Antivirus Pioneer John McAfee Arrested In Belize 367
First time accepted submitter rebelwarlock writes "McAfee lives in Belize and he says that he has become a target of the Gang Suppression Unit. He says the GSU came busting into his research facility in Orange Walk, killed his dog, took his passport, handcuffed him and arrested him on a bogus weapons charge. McAfee says he's a victim because he didn't donate money to a known U.D.P. Orange Walk politician."
Question: Why does this guy live in Belize? (Score:5, Informative)
Answer: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/145/fantasy-island.html [fastcompany.com]
Re:Clearly... (Score:5, Informative)
I know you're joking, but a lot of other people aren't and I can't respond to all of them. McAfee (the person) hasn't had anything to do with McAfee (the malware company) for nearly twenty years. He does pharmaceutical research now, and has nearly blown through his entire fortune in the process. Perhaps that's why he could no longer afford to pay the protection money ...er, I mean, make the "political donations".
Re:Clearly... (Score:5, Informative)
Javascript, for example: 90% of the websites out there that use it could be redesigned to work without it
So what you are really saying is that you don't know how websites are made?
Javascript is a client-side scripting language that allows us to modify the DOM (the visible webpage) and make API calls to get data. Without it, there is a hell of lot we just simply cannot do anymore.
While it may be possible to implement everything in a server side scripting language like PHP, it will not be nearly as pretty or functional. Keep in mind, some of that pretty makes it fairly damned functional by creating UI that are not possible with server side only implementations.
Whether you like it or not we are going to continue moving towards browsers being merely dynamic front ends for applications and that simply requires client side code. Period.
The only other option is a metric butt-ton of RDP connections so that users can enjoy an application remotely and that is ridiculously impractical.
Saying that 90% of websites should be redesigned in such a fashion is quite comical.
Check the citation... (Score:5, Informative)
From Wikipedia:
Beginning in February 2010, John started a new venture in the field of bacterial quorum sensing.
His new company QuorumEx is headquartered in Belize and is working towards producing commercial all natural antibiotics based on anti-quorum sensing technology.[6]
From the cited article:
http://edition.channel5belize.com/archives/69891 [channel5belize.com]
Analysts at the Forensic Laboratory, and personnel from the Ministry of Health were taken to inspect the facility and samples of an alleged antibiotic apparently being manufactured at the Laboratory were also taken for analysis.
The Ministry of Health has already confirmed that no licence has been granted to McAfee or any of his agents to manufacture antibiotics in Belize.
Doing so without a licence is an offence under the Antibiotics Act.
Then, there are bits that seem a tad... not directly related to the alleged main issue of the police action:
Present on the premises at the time were John McAfee, his girlfriend who is a seventeen year old Belizean minor, five security guards.
...
Further investigation led into a query regarding the employment of the security guards. This revealed that only two of the four guards on the premises were licensed to act as security guards.
...
At the end of the search, three of the security guards were arrested and charged for "Providing Security Services without a License".
Also, the dog was not shot dead. It was "fatally wounded".
The same dog then attacked a B.D.F. soldier who responded by fatally wounded the dog.
Re:Clearly... (Score:3, Informative)
Funny you say that. If you access the "mobile" versions of a lot of sites they have no Javascript, load nearly instantly and often times have SUPERIOR UI to the "full blown" site that has a lot of meaningless crap.
Yelp is a good example. The mobile version of Yelp is simple and to the point. Is it spartan? Yes, but it's good enough.
Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (Score:4, Informative)
Then there is the $1 million patrol boat he donated to the Belizean coast guard. (In a letter to The New York Times, he described it as an act of philanthropy; later, he tells me he had to bribe members of the coast guard to prevent them from hassling his ferry business: "This is a third-world country. I had to bribe a whole bunch of folks.
indicating that he routinely gives large, overt, public bribes to get whatever he wants in Belize
Bribing foreign officials is a violation of the US law Foreign Corrupt Practices Act [wikipedia.org]. So it's surprising that he would admit this to a journalist.
Re:Clearly... (Score:3, Informative)
No, it isn't (Score:5, Informative)
Re:WTF? (Score:5, Informative)
Why are you shocked and surprised? This happens every day in the United States in drug raids. Whole family is sitting down to dinner, just chilling one evening, then the door explodes (gotta love those no-knock warrants) while armed thugs swarm in, family dog gets a bullet (well that pomeranian could have gotten a cop and given him an infection ya know), kids are screaming while mom and dad are roughly thrown to the ground. Thugs take their time searching through the house and snickering loudly at mom's sex toys. Sometimes people even get shot for absolutely no reason.
Welcome to the creeping tyranny of a police state. Not so fun to actually be a part of one, is it?
Re:Darn... (Score:4, Informative)
They didn't "kill his dog" (Score:3, Informative)
They killed one of his eleven dogs (three of which attacked them). They also arrested three of his four security guards for not having the proper license to work as private security in Belize.
But hey, the more I read about the guy, the more I dislike him.
He created the McAfee antivirus, which alone is enough to take pleasure in his misfortune.
He has a 17-year-old girlfriend. Don't get me wrong. I think it's perfectly okay for a 66-year-old guy to have a 17-year-old girlfriend, as long as 66-year-old guy is me, when I'm 66.
He fled the U.S., tried to renounce his citizenship, etc. etc. etc. to escape from 5 civil suits that have been brought against him.
He moved to some third-world tax haven country where he thought the U.S. wouldn't be able to reach him (or his money).
He greased a few palms like he was supposed to do, then he got uppity and decided he wasn't going to give this one gentleman any money because, you know, he'd already given a million dollars to the police department.
He has ELEVEN dogs. In most cities in the U.S., that itself would be illegal. He hired four security guards, 3 of whom were unlicensed.
And then when the shit hit the fan, he started crying to the American Embassy to get rescued. Excuse me? Is he an American citizen or isn't he?