In The News Today...

Quote: SOOPOO

I don’t consider going to a ‘drag show’ a right or left thing. I went with wifey and friends in Key West and it was a blast. But agree that only those on the right would do anything other than laud the hero. I am pretty sure that the show I went to was more than 1/2 heterosexual couples.

Quote:

Over the years, Bob Innes has found himself on more than one occasion scratching his head and wondering, "Can some people really be that dumb?"

"I mean, nobody could be stupid enough to hire a hitman on the internet, right?" he tells PEOPLE.

Well, as the northern California resident came to learn, they could be.

It all started in 2005, when Innes and some buddies in an IT program at a Santa Rosa, Calif., business school wanted to start a computer security company.

They chose a tongue-in-cheek website domain name: RentAHitman.com.

"Rent as in hire us," explains Innes, 54. "Hit as in network traffic, and men, because there were four of us. We thought it was funny."

When the school program ended, the four friends went their separate ways and never started the company. Innes all but forgot about the website until 2008, when he logged on just for the heck of it and found 300 or so emails in the inbox.

Some of the inquiries were not at all what he expected.

"How much for a hit? Do you perform asset extraction? Are you hiring?" were some of the eyebrow-raising questions people were asking, he recalls.

"There was even a female out of the UK who wanted to learn the business so that she could be a hitwoman," he says.

Then it dawned on him: He'd accidentally started a fake hitman-for-hire site — one that would end up catching real-life criminals.

All for the $9.20 for the domain name.

Seeing that some people out there thought this was an actual murder-for-hire website, Innes decided to have some fun with it.

He tweaked the original content and turned it into a parody site.

"There are customer service awards and fake customer testimonials," he says. "And if you click on the banner ad, it opens up a brand-new window to the FBI Internet Crime Complaints Center.

"If you see that, and you still move forward with filling out a service request form, then I'm your man," he says.

He vets potential clients (read: criminals-in-the-making) by waiting 24 hours before responding to them. He then asks if they still require the site's services and if they want him to put them in contact with a field operative. If they say yes, he gets in touch with one of the more than 17,985 "operatives" at his disposal, which happens to be the number of police departments in the U.S. in 2016, a figure he found on Google.

The site has led to at least 30 arrests, according to Innes, and some convictions.

Quote: rxwine

For all the theories on the 4 Idaho student killer, I haven't heard anyone suggest that the killer could be someone seeking revenge on one of their parents. Which is, if you think about it pretty effective revenge, as most parents would rather have their own throat cut than their kids murdered.

So, I'll suggest it. They should look at connections to the parents.

Of course, they may have a pretty good idea who it is, and just aren't making it public.

Quote: rxwine

Anyone hear the reason that guy fell off the cruise ship? They never did say whether he was drunk or what.

I'm sure AMS would like to know as he's been taking a lot of cruises lately. One should know if the possibility of flying off the deck into the ocean for no particular reason is something to worry about. ; )

Quote: rquiredusername

I’m guessing he was briefly suicidal and immediately regretted it. Will he admit it? Probably not. The worst thing you can do is admit that, people won’t leave you the f alone.

Quote: rxwine

Anyone hear the reason that guy fell off the cruise ship? They never did say whether he was drunk or what.

I'm sure AMS would like to know as he's been taking a lot of cruises lately. One should know if the possibility of flying off the deck into the ocean for no particular reason is something to worry about. ; )