Re: 1984 (Big Brother)

Daniel Brown wrote:

On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 19:47, Micky Hulse <mickyhulse.lists@gmail.com> wrote:

Motion sensing camera connected to a mechanical pointer stick aimed to trigger the server power button. On his way out of the office: Clap on/clap off Clapper connected to computer power cable.

    It would be cheaper to employ the same method used on some

lawnmowers and required on Jet Skis and Skidoos: a cable with a clip worn by the rider. The rider falls off, the cable releases from the vehicle, disengaging the throttle and cutting the engine. The boss stands up, his entire infrastructure collapses, everyone's connections are closed, and all PCs subsequently catch fire.

I fear this is the implementation needed to make "boss" see sense, however..

    Realistically, a simple desktop-based application running in the

system tray (presuming Windows) would send a kill signal to a predefined script to issue safe closing routines to the database first, then any other systems he wants to close out. It could even have simple options to poll if there's a screensaver activated, which would initiate the process automatically, should he choose to be extremely paranoid. The same could be automated to work in reverse, to automatically bring the systems up, when the local desktop session becomes active (from hibernation, logoff, or screensaver), or even with an override ("Pause Sessions") by right-clicking the systray icon.

The main problem here is in using a stateless protocol (HTTP) in a stateful manner (with sessions), it makes this, technically, impossible. That said, you could do this in a stateless manner quite easily by giving the boss full control of granting and denying access, that way he is always accountable (with his described nature, it might be good for the buck to stop with him, rather than your code). I'd suggest having a simple boolean flag, usersCanAccess and giving him a button to toggle the flags state from true to false. Real life implementation could be an empty file which is touched and unlinked, php implementation being an if(file_exists('boss_man_say_okay') ){ // let monkeys work } type solution. Best, Nathan