What Does Your Dead Man's Switch Do? 310
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?"
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.
There's only one thing it should do (Score:3, Funny)
My gas pedal... (Score:4, Funny)
Grump
Halo. (Score:5, Funny)
creates more deadmens switches (Score:5, Funny)
First things first (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Ironically... (Score:5, Funny)
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!!"
We need a new checkbox when posting to /. (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Jewish Mother Dead Man's Switch (Score:5, Funny)
I didn't set this up, it was genetics.
What if... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:First things first (Score:5, Funny)
+1 Solipsist
Re:Why not have some fun? (Score:5, Funny)
Snow Crash (Score:4, Funny)
Re:We need a new checkbox when posting to /. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:what I tell the guy with the gun (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ironically... (Score:5, Funny)
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 ;)
Re:First things first (Score:3, Funny)
Whatever these little consequences are, they can't concern me anymore, since i'm already dead.
Even the (hypothetical) people i love don't have any consequence to me anymore, since i'm dead. Death is The End.
This thinking can, of course, lead to amoral decisions, and that's why we have invented religion
Re:First things first (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Wives and Other DMSs (Score:2, Funny)
Ah, but that's the double sens of “dead man's mechanism:” herald and agent of your unmaking.
(At the very least, she unmade me a bachelor.)
Mine is... (Score:1, Funny)
Right on time (Score:3, Funny)
Good day for this story. somethingawful [somethingawful.com] has a great article about this today. Quoth the website:
Go and read it.
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.
Re:First things first (Score:2, Funny)
First Post (Score:1, Funny)
to every new subject...
kind regards,
Re:Ironically... (Score:5, Funny)
Oh great...he hasn't responded. You, sir, are being charged with murder!
Re:Too Effective? (Score:3, Funny)
What the hell are you protecting there?
Re:There's only one thing it should do (Score:2, Funny)
Re:My gas pedal... (Score:4, Funny)
s/55/4
Might I suggest a button... (Score:3, Funny)
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...
Re:Why should I care? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:There's only one thing it should do (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Feed the worms (Score:5, Funny)
16 Mexicans (Score:5, Funny)
Re:My gas pedal... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:First things first (Score:1, Funny)
You are not the center of the universe. You are merely an almost infinitesimal part of the big, grand, large, larger than life universe.
That's mighty big talk for a figment of my imagination.
Re:First things first (Score:5, Funny)
Re:First things first (Score:3, Funny)
Can't get laid, eh?
Cheer up, someday your princess will come.
Re:Halo. (Score:1, Funny)
Re:What happens when you forget? (Score:1, Funny)
My karma is my dead man's switch (Score:3, Funny)
My first job, I got fired, the next week the whole AD environment went down for hours on end
My second job, I quit, the next week, all firewalls went into some type of crash, the network was overloaded by a broadcast-zombie and there was some type of virus
I left home, went living somewhere else, the computer of my dad smoked, he had to buy a new one
Another job, I was a freelancer, I left, next week I got bunches of nagios alerts
Another job, I was a sysadmin, I got laid off, next week, nobody could receive e-mail and some type of update made it that networking got in trouble
Last job, I was a sysadmin, I got fired, yesterday somebody told me that the whole network was down (>30000 nodes)
Re:First things first (Score:3, Funny)
My DMS (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Re:It behaves in a very unprofessional manner (Score:3, Funny)
This leads to this observation: Any sufficiently finicky cobbled together collection of systems that requires intervention is indistinguishable from a Dead Man's Switch.
Re:My gas pedal... (Score:4, Funny)