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Journal eldavojohn's Journal: Do You Have a Digital Will & Binary Testament? 61

Journal by eldavojohn
A while back, I cancelled my Star Wars Galaxies account. Yes, I know that many of you reading this can identify with me. Someone somewhere destroyed that game (point the finger however you would like).

I'd be lying if I said that I didn't feel some form of remorse. But it wasn't only the remorse of losing my friends in the game and the daily grinding with my character--there's a little bit of affection I had towards the game that resulted in such fun times I had.

My father grew up with a single shot bolt action .22 caliber center fire rifle. I don't expect computer programmers to know what that is so I'll just describe as a tiny little rifle capable of shooting up pop cans and small game (don't worry, no one in my family is a member of the NRA). As a kid, he would use that rifle to target shoot and kill rats/gophers with his friends.

When I turned 13 or 14, I got my orange card and with that, my father's rifle. This wasn't a Winchester or Browning or even Remington rifle, it didn't even have a serial number on it. The fact of the matter is that the rifle was fired so much that the action eventually broke and my parents refused to spend the money to repair it. It's somewhere in my parent's house now (I don't have a need for a rifle now that I live in large metropolis--although you might be able to argue otherwise). I was sad that a tool and recreation device passed on to me is now gone.

What am I going to pass on to my children? I have no childhood toys that aren't rusted and broken in a machine shed. But I do have accounts to games like Warcraft III, SWG, WoW etc. that I have put many hours into. Further more; there are websites like HSX, MySpace, Flickr and even Slashdot where I have accounts with a lot of information about me. On top of that, what of my three or four free/academic e-mail accounts that I heavily use? Will I go through and delete selected e-mails or will I leave the access information to my family uncensored when I die?

Aren't these e-mails like correspondences of dead relatives except they won't be lost in a fire or flood? Wouldn't a Flickr account be like a photo album that you didn't have to fight siblings for? Isn't my WoW account much like the rifle that my dad passed on to me when I was a kid?

My dad and his siblings did leave me a pong paddle game. I understand that the future holds games far beyond the qualities of those above. But aren't they cherished classics? I spent hours upon hours playing pong with my friends after I inherited the pong console that my dad used. Call me easily entertained but those were some fun times. The pong game eventually broke and I think we went through three or four RF adapters (those things really are poorly made) as we played it into the ground.

We live in the information age.

Let that sink in. The games we play, the electronic trails we leave ... those things will most certainly persist--considering the redundant array of indexed disks that servers use, possibly indefinitely. Will you pass them on to your children? Will it be easier for your life's work to be cumulatively added to a family digital history book? Will my great great great grandson one day have access to the plain old java objects that at a young age set me on my life long profession? Will his eyes one day read this journal entry?

Do you have a digital will and binary testament with all your access information to personal accounts for your love ones to cherish after you pass? Could there be anything greater that would help your memory persist?

*my father aims his rifle and places a tiny hole inside the 'o' on a Coca-Cola can 30 yards away and imagines the future as I do the same*

... 25 years later ...

*I slap devouring plague on an alliance rogue, psychic scream him with my level 60 priest then sit back and watch him flail around a bit before dying ... and I imagine the future as my son does the same*
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Do You Have a Digital Will & Binary Testament? More

Do You Have a Digital Will & Binary Testament?

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  • What's wrong with guns? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jdavidb ( 449077 ) * on Wednesday April 05, 2006 @01:14PM (#15068136) Homepage Journal

    My father grew up with a single shot bolt action .22 caliber center fire rifle. I don't expect computer programmers to know what that is

    Why not? Many computer programmers are libertarians and thus have a pro-gun bent. Eric Raymond [catb.org] is a notable example.

    (don't worry, no one in my family is a member of the NRA).

    What would be wrong with that? Belonging to an organization that exists to lobby to safeguard important rights is an admirable thing. Why are you so apologetic about guns? Gun rights are very important. I think encouraging gun ownership and the exercise of gun rights is good for society, even though I personally am a pacifist and will never own one myself. Why in the world must you bend over backward to apologize, as if being associated with the exercise of your civil rights were a dishonorable thing? It'd be better to assure us that noone in your family has ever murdered anyone, with or without a gun. As long as those guns have never been used to initiate force against anyone else (i.e., never for any reason other than self-defense or private entertainment), you have a family that society can be proud of, although that might be even more true, not less, if they were members of the NRA.

    • The way he said both things, they sounded like sarcastic jokes. So instead of ragging on him about how he made sterotypical jokes about computer programmers not having any interest in something as guns or NRA being bad, how about talking about the topic that he brought up.
    • I think the reason that he acts apologetic towards owning a gun and tries to make it plainly known that he is not a member of the NRA is because of the stigma that they have inherited. When people think of NRA members, they often think of uneducated redneck country bumpkins or those who are fanatically obsessed with hunting. I believe in the right to bear firearms as well, but I shy away from others that support it because I don't support it for the same reasons. I think guns should be allowed for colle
      • You mentioned "collecting, hunting, target practice, recreation" as means to own firearms. You also mentioned a rifle as a good home-defense weapon, which is generally false [theboxotruth.com]. Thus, I am making a general assumption that you aren't overly knowledgeably when it comes to firearms. Allow me to explain why firearms are necessary in brief.

        The *primary* reason, reason number uno, that the Second Amendment exists is as the "final check and balance" for the American system of government. Don't believe me? Read the De [archives.gov]
        • I am fully aware that is the reason that right was written into the constitution, I just think that the way you described it is totally out of date. Face it, if that were to happen today we would be totally screwed anyway. Even with the arms you mentioned, it would be no match for the much more expensive heavy arms and combat vehicles that the government is able to afford that the average citizen cannot. In addition, combat training has grown so advanced that an average group of citizens would be utterly
  • i started a service about two years ago, on www.eheritage.net on just that idea. about one year later, found out there was no interest in it (yet), and i let the ball go... maybe i should pick it back up? if you know people who're interested, i can start working on the project again. seeing you post thoughts about this definitely gets me thinking maybe i was on the right track, just a couple years too early.
    • I think it's probably going to be a few years yet.

      The people who are mostly thinking about their inheritance right now are mostly from the pen-and-paper generation. All the stuff they want to save is in closets and file drawers and photo boxes. So unless your service provides a means for them to get that stuff digitized -- in which case I think you might have a real winner -- I'm not sure it's going to fly. Give it a few years for the generation that grew up with computers to start having children and see t
  • eldavojohn brings up a salient topic- is this the new form of immortality, being copied from one database to the next? Interesting to ponder, at very least. After reading his post, the first thought that came to my mind were the actions I took with my email, ebay, ftp, etc. accounts after Yahoo! did not grant the parent's access to an email account owned by their son, who died fighting in Iraq. I would have to search for the article, but to my knowledge, they did not grant them access, citing the EULA as be

  • .22 caliber (Score:2, Informative)

    by edwyr ( 792284 )
    Most .22 caliber shells are rim-fire, not center fire.
    • Which is probably why he mentions it.

      I wonder if it was a a center-fire Browning [urban-armory.com]?
    • Yes, but there are .22 caliber centerfire rifles and ammunition. They are less common and that may just be the reason that the fact that it was centerfire was pointed out in the journal entry. One of the more common of these is often referred to as a .222, also don't forget that the M-18 fires what is essentially a .22 on steroids, and it is centerfire: 5.56mm is .223 inches.

      You normally would not say "it was a .22 caliber rimfire rifle," you'd just say it was a .22 or if it were important, you might specif
  • But the question remains, how do you leave them access?

    Do you leave a piece of paper with all your passwords on it lying in a safe deposit box somewhere? Or do you just depend on GMail or Yahoo to honor your will?

    While I'd like my family to have access to the sum of my correspondance, I don't want to leave my passwords lying around while I'm still alive.
    • I handle all of the finances for my family. Being the digital age, 99% of this is done via online accounts and automatic bill payments. In the event that something happens to me and/or my wife, I have been keeping an encrypted file on my computer that tracks everything from retirement accounts to my NetFlix account names and passwords. I hope that if soemthing unforseen happens, this file will help ease the financial obligations of my beneficiary. -b
      • Even if your wife has the passphrase for that file memorized, writing it down somewhere on paper would be a very good idea.

        Also, as an extra backup, it probably would be a good idea to write down the usernames and passwords and put them in waterproof container inside a safety deposit box at the bank. This protects you against loss of the computer and/or external media on which the encrypted file is stored in the event of burglary, fire, flood, earthquake, tornado, etc.

        And if you want to be *really* paranoid
    • I've spent a bit of time thinking about this topic. I would just print out the a list of passwords, shove it in an envelope with some general instructions and seal it. Old school style so that you can tell if it's been tampered. Then place it where ever you have your will. A safe, a bank box, a lawyers office, whatever.
      Don't forget the encryption keys!
      • I have an encrypted flash drive and CD in my bank's safe deposit vault, containing information about my accounts, creditors, friends, etc. My closest relatives have the ability and instructions to access the safe deposit vault in the event of death, coma, or mental disability that leaves me unable to care for myself. It's nice to know that my trusted relatives can take care of my creditors and notify my friends if I am unable to do so.

  • Excellent and fascinating. This topic of personal digital perpetuity is, I think, a much larger one than most people are aware of yet.

    I have been thinking along these lines for some time, but I hadn't considered the issue of online accounts (e.g. for games). Those can be especially meaningful if they constitute a developed persona in a social network. How can they at all be saved? Do any online networked games (e.g. MMORPG) have any kind of history-saving features to them?

    I've been struggling to com

    • The problem (perhaps also a bit disturbing thing) with applying this to MMORPG - the developed persona in social network is not autonomous, it's part of a person that's now...dead. So why not let the MMORPG character die with it?
      • Ah, yes; a good point. I was thinking more about somehow preserving that character but not continuing him/her in active play/interaction. So a retirement, perhaps. Or even a death, but that doesn't mean cancelling the account and having all trace of the character erased. But what ways might that work? How could the social network aspect be preserved (but not actively continued)? Maybe some kind of snapshots, yearbook-like things, recordings of interactions or particularly memorable conquests? Hmm.
  • A number of years ago I worked for a company that carried Key man insurance on me. That got me thinking I need to include an Index of information in my Will and Testament. The problem was keeping this updated without compromising the information; I joking call it my treasure map. The best way to keep a Secret is to not tell anyone or keep any record of it. So how in the heck do you pass on that information in the account of your death? Another consideration is what is the risk of that information leaki
  • Ignoring the fact that most online game companies don't allow transfer of accounts, maybe when your children see it they'll realize how stupid it is for them to waste so much time on fruitless computer games.

    "Wow. My dad spent *that* much time on computer games? He was a real geek. A dedicated one, sure, but a geek nonetheless."

    The flickr bit and retention of correspondence and passwords, however, are an important matter. In the non-profit I work for, we always make sure that at least two people have access
  • But what makes you think WoW, or any other MMORPG of today, is going to be around in 30 years?
  • So it dies with me. I don't care. The little shits can go write their own Java scripts and create their own mud or SilkRoadOnline (free MMORPG btw) accounts for all I care. :)
  • It has occurred to me that I might want my spouse, or any offspring we have, to be able to access my accounts, decrypt my CDs of old email, etc., but I haven't actually done anything about it.

    I never thought of passing on game accounts, or even email accounts as such [I mean, I wouldn't want my child to be using the same email address as me -- it's mine, it's personal, if you're emailing that address, you're emailing me, not somneone else], but I did think to make a CD with my PGP private and public keys, p

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