darrenpopham.com is my personal website expressing opinions and ideas that may amuse some, offend others, and be ignored by everyone else. All I can promise is that I may write something that you might read. If you don’t read it then it really doesn’t matter much then does it? If you did read it then consider yourself lucky to have graduated school with a teacher who cared enough to teach you how.
I am and have been a software engineer, Engineering VP, CTO, Engineering Director, QA Director, Web Developer, Automation Engineer, Serial Startup Entrepreneur, Published Research Scientist, Video Streaming Engineer, Volunteer Crisis Hotline Worker, Trainer and Coordinator, Systems Engineer and a Teacher as well. My resume could fuel multiple websites with content spanning years of experience ranging from the first Internet Application Catalog driven from a database source to developing an entire packaging, test and release platform for security product updates.
One item I am particularly proud of is that I am the co-creator of the current desktop PC firewall market that today exists in every Windows system, Apple device, Android device and every Internet of Things doohickey. Hats off to James Grant (the amazing lead developer) and Phil Attfield (co-founder with a vision for security) – the three of us as a team changed the Internet without even realizing it. McAfee bought our company and from there my Internet career has never looked back. Our ConSeal PC Firewall became the basis for the idea of every other firewall to come.
With such a diverse background I have been known to write about and dabble in many topics including security from time to time. Visitors can benefit from this by browsing through the years of accumulated intruder data and maps showing where they originated. Intruders have been consistently trying to gain access to my servers since 2009 and I have been continuously recording their nonsense. All of this data is collected and analyzed automatically and then made available in a summary form for you to browse through.
Have you ever wondered which country’s citizens attack websites more frequently than any others? I know. Have you ever wondered how frequently hackers try to break in? I know. Ever wonder why Internet providers, who have this same data, never do anything about it? I wonder too…..
Ideas and Beliefs
Warning: the next section is not for the faint of heart nor for those that are easily upset. If you are easily triggered by ideas that may challenge your outlook on life, then skip over this. You’ve been warned……
** begin trigger section **
Security though is not just limited to the Internet and takes on many forms, including security of thought and knowledge. Not censorship…. get that out of mind right now.
Ever since mankind lived in caves trembling in fear of the thunder noises from the sky, we have had the uncanny ability to make up stupid shit to make us feel better about that which we do not understand. However when these small-minded ancient ideas continue to persist beyond their childish beginnings and evolve into ridiculous religious beliefs that then influence our “modern” society, then I call Bullshit. The universe was not created in seven days with plants existing before sunlight was even created to feed them. A massive population did not spend years wandering the desert leaving no evidence and having enough people to easily span the desert from end to end. The latest retelling for the umpteenth time of a deity descendant who dies for something called sin and then getting resurrected three days later did not happen, just like the Easter Bunny does not deliver brightly colored eggs. Bad ideas perpetuated by ignorant people who refuse to ask questions because it threatens their sacred beliefs are still bad ideas whether people want to admit it or not.
Does it make sense to teach people that when you turn on a light switch an angel lights its farts with a match to illuminate the bulb? There’s no proof of angel farts yet there is plenty of proof for electrical circuits, switches, lights and power sources. It would be ridiculous to believe in angel farts in light of the prevailing evidence of basic electricity. So why believe in an invisible sky daddy that wants to love everyone by scaring the shit out of them and threatening ever lasting pain and torment?
Ideas that are ludicrous should not even be given a second of consideration before being dismissed as some of the dumbest shit ever perpetuated on a thinking species. These include ideas such as those of a talking snake, a boat full of animals that walked all the way from Australia, someone living inside a big fish, and believing that the most recent retelling of the same story about the son of an invisible sky daddy who later dies and rises from the dead, a hermit who mumbles and sleeps sitting up reaches a heightened level of consciousness and transcendence, and many, many more. It’s all bullshit.
I do not support these dumb ideas. Period. They are made up crap that have no evidence, are misleading and are potentially dangerous. Wishing on a fairy god mother that cancer goes away doesn’t make it go away. If it did, there wouldn’t be cancer. Instead immune responses, modern medicines and surgeries make it go away – support that instead. Don’t spend the effort on crap ideas but instead find ways to work with the ideas that probably work and make things better.
It is also not my responsibility to blindly accept weird beliefs on “faith” just because some ancient pedophile in a book says I should, but instead it is up to the snake-oil salesmen to provide the evidence for their claims. Prove it. Convince me with facts. And if you think I have insulted some magic fairy then I humbly suggest that the magic ghost friend can file an injunction in court and then show up. Not you. Not their followers. If that stupid fairy is real then they can do it themselves without proxy, help, support or any other human intervention. Just them. Or better yet, Strike Me Down With your Magic Light Saber! Pew Pew Pew.
Good luck with that.
Alas when it comes to odd beliefs, reality is rarely considered and no proof for the made up stories is ever provided. There is no such evidence for fart angels igniting light bulbs and blindly saying “it was written in our sacred [insert your favorite Goat Herder Instruction Manual here]” does not count as evidence. Instead what we get are false arguments that target and try to confuse people.
For example, the best explanation we have so far for falling down works repeatedly. The Theory of Gravity works even if it is called a theory. Go jump off a bridge and prove me wrong if you doubt me. That is repeatable proof that you don’t need to take on faith. Do it yourself if in doubt. However a magic fat guy in the sky watching my every move that threatens perpetual torture is bullcrap. Prove otherwise with proof.
But rather than offer proof for the outlandish stories, all that is offered is regurgitated falsehoods that fly in the face of observable phenomena whose only purpose is to confuse people. No proof is available for the weird ideas, so instead confusing and misleading ideas attempt to distract people away from the observable facts. “I saw someone miraculously get cured of their cancer!” Who was cured? The woman whose testimony was used by the catholic church to justify Mother Theresa getting Sainthood? The same woman who claimed to have had cancer that went away when she claimed to have touched a picture of Mother Theresa? The same woman who was diagnosed at that time as never having had cancer but instead having a cyst for which she was already in a months-long treatment? Or did those little details and facts get in the way of making up some fake story?
How about the World Is Flat argument (disproven by people thousands of years ago with nothing but a stick)? In fact people have measured the size of the Earth for thousands of years. Heck if you have a long stick and time to travel to different parts of the world on a yearly basis you too can prove the world is round and measure its size. With a stick!!!!! Welcome to high school math…….. [trigonometry, measure the shadow length at different latitudes on the same day of the year, simple things like that].
And there IS recorded evidence of evolution. There is an unimaginable number of remains of transitionary species. That’s most of what is found. So why do people froth at the mouth that there are no transitionary species? Anyone who knows anything about evolution knows that the fossil records are full of transitionary species!
Theories like these and the “Theory of Gravity” do not go away by simply believing something else. You cannot just fly because you believe you can. When you turn on your cell phone it’s not Angel farts carrying smoke signals to other phones in the ether, it’s the manipulation of electromagnetism that is used to send and receive the signals. The scientific theories exist because they are statements based on observable and repeatable phenomena. The observed evidence is there, it doesn’t go away when it’s inconvenient. The evidence can be found by anyone and it supports the theory that best describes the evidence at the time. When’s the last time you smelled an Angel fart?
So ideas like religion, homeopathy, psychic claims and other supernatural phenomenon are dangerous. They provide pat and incorrect answers that are easily disprovable but still appeal to simple minded people who stopped asking questions. Believing in the made-up ideas deludes people from looking for real answers that could be more helpful. I feel sorry for people that believe the falsehoods and hope that someday they can break out of their oppressive views and start asking meaningful questions and join the rest of us in this Universe instead of their cartoon one.
In the meantime though society as a whole keeps believing in some version of unverifiable Fairy Farts while at the same time benefits from all the science and innovation that surrounds us. For example,
- Where do people think cars came from? Must have been Bigfoot engineering.
- Who invented cell phones and TVs? Aliens of course.
- Who invented homogenized milk that prevents the deaths of uncountable children? The tooth fairy of course, how could I forget.
- And the flu vaccine or antibiotics? They must have been found by someone praying really hard and then the solution magically fell out of their ass.
In reality there was a lot of hard work performed by a large number of people, there was a lot of trial and error with many dead ends. But yet most of all, the discoveries that were discovered that make all of our lives better were found to be repeatable and observable. That’s science.
If you are open minded, not trying to convince me of some ludicrous idea without providing the evidence to back it up, and you are interested in the things that interest me, then I welcome you to visit my site. If you have something to say, be patient, don’t write in all caps, be nice and try to write your messages as clear as possible. If you’re a bible thumping believer bent on convincing me you are right and I am wrong then I wish you luck, hope that someday you will learn more and stop wasting your time and mine.
Until then though, I will politely just ignore you.
** end trigger section **
Site Etiquette
I try to leave content alone for the most part, but realize that this is my site, not yours. If a comment is particularly unhelpful, insulting, or otherwise rude enough that you’d have your teeth caved in had you said it in public, then I will remove it, edit it, forward it to the Internet community for ridicule, or do whatever the hell I want with it without any warning whatsoever. You might think that your immaturity or moral outrage is normal Internet etiquette, but I am sorry, if you do that here then you sir or madam are an a-hole. Keep trying to contribute in this way and I’ll blacklist you. As I said above, this is my site, not yours. I can make the site, take it down, change its colors or switch the language to Finnish if I wish. Pucker up buttercup and live with that.
The same warning goes for spam. Spam based comments are deleted automatically, often without my even noticing them, and the server that tried to post the spam is automatically blacklisted by the security software I wrote. Spammers in my opinion contribute less to society than splinters woven into cheap toilet paper. While selling hope and promise they simply lead to a rather unpleasant outcome.
I also reserve the right to remove or edit any article I have written in the past. Ideas change, new information becomes available all the time, and I couldn’t stand by if something I said in the past comes out to be inaccurate. Unlike religions, I will change. Take that idea and mull over it for a bit – I can change my mind when new information arrives. Provide real evidence that a flying spaghetti monster exists and drops his noodly blessings from on high then sign me up. If I am given provable evidence then I would believe. Until then, I’ll enjoy eating the pasta on my plate.
And last but not least, and perhaps the most important of all: enjoy life.
It is after all the only one you’ve got.