8 November 2012: Oops! Turns out he moved to Belize and planted the rumor that he lost 96% of his wealth to avoid possible damages in case he loses the civil lawsuits against him in the US related to his nephew's death. Oh, and now he hangs out with known gangsters. http://gizmodo.com/5958877/secrets-schemes-and-lots-of-guns-...
Gizmodo and its parent company have a documented history of ethical slips. A tattooed guy with a shotgun isn't inherently unethical or guilty, in my mind. But I don't watch a lot of TV or movies, so I'm weak in the stereotyping department.
He looks exactly like a kind of person who would make trouble. Not saying that he did, we know looks can be deceptive. Just pointing out that ad hominem argument here can fly both ways.
It didn't really shock me when the Reiser thing came to light. I remember back around 2003-2004 (possibly before) when there was all the hoo-haa on the lkml between Reiser's scratchy personality and his attacks on Torvalds, Cox et al., but backed up with a brilliant FS.
It genuinely was faster, especially for lots of small files (the common case in 2003). It was night and day difference when running a busy mail server. It had lots of nice things too, e.g. it was reliably possible to grow a reiserFS while the FS was online / mounted, which was a neat trick in conjunction with LVM.
There were some folks who stepped into the fray to try and lubricate the relationships a little - allowing the community at large to benefit from Reiser's work, by avoiding the need for the tempered Reiser to interact with others while his work was integrated. That never really happened though, there was noone to successfully defang the Torvalds side of the bun fight (which is entirely understandable).
So when the case came to light, i couldn't help wondering if it was more than likely true.
> 8 November 2012: Oops! Turns out he moved to Belize and planted the rumor that he lost 96% of his wealth to avoid possible damages in case he loses the civil lawsuits against him in the US related to his nephew's death. Oh, and now he hangs out with known gangsters. http://gizmodo.com/5958877/secrets-schemes-and-lots-of-guns-...
So, to put it short: he loses his fortune, flees to a corrupt developing country, collects firearms there, gets arrested, thinks the govt need some black suited special ops in a boat to kill a dog, gets accused of murder so he goes on the run which would be a smart thing to do, but then he doesn't want to flee the country that presumabely wants to kill him because it's lovely.
Sounds like trouble really likes this guy, or dude is simply nuts.
It is written on all 9mm cartridges regardless of who manufactured the ammo. It would be hard to distinguish it from say 40 S&W ammo from across the room, but my guess is the reporter just read what was on the cartridges.
"9mm Luger" is about as specific as saying there was a 12oz soda can on his table. The details about a specific cartridge are only written on the box, but can be determined from a casing and a photo book. If he said he has "124 Gr Remmington Golden Saber 9mm Luger" ammo, that would actually be specific information.
Looking at a cartridge from a few feet away, anyone who's a gun geek and has decent eyesight can probably tell you that a 9mm cartridge is either that, a .40 S&W, or something very obscure. Also though, almost all handgun cartridges have their caliber stamped on the rim. I just checked to see from how far away I can read the markings on my Federal .40 (I don't own any 9mm, but it should be basically comparable). In good light and at just the correct angle, I can read it from about arm's length. Otherwise I have to hold it close.
"Luger", originally, meant the Luger P08 pistol. You'd probably recognize it as the sidearm you see the Nazis carrying in WWII movies. It was the first pistol to take the cartridge which today most people just call "9mm".
Today, "9mm Luger", "9mm Parabellum", and "9x19mm" are all synonyms for this same cartridge. Usually when "9mm" is said without qualification, this is what it means. However, there are other much rarer 9mm cartridges such as the 9x18mm Makarov, and also "9mm short" and "9x17mm" are rarely-used synonyms for the (common) cartridge usually called .380ACP.
It might seem like a small difference if you're not used to handling pistol cartridges, but if you are, that's like saying it's difficult to tell PHP from Perl.
Edit: Also, there is usually an imprint on the bottom of the cartridge that says "9MM LUGER".
I handle a lot of guns and that is a great analogy. We know that all we have to do is look for a ".php". But how many average people notice that type of stuff?
You're right that there are imprints on all rounds but seeing and remembering that is like getting a database error and remembering if it was Microsoft or MYSQL...You have to have a lot of experience and a keen memory.
You're assuming that the author is an average person with respect to gun knowledge. I don't know how much he knows about them, but the story seems to suggest he knows a little, right? Maybe relevant: he was a war correspondent in Iraq[1]. Or maybe he just likes guns?
There's also a much more obvious difference in "fatness" (e.g. width/length). Humans are much better at judging that kind of relative difference quickly and from a distance....
An occasional, recreational shooter aught to be able to recognize 9mm cartridges fairly easily. Here are a couple of lineups comparing 9mm with other pistol cartridges.
I don't think there's "Luger Brand ammunition" as mentioned in the police report, either (unless it's some lame latin american brand I've never heard of)
Rather, it's a brand/mark, but not that of the ammunition manufacturer. The (9mm Luger|9x19mm|9mm Parabellum) is the round used by most 9mm handguns, and is manufactured by thousands of companies worldwide. "Luger" is simply the name of the round's designer and the Luger pistol that introduced it.
9mm luger is easy to identify for someone familiar with handguns. However, 9mm luger is one of, if not THE most popular handgun ammunition in the world, so in my mind, it doesn't even imply circumstantial guilt.
Whether or not he is innocent/guilty/crazy/sane is to be determined but one thing about the dogs - the first thing police do is kill any dog that looks like it could attack them, they don't have to justify it so it's fun target practice for them. Special ops that don't want any alert by gunfire or barking would definitely poison the dogs with tainted meat, etc.
So that part is not hard to believe. There are other aspects though that are worse. It's a series of poor, dramatic choices.
I'm actually not sure about that. If they need quiet, they'd shoot the dog quietly - but apparently the dogs had not yet all died by the time the interview was held, so they were alive far, far longer than could possibly be of any benefit to a special ops team.
More likely that a neighbor did it, sad as it is. Maybe the guy that got shot, maybe somebody else who got sick of a pack of wild dogs trying to attack them for using a public beach. It's one thing to "love dogs" and another to tolerate a dangerous pack of animals in your neighborhood that have been spoiled by a paranoid nutcase.
With a silencer, I guess. What do I know? I've never shot anything nor do I plan to - but it seems a silencer would be quieter than a dog that was still dying of poison two days later.
I am no dog trainer, but I've lived with them all my life. The dog would needs trust in order to take food from a stranger, even if you threw it to them at a distance. Some dogs are more trusting than others. And some dogs are fussy eaters too. They may not even be hungry and decide to bury it for later.
Basically, if you want it dead, its simpler to shoot it. Less elaborate planning required.
His description of a Navy SEALesque operation the government of Belize put in place to poison a bunch of stupid dogs leads me to believe this guy has a tenuous grasp on reality. And he has a history of violence. Oh and he's apparently been really big on research chemicals as well? Yeah, his mind is fried.
While I have zero knowledge of this particular situation, I've spent a fair amount of time in Central America and "corrupt law enforcement does something creepy" really does not seem all that far fetched to me. The rule of law does not work the same way it does in the US or western Europe - I too would hesitate to trust the legal system, especially if I had been around long enough to piss off (eg fail to bribe) the local authorities.
Of course McAfee may very well be a nutter. These are not mutually exclusive propositions.
This is more about meth/meth derivatives than any work on some replacement for antibiotics or whatever. Research chemicals are bad fucking news and for every one discovery of something like LSD there are hundreds of newly-discovered chemicals that will happily get you high or keep you awake, while scrambling your brain and turning you into a literal crazy person who: thinks the government is poisoning his dogs; blacks out and kills his neighbor.
"Internet cafes can be found in larger tourist areas, but are infrequent in rural areas. The government does not allow Skype and forces tourists to call out of the country using its only government-owned phone company."
...AMAZING how much work some people put into fucking up their lives ...still, better than having a heart attack in front of your PC while stuffing yourself with junkfood and energy drinks though :)
"Antivirus Software Pioneer John McAfee Loses Fortune (2009)" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2933994 [some additional discussion/links in the comments]
"Meth Labs and Dead Dogs: How the Founder of McAfee Antivirus Went on the Run" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4027046