danalwyn

The real stinger for Brazil is not that they screwed up in front of the whole world, it's that they paid $14 billion for the honor of screwing up in front of their own fans. Maybe they should have let someone else get that particular honor ...

A lot of computer people have long suspected that anti-virus software was essentially a kind of elaborate scam, not just the pop-up window viruses that promise you 'virus protection' after they've infected your computer, but the kind of anti-virus programs that they sell in reputable stores. Even when they work, they're essentially attempts to fix problems they already know about, when your biggest problem is ones that you don't.

So it comes as no surprise that John McAfee, creator of the company that is probably second- or third-most likely to install their software alongside something entirely unrelated, is a bit of a snake oil salesman in real life. But we were surprised to find out from Gizmodo that McAfee has entered a lifestyle involving 17-year old girlfriends, an arsenal of guns, and a descent full-blown paranoia.

That was then, of course, November 8th. Now the neighbor that McAfee had disputes with, American expatriate Gregory Faull, is dead. McAfee himself, wanted for questioning regarding the incident, is on the run.

The affair has turned into a full-blown internet sensation. McAfee is making regular phone calls to Wired reporter Joshua Davis, claiming that he is now in disguise, and is evading the police. He's already compared the rounding up of his various employees for questioning to Stalin's detentions, has claimed the police are out to kill him, and is presumably doing some wacky stunt right now, probably involving driving an ATV off a cliff. What's drawn people here is not so much the celebrity factor, but the continual amount of crazy that McAfee continues to deliver live through the internet.

If this was the US, this would be pretty cut and dry. The kind of person who has to give live updates on his escape on twitter is not the kind who can stay out of police sight for long. If he managed to escape here he would rightly raise all manner of conspiracy theories. But McAfee has been living in Belize, that small country in South America that doesn't quite fit in.

( No Conspiracy Theories Necessary )

News Summary Time:

I've been avoiding the Middle East like the plague ever since it became impossible to get anything concrete out of it, but there's a bunch of other things (some outdated since it took me so long to write this) that have been running around the headlines. So here they are:

( But First, Here's Johnny With the News )

Microsoft may be a monster when it comes to shady business practices, but I think Google is the first of the big American software companies to be blamed for creating an incident that could be considered an act of war. Granted, it was most probably an accident, but getting Nicaragua to invade Costa Rica has to put them pretty high up on the corporate mojo scale.

(Thanks to Foreign Policy for this one)

The situation in Honduras is increasingly confusing, and most of us have better things to do then spend time learning about it, like mowing the lawn, or sanding bricks, or shoveling gravel, or basically anything. So, just for your convenience, I have written down a timeline of how the whole mess started, so that you don't have to sort through all those annoying "facts" in news broadcasts.


1) Everything starts when one morning Manuel Zelaya woke up and suddenly realized that, not only was he not a rich and successful millionaire playboy who took his battle against crime to the streets in honor of his murdered parents, but that he was actually President of the Honduras, which, in the international scheme of things is sort of like being kneecapped by athletes at the Special Olympics.


( And that's how it went down... )