What happens if I die?

[MV/Liberace!]

Serious question. 

As it relates to the future of this forum, what happens if I die?  The hosting bill will go unpaid, as my wife will have no idea how to pay it or what it is she needs to pay or why it should BE paid.  Eventually, they'll pull the plug.  Later on, the domain registration will go unpaid and fall into the hands of somebody else.  Probably a Premiere Radio suit.  They'll attach the domain to some website selling prostate herbs or something.

I was seriously thinking about all of this today and decided I need to put a plan into action to keep all of this going in the event I croak.  Seriously.  I don't think website owners think of these things.  At least Max is an admin here and can save the database.

A new thought:
This shows just what a douche nozzle I really am.  I'm planning for the future of this forum in my absence, but I don't yet have adequate life insurance.  Jeee-heeee-sus.

I make strange posts like this when I'm severely sleep deprived.  I'm going to bed now.

[aliens_against_noory]

Lets hope you do not assume room temperature for many eons to come.

[Pirate King Atomsk]

All you can really do is hypothesize and construct a contingency plan with those sorts of things. That aside, it's in (insert Deity's here) hands.

Actually, after I finish school I'll be able to volunteer to help somehow...it's a bit down the road, but as long as Noory is running C2CAM, I'm down with the cause. 

[Loui Zoot]

I assume you use godaddy for the domain. You can have domain paid ten years ahead, which still doesn't take care of forever. They also have auto bill if you enable it, and that can pull from a paypal account. So you could set up a secondary paypal account and start putting money in there, and potentially have enough in there at some point to have many decades worth set aside. The reason I mention paypal, is because most banks have an inactivity fee, which could eat up a dead mans account over time. As far as I know paypal does not.

That would take care of your domain, other than hosting your forum with the free hosting the godaddy throws in with every domain, I don't have an answer on that yet. You are not alone in those kind of thoughts.

A distributed website, might take care of the problem, if they even exist, yet. Where chunks could be hosted all over the net, so if one goes away, others still take care of it. I assume you'd have to do some really tricky DNS, so it would always point a URL request to an active chunk. Some kind of dynamic clustering.

Cloud/Grid hosting might be one way, not factoring in price at all. Since you should be able to keep those sites active regardless of the equipment being replaced. Because a server is almost certainly not going to be around after 20 years, and usually far less. Cloud hosting is not all that cheap for regular people.

[Frys Girl]

Michael, this is an awful thing to write! How dare you even say the words? Long live MV and George Noory Sucks!

[Smoky]

It will turn to dust and scatter.

[EvB]

It will turn to dust and scatter.

Smokey --

We are pretty loose goose here - but giving voice to MV's deepest fears is never wise.  Oh, he'd never BAN you for it or anything dumb like that  . . . but he has voo-doo powers we rarely speak of.    ;

[Smoky]

Smoky --

We are pretty loose goose here - but giving voice to MV's deepest fears is never wise.  Oh, he'd never BAN you for it or anything dumb like that  . . . but he has voo-doo powers we rarely speak of.    ;

MV has no power here..by his own admission. However I am new and time will tell.

[Pirate King Atomsk]

I wouldn't underestimate him. I heard MV dropkicks grizzly bears and farts lasers.

[Frys Girl]

I wouldn't underestimate him. I heard MV dropkicks grizzly bears and farts lasers.

When the war happens, he will be our King Arthur for sure.

[Borr]

I wouldn't underestimate him. I heard MV dropkicks grizzly bears and farts lasers.

Did I ever tell you about the time Vandeven took me out to go get a drink with him? We go off looking for a bar and we can't find one. Finally Vandeven takes me to a vacant lot and says, 'Here we are.' We sat there for a year and a half?until sure enough, someone constructs a bar around us. Well, the day they opened we ordered a shot, drank it, and then burned the place to the ground. Vandeven yelled over the roar of the flames, 'Always leave things the way you found 'em!

[Smoky]

you guys sound like drones, i thought there was no hierarchy here.

[Pirate King Atomsk]

If there really was a oppressive hierarchy here, I'd already have been kicked out multiple times.

As far as automatons go, I'd refer you to nightdronezone. Their motto is practically "leave your personality at the door".

[EvB]

you guys sound like drones, i thought there was no hierarchy here.

Hang on - you'll figure out when your leg is being pulled 

[Borr]

We're sticking up for Mike and acting like we respect him...if that's not leg pulling, what is?

[Smoky]

ah ok  hehe

[Loui Zoot]

you guys sound like drones, i thought there was no hierarchy here.

Perhaps they appreciate the fact that he set this place up, pays for it, keeps it running, and isn't a pain in the ass to the users. Of course I could be wrong.

There is a difference between ass kissing and appreciation.

I smell tones of GLP, and I mean that in the bad way you are reading it.

[Frys Girl]

Perhaps they appreciate the fact that he set this place up, pays for it, keeps it running, and isn't a pain in the ass to the users. Of course I could be wrong.

There is a difference between ass kissing and appreciation.

I smell tones of GLP, and I mean that in the bad way you are reading it.

You're right. I had a weird thing happen to my account recently because of my stupid Internet service provider I think, and I was suspicious. Maybe it's because MV is a fascist white male? Maybe he wanted me to die (I can't live w/o this site. look how many posts I have!) Maybe he is trying to shut down my radio show and forbid me from advertising it here? (I don't have one, but I just thought maybe in the future, that this was his plan. TURNS OUT no. I contacted him and he went out of his way to help me and explain what happened.

That experience, and the others when he has been kind and supportive, like most here, are why I like MV and I would martyr myself in the GNS battle, should there ever be one.

[Pirate King Atomsk]

Perhaps they appreciate the fact that he set this place up, pays for it, keeps it running, and isn't a pain in the ass to the users.

That, and the stream is something I've enjoyed free of charge for like...what...3..maybe even 4 years now? Haha.

Yeah.. I don't really mind being vocally appreciative of that. It's not like I'm getting blowjobs every time I praise the site. I do it cause it's one of the few forums that I've visited that isn't extreme faggotry. And better yet, a C2CAM forum that isn't hanging on Noory's jagon like a condom? I certainly haven't found any other ones on the net.

[Frys Girl]

I'm no getting blowjobs every time I praise the site.

Yea it's not that kind of site at all, though they exist.

This was one of the bests posts by you. Hanging on noory's jagon like a condom was great. HAHA. thanks.

[Smoky]

Perhaps they appreciate the fact that he set this place up, pays for it, keeps it running, and isn't a pain in the ass to the users. Of course I could be wrong.

There is a difference between ass kissing and appreciation.

I smell tones of GLP, and I mean that in the bad way you are reading it.

yeah....but you still turn to dust when you die. Sorry, I don't make the rules.

[EvB]

Right now - one obvious difference between GLP and GNS is that GNS is new, and relatively small.  Part of what that means is that the people who interact here on a regular basis get to know each other - to whatever degree one can in virtual reality.

People were here for me when I applied to grad school - even to the point of helping me out with my admissions essay.  We checked in with MV as regularly as we could when he went to bring his wife to the US from Morocco - and got the gory details of his case of "tourista" - those of us who are students - or just plain insomniacs - whine to each other back-channel in the wee hours. People help each other with web-based projects not realted to GNS - and sometimes we even exchange recipies! 

When regulars are MIA for a while - we do what we can to find them and bring them back (which is the only reason Fry's Girl ever knew we had not dissaperaed from the web or that she had not been personally rejected)

We fight, call names, and get over it or not - just like "real life"  What looks like "ass kissing" is, from where I sit, real affection.

As we grow - I imagine those kinds of relationships will continue -but in subgroups.  The Admin/Moderation team here (which, by the way, you can count on one hand with fingers to spare) won't be able to filter it all. (and by "filter" I don't mean censor - I mean we won't be able to keep track and answer all the back-channel questions about where the hell whomever has gone and so on . . )

The personality of this place is still only partially formed, and your personality will have significant impact on who we turn out to be.

Some of us who have been here a while are both delighted and overwhelmed by this influx of membership though the refugee camp. And, I don't think there is any way to be sure what GNS is really like now until the dust settles a bit.

All that aside : MICHAEL!  Get over this morbid fit of yours - I'm looking forward to the chance to get your boxers in a bunch during your radio program tomorrow. I need some more of your verbal abuse for a sound editing project  ;

[Loui Zoot]

Actually I think viable answers to his original question would be very valuable in general. In some versions a trust would be the way to keep it going, then the trust itself would have more details to hammer out.

I would certainly consider something like that for the most popular of my sites. My UFO, since it contains many years worth of UFO sightings from hundreds of people, and once I find public domain sightings, or permission from other sites/organizations to freely publish their sightings, it could balloon to tens of thousands of sightings ranging many decades. When I redid the website this latest time, I changed the format to UFO sightings only, with the idea of it being in a highly searchable format. With all information on the site being released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Even so that is no guarantee the entire group of information will survive after the site is gone. Archive.org's wayback machine is no promise either, and it doesn't not preserve original content in the original functionality, as it does not cache the backend.

I'm sure sites like Source Forge would be fine for a long time. Not long ago though, Wikipedia a massively huge and popular site, was in trouble. Not that many people actually run the site, and it is not majorly funded, or was not then at least, not sure about now. For weeks the creator had fairly noticeable messages on the site asking for money, and he was clearly embarrassed to have to do that.

Michael's concern is very a genuine one. You never know when a well thought out and executed death plan can come to the rescue. Death does not have to equal his life in all situations, death of a career, death of a hosting account, death of a domain, death of an income and so on. A good plan can help you make a calm decisive decision when you might otherwise make a poor decision due to a stressful situation. I made one of those earlier in the year, and deleted all of my websites. Knowing that the most recent backup was from 3 months before that. Throwing my hands in the air, in a fit of despair and frustration, giving up on the idea of ever having a website, is a decision I made when I thought I had no other options. Had I had a backup plan in place, that wouldn't have happened.

Something that happened this month http://news.google.com/news?um=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=Ligesh+Suicide a software developer which had the most popular economy virtual server control panel, as he only charged somewhere around 50 cents per virtual machine running his panel. He was the only developer of the software, and had one office employee, yet not someone who could program the software. He had lost a big contract and then hackers exploited flaws in his software at some large hosting companies. He ended up hanging himself to death. Leaving thousands of people with servers running vulnerable servers, because the programmer did not have a back up plan, and because most of those users did not have a backup plan for such a seemingly impossible situation. And it's not as simple as them finding a new hosting company in the same price range, and many of them were also running the software.

I'm not going to go into Michael's alleged thoughts of death, telling someone not to think that way does not help.

So I say plan ahead.

[MV/Liberace!]

loui, you are a brilliant, insightful, thorough man.  i am very thankful you returned to this site after being absent for so long.

It will turn to dust and scatter.

heh, actually, the sarcastic nature of his comment got a chuckle out of me.

you guys sound like drones, i thought there was no hierarchy here.

we're just people who like one another.  i don't know how anybody could be expected to apologize for that.  it's no different than if i were to say nice things to one of them.  problem is, if somebody is nice to me, they're accused of being a shill or something because i'm "the boss" or some such nonsense.  it's an unfair position to put me in because it suggests i'm not allowed to interact with people here the way any normal human would interact, nor are they with me, because of who i am.  bullshit, i say.  that's just not a fair expectation to dump on me or anybody else here.  people have actually left this site because of this same flawed perception!  i hate being put in that position, and sometimes it makes me hold back on saying what i really want to say, good AND bad.  the only solution would be for me to permanently excuse myself from the site and act only as some robotic back-end administrator with no genuine human interaction with the people who are kind enough to spend their time on this website.  i'm not interested in doing that.

what sets this site apart is the fact that those who come here are not REQUIRED to be nice to any one person.  if they choose to BE nice, it's because to do so is warranted.  that philosophy works in multiple directions.

[Nboy]

we're just people who like one another.

LIES! YOU BASTARD! I HATE YOU ALL!

[Caruthers612]

Michael,

    I'd have thought this one would've been obvious. You ought to have begun uploading your consciousness into the mother father computer long since--though it's never too late to start--and that way your essence will have been fully assimilated when your meat wagon deep sixes and the worms use your eye sockets as theme park rides. In fact, since it's never been proven that anyone here has actually met you (those could be photos of Ed Gein during his salad days), I'm not at all sure we haven't been speaking to your disemboweled consciousness all along. Disembodied, sorry. If so, I expect you'll begin pitting us jizz buckets against each other in gladiatorial combat and wagering quatloos on the winner.

M

[Marc.Knight]

Michael,

    I'd have thought this one would've been obvious. You ought to have begun uploading your consciousness into the mother father computer long since--though it's never too late to start--and that way your essence will have been fully assimilated when your meat wagon deep sixes and the worms use your eye sockets as theme park rides. In fact, since it's never been proven that anyone here has actually met you (those could be photos of Ed Gein during his salad days), I'm not at all sure we haven't been speaking to your disemboweled consciousness all along. Disembodied, sorry. If so, I expect you'll begin pitting us jizz buckets against each other in gladiatorial combat and wagering quatloos on the winner.

M

I wager 50 quatloos.

[Smoky]

loui, you are a brilliant, insightful, thorough man.  i am very thankful you returned to this site after being absent for so long.
heh, actually, the sarcastic nature of his comment got a chuckle out of me.
we're just people who like one another.  i don't know how anybody could be expected to apologize for that.  it's no different than if i were to say nice things to one of them.  problem is, if somebody is nice to me, they're accused of being a shill or something because i'm "the boss" or some such nonsense.  it's an unfair position to put me in because it suggests i'm not allowed to interact with people here the way any normal human would interact, nor are they with me, because of who i am.  bullshit, i say.  that's just not a fair expectation to dump on me or anybody else here.  people have actually left this site because of this same flawed perception!  i hate being put in that position, and sometimes it makes me hold back on saying what i really want to say, good AND bad.  the only solution would be for me to permanently excuse myself from the site and act only as some robotic back-end administrator with no genuine human interaction with the people who are kind enough to spend their time on this website.  i'm not interested in doing that.

what sets this site apart is the fact that those who come here are not REQUIRED to be nice to any one person.  if they choose to BE nice, it's because to do so is warranted.  that philosophy works in multiple directions.

you could do the robotic back end but also have a different account so no one knows who you are. Then you wouldn't have to hold back on your opinions. Separate personalities as it were.