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Guy Robs Someone At Gunpoint For Domain Name, Gets 20 Years In Jail (vice.com)
Yesterday, 43-year-old Iowa man Sherman Hopkins Jr. was sentenced to 20 years in prison for attempting to rob a domain name from another man at gunpoint in 2017. As Motherboard reports, "this may be the first time someone has attempted to steal a domain name at gunpoint." From the report: Last June, Hopkins broke into the home of 26 year-old Ethan Deyo in Cedar Rapids, Iowa one afternoon and demanded that Deyo to log on to his computer to transfer the domain name for "doitforstate.com" to another account. According to Deyo's bio on his personal website, he is a web entrepreneur who previously worked for the web hosting service GoDaddy. After seeing Hopkins enter the apartment, Deyo locked himself into his room and Hopkins kicked in the door. Hopkins kicked in the door and "pistol-whipped" Deyo, held a gun to his head and used a stun gun on him during the encounter. While he attempted to wrestle the gun away from Hopkins, Deyo was shot in the leg, but he eventually gained control of the firearm and shot Hopkins multiple times in the chest. It's unclear why Hopkins wanted the domain name or who he was transferring the domain name to.
"guy robs" ...
"Deyo was shot in the leg, but he eventually gained control of the firearm and shot Hopkins multiple times in the chest."
That doesn't count as "robs", but "attempts to rob".
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Ocean's Eleven Chest Holes.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Plot for Taken 4. Terrorists steal Liam Neeson's domain name.
phishing email like everybody else does? Hard to get shot in the chest that way...
He could have just added an 's' to the domain and bought it for .99 cents.
"Do It For State" is a millennial phrase out of Iowa State like, "Do it for the boobies" or "I did it for the nookie" or "Man up and do it."
As for everyone saying that no one knows why Hopkins did it...
Obviously he did it for state.
This is why it is a bad idea to have public registration information. It should really only be available with a court order; yet many domain name registrars charge you a fee to keep your information safe.
How do you get shot 4 times in the chest and still make it to get 20 years?
This is precisely why ICANN should stop requiring postal and/or phone number in the WHOIS records.
Ehh, I can't say that it sounds particularly interesting to me. The ability to look people up via whois kinda destroys any dramatic tension, ya know?
Google number, and P.O. Box. Failing that, a small company front.
Guns don't kill people, DNS kills people.
Wellllll in this case nobody got kilt. And you could argue it was a domain name registration. But that just ain't bumper-sticker worthy.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Plot for Taken 4. Terrorists steal Liam Neeson's domain name.
Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson): "I have a particular set of skills -- and a Security+ certification..."
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
These 20 years will do nothing to deter anything like this and when he comes out, he will probably still be dangerous. Fail.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
... The ability to look people up via whois kinda destroys any dramatic tension, ya know?
If you remember from the film The Net the "whois" command can return a picture of a person's drivers license - so there's that. (sigh)
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Hmm - wonder if since the victim used to work for godaddy that this was a grievance thing? Maybe he used to have the domain and perceived that it was taken from him by nefarious means? Anybody got a subscription to a whois history service that can take a peek? Doesn't condone this nutter's action, but surely there's more to this than a random attempt to grab a (presumably) valuable domain? I mean there are other more obvious targets if you're willing to do this at gunpoint!
Poking a hole in someone's spinal cord, heart, or certain parts of the brain will kill them. Other that, doctors intentionally remove lungs, kidneys, etc, to make someone's life better in some cases. Poking a hole in one is unlikely to kill someone.
Real life shootings are very, very different from movies. Getting shot doesn't knock you back either. You may recall Newton's third law says the force backward on the person shooting is at least equal to the force of the bullet. Actually the person shooting gets a significantly greater force than person shot - the gases come out of the barrel with significant energy that wasn't transferred to the bullet. The person shooting gets "knocked backward" with about twice as much energy as the person shot (half inch vs quarter inch).
I don't know who you are but I will find you and I will whois you! â
Because this is what a hero looks like.
Here we're talking about a handgun. In a handgun, approximately half of the forward energy is in the projectile, so without a muzzle brake the shooter would absorb twice as much energy as the target.
Not that hardly anyone uses a muzzle brake on a handgun, but let's suppose someone does. At handgun pressures, the muzzle brake might reduce recoil by 10%-15%. So through the grip, the shooter feels 185% of the energy that the target gets.
Suppose a perfect muzzle brake which redirects all of the excess up and sideways (we assume here it doesn't direct the muzzle flash back into the shooters face.) That perfect muzzle brake would eliminate the excess recoil due to the gases being expelled, leaving the projectile as the only source of recoil. The recoil delivered to the shooter would then be exactly equal to the energy delivered to the target, plus the energy the projectile loses to air resistance. The recoil is still higher than the energy of the projectile.
As to you and your friend, a very good muzzle brake, under the right conditions on a high velocity rifle, can reduce recoil energy by about 50%. In other words, in the best case, it can reduce 6000 Joule to 3000. So that's odd. However, different guns can also deliver that energy over a different period of time. 6000 Joule would be a massage if delivered over a sufficiently long period of time.
IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer) but even I can think of 20 years of charges... criminal trespass, break and enter, assault and battery, extortion, unlawful access to a computer account (think CFAA). Many jurisdictions also throw in extra prison tine if a gun is used in the commision of a crime.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
You're thinking of the charges, but not changing the underlying nature of the preposterous crime.
For example, robbing a bank for money? A crime. Robbing a sperm bank for money, evidence of your client's mental state.
Re-read the first half of the sentence you quoted.
Approximately half of the energy of the expanding gas is imparted to the projectile. The other half is gas amd other residue shooting out of the muzzle, at a velocity higher than that of the projectile. A low single-digit percentage is lost to friction.
Handguns and rifles have "rifled" barrels, meaning there are deep grooves in the barrel, through which a round bullet passes. A portion of the expanding gas escapes through the grooves, never imparting any energy on the projectile. The rest of the gas comes exploding out of the barrel behind the bullet. This is especially true for handguns, with there short barrels. A three inch barrel isn't long enough for the gas to slow down, imparting most of it's energy to the projectile.
The recoil is equal to the energy of the projectile PLUS the energy of the gases and solid residue leaving the barrel.
The above ignores miscellaneous forces less than 2%.
What other excuse could a web entrepreneur use? I'll give him points for creative thinking.
> For a target, a bullet designed for penetration will not impart all the energy into the target. For a hollow point of the same energy, more will go into the target and will deliver more 'knock back'.
It doesn't matter if it penetrates one inch or six inches. When it comes to rest, all of the energy has been transferred to the target.
This would only matter if the projectile passes all the way through the target, and exits at a significant velocity.
A former American President also stole Domain names and then gave those domain names to the United Nations. He may have done this to keep Hillary's additional dirty laundry from wikileaks. He's facing a lawsuit from four state attorneys and it doesnt look like he's going to jail ....
Of course not. They used to call Reagan the teflon president. He had nothing on Obama. Man that guy is slicker than a used car salesman.
I have a deal for you. Hope and change. Just vote for me. Millions did. Suckers.