TechStuff Investigates McAfee

Hey there. So, yeah, there's been some interesting news about some tech personalities lately as of the time we're recording this towards the end of November, and um, you know, we've talked to a lot about people who have very strong personalities, people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and um, you know, very very powerful personalities there. Uh. They may be friendly, they may be you know, have thorny anger, management problems or whatever. But for the most part, you know,

you can see a pretty good picture of the person involved. Um, and then there are other people who you go, wait what, Yeah, We've had a pretty big one of those towards the end of there's a spectrum of of normal, right right, there's some people who are further out on the edges of that spectrum. I would say people like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are a little further out on that spectrum than others because they are very They were both

very driven. Of course Steve Jobs unfortunately passed away, but both very driven individuals who were passionate about their interests and UM, and both reportedly had times when they were not the most pleasant of people to be around. So

so yeah, you've got that whole spectrum thing. Well that we wanted to talk today about some people who kind of fall outside that spectrum to the point where you'd say, all right, either this person has something seriously wrong going on with them, or perhaps the things that are being reported about this person are putting them in a really bad light. But in any way, they are clearly they're they're in a situation that is not normal, and they

themselves may not be what we would call normal. UM. And the first one we wanted to talk about was the one who was in the news recently is John McAfee. And McAfee is a guy who's he's been known as being an eccentric for uh for more than a decade UM. But McAfee he was born in England and raised in Virginia. He went to Roanoke College and got a degree in mathematics. From that college, UH, he spent time as a programmer for NASA's Institute for Space Studies. He worked for a

couple of big companies. He worked for Univac, he worked for Xerox. UH nineteen seventy eight, he joined the Computer Sciences Corporation, and then he started working for Lockheed. And while he was working for Lockheed, that's when he started to develop the software that he has really become known for. In fact, it shares his name, the McAfee anti virus software. While at LOCKEED he was he became very interested in this idea of detecting and removing computer viruses because they

were just really starting to blossom at that time. We're talking about UM the late eighties, and you know, this is before we really get into the eras of web. The Web doesn't really exist yet, actually doesn't exist yet in the in the eighties UM, and very few companies have access to some of the other Internet UM functionalities like file transfer protocols or email, although they do exist

at this time. But he was he could see that there was this rise in computer viruses and that because computers followed directions, there are ways of creating directions that make your computer do things that you don't necessarily want it to do, whether that's completely filling up a hard drive with meaningless information and breaking it, or installing some sort of of of uh trojan program that protects a

nasty piece of malware from being detected. He was very much dedicated to creating software that would that would find that and remove it. Now, UM, it's interesting to note a little bit about his his background and UM I read not too long ago a piece from released by Wired called John McAfee's Last Stand by Joshua Davis. They also have a an e book available on Amazon that you can purchase. I think it's nine cents and I think it's a I want to say it's thirteen chapter

something like that. Yeah, yeah, it's it's not a long long book, but it's you know, more than an article. Yeah, because apparently this from Wired was there for like six months. Yea. Um, but yeah, he he had been um, you know, as he was working for uh, you know, companies like omex Um in the early nineteen eighties. I mean he was a pretty heavy drug user. Apparently I used cocaine, coeludes. Um, you know, he he had been a pretty heavy drinker

before that, even in his college days. It looks like um and apparently got to a point where he decided, you know, that was it, he wasn't going to do this anymore. And he really straightened up, um cleaned up. And this was you know, this was before he really got the idea to go in and do this himself, to launch his own company. Um so. And you know, it's not that I necessarily want to uh smear mud on John McAfee so much as I think it provides some context for for the kinds of things that happened

later on in his life. Sure, and uh he made some interesting decisions with that software that he created. One of those was that he decided upon the shareware distribution model, which ended up being a very effective way for him to get that software out there on the market. Um So. In eighties seven he formed McAfee Associates, which was essentially in charge of creating this MacAfee antivirus software. But it

wasn't that much longer. I mean, it was just in ninety four when he resigned from the company, and a couple of years later he sold his his stake uh in the company entirely and just completely got away from it. Um. At one point I hear that he was valued at

around a hundred million dollars. He himself stated that due to the economic depression and downturn and and all these other issues, that he was reduced too closer to four million dollars uh after that was all over, although more recently in two thousand twelve, he said that that was probably not entirely accurate. He may he may in fact have had a bit more than four million dollars UM. And this is where we start getting into some pretty

strange stuff. Um. He one thing was that he was really interested in this this concept of quorum sensing, now uh quick. Quarum sensing, especially when it refers to bacteria, is a way of the bacteria have of reacting in a certain manner, and that manner is completely dependent upon how much bacteria is present at that time. So in other words, if you were to provide a stimulus to these bacteria, they would provide a response that would be based mostly upon how many other uh instances of that

bacteria are present. So if there is x number or greater, it will respond one way, but if it's fewer than that, it will respond a different way, and uh my Coufee said that he was doing this in order to try and develop new anti beyodics, antibacterial treatments, things that could help humans, uh in a medicinal way. And he relocated

to two Belize, just in Central America. Uh the only country in Central America, by the way, for which English is the official language, although from what I understand it is not the most prevalent language spoken there. It is however, the official one. Anyway, he moved to Belize, um created this lab in his home, you know, apparently a pretty large compound there, but he has a lab at that compound.

That was from what he was saying, all about studying this stuff to try and create better medicines, mostly medicines that he was looking at. He was looking at a lot of natural elements, things that were um found out in rainforests, things like that as the key to these sort of medicines. That's what he was claiming. Yeah, it would seem that his his entrepreneurial spirit hasn't completely left because he's done this. He's also even apparently tried to

come up with a a sport. Yes, when he was living out in the Southwest and this is before he moved to Belieze. Um. Apparently, Um, I was listening to a radio report from someone who had been uh you know, who had met McAfee more than once, and he said, yeah, I want you to come out here and check out this new sport, apparently, narrow trekking. You're supposed to fly, I don't know, very very close to the ground. Um. You fly very low to the ground using uh, some

form of aircraft. It might even be a hang glider with a motor attached to it. But the idea is that you are flying close to the ground so that you get that real sense of speed and danger from being you know, just a very short distance away from crashing to a potential terrible injury or death. And in fact, McAfee was involved in a wrongful death lawsuit that was

the result of a person dying from an arrow trekking accident. Um, So I mean this was you know, he's known as a daredevil as well as many other things, which will I guess we can kind of segue into. Now this is gonna get really weird, folks, because here here's the thing is that there are a lot of different reports.

There's what McAfee has said through or we presume it's McAfee, through various blogs and Twitter account Twitter messages, things like that, there are things that he has said, there are things that people who know him have have said. There's things that journalists who have investigated this have said, and honestly we don't have the whole story. But no matter who's telling the story, it's weird. UM has known that the

Polize police have visited him on more than on occasion. Yes, they're their gangs unit actually rated his house in April two twelve, the Gang Suppression Unit in Orange Walk Down Belize. They rated his home under suspicion that his laboratory was actually producing crystal meth. That that was in fact what

he was interested in making and not UM medicine. And in fact there are there are journalists, they're bloggers who have said that UM that that McAfee was very active in online discussion forums that were dedicated to drug manufacturer like as an illicit drugs or or recreational drugs. UM. Although there is a woman who UM he talked into a job offer to come down and work on UH

medicinal drugs as well. So that again this is their conflicting report, right, So, so they could be that these reports that he was the one who was on these recreational drug sites, maybe that wasn't him because there they were using uh uh pseudonyms, I mean handles, they weren't

It wasn't just him there. But Gismoto published a report that very much seemed to indicate that he was one of the people on this recreational drug forum talking about trying to perfect a typical kind of drug that would, um well, supposed to enhance his his sexual experiences as well as give a sense of euphoria and supposedly would create a very gradual and mellow come down afterward. So uh, and he the guy who was posting under this name,

posted a lot about this particular kind of drug. Um Whether or not that was John McAfee, however, is still a question. Now. One of the things that people have said is that the drugs that he was talking about often can create a sense of paranoia in someone who's using those drugs. Now, again, whether or not McFee was using those drugs is a is a question that's left open. However, I think it's safe to say that paranoia is something he has felt yes, he has. He has demonstrated, UH,

paranoid tendencies. Now again there's always that joke just because your paranoia doesn't mean they're not out to get you. But we can't really say that, but we can definitely say that he has shown some some paranoid tendencies. One

of those is trying to evade the police. Now, as of the recording of this podcast, which is at the end of November twelve, he's still on the run from police and Belize, And the reason why the police are interested in him is that someone who lived near him, Gregory Veant Fall, was found shot dead a few several

meters away from UH from McAfee's property and UM. Fall and McAfee had a history of um H arguments, some some UH some disagreements, one of which was that Fall said that McAfee mcfee's dogs, when I think McFee owned like eleven dogs, but that his dogs were barking all the time and that was driving Fall crazy. And UH. One of the other issues that happened recently was that several of McAfee's dogs, I think four of them died

of poisoning. So the implication here and again this is all unfolding, so we don't have the full information, but the implication is that perhaps Fall or someone that Fall knows, poisoned the dogs, and that perhaps there was an act of retribution against Fall. So when the news first broke, it sounded like McAfee was not just a person of interest but a suspect. Since then the police police have said, no, he's not a suspect. We just want to talk to him because we want to find out who killed Fall.

It's possible that perhaps someone around McAfee killed Fall or McAfee, not necessarily on McAfee's command, because, as it turns out, McAfee has seemingly started to hang out with some pretty rough customers in Belize. Yep, the photography that that accompanies the Wired book includes some people with some very large guns. Yeah, the stories are essentially I'm sorry, I mean, there's a

guns are pretty heavily restricted in Beliefe. So the story essentially is that it sounds like McAfee has um formed relationships with several of the the drug gangs in Belize. Now it may be that he was doing this in an attempt to get hold of materials for his legitimate medical you know, research that could be the case, it would not be necessarily the wisest move a person has ever made to get involved with drug boards, but that's

a possibility. Now a lot of other people are saying, no, what's happening is McAfee got involved in so he could get the ingredients need to make the recreational drugs that he was interested in, which again we don't know um so. Anyway, it's possible that maybe one of these you know, gang members that he hangs out with committed the murder and

it wasn't McAfee at all. So we don't know if McAfee shot Fall, or if someone McAfee knows shot him, or if it was just some random crime that seems that seems the most unrealistic of the various possibilities, but we don't know, um so. McAfee has been on the run and has been posting, or at least there have been blog posts attributed to McAfee that have posted in his absence that have made things sound even more strange, for instance, that McAfee has been using elaborate disguises to

to hide in plain sight. Yes, he appeared as a German um tourist basically using profanity and just shouting at people randomly, or tried to uh disguise himself and hunch over so that he didn't appear as tall as he normally is, and uh spoken heavily accented English, trying to sell trinkets to uh he said even or this person said he even attempted to sell something to an Associated Press reporter who didn't recognize him, a wooden dolphins. Yes, uh,

that the reporter suddenly had an urgent call to attend to. Yeah, it's in the blog post McAfee, assuming it is. McAfee claimed that he nearly sold one of these trinkets before the AP reporter was called away. Now the police police have been asking him to turn himself in so that he can talk about whatever it is that happened to fall like who who could have possibly killed him, and

to clear his name. McAfee, in turn, has said that, or at least according to these reports and according to people who know him who say they've talked to him, says that he doesn't want to go into police custody because he firmly believes that the police will kill him once he's in their custody. Yeah he um he even reacted to the that's the way he's on the run now. Actually was because when the when the police showed up, he thought they were coming to hassle him again. So

he here, that's what he says. Anyway, so he escaped before they could catch him. He Um. So anyway, he's saying that the police are definitely going to kill him if they take him into custody. Uh. He's also at one point apparently suggested that, uh that fall falls death was really meant, was that there was a hit gone wrong that was meant to hit McAfee and instead hit Fallum. That was one of the other possibilities I heard of

the couple of weeks before we record this podcast. Um. So it's these are these are definitely tendencies that we would classify as paranohite. Um. And honestly, again we don't know all the information. It maybe that perhaps McAfee is a very eccentric but otherwise mostly innocent. First and now it's true that his personal life also has some other complications.

Apparently he has several people living at that compound with him, including several young women with whom he often has sexual relations, and including one who is identified over and over as a seventeen year old girlfriend. But then there are other women, uh, and and at that compound as well, and so I mean they're they're definitely. So it's kind of this weird, larger than life, odd David Lynch sort of story thing. Like if I saw this enough film, I would think

the Cohen Brothers made it. Yeah, it's just it's just so weird when you think of somebody who has gone down in history as coming up with a very successful tech product. Um. You know, you you don't typically think of that. You think of somebody like Jobs or Gates or um, maybe Larry Ellison. Uh, you know some some people who they've got lots of money, they live a

jet setter's lifestyle. Maybe maybe not um, but you don't really typically think of you know, when you hear something like, well, John McAfee is a person of interest in this murder case, and really that's just strange. But but you know the reason why we wanted to do this podcast was not just to talk about about McAfee, although that was you know, the main, the main focus, but also to talk about

some other people in technology who have displayed odd traits. Well, yeah, that was that was the second thing that came to my mind was you know, well he's not alone. I mean I was thinking specifically when I talked to Jonathan about this about a man named Hans Reiser, who also whom I read about and wired, uh several years ago, um,

when he was at that point accused of murdering his wife. Um. And uh, it was just strange to me because he was, Um he's known for UM, he's not as famous as as uh John McAfee would be, but he is known for his riser f s. It's a file system for for computers to store files and apparently is extremely efficient, Um, very popular among among a certain crowd, very very popular

in various Linux distributions. Yes, yes, Um. And then you know, and here again I'm going wait this, this person who's you know, famous within a certain tech community is um, you know it's it's wanted for murder. This is so strange. Yeah. He married a woman named Nina Sharonova. Uh and they met in Russia, I believe so that and that has raised questions as to you know, was that an arranged marriage kind of thing? But whether that is or not, she turned up missing and uh, eventually I know it's

an odd, odd phrase, right. Uh, But she turned up missing and then her body was found, and eventually Hans rise Or was taken into custody, and uh, he was tried, he was convicted. He ended up um getting a Originally he was tried under first degree murder, but it was reduced to second degree murder in a plea deal. But yeah, that's that goes beyond being odd, I would say. Uh. But yeah, certainly an example of someone who created something very influential in technology who ended up having some very

severe problems. Well, he had, um, he had claimed that she had left the country and gone back to Russia, and um, you know I had there was nothing, nothing there untowards of course, UM, the police had, well they didn't have the body. They didn't know, you know, for sure, whether she was missing or or dead. And um they found his car with um, some bloodstains of hers in it, um and an inch of water on the floorboard apparently.

And he was trying to explain how he you know, tried to clean out his car with water and how he was surprised to find out that card manufacturers don't put a hole in the floor so that water will drain out and all sorts of things apparently that made the jury shake their heads. And then finally he just said, you know, look, this is what happened. Um, but it's

just very very thing, very very weird thing. I should say, I meant I left out a word there um to to see something like that happen, and uh, you know it's strange. If you want to hear about some more here do some more eccentric ones. These are not nearly as grim so our buddy Tesla. Oh yes, Nikola, Tesla, Internet darling Tesla. You guys love Tesla. I just have to say, whenever we talk about Tesla, we get lots of emails and messages. Yes, he's right behind Chris his

picture anyway, Um Tesla. Yeah, one of those guys that everyone on the internet seems to adore. Um. Also kind of an odd fellow. Had a lot of compulsions that he would um, he would bow to all the time. One of them was an obsession with the number three. Apparently he made it a habit that before going into a building, he would walk around the block three times

before entering. I've read reports that he would always have stacks of three stacks of napkins, and the napkins had to be in a number that's divisible by three, although the number has changed depending upon which sours I was reading. There was one that's at nine and one that's at eighteen. Uh. But you know, he had anything that was that had the number three, and that that was something that was very important to him. He wanted to stay in hotel rooms that are only the room number need to be

divisible by three. Uh. And he lived in a hotel. He didn't, you know, have an apartment or a house or yeah. He Uh. He also was a germophoe and um, he hated the thought of anything dirty. He didn't you know, he was extremely uh obsessed with cleantliness. Not necessarily a bad thing until it goes a little too far. He apparently hated jewelry and round the objects. Grant if you're if you're creating a tesla coil, round up objects might

kill you. So maybe that's why. But um, but yeah, there was just these weird little things and and of course his eccentricities became more and more pronounced as he

got closer to his death. He kind of had a pretty sharp decline, and part of that was probably brought on by the stress and anxiety he felt by you know, feeling like legitimately so, but feeling like he had been um cheated out of his spot in the limelight for quite some time when other other people were getting patents on inventions that he felt he was the rightful inventor of and therefore he should be the one holding the patent um. Kind of a tragic life really when you

when you look at the whole story. Although he did some amazing things I mean alternating current and Tesla Coil's radio I mean again radio is one of those big ones where he originally had the patent and then the patent office famously reverse their decision on his patent and gave it to Marconi, and that was there was a big slap in the face. But he's not the only famous tech guy who had some weird personality quirks. Samuel Morse another one, Yes, Morris, this is an unpleasant one

to talk about. He's known for his involvement with the telegraph. Ye patent did the telegraph. He also he also built I didn't realize this in my research, I found out he had built a marble cutting machine like to cut slabs of marble into three dimensional sculptures. He was not able to get a patent on it because there was a patent for a previous device that did essentially the same thing, but he did in at one UM. So he was paranoid as well, you know, he was, you know,

like McAfee, very paranoidal. But his paranoia was was painted against very broad groups um, notably the Catholics. He was Protestant, and he believed that Catholics were going to wipe out Protestants. UM. He also apparently thought that the nation of Austria was dedicated to destroying Protestants. And he even ran for the mayor of New York City under the Nativist Party. And the Nativist Party was an anti immigration party. They didn't

want any immigrants coming into the United States. Um and and his his prejudices went well beyond Catholics and and Austrians. He also uh seemed to hold several, uh pretty strong negative opinions about people who are Jewish as well as he defended, um the institution of slavery. Now you gotta remember the only Morse is active in the mid nineteenth century, so this is even before the Civil War. But he what he defended slavery, saying essentially that it was it

was part of the divine plan. And so you know, he created something that ended up being instrumental in our communications network and really laid the foundation for what would become later on our our telephone network, and then even beyond that, the Internet itself. You're talking about this is like the beginning of all of that. Uh. And yet also held these these beliefs, and uh seemed to have

some pretty crazy ideas. I mean, the idea that that there was this this organized conspiracy to wipe out a certain segment of the population was a little odd. Uh. And then I've got one. This one's more fun or weird and less again grim or gloomy. But h and again this this was something I read on a blog post that was about people who showed odd tendencies, you know, people in technology so um. But it was about Yoshiro Nakamatsu, who was the guy who held the most patents ever,

like three thousand. UM. He invented compact discs, digital or DVDs. He also did uh, digital watches, UM, lots and lots of stuff. Apparently, his little excentristy is that he writes down everything he eats, he he makes a record of it, and he has a specific goal, a very particular goal, to live to be one hundred and forty four years old.

And uh, the the thing that makes up the majority of his diet is what the blog called yummy New Tree Brain food, which was a combination of seaweed, cheese, yogurt, eel, eggs, beef, and chicken liver. And also he had a very interesting way of inspiring himself to get new ideas ideas for inventions.

He would submerge himself in a tub of water and then hold his breath until he could not possibly hold his breath a moment longer, to the point where he said that he was a half second away from drowning and says it was the depletion of oxygen that is integral for the act of inspiration. HM. So that's interesting. I do not recommend that. In fact, I would like to currently say, with all sincerity, don't do that. There are better ways of coming up with good ideas well.

The longevity argument that he makes sort of reminds me of Ray Kurtzweil, whom we've talked about before and who believes that we are reaching the point at which the singularity is very likely to occur, the point where you know, basically people will be able to, you know what technological

help become immortal essentially, and um uh. You know he has been on a very strict diet for quite some time and taking certain vitamins and things any occidants that that he hopes will preserve his physical body until the point where it can be transferred I guess to a uh cybernetic state. But you know, that's one of those things where you think of Cursewile and all these things that he's done in in terms of um uh, learning technologies and music, and you know, you hear something else.

You go, wow, that's that's kind of unusual. But you know again, that's that's more of a that's sort of fun and not so not so deep. Jonathan's got an unusual look on his face. And do you find something else? I was just looking at some other things Nat has done. Apparently he has a million dollar toilet room made completely out of gold that helps him think better help, And he has a vertical moving room in his house which

you must not call an elevator. Yeah. Yeah. Also a lot of his inventions are kind of those wacky inventions, like the patent stuff that he's got. Not all the patents are necessarily things that you would think of as being actually useful, so you know, it's kind of the Mr Pope Heel of Japan apparently pocket Fisherman anyway. So clearly, uh, genius can sometimes come with some some little weird quirks,

sometimes quirks that can lead to pretty tragic outcomes. Hopefully we'll see more of the fun weird quirks than the ones that are going to create a dark news items goodness, I certainly don't want any more of those, but and

that kind of wraps up our discussion here. There are plenty of other examples, and I'm sure they're They're probably giants in the technology industry out there whom I have personality issues or personality traits that we would find endlessly fascinating, but we don't know about them because they've kept them under wraps. That's my goal, keep all of my personality quirks under reps. And good luck with that. Yeah, I guess I shouldn't posted Twitter all the time. Um, but

that wraps up this discussion. And if you guys have any suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff. I highly recommend you get in touch with us. Send us an email or address as tech stuff at Discovery dot com, or drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter are handled. There is tech Stuff H. S. W and Chris and I will talk to you again really soon. For more on this and bausands of other topics, visit hastaff Works dot com. Brought to you by the two thousand and twelve Toyota camera