" might have a larger and longer existence than the body of "Lukas Beeler".
What if you were to invest your identity into your community, your city or your nation? That's an even larger and longer existence. Perhaps we have here a sensible argument for patriotism. But why stop there, when by identifying "yourself" with the whole human race, "you" get even bigger and longer-lived?
Now, hold on there, you ask. How in world am I supposed to accomplish this "investment of identity" that you're going on about? Well, it means to think of yourself as these other people. It's an exercise of imagination, to see things through their eyes, to feel what they feel. With that exercise, eventually it can be seen that the ordinary idea of "self" is just a mental construct, just an idea, not an immutable reality.
In other words, compassion is the tool and the method to get You out of you, the "big You" of consciousness out of the "small you" of flesh.
Indeed, if you get good at it, you may find that you can see "yourself" not just in other humans, but in other animals; in the trees; in the whole biosphere. Expanding "yourself" until not much identity is left connected with the body known as "Lukas Beeler".
And maybe you can keep going. Eventually you might find yourself worrying about the heat death of the observable Universe, billions of years in the future, as your end, instead of the dissolution of "Lukas Beeler" in a few decades. That's a pretty massive trade-up. And if you get that far, it's comforting to consider that cosmology seems more and more to be considering some sort of "multi-verse" scheme in which our observable Universe is only a part; there's still more to become.
"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us 'universe', a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the re
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Not if I can help it! (Score:4, Funny)
Of course, the most important single word on the bracelet is "REWARD".
I've also made sure that my wife (who is in the process of signing up) and my friends (some of whom are also signed up) are on board with this, and willing to go to bat for me if the coroner decides to get uppity.
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What happens when you forget? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What happens when you forget? (Score:5, Interesting)
Such as? Maybe you can leave a sealed note with whoever has your will, saying 'in the event of my death please visit this web page', then give a URL, username, and password, the visiting of which causes a server-side script to run and delete all your pr0n, hate-mail your boss, put your low-numbered slashdot account up on ebay for the benefit of your next of kin, and so on.
Of course you'd have to make sure that URL was secured....
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Re:What happens when you forget? (Score:5, Funny)
Excuse me, I need to make a few phone calls.
You've got a nice account, by the way. Very nice...
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Re:What happens when you forget? (Score:5, Interesting)
You can even set it up with your lawyer to have him mail things out once you're dead -- including your encryption keys, letters to family, etc.
And yes, I have been the recipient of such a letter. Many such letters, in fact. My great grandparents both wrote letters to the family describing our family history going back to roughly 1550-1600. Instead of sending them to us and us inevitably losing them, they wrote them to their estate lawyer, who held them until they both passed on. They are great reading and have been far more valuable tracing family history than the Internet or any books or libraries have gotten us.
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Re:What happens when you forget? (Score:4, Insightful)
I dont like to study History. In fact, in primary, secondary and high school I was *really* bad at History (I can not just learn things by the book, I need to find some kind of reasoning).
Having said that, I am completely aware of the value of history, which , if known by the current people(for example) would prevent lots of deaths and war.
Now, what does your dead grandpa has to do with history?, well, history is not only what history books tell you. The history you read written on those books is what the WINNER of those events want you to believe.
As a simple example, take the Mexican revolution (I am aware, as I am Mexican). Every Setpember, 16 Mexicans have a great party celebrating the revolution of Mexico but the fact is, that the revolution was not complete. And that, is one of the reasons why Mexicans are always in the middle of nothing, where nothing happens. It is a bit more complex than that but if you like, you could read this book review [jstor.org] to know more about that.
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16 Mexicans (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:What happens when you forget? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is only one possible recommendation to be said here: "Do not".
First, your knowledge and capability are the best "dead" man switch you can have. If you need more than that you have failed in your professional objectives. Get real, sit down and get better at what you do.
Second, what goes around, comes around. You never know whom are you going to meet in your next job. Even if you meant it to be a real "dead man switch", you never know whom are your descendants, students or friends going to meet in their next job.
Third, if you leave a reasonable amount of time between the last check and firing the targets are likely to change, which will make the payload of the dead man switch misfire. You would either overdo it or fail to do it fully and leave traces. Either case is not in your favour. What may have been a harmless prank can become a crime which will be traced to you.
So the recommendations are do not, do not and do not. Your will deposited with your bank or insurance company is a good enough dead man switch and you will be surely dead when it gets invoked.
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Re:What happens when you forget? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm still not entirely sure I would set up such a system rather than simply writing a proper will and leaving the information with a trusted individual, however it is certainly not an insurmountable problem, and there could be benefits to such a system, if nothing else, some of the paperwork that people would need to settle my estate is on my computer, and I'd rather they don't spend a bunch of time cursing me for not having easy access to it while trying to both deal with the legal obligations and grieve at the same time...
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Too Effective? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Too Effective? (Score:5, Interesting)
Mine simply locks the encrypted filesystem if the power is interupted. A raid on my premisis while I'm gone locks things up tight. Forcing the door drops power. When I'm back, I can enter the encryption key and restore normal operation.
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Re:Too Effective? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ironically... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ironically... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Ironically... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh great...he hasn't responded. You, sir, are being charged with murder!
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Why not have some fun? (Score:5, Funny)
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!!"
Re:Why not have some fun? (Score:5, Funny)
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We need a new checkbox when posting to /. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:We need a new checkbox when posting to /. (Score:4, Funny)
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False alerts (Score:4, Informative)
I basically have 7 emails to ppl really close to me. One of my password go in one of those emails and that has access to all my email/personal passwords. I havnt put any banking data since I dont think thats going to be too difficult to get, if I am legally dead.
My deadmans switch is a simple cron job and I need to reset it once every 3 months.
Last will and chain contingency (Score:3, Funny)
2. dispell all negative effects on me
3. teleport a friendly cleric in to rez
On a little more realistic scale, how about you make a will?
IN THE EVENT OF DEATH EACH PERSON NAMED WILL RECEIVE THE ENCLOSED USB DRIVE WITH THEIR NAME ON IT... not overly difficult, and there are real legal comebacks if it is processed and you are not in fact deceased, instead of just looking like a tool.
It behaves in a very unprofessional manner (Score:4, Interesting)
I helped out for a few months in a place where the sysadmins and most of management had to be marched out the door by security for various expensive reasons. The place seemed full of dead man's switches but it reality was probably just a finicky cobbled together collection of systems that required intervention when cron jobs/scheduled tasks could have done it (and later did).
Currently the stuff that is being trialed would stop and someone would have to look at the tape schedule - but I thought the whole idea of working as a sysadmin was to set stuff up so everything else goes smoothly while you are sorting out the problem of the day, trying out new stuff, or reading slashdot.
Jewish Mother Dead Man's Switch (Score:5, Funny)
I didn't set this up, it was genetics.
What if... (Score:5, Funny)
Snow Crash (Score:4, Funny)
Internet dating (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
I've got one. (Score:5, Insightful)
So, I put together a quick routine using perl and chron that dispatches email to my workplace, the local legal rep contact, and some friends. The later includes directions to a hidden key and asks them to feed my cat until they hear from me. I only enable the system when I'm expecting a significant risk of arrest. Once it's started, if I don't either log into the machine or send myself an email containing a specific string once every 24 hours, the alarm goes off.
Turns out it's never actually been used (except when testing.) I did get caught up in a surprise arrest not too long ago, but since my girlfriend was going to be at home and able to take care of any problems I didn't turn on the system.
But, if you ask me, trusting life-changing information to a php script is a really, really scary idea. Even my trivial "please feed my cat" letters included disclaimers explaining that they may have been falsely triggered.
Now, on the other hand, the possibility of spoofing dead man's letters from other people *does* sound promising.
This is true... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.)
Re:what I tell the guy with the gun (Score:5, Funny)
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