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Dead Programmers Aren't Much Fun

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Re: Dead Programmers Aren't Much Fun

#11

Post by tomjen3 »

extension wrote: post #4

I find it strangely unsettling that if I die, my Minecraft clan will never know what happened to me. I'll just vanish one day. They will spend some time trying to contact me but probably won't make a connection with anybody who can tell them what happened. And nobody who is sure to know about my death would know to contact them.

Leave a link to some site that you have instructed your family to update in case of your death.

ESR has a continuity page for the purpose of handing his projects over when he goes to California http://www.catb.org/~esr/continuity.html.

Re: Dead Programmers Aren't Much Fun

#13

Post by jeffbarr »

All of our digital ephemera (photos, blog posts, emails, reviews, tweets, code, and accounts) and so forth can theoretically last forever. In reality, disk drives and servers can die, domain registrations will expire, data formats will become outdated, and more.

Even if you have the bits and you can read them, you may be faced with a excavation job. Who has time to dig through someone else's email? Are we generating more data than we can process or appreciate? I just checked my family camera archive -- 279 GB, 135,042 files. When does this legacy turns in to a liability?

At some point, long-running sites will have to start making some interesting and difficult decisions. They can start to purge the seemingly dead members, they can have a way to flag a member as alive or dead, and they'll have to report their membership as 10 million live and active users, 20 million dead [and presumably inactive] users.

Re: Dead Programmers Aren't Much Fun

#14

Post by hermannj314 »

hippich wrote: post #9
hermannj314 wrote: post #5

Is there a business opportunity here? Find widows of deceased programmers and offer a lump sum for the rights to all digital works?

sexism here! why you think about widows and not widowers??? edit: bazinga!

Husbands of deceased female programmers? You can target the niche markets.

Re: Dead Programmers Aren't Much Fun

#15

Post by vog »

tomjen3 wrote: post #11
extension wrote: post #4

I find it strangely unsettling that if I die, my Minecraft clan will never know what happened to me. I'll just vanish one day. They will spend some time trying to contact me but probably won't make a connection with anybody who can tell them what happened. And nobody who is sure to know about my death would know to contact them.

Leave a link to some site that you have instructed your family to update in case of your death. ESR has a continuity page for the purpose of handing his projects over when he goes to California http://www.catb.org/~esr/continuity.html .

I think he should have signed that text crytographically. (in case his site is hacked, or in case the server goes down and different people pretend to have conflicting versions of that text)

Re: Dead Programmers Aren't Much Fun

#16

Post by ben1040 »

This got me wondering about how I could provide my passwords to people if something were to happen to me. Not even so much for Github or the like but for my online banking, credit cards, etc so it would be easier to wind down those affairs. I have online billing set up for those so it's not even like you could wait for the statements to come in the mail and settle them that way.

I can always just tell my wife my passwords, but what if something happens to the both of us?

I was almost tempted to start a document that would keep all that stuff, and share it in Dropbox with a few trusted people. It would be encrypted; I would keep the public key on my computer so I could continue to update it. The private key would be on a CD in a safe deposit box with instructions that those people could access it if I am incapacitated.

Sounds too complicated, though; that's why I haven't ever done it.

Re: Dead Programmers Aren't Much Fun

#17

Post by jvdh »

ben1040 wrote: post #16

This got me wondering about how I could provide my passwords to people if something were to happen to me. Not even so much for Github or the like but for my online banking, credit cards, etc so it would be easier to wind down those affairs. I have online billing set up for those so it's not even like you could wait for the statements to come in the mail and settle them that way. I can always just tell my wife my pass…

This is a wonderful idea: http://blog.agilebits.com/2012/03/09/1password-emergency-kit

Reminds me again that I still have to print it out and store it somewhere safe...

Re: Dead Programmers Aren't Much Fun

#19

Post by gk1 »

AznHisoka wrote: post #3

For me, the most important thing is to leave info on any sites/accounts that make me money. Anything after that, social networks, blogs.. I could care less about. I won't be worrying about that after I die.

Apparently my father agrees with you. He is doing fine, but last year he decided to share with me his account info from money-generating websites. (He gets about $300/month from a stock photo site.) I suppose it gave him comfort that if anything were to happen, the fruit of his labor (ie, income from his designs) would continue to benefit the family.

Also, hate to nitpick, but the phrase is "I couldn't care less," meaning your level of care is already at the minimum.

Re: Dead Programmers Aren't Much Fun

#20

Post by troymc »

I was thinking about a related issue yesterday: In 100 years, which free web services, where I can post content, will still be around, with high probability?

Wikipedia is one, but most of my edits will probably be buried by then. My Wikimedia user profile page will still be up, maybe.

Maybe the Internet Archive (archive.org).

Maybe the arXiv (arxiv.org), though it may be renamed or subsumed by then.

What else?

Maybe public libraries could offer some kind of digital archival service for people in the area they serve?

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