The Future of ReiserFS

lisah writes "With the announcement of Hans Reiser's arrest this week, many people have been wondering what this will mean for his company, Namesys, and the future of his filesystem work. According to a report at Linux.com, employees at Namesys are circling their wagons and plan to continue working on the project 'in the short term.' One employee admits, 'we are rather shaken and stressed at the moment, although I cannot say we didn't see it coming.'"

Comments

We saw it coming??

[Anonymous Coward]

They knew he was going to kill his wife? Isn't that a felony itself?

Re:We saw it coming??

[MartinG]

Nobody knows if he did kill his wife.

I assume they meant that they saw his arrest coming. (Since when wives disappear, husbands routinely get arrested or at the very least intensively questioned by police)

Re:We saw it coming??

[BSOD DOC]

I thought that one was presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, or has he already been tried and convicted here?

Re:We saw it coming??

[Koroviev]

He meant the arrest. This is the full quotation:

Yes, we are rather shaked and stressed at moment, altough I can not say, we didn't seen it coming. I, personally, really like how US police acted exactly like their russian counterpart: e.g. sitting on their ass for whole month, waiting, so they can declare person officially missing and then just press charges against whoever looks most vulnerable. Well, probably I am wrong. Time will show.

Re:We saw it coming??

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody knows if he did kill his wife.

Well, one person most likely knows for certain...

Re:We saw it coming??

[Tony Hoyle]

No they don't routinely get arrested. To arrest someone you have to have evidence - this means the police have evidence that he *did* kill his wife. They're only now trying to get a confession or enough to convince a jury.

Re:We saw it coming??

[jobsagoodun]

Didn't AOL PUBLISH this a few months ago?

Re:We saw it coming??

[Speare]

I think the "We saw it coming" quote was not in reference to the actual crime, but in the downwardly spiralling finances the group knew about. I hadn't even seen anything about this story until the LAST slashdot article, and someone linked some public emails that showed that the group was quite aware that doom was approaching.

Re:We saw it coming??

[Anonymous Coward]

The alternate hypothosis is they have no idea what happened and are hoping for a confession.

The circumstances surrounding her disappearance are so strange that I wouldn't assume anything.

Re:We saw it coming??

[Rumagent]

this means the police have evidence that he *did* kill his wife

Or think they do. Or hope they do. Or just don't care if they do. The police is not exactly an organization which is known for its infallibility.

Re:We saw it coming??

[Henry V .009]

There was a news story that Reiser was a suspect several weeks ago.

In the office meeting 3 weeks ago, we joked about the advantages of switching to Reiser FS, now that Reiser was going to jail. He'll have plenty of time to work on it, after all.

Re:We saw it coming??

[Aethedor]

Why doesn't the police use Hans' Journal to recover his lost wife?

Re:We saw it coming??

[Anonymous Coward]

You sure about that? The US government is big enough now (*) to detain innocent people indefinitely without due process. As we speak, there are hundreds (thousands?) of people sitting in jail who haven't been formally charged with anything. I don't know the first thing about this particular case, but it seems pretty clear to me that due process is gone.

(*) This isn't the result of terrorism or any one particular event; it is simply the inevitable consequence of government expanding its power year after year. (The US government of today dwarfs the US government of 100 years ago, both in revenue and power over the people, but only a fraction of that growth was achieved pre-Bush or post-9/11.

Re:We saw it coming??

[Anonymous Coward]

Not in the USA, you don't.
Those days are gone. In the USA you are guilty if the government says so.

Re:We saw it coming??

[selfsealingstembolt]

Ever heard of Guantanamo Bay?

Re:We saw it coming??

[slavelayer]

Nice! I like how you made up a quotation, passed it for the real deal, then get +5 informative!
Anyhow, here is the real quote in context.

"I do not think that just being arrested will affect anything so long as Hans is not actually convicted," says Oleg Drokin, the former release manager at Namesys. "If he is convicted, that might cause problems for Namesys [because] it is operated solely by Hans."

The main concern, according to Drokin, is whether Namesys employees, many of whom live in Russia, will continue to receive their salaries. If the money stops flowing, "some people will stop working, of course."

However, Drokin thinks that situation is unlikely. "Hans suspected that he would be suspected from the very beginning," he adds. "I would think he took necessary steps for Namesys employees to continue to work even in his absence and even Namesys itself is safe for at least some time."

...

Lyamin agrees that Reiser4 should be unaffected for now. "Yes, we are rather shaken and stressed at the moment, although I cannot say we didn't see it coming." In the short term, Lyamin says, meaning the next six months, "We will just buzz along as usual, chunking out patches and going through reviews."

Re:We saw it coming??

[Anonymous Coward]

Check the FAQ, it's got something to do with preventing people who never post from meta moderating. It definitely did that before subscriptions existed.

Re:We saw it coming??

[T.E.D.]

To arrest someone you have to have evidence

No you don't. Police can arrest anyone at any time. They do have to eventually charge you with something or release you (at least sometimes they do. The principle is Habeas corpus, which our government has spent the last 5 years undermining).

I can understand why you'd want to think this way. People like to believe that anyone the government goes after must have somehow deserved it. Its a shame that reality doesn't allways work that way.

Re:We saw it coming??

[Anonymous Coward]

GP was quoting from the original LKML post.

Asshat.

Re:We saw it coming??

[Anonymous Coward]

While discussing salaries for the employees while Hans is in custody, and the potential for people to stop working:
FTFA: However, Drokin thinks that situation is unlikely. "Hans suspected that he would be suspected from the very beginning,"

Re:We saw it coming??

[Koroviev]

Thanks. This is where I made my quotation from.

Re:We saw it coming??

[Anonymous Coward]

The police is not exactly an organization which is known for its infallibility.

Man, isn't that the truth - they totally sucked after Sting left...

Re:We saw it coming??

[Anonymous Coward]

I hadn't even seen anything about this story until the LAST slashdot article, and someone linked some public emails that showed that the group was quite aware that doom was approaching.

What's a public email?

Re:We saw it coming??

[EastCoastSurfer]

At least they made an arrest. Where I live, if you're a cop you can kill someone and get away with it. Just check my sig.

Re:We saw it coming??

[Anonymous Coward]

For. Crying. Out. Loud.
Will you wake up and grasp the distinction between enemy combatants sincerely interested in attacking a foreign country, and someone who is either a citizen or resident alien (I presume) of the US?
The relentless nanny-state onslaught has produced such a bunch of slack-jawed granola-heads as to be an utter embarrassment.
Go back to college, listen to your Steve Miller Band, and keep smoking that stuff until you become intellectually indistinguishable from that plant.
</rant>

Re:We saw it coming??

[buckysphere]

I have. What a beautiful place, espcially when compared to any place that the pieces-of-shit who are being held there have visited. Have you heard the true story of their treatment? Apparently not...you know, the gaining of weight from an actual normal diet, the two hours (or more) a day that the bastards are allowed for recess (seriously...f'in recess!), the complete kissing of their asses by everyone there even when they are attacking our soldiers with poo and anything else they can find, the free Qorans and prayer rugs provided to them (not free, really...American taxpayers are providing them), and...well the ridiculous list goes on and on.

Give me a break with that bullshit. We got it already - you hate Bush...you don't HAVE to allow your hatred for our President to absolutely warp your small mind.

Re:We saw it coming??

[Maxo-Texas]

Oh please.

While I didn't vote for Bush, I'm fairly conservative, against terrorism, agree many of the people there are scum.

However, on his dancing around the torture issue, it is clear that we are torturing people somewhere in the world if not there. As an *American* that really pisses me off- we are supposed to the be the shining light on the hill.

Likewise, there is *pretty clear* evidence that a lot of innocent people got swept up in guantanamo (up to 10%) and their lives have been destroyed and when they got out they *reported* being tortured and observing torture. Yes 90% are probably scum bags but police and other people with authority regularly put innocent people to death because their bias is exactly 100% reversed from what it should be. It should be "We don't want to destroy even one innocent person" instead of "We don't want even one guilty person to get away".

We probably *are* kissing their asses and giving them qurans when we are not torturing them. Which is sort of twisted when you think about it. Oh yea- and there is not another country on earth outside of maybe iceland and canada? that hasn't done the same or worse to their own secret prisoners.

Re:We saw it coming??

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you lived under a stone since 9/11??

Re:We saw it coming??

[Rob Kaper]

The US government of today dwarfs the US government of 100 years ago, both in revenue and power over the people, but only a fraction of that growth was achieved pre-Bush or post-9/11.

So the ballpart was achieved in few months during Bush that were prior to 9/11? I take it you meant post-Bush (in which case I agree) or pre-9/11 (in which case I don't).. which is it?

Re:We saw it coming??

[octopus72]

THe evidence here is probably only the fact that he is the last person to be seen with her and actually only known to the police with motives to kill her (because of divorce dispute). I however have doubts that he is the murderer as it would be very stupid of him to do that and he's more than intelligent enough to realise that he w'd be the prime suspect (however he IS a tough personality, so it is possible). Statistics will probably say that in 80%-90% of cases missing/killed wife is a crime commited by husband, and inspectors are aware of that.

Although there is a little possibility that his wife is alive (though I hope she is). In case of a tragedy I hope they'll at least find her body so poor kids can know her fate.

Re:We saw it coming??

[Inhibit]

Just like they didn't hold Bernie S. (old 2600 site) without bail or hearing for suspicion of selling drugs because he was selling radio crystals. Right?

Oh. And they managed to top it off by throwing him on the stand while he was very ill and unable to defend himself. Obviously everyone simply "gets what's coming to them". Best to let that whole "burden of proof" and "innocent until *found* guilty" thing just slide.

Plus he's a fairly nice guy. Which makes it even worse.

Re:We saw it coming??

[Anonymous Coward]

Jon Bonet Ramsey and her parents.

The security guy with the olypmics bombing.

The prof with Anthrax.
 
Folks arrested, these people were destroyed, and NONE of these had one shred of credible evidence.
 
There are plenty of arrests that occur just here in the states, in which there is no evidence.

Re:We saw it coming??

[manno]

I read that whole stiry man. At the bottom of the page it said something about an action that should be taken. what is it?

Re:We saw it coming??

[slavelayer]

Ah, thanks for citing the source.

Re:We saw it coming??

[reklusband]

I killed her. I did it. There. Happy?

Re:We saw it coming??

[demigod]

Have you heard the true story of their treatment?

Nope. Doesn't look like you have either.

Re:We saw it coming??

[EastCoastSurfer]

At this point there isn't a whole lot more that people can do (unless they know something and can come forward). A couple weeks ago the police released a final report and turned it into a cold case.

There is a better article about the case in the local paper where the she was killed, but they are slack and pull articles down in a couple days and charge you for them.

Re:We saw it coming??

[joto]

To arrest someone you have to have evidence

No, that is to convict someone (you know, the stuff they do on court-TV).

To arrest someone, the person must be a suspect in a crime, and there must be a danger of evidence (such as the suspect) disappearing unless the suspect is arrested (you know, the stuff they do in CSI).

this means the police have evidence that he *did* kill his wife.

No, it means the police suspects he *might* have killed his wife, or that he in some other way, have been involved in her sudden disappearance.

They're only now trying to get a confession or enough to convince a jury.

More likely, they are trying to get at least enough evidence to prosecute against him. Otherwise they would have to release him before the investigation was finished. Getting enough evidence to convince a jury is probably more than just a few months away...

Re:We saw it coming??

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody knows if he did kill his wife.

Rather than "Informative", I'd call this statement outright stupid. Hans knows if he did it or not... or is that something you'd rather not take into account?

Re:We saw it coming??

[pkulak]

They say they have "enough" circumstantial evendence to make an arrest. That's a long way from what you need to get a conviction.

Re:We saw it coming??

[sgage]

OK, bucky, I know you're trolling, but I'll bite:

Yes, it's just a laugh a minute in Gitmo. Life in the 6x6 chainlink fence kennel is just a ball. No problem, you get 2 hours a day to stretch your legs. And the poor American taxpayer, imagine having to provide a rug! Of course, it's no fucking problem coughing up $2 BILLION a week for a fucking retarded worse-than-useless war that can have no positive outcome for anyone. That has killed 3000 US soldiers and maimed a hell of a lot more. That has destroyed whatever moral highground the US still had, and has served to galvanize hatred for the US all over the world.

Let's not forget that most of these pampered pets (or "pieces of shit" - whatever) at Gitmo have had no charges brought against them, and were simply sold to "Coalition" forces for the bounty. We damn well better feed 'em and give 'em a rug. The whole thing is a shame and disgrace to our country.

I don't know if you were serious, but to the extent that you were, you are no patriot. You are, in fact, a fact-twisting, lying, sack of shit asshole. Just like your neocon buddies in Washington.

Give us all a break with your bullshit. We got it already - you love Bush...you don't HAVE to allow your blind worship of that moron to absolutely warp your small mind.

NOTE: If you were kidding, so am I.

Re:We saw it coming??

[Anonymous Coward]

The police is not exactly an organization which is known for its infallibility.

But every breath you take, every move you make, they'll be watching you.

Re:We saw it coming??

[Anonymous Coward]

They do have to eventually charge you with something or release you (at least sometimes they do. The principle is Habeas corpus, which our government has spent the last 5 years undermining).

Yeah, the government imprisoned Kevin Mitnick in 1995 and didn't present charges until 1999. He wasn't even allowed a phone call because supposedly he could hack computers and initiate World War III by whistling into a telephone receiver. Those were the days.

Re:We saw it coming??

[Kelson]

I assume they meant that they saw his arrest coming.

I'd assume the same thing.

When I was in college, I had a girlfriend who was majoring in criminology. According to her professors, a huge percentage of murders are actually perpetrated by people who know the victim. Who's closer than a spouse? (And if someone else is closer, you've got a suspect *and* a motive.)

So here you have an estranged marriage, and the wife disappears. It's a no-brainer that the cops are going to at least investigate the husband.

Re:We saw it coming??

[Anonymous Coward]

For. Crying. Out. Loud.
Will you wake up and grasp the distinction between enemy combatants sincerely interested in attacking a foreign country, and someone who is either a citizen or resident alien (I presume) of the US?

Only when you wake up and grasp the distinction between "enemy combatants sincerely interested in attacking a foreign country" and the majority of the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay, who are composed largely of (a) enemy combatants who were only interested in defending their own country against an invading army, (b) non-combatants, many of whom were arrested thousands of miles away from any war zone, because they were suspected of being involved in funding terrorism, and (c) a handful of real terrorists?

The problem that the government now faces is determining which of the people they have are in category C. You are an idiot if you believe they all fall into that category. The bleeding-heart liberals who claim they should all be released at once are equally idiotic, of course, but the fact remains that Guantanamo is illegal, unconstitutional, and should be closed down as soon as possible, with all the inmates being either released or given free, fair, transparent criminal trials. (You know, the kind where they actually get to find out what crimes they're standing trial for?)

Re:We saw it coming??

[Rinkhals]

What a horror story.

Totally confirms my perception of the US justice system.

There are enough innocent people waiting on death row for me to be pretty pessimistic about Hans Reiser's chances of a fair trial.

Re:We saw it coming??

[Anonymous Coward]

arrest that man....

Re:We saw it coming??

[benplaut]

It's never worked in the past, why should it work now?!

Re:We saw it coming??

[DrSkwid]

If they have evidence that he killed his wife, what is the confession for ?

Re:We saw it coming??

[DrSkwid]

Wow, a professor said that. Blimey, they sure do know a lot of secret knowledge up their in university land.

Re:We saw it coming??

[Anonymous Coward]

Hans knows if he did it or not...

Heard of amnesia? Or any of a myriad other psychological conditions that might lead him to be unable to remember such a traumatic event, or conversely to remember murdering her when he didn't, etc.

It is, in fact, possible (if unlikely) that he doesn't know whether he did it or not.

Re:We saw it coming??

[TeknoHog]

Because, IIRC, ReiserFS only journals metadata.

Re:We saw it coming??

[drinkypoo]

No they don't routinely get arrested. To arrest someone you have to have evidence

Who told you that? And what kind of idiots modded you up for saying it? This is the most incorrect line of bullshit I've ever seen. To arrest someone, you have to have cause. This is not the same as evidence.

This is very simple and I will lay it out for you now so you do not go around misinforming people.

Under U.S. law, any person can arrest any person. When a citizen makes an arrest, we call it "citizen's arrest". When a peace officer does it, we call it "police arrest" but since almost all arrests are police arrests, we just call it an arrest.

A citizen may arrest you if they witness you commiting a misdemeanor, or if they have reason to believe you have commited a felony. Such as someone told them so. It doesn't mean they have evidence - someone telling them so is circumstantial at best.

A police officer may arrest you if they have reason to believe you commited a misdemeanor or felony. They do not have to witness it. They don't even have to witness it to cite you for an infraction, although if they don't see it, that's a reasonable defense in court.

The simple fact is that you don't need any evidence whatsoever to arrest someone, and once you have arrested them, you can hold them for up to 48 hours without charging them of a crime.

What country do you think we live in, anyway? You think this is the land of the free or something?

Finally, I'm not saying they don't have evidence - just that it's not actually a requirement for an arrest.

Re:We saw it coming??

[drinkypoo]

Will you wake up and grasp the distinction between enemy combatants sincerely interested in attacking a foreign country, and someone who is either a citizen or resident alien (I presume) of the US?

There is no fucking difference.

Both citizens and non-citizens, even enemy combatants, are human beings.

The Bill of Rights is supposed to be a partial list of rights which are supposed to be accorded to all humans.

If you are willing to compromise your principles in certain situations, you don't have principles.

Re:We saw it coming??

[A beautiful mind]

Most likely it happened elsewhere aswell, but I don't think a system claimed to be a democracy ever did it on this scale in peacetime. We're talking about more than 90,000 people in ILLEGAL detention only! The biggest stadium in the USA couldn't fit that many people. That is the important difference.

Re:We saw it coming??

[MLease]

Actually, I just went to Main and got the Meta-Mod link myself.

-Mike

Re:We saw it coming??

[DrSkwid]

I bet they spot typing their instead of there too !

Re:We saw it coming??

[killjoe]

"While I didn't vote for Bush, I'm fairly conservative, against terrorism, agree many of the people there are scum."

The thing that bothers me most is that people are willing to accept that "many" of the people there are scum. How do you know? Honestly how does anybody know unless they are trusting the president 100%. He is the only arbiter, he points to a picture or a list of people, utters the phrase "bad men" and it's a done deal. No courts, no trials, no evidence, no nothing. The president says so and therefore it must be so.

Re:We saw it coming??

[mfrank]

The big change came during the Civil War. Before the war started, the Federal government employed about 80,000 civilians. Of those, 50,000 worked for the Post Office.

Re:We saw it coming??

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was in college, I had a girlfriend who was majoring in criminology. According to her professors, a huge percentage of murders are actually perpetrated by people who know the victim. Who's closer than a spouse? (And if someone else is closer, you've got a suspect *and* a motive.)

How about that boyfriend of hers that's trolling the streets "looking for her" a month AFTER she disappeared, and AFTER Reiser was arrested?

Re:We saw it coming??

[Maxo-Texas]

Sorry,
Guess I'm influenced unduly by the pictures of people jumping to their death from burning buildings.
Most of the people there were captured on the battle field or under suspicious circumstances.
I don't trust the president 100%- not even 75%. But I do not believe that the military picked up a bunch of people from neutral locations and through them into Gitmo. I do believe most of them would slit my throat if I tried to help them and they would happily burn my daughter to death or behead her.

As a result, I'm just a "wee" bit more tolerant of the president and his men being a bit overboard against them.

I'm also a "wee" bit concerned about the president sliding into a fascist corporate dictator state.

They are competing priorities and i have to balance them on an ongoing basis.

Re:We saw it coming??

[Just Some Guy]

What a jackass! What were they supposed to do - arrest him before she was officially declared missing? And although I have no information about the supposed crime, wouldn't an estranged husband almost automatically be the most likely suspect in her disappearance?

I don't have anything against Reiser. However, while this has to be incredibly frustrating for him (assuming he truly is innocent), I don't see what police course of action would have been more justified.

Re:We saw it coming??

[Anonymous Coward]

What were they supposed to do - arrest him before she was officially declared missing?

Yes because I'm hoping that to arrest him they have to have had some additional evidence that he caused her to disappear. If they had that then why couldn't they have arrested him then since there is evidence of a crime and not just a "normal" disapperance. If they don't then why the heck are they arresting him?

Re:We saw it coming??

[CrankyOldBastard]

David Hicks has never fired a shot at a human being. He has never bombed a building. Exactly how is he an "enemy combatant". He has never been to or applied for a visa to the US. The closest he's ever been to the US is being held in custody without charge for years on end. Your presumption about the inmates of Gitmo is flawed.

Don't get me wrong, there may well be terrorists who were actively involved in committing and/or performing terrorist acts against the USA in there, in fact there probably are. But at least one isnt, and there may be more.

Re:We saw it coming??

[killjoe]

"Guess I'm influenced unduly by the pictures of people jumping to their death from burning buildings."

In that case you are an idiot of the highest order. Let's try an intelligence test shall we? Who at guantanamo was responsible for the people jumping off of those buildings?

"Most of the people there were captured on the battle field or under suspicious circumstances."

1) How do you know?
2) What do mean "most"? How about the rest?
3) What do you mean "suspicious circumstances" and how do you know?

"But I do not believe that the military picked up a bunch of people from neutral locations and through them into Gitmo. I do believe most of them would slit my throat if I tried to help them and they would happily burn my daughter to death or behead her."

Why do you believe these things? Some people were let go from gitmo and they didn't slit anybodies throats. They were all tortured too even though they were innocent. Even the army had to admit eventually that they were innocent and let them go. Why would you believe an army which has admitted that it's making mistakes and torturing innocent people?

Re:We saw it coming??

[Master of Transhuman]

"Most of the people there were captured on the battle field or under suspicious circumstances."

According to recent articles, a certain percentage - perhaps a significant percentage - were "captured" by foreign national "bounty hunters" paid by the US military/CIA - in other words, scooped up en mass and dumped into US custody for money.

Yeah, I trust those "suspicious circumstances."

"I do believe most of them would slit my throat if I tried to help them and they would happily burn my daughter to death or behead her."

In other words, you're a provincial American clueless about the rest of the world. Some others like you raped and murdered a fourteen year old Iraqi girl for kicks. And you wonder why some people don't like Americans.

Moron.

Re:We saw it coming??

[Maxo-Texas]

Keep living in that dream world.

The reality is there are millions of people (including millions of children) out there who would celebrate in the streets at your or my painful deaths.

Re:We saw it coming??

[Maxo-Texas]

Are you completely incapble of holding in your head two facts at the same time?

* some of the people in gitmo are innocent. I'd even grant up to 10% (as I did in the parent post).
* MOST of the people in gitmo were educated from childhood that I'm not human and they would celebrate at finding any way to kill me or hearing someone else had killed me. This repeats what i said in my parent post. Do you have trouble parsing that I equated "most" to 90% in the original post? It was basic english. Perhaps you got so mad at the first couple sentences that you failed to read the rest of the post?

Do you seriously believe that the vast majority of people in gitmo were picked up while shopping or doing innocuous activities and are completely innocent?

Until the saudi's and others stop educating their 7 year olds that we are not human and deserve to die this is going to continue to be a problem. They have no moral restraint with regard to killing us because it was never put in them in the first place. This has nothing to do with all the nasty shit america and others have done. We (and everyone else) have done lots of nasty shit to everyone- but we don't educate our children from birth to kill other people. But certain right wing xtian groups are starting to do that now and it's scary.

Re:We saw it coming??

[killjoe]

"some of the people in gitmo are innocent. I'd even grant up to 10% (as I did in the parent post)."

And you are fine with torturing innocent people as long as it's only 10%.

"MOST of the people in gitmo were educated from childhood that I'm not human and they would celebrate at finding any way to kill me or hearing someone else had killed me."

How do you know this?

"Do you seriously believe that the vast majority of people in gitmo were picked up while shopping or doing innocuous activities and are completely innocent?"

The vast majority were turned over for bounty or picked up because they were males carrying guns in afghanistan. They were conscripts or trying to defend their country against the invaders.

NONE OF THEY HAD ANYTHING TO DO WITH 9/11

"Until the saudi's and others stop educating their 7 year olds that we are not human and deserve to die this is going to continue to be a problem."

Until then we are going to torture innocent people? How many at gitmo are saudis anyway?

"They have no moral restraint with regard to killing us because it was never put in them in the first place."

Mmmm. Sounds oddly like you.

"This has nothing to do with all the nasty shit america and others have done."

Nothing at all huh? Not even a little bit? Not even a smidgen? Nothing at all?

"We (and everyone else) have done lots of nasty shit to everyone- but we don't educate our children from birth to kill other people."

Sure we do. Why do think so many americans are favor of torturing arabs and turning iran and iraq into a nuclear wasteland? Ask a republican whether the US should kill millions of iranians by launching nukes and 30% of them will say yes.

Re:We saw it coming??

[Maxo-Texas]

1) That's not what I said and you know it. I think we need to make an effort to get those 10% out quickly. I think it is not okay for us to use torture except in immediate circumstances. I.e., if we knew a person knew where a nuke set to go off in the next 8 hours was planted in new york city (25 million dead- women, children, old people, pregnant folks), I would personally take the moral stain of doing whatever it took to get the information in time to neutralize the bomb. I don't even need to have relatives there to get out the pliers and start removing body parts. It is the classic quandary: What would you do to a person raping your daughter? Would you calmly call the police and tell the person to stop or would you carefully break their knees with a crowbar and then emasculate them before killing them so they can't sue you.

After doing such things, you are permanently ruined as a human being. You basically sacrifice yourself to protect everyone else.

2) It is trivial to find support for the education. It's happening in america ("I'm not an american- says 13 year old islam home schooled american citizen), saudi arabia (monkees and evil), and other islamic countries *DESPITE* the fact that we have called them on it and they keep saying they are stopping. It's as bad as the bloody creationists in this country. When you get the kids at 8 years old, it's really hard to fix them- they are messed up as human beings now in a very fundamental way just like hitler youth were.

3) It's not about 9/11- it's not about the various bombings of buildings, ships, and murders of innocents. 9/11 was just the moment a lot of us woke up and said, "Okay the kid gloves are off- they want to kill us- and that includes the "innocent" people who merely provide them millions of dollars, don't turn them in, don't report when their immam preaches murdering us, etc.

4) No- not really even a smidgeon. It has a lot more to do with the fact that we are not islamic. They mean to convert us- peacefully if possible- and by the sword otherwise.

5) No- millions of americans would not be comfortable with going over and shooting up a schoolyard full of children. We are bloody trying to rebuild schools, hospitals, etc. We are not pulling a rome on them and just killing everyone and salting the ground.

It is not too late for islam to grow up and join the rest of the world. It is showing *some* very slight signs. But there is still way too much celebrating in the streets by the entire populace (including 8 year olds) when non-islamics die. There is still way to much sense of manifest destiny and "no compromise" there. If they don't adapt and adjust, we will turn medieval the next time a couple buildings go down and several thousand people die. We have a fringe of liberal types- but during WWII, they mostly converted over so the remaining 2% were shut up. The west can be extremely hard nosed and surgically evil when it needs to be- dresden comes to mind- but the second the need ends, those measures stop. The instant wwii was over, we helped rebuild japan and europe without malice.

The instant that islam stops trying to kill us, we will forget the malice immediately. As long as they keep trying, we are going to get more and more aggressive.

Re:We saw it coming??

[killjoe]

"if we knew a person knew where a nuke set to go off in the next 8 hours was planted in new york city (25 million dead- women, children, old people, pregnant folks), I would personally take the moral stain of doing whatever it took to get the information in time to neutralize the bomb."

Most people believe like you do. They somehow think that the people in gitmo are in posession of some knowledge that will save lives as soon as we torture them enough and get the answer. Alas most people are idiots. They don't realize that those people are tortured overseas in pakistan, syria, lebanon and israel. By the time a prisoner is brought to gitmo they have already gone through their first regime of torture and enough time has passed to obviate any immediate danger. To continue to torture them is simply sadism, doing it for pleasure. To continue to torture them years after they have been plucked from afghanistan is pure evil.

"No- not really even a smidgeon. It has a lot more to do with the fact that we are not islamic. They mean to convert us- peacefully if possible- and by the sword otherwise."

Well if that doesn't prove you are republitard then nothing does.

"No- millions of americans would not be comfortable with going over and shooting up a schoolyard full of children."

They would be very comfortable with dropping nukes on iran. We like to do our killing from the air.

"The instant that islam stops trying to kill us, we will forget the malice immediately. As long as they keep trying, we are going to get more and more aggressive."

Well lets hope this crusade works better for us then the last one did.

Re:We saw it coming??

[JabberWokky]

Lincoln also suspended habeas corpus (and later regretted it). Wars seem to grow the federal government and erode the power and liberty of local governments and individuals. World War II also introduced a ton of federal agencies that will never go away.

--
Evan "old enough story to get a bit offtopic, I think"

As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

This is as expected. Just because Hans probably murdered his wife, this is no reason for all the other devs to stop work on the system. It's not a one-man job, after all.

Re:As expected

[MartinG]

Hans probably murdered his wife

Not sure if I'm feeding a troll here, but the man has BEEN ARRESTED! That is all!

If you have any evidence that he killed his wife, be sure to let us know. (and let the police know of course)

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when is expressing an opinion on the likelihood of something a "troll"? Show some maturity, please.

Re:As expected

[_xeno_]

And now that he's been arrested, the police have described some of their evidence against him. They found her blood in his house and in his car.

We don't know if he did it - yet - but we know more than enough to say that it's most probable that he did. It is, of course, possible he didn't, and we all hope that Nina will be found alive somewhere, but the most probable outcome is that Hans Reiser has, in fact, murdered Nina.

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have any evidence that he killed his wife, be sure to let us know. (and let the police know of course)

Oh, you mean like the blood splatters that were found in HIS car that has been confirmed as HER blood?
And the fact that the rear seats are missing from said car?
And the fact that he actively attempted to hide the car from police?
And the fact that he had books on how law enforcement handles homicide investigations?

Now, it could be the case that his wife had a nose bleed or had suffered a paper cut while riding with Hans, and it could be true that the whole hiding the car things was a misunderstanding (or fearing that the missing rear seat would look bad, he actually did try to hide it in panic), and it could be true that he purchased the books knowing that he would be a likely suspect so he wanted to know what was coming. However, the above taken with other observations about his behaviour does not paint a rosey picture. Sure, he is innocent until proven guilty, but there is at least enough evidence so far to strongly implicate him. It's not one of these "heck, we have no evidence and no clue, so lets just arrest the husband" deals.

Re:As expected

[DagdaMor]

All of which is Circumstantial Evidence, and a bit flimsy to prosecute on when no one has found a body yet.

Re:As expected

[denebian devil]

They forgot to mention the most important piece of evidence in their arsenal: They reviewed the AOL search records that were released and identified record #456365 as likely to belong to Reiser, and noted many suspicious searches such as "I hate Nina Reiser" and "how to kill Nina Reiser without getting caught".

The most offensive part of this evidence of course is that Hans Reiser uses AOL Search....

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if he was the one who was doing the searching on AOL on how to kill his wife.

Anon

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

All of which is Circumstantial Evidence, and a bit flimsy to prosecute on when no one has found a body yet.

Err, didn't I conclude"Sure, he is innocent until proven guilty, but there is at least enough evidence so far to strongly implicate him". I didn't say he was guilty, just that there is at least enough evidence to arrest him and to make him the primary suspect. Is there enough to garner a conviction, hard to say, likely not from what has been disclosed to the public so far, but who knows what other evidence the police have that they are not sharing. Plus it's been proven time and time again that you don't need a body to convict, if the quantity and quality of circumstantial evidence is strong enough, one's ability to properly dispose of a corpse no longer becomes a valid way to avoid conviction.

Re:As expected

[gellenburg]

Tell that to Scott Peterson.

But wait, he *did* kill his wife, didn't he?

At least a Jury said so.

But *he* was tried on circumstantial evidence, too.

Re:As expected

[A beautiful mind]

Investigators have also recovered books on how police investigate homicides, which were obtained by Hans Reiser a few days after his wife's Sept. 3 disappearance, the sources said.

I don't know a lot about the other stuff, but this seems to be on HIS side, rather than against him. He acted like I would act, like a geek would act imo in this respect. To put it into geek terminology, he read the HOWTO after he discovered a bug. This would rather point into the direction he didn't knowingly create the bug in the first place.

My point is, if you'd want to kill your wife, you'd obtain these books BEFORE you kill your wife, study them thoroughly for a long time and then despose them. Hans Reiser is not stupid. Of course it is all possible that if she were murdered by him, it was an impulse murder. Who knows. We have no evidence and facts.

Re:As expected

[KutuluWare]

You've been watching way too much CSI if you think this evidence isn't enough to take a case to trial. Not every murder case ends with the forensic investigators finding a tiny shard of a unique knife mande only once in history by the accused's next door neighbor which is metallically linked to the handle of a knife found in a dumpster with the accused fingerprints on it nearby some ashes that have remnants of the victims DNS embedded in the one tooth that survived the burning process etcetcetcetc.

In many situations, the blood in his car *by itself* would be enough for a DA to decide to try the case. People often place way too much import on the idea of "circumstantial evidence"... it's still evidence. Given enough of it, a good prosecutor can employ a strategy of diminishing probabilities: one single piece of evidence may only narrow down the potential suspect list to a few thousand... but each additional piece of evidence narrows the field further and further until the number of people which fit *all* of the evidence is increasingly small, and the likelihood that someone other than the accused is guilty becomes very small.

As for not having a body, that is certainly a problem when attempting to prove murder (it's one more reasonable doubt the defense can introduce).. but again, the presence of blood, especially if there turns out to be a large quantity of it, has been used many times in the past to infer murder in the absence of a body.

--K

Re:As expected

[squiggleslash]

I agree. I think people forget that the standard is "Beyond reasonable doubt", not "Mathematically proven to be true."

Fiction is a pretty awful thing to judge standards of evidence from. How many people have watched dramatisations of old Agatha Christie novels (Poirot, etc) and wondered how the hell the "evidence" given could possibly be seen as enough (it's convenient that her murderers always make a full confession once the fact that they could have been the only person with access to the knife that night because they were the only person aware that it was in an unlocked bathroom on the floor.) We have that, and then we have CSI. Real police work seems to be rather more, well, "real world", than that.

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

the blood in his car *by itself* would be enough for a DA to decide to try the case.

But they were once married. There are plenty of innocent ways in which various bodily fluids can wind up in a car of a married couple that subsequently splits up. Also, they have children together, and apparently some shared custody, so plenty more innocent ways in which initially-DNA-matching evidence can turn up. Yeah, it's enough to justify arresting him and questioning him. MAYBE enough to justify trying the case. But NOT enough for Joe Public to try him in the court of public opinion and find him guilty as seems to have already happened.

Re:As expected

[bryanp]

Rumor has it that OJ Simpson has volunteered to help Hans in his search for the real killers.

Re:As expected

[Duds]

Um. It's not like it's a stranger. "They found blood" is not in itself that great.

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

My point is, if you'd want to kill your wife, you'd obtain these books BEFORE you kill your wife, study them thoroughly for a long time and then despose them. Hans Reiser is not stupid. Of course it is all possible that if she were murdered by him, it was an impulse murder. Who knows. We have no evidence and facts.

This point alone makes your original comment moot, the significance of the timing is currently not relevant precisely because we don't know if this was "planned" or simply a crime of opportunity (e.g. he saw his chance and he took it) or "passion" (they got into another argument and things got "out of hand"). Funny you say that Hans "isn't stupid", but if you KNEW that you are likely to be the prime suspect, why on earth would you purchase such a book? You'd think that he would be "smart" enough to know that it is likely to look fishy at the least, not the move of a "smart" person in my book. Oh, and we do have "facts", all those points I mentioned in my post.

Re:As expected

[phiwum]

Oh, you mean like the blood splatters that were found in HIS car that has been confirmed as HER blood?
  And the fact that the rear seats are missing from said car?
  And the fact that he actively attempted to hide the car from police?
  And the fact that he had books on how law enforcement handles homicide investigations?
 

The first three facts are pretty incriminating, but the books are horrible evidence.

His wife was missing. They were in the process of a messy divorce. Even if he were innocent, he would realize that he was a likely suspect. In that situation, it makes perfect sense to get some books and learn about the process. (Note: he acquired the books a few days after his wife went missing.)

I don't see that the books are relevant at all.

Re:As expected

[EastCoastSurfer]

The missing car seat is a bit odd. Plus buying books a couple days after to read about how police investigate crimes. Until they have a body though, it's going to be hard to prove a murder.

Re:As expected

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

The fact that he has been arrested is evidence. It's not evidence that would stand up in court, obviously. But it is evidence in the sense used in ordinary speech. I'll put money on there being a significant correlation between people being arrested and people being convicted. To deny that would be silly, it would mean that arresting peole served no purpose and we might as well put randomly selected people on trial. So if there is such a correlation, someone's arrest is most definitely evidence that they have committed a crime. Whether or not someone who has been arrested probably committed the crime is a different matter. That would require scrutinizing arrest and conviction records. But only an insane person would deny any correlation whatsoever.

Re:As expected

[kenb215]

if you KNEW that you are likely to be the prime suspect, why on earth would you purchase such a book?

You would purchase such a book so you would have some idea as to what the police were likely to do, and to prepare yourself for a possible investigation.

Re:As expected

[kitzilla]

No, that's not circumstantial evidence. It's physical evidence. They don't need a body to prosecute, and I don't see any red flags regarding police conduct in the reports I've read.

What an awful case. It's by no mean certain Hans is guilty, but there sure appears to be sufficient evidence to try him. Hopefully, the truth will become apparent.

One more thing: I see the cleverness in some of the jokes in this thread, and I'm no prude. But joking about chopping up this woman (I get it, really) seems pretty damn cold. There's nothing but sadness here for all parties.

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

You should make a claim on the $15,000 reward. You obviously know everything about it.

Re:As expected

[arth1]

Hans Reiser is not stupid.

He's in jail, arrested for murder in a state which has the death penalty.
That sounds terminally stupid to me.

Re:As expected

[Ledgem]

... with the accused fingerprints on it nearby some ashes that have remnants of the victims DNS embedded in the one tooth that survived the burning process etcetcetcetc.

e360, you have no chance of murdering Spamhaus and getting away with it - the police can find remnants of the DNS now!

Re:As expected

[vboulytchev]

lol, only a geek needs a manual on how the cops handle homocide investigations...

watch them find a manual for "money laundering" :)

Re:As expected

[ArsenneLupin]

And the fact that he had books on how law enforcement handles homicide investigations?

... which were bought after the disappearance.

If this was premeditated murder, he would have bought, read and disposed of them before the deed. He bought them after, probably out of (justified) curiosity to see what might happen. He's no idiot, and knows that police might (wrongfully?) suspect him after the disappearance.

Re:As expected

[Dreddy Schwager]

And the fact that he had books on how law enforcement handles homicide investigations?

I can see why a reasonable intelligent person who wanted to commit murder would want to read such books. But why would a reasonable intelligent person still be in possession of such books at the time of the murder?

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

Shit man, there is "sources" claiming this but we don't know of the sources is right.

Re:As expected

[westlake]

All of which is Circumstantial Evidence, and a bit flimsy to prosecute on when no one has found a body yet.

You don't need a body to prosecute a murder. The Acid Bath Vampire

If you are the Ken and Barbie of serial killers, you videotape your abduction and assault of teenage girls.

---and Inspector Clouseau gets assigned to your case.

But the "smart ones" try very hard not to leave behind so conspicuous a gift for the police.

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

> No, that's not circumstantial evidence. It's physical evidence.

Even the blood all over his car is circumstantial evidence unless it can be directly connected to him. It's physical evidence something happened to her, not physical evidence he did it. For that you need fingerprints on the murder weapon, her blood on him, etc.

"Circumstantial evidence" is only a derogatory term on TV shows. This is pretty strong evidence.

Re:As expected

[whoda]

Currently, I own a car that:

Has spots of my wife's blood in it. I know this, because she's a diabetic and occasionally she gets drops of blood in weird places.
The front AND back seats are missing because the car is being renovated.
The car is 2 states away from me, under a tarp, I suppose you could say it is "hidden from local police".

I sure hope my wife comes home tonight from her job, or I'll probably get picked up for her murder in the not too distant future.

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is, when was he alone with her?

The last time she was seen alive was when she dropped off the children - were the children witnesses? Where were they during the alleged murder? Where were they while the body was presumably disposed of? They're kind of young to be left alone, but old enough to testify as to what happened.

Re:As expected

[metamatic]

If your wife goes missing in suspicious circumstances and you have 2 brain cells to rub together, you know you're going to be the #1 suspect. That being the case, only a total dumbass--or a man in blind panic--would go and buy books on how murder investigations are carried out, particularly immediately after the disappearance.

Re:As expected

[Surt]

But probably, he killed his wife. When a woman dies, her emotionally closest male acquaintance (husband, boyfriend ...) is the most probable killer.

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

But there are many possible definitions for "reasonable".

I for one would like very strong requirements for evidence for me to consider a justice system just. It's better to err on the side of letting someone guilty go than punishing the innocent.

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

The missing seat is not odd at all. CRXs from that era are frequently souped up with DOHC VTEC + weight reduction to make one fast rice rocket.

Here's an article about doing weight reduction on a CRX: http://www.hondatuningmagazine.com/tech/0306ht_198 8_honda_crx_drag_racing/

Re:As expected

[nuzak]

> The fact that he has been arrested is evidence.

There's not a courtroom in the country that will accept it as evidence, and just because you note a correlation does not make it into evidence. Even if you italicize it.

> So if there is such a correlation, someone's arrest is most definitely evidence that they have committed a crime

Well, it's a good thing they tend to ask about this very sort of thing on jury questionnaires. Thankfully it doesn't even cost a strike because even prosecutors won't contest a challenge on such naked bias.

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember a case of more than 10 years ago in which there was even more evidence against the person assumed to have murdered his ex-wife and her boyfriend, but somehow the defense managed to get him acquitted in a jury trial.
It was broadcast live and in re-cap on satellite TV.

Re:As expected

[nmx]

The missing car seat is a bit odd.

True.

Plus buying books a couple days after to read about how police investigate crimes.

This is easily explained away. The husband (or ex-husband in this case) is always one of the first suspects. If he knew his wife was missing, and that the police suspected homicide, it's not unreasonable for him to be interested in how they would investigate, knowing that he would be a prime suspect.

Until they have a body though, it's going to be hard to prove a murder.

That's true, and the released evidence is, at this point, all circumstantial. Whether he did it or not, people will assume he did, even if he isn't convicted. That's the way public opinion goes, and it's really a shame. If he is put on trial, hopefully the jury will keep an open mind.

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

Um...you go to bed, and there is no snow on the ground. You wake to find a blanket of snow. The Evidence of the Circumstances are that it snowed during the night, even without eyewitness testimony to the fact. In the legal profession, we call that Circumstantial Evidence.

And yes, now that you ask, I AM the DA, and have been for 24 years.

Re:As expected

[nmx]

He's in jail, arrested for murder in a state which has the death penalty. That sounds terminally stupid to me.He's in jail, arrested for murder in a state which has the death penalty. That sounds terminally stupid to me.

That's assuming he actually committed the murder. Or are you saying he's stupid to live in a state that has the death penalty in the first place?

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

They may as well say that having a lawyer is evidence againts him: criminal lawyers have knowledge about criminal investigation.

Re:As expected

[nmx]

I'll put money on there being a significant correlation between people being arrested and people being convicted.

Of course there is... people generally don't get convicted of crimes they haven't been arrested for.

Re:As expected

[EastCoastSurfer]

That's true, and the released evidence is, at this point, all circumstantial.

I agree. I think that arresting him at this point was a bit premature, unless there is more they aren't telling or they were afraid he was going to destroy more evidence (although having him free for a month would've allowed that already). If it were me, I would have at least waited till finding a body and figuring out cause of death, etc...

Outside the geek circles I'm also not sure how big this case is, so there could also be community pressure to arrest someone. This really sucks if that's the case. Rushing to trial could lead to a lack of evidence and an acquittal if he really is guilty.

Anyways, at the end of the day I hope the right person is caught, convicted and punished accordingly.

Re:As expected

[DrSkwid]

I've been arrested 5 times and sucessfully prosecuted twice.

So my correlation is that arrest doesn't lead to prosecution.

Re:As expected

[dasunt]

And the fact that he had books on how law enforcement handles homicide investigations?

He had one book, according to the news story that I read.

Awhile back, there was a pair of books concerning the aftermath of a murder from a law enforcement/legal perspective (_How_To_Solve_A_Murder_ and _How_To_Try_A_Murder_) that ended up on my Barnes & Nobels bargain rack. I picked up the latter since it was only a few bucks.

I wouldn't be surprised if I was the only geek that did so.

To play devil's advocate some more, lets consider the blood splatters found in the house and car. Why both locations? It would be interesting to know where the blood was found and how much there was.

As for "hiding" the car, well, it was Hans. Perhaps he was pissed at the police for wasting their time when his wife was missing by investigating him. His refusal to help them could be interpretted as "hiding" the auto.

But I don't have a good explanation for the missing passenger seat. (Hey, I was playing devil's advocate, not acting as Hans's lawyer.) If the prosecution can show that the passenger seat went missing at about the time of Nina's disappearance, that's going to be pretty damaging to his case.

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

That's assuming he actually committed the murder.

No, it's not. Note the "arrested", as opposed to "convicted", in the post you replied to.

Re:As expected

[evilviper]

They found her blood in his house and in his car.

If the victim was a complete stranger, that would be suspicious. Since this is his ex wife, it's not hard to imagine MANY senarios to explain that away... People get injured all the time. The article doesn't say if this was huge ammounts of blood spread all around the vehicle, or just 2-3 drops on the floor...

Hans Reiser removed the passenger seat of his 1988 Honda hatchback

Not at all suspect. In an '88 model-year car, it's not hard to imagine the seat was damaged, cracked, etc. He may have dumped it before getting a new one, or perhaps was leaving it out for extra cargo room.

and that he attempted to hide the vehicle from authorities.

Completely subjective. That could just mean he didn't immediately offer to let them look at it, or immediately tell them where it was.

books on how police investigate homicides,

Seems pretty standard. If someone I know was to disappear, I'd read-up about the process, too. The books are only even slightly suspicious if you are prejudiced and already believe he's guilty.

We don't know if he did it - yet - but we know more than enough to say that it's most probable that he did.

No, we have one-liners from the police department that don't even sound remotely suspicious, unless you let your mind go wild and assume the worst, in absence of any facts.

There isn't enough evidence to even suggest she's dead.

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

Buying books before the disappearance would be odd; buying them after doesn't seem odd. Consider a few stories in which a wife disappears and a man buys books:

1) A man has a highly tense relationship with his wife. He calculates that her death would be profitable and begins to make plans. He foresees a police investigation, buys books on police investigations, makes his plans, and then commits premeditated murder.

2) A man has a highly tense relationship with his wife. At some point, he becomes irrational and commits unpremeditated murder. A few days later, he realizes that he could be imprisoned if the police discover his crime, so he decides to cover up the crime and trick the police. He buys books on police investigation to see what he needs to do.

3) A man has a highly tense relationship with his wife. At some point, she disappears for reasons he does not know. A few days later, the police begin an investigation and start asking him questions. The investigation is out of his control but he still wants to understand it so that he can (a) help out and/or (b) determine how much hope to have about her reappearance. He buys books so that he can understand what's going on.

4) A man has a highly tense relationship with his wife. At some point, she disappears for reasons he does not know. A few days later, the police begin an investigation and start asking him questions. He recalls from several movies that the husband is usually the first suspect. He buys books so that he understands how to protect himself.

Now, I don't know of any evidence indicating that one story or another applies to the Reisers. My point is this: a book on crime or investigations can be important to anyone who is touched by a crime or an investigation. The mere existence or purchase of a book does not indicate the person's role with respect to a crime or investigation.

Re:As expected

[nmx]

No, it's not. Note the "arrested", as opposed to "convicted", in the post you replied to.

Thanks, but I can read. How is being arrested indicative of stupidity?

Re:As expected

[stecoop]

Beyond reasonable doubt...

In quite a few states, if the penatly of crime is death then the jury has to use the rule beyond a shadow of a doubt. This is why I have to agree with the jury in the OJ case because there were shadows. It is very important that death penatly cases be RIGHT and execised with extreeem caution.

Re:As expected

[jebell]

No, that's not circumstantial evidence. It's physical evidence.

Physical evidence is often circumstantial. In fact, I'd say it's circumstantial in the vast majority of cases. I think you are just confused (as many folks are) about the definition of circumstantial evidence.

I used to be a state prosecutor. I never tried a murder case, but I did have a spiel about circumstantial evidence. It went something like this:

Let's say you have some ice cream in your freezer. Let's also say that you are the parent of a 6-year-old boy. You leave him alone in the kitchen for 20 minutes and when you come back, you see an empty ice cream container on your counter, melted splatters of ice cream all over the countertops and your kitchen table, and your beloved son has schmears of ice cream all around his mouth.

All of the evidence I just presented is circumstantial evidence that your little boy ate the ice cream. None of it is DIRECT evidence. An example of direct evidence would be an eyewitness who testifies that he SAW your son eat the ice cream.

The fact is that strong cases can be - and often are - built largely upon circumstantial evidence. Blood in the perp's car is strong physical evidence, but also circumstantial.

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have any evidence that he killed his wife, be sure to let us know. (and let the police know of course)

Oh, you mean like the blood splatters that were found in HIS car that has been confirmed as HER blood?
And the fact that the rear seats are missing from said car?
And the fact that he actively attempted to hide the car from police?
And the fact that he had books on how law enforcement handles homicide investigations?

For someone who works on OSS, I can't imagine why he'd do everything you've said on his own.

Surely he would have asked for community involvement.

If there's no SourceForge site, you must acquit.

Re:As expected

[bnenning]

There's not a courtroom in the country that will accept it as evidence

Which he said. It's not evidence in the legal sense, but it is evidence in the Bayesian sense.

Re:As expected

[Omnifarious]

That's my thought about the books too. But my suspicion is that he has mental health issues and did it without any premeditation.

Re:As expected

[a.d.trick]

Hans Reiser is not stupid

Sure, but he's probably not quite sane at the moment. If he did not kill his ex-wife, the feelings of confusion and helplessness at being arrested are enough to make anyone behave nutty. People sincerely believe that if they are inoccent, their inoccence will eventually be proved. On the other hand, the human heart is an amazingly base and mysterious thing some times. No matter how smart you are it can work itself into thinking absurd things, like believing that killing your wife would be a good thing. When people are like this they don't behave normally because there is still that bit of humanity that wants to put up a fight. Read Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky for a good portail of this.

Personally I don't have enough evidence to make a good guess about anything.

Re:As expected

[TrentC]

My point is, if you'd want to kill your wife, you'd obtain these books BEFORE you kill your wife, study them thoroughly for a long time and then despose them. Hans Reiser is not stupid.

Lots of criminals are caught precisely because they believe they're smarter than the people doing the investigating, and end up making that one critical mistake. Look up Ward Weaver -- he plead guilty to charges of murdering a 12- and a 13-year old girl in Oregon City. It took the FBI eight months to come up with a reason to obtain a search warrant for his property, where they ultimately found the bodies.

But go ahead, please try the "I'm a geek! I just wanted to know how the police are going to investigate me should they determine I'm a suspect!" defense, and let me know how it works. You call it "checking the documentation on a bug", but a jury is more likely to consider it obstructing justice or premeditation.

Re:As expected

[neuro88]

Unless it was a crime of passion, and he was hoping to cover it up after the fact.

Re:As expected

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

I've been arrested 5 times and sucessfully prosecuted twice. So my correlation is that arrest doesn't lead to prosecution.

You clearly don't understand the meaning of the word correlation. 2 out of 5 is an extremely high correlation.

Re:As expected

[TrentC]

No, retaining a lawyer in the face of criminal charges or a civil action makes perfect sense. Nina Reiser has been missing for over a month, so it's assumed the police have talked to Hans before about it. There's a reason why the police have to let you have access to legal representation when you're accused of a crime. (Well, up util recently anyway...)

If you want to investigate your legal rights as the accused, you buy books on criminal law (or better yet, retain a lawyer). Buying books on police procedure can be shown to have more to do with finding out how to "beat the system".

Re:As expected

[sillybilly]

Given sufficient effort anybody can be framed properly, and even a dead body can be faked. Of course most of the 99.99% of real world cases are just that, real world cases, but then again, reality is sometimes stranger than fiction. You still go ahead, with the run of the mill prosecution and convictions, deal with the real world assuming that's all you're dealing with, but in all that, you have to keep the other side too in the back of your mind, that you can never be certain about anything in this world.

Re:As expected

[SanityInAnarchy]

How much blood before we can reasonably assume that a murder has even occurred, much less that it was Hans who did it?

Re:As expected

[SanityInAnarchy]

a jury is more likely to consider it obstructing justice or premeditation.

WTF? How does it obstruct justice to purchase a fucking book? How is it PREmeditation if he bought them after the fact?

Re:As expected

[freeze128]

You've been watching way too much CSI if you think this evidence isn't enough to take a case to trial. Not every murder case ends with the forensic investigators finding a tiny shard of a unique knife mande only once in history by the accused's next door neighbor which is metallically linked to the handle of a knife found in a dumpster with the accused fingerprints on it nearby some ashes that have remnants of the victims DNS embedded in the one tooth that survived the burning process etcetcetcetc.

I would say that *YOU* have been watching too much CSI, but then I noticed that you typed DNS when you really meant DNA. Good for you! You have been working on getting BIND correctly configured instead of watching medical dramas. Keep up the good work!

BTW: California Highway Patrol is CHiPs, not DHCP.

Re:As expected

[fossa]

The articles did say he was cooperative with the police initially; perhaps he wanted to understand the process of the investigation in order to better assist the police locate his missing wife or to keep tabs on their progress. That said, everything is speculation at this point. Certainly not a happy situation for anyone.

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

You would purchase such a book so you would have some idea as to what the police were likely to do, and to prepare yourself for a possible investigation.

Err, so if you're really interested/concerned, then you contact a lawyer, you don't do something so stupid as to implicate yourself even further. Heck, if you knew that you were going to be accused of bombing a building, would you go out and buy books on bomb building and structural analysis? It's not like he was researching how to beat a traffic ticket. If he is innocent (and evidence just released is making it look less and less so), then he's an idiot. Heck if he's guilty then he's an idiot, but then if he were guilty, I wouldn't be surprised that he would do non sensical stuff since he would have just done one of the most dumb things one can possibly do.

Re:As expected

[phiwum]

Okay, so only a dumbass or a panicky man buys the books. But both the innocent and the guilty panic when they believe they're suspects. So again, the books aren't evidence about guilt.

Re:As expected

[accessdeniednsp]

...remnants of the victims DNS embedded in...


You know you're a geek when you mistype DNA as DNS.

Re:As expected

[kchrist]

we might as well put randomly selected people on trial

Don't read much Kafka, do you?

Re:As expected

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Your simple statement belies a more subtle issue. Obviously anyone who has been convicted as been arrested. That trivial logical fact alone, is enough to provide evidence that Reiser is more likely to be convicted than a randomly chosen other person such as me (who happens to live not far from Reiser).

But there's another issue - are cops selective about who they arrest? If cops are significanty more likely to arrest guilty people than non-guilty people (and we hope they are, otherwise police investigation is a waste of tax money) then the fact that Reiser has been arrested is evidence to me in favour of his guilt. Of course it's not good evidence for the cop - the cops are arresting him because they already have some evidence, and to use his arrest as evidence would mean using the same evidence twice. So the fact that Reiser has been arrested is evidence (but not proof) of his guilt for me, but obviously it should never be used in a court of law.

Re:As expected

[l0ungeb0y]

To dismiss the circumstantial evidence as meritless due to a lack of a corpse is incorrect. As far as circumstantial evidence goes, this is pretty damning. And it would be imprudent of the police not to have Hans arrested with the evidence they have. The prosecuter could make a good case for murder with the knowledge they have made public at this time.

The fact that the books were bought after the murder means he probably would not be charged with murder in the 1st degree, but definitely 2nd degree. So it's likely he will not get a death penalty charge, but that's just a guess.

Personally, unless the defense comes up with some exceptionally strong counter arguements, Scott Peterson is about to get a new buddy.

Re:As expected

[nuzak]

> Look up Ward Weaver -- he plead guilty to charges of murdering a 12- and a 13-year old girl in Oregon City.

The sick thing is, I originally read that name as Ward Cleaver.

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

In quite a few states, if the penatly of crime is death then the jury has to use the rule beyond a shadow of a doubt. This is why I have to agree with the jury in the OJ case because there were shadows. It is very important that death penatly cases be RIGHT and execised with extreeem caution.


Uh...can you name even one such state?

Re:As expected

[oohshiny]

But go ahead, please try the "I'm a geek! I just wanted to know how the police are going to investigate me should they determine I'm a suspect!" defense, and let me know how it works. You call it "checking the documentation on a bug", but a jury is more likely to consider it obstructing justice or premeditation.

You're absolutely right that many things geeks do are likely to be a mystery to your average juror and are going to be held against them. Nevertheless, the problem there is with the jury, not with the geek: reading books on police procedures after your wife has disappeared should not be considered evidence of guilt.

Re:As expected

[Achromatic1978]

As for "hiding" the car, well, it was Hans. Perhaps he was pissed at the police for wasting their time when his wife was missing by investigating him. His refusal to help them could be interpretted as "hiding" the auto.

At the very least, that alone would be obstruction of an investigation/justice. Not 'murder', sure, but not the wisest of moves.

Re:As expected

[Anonymous Coward]

"You've been watching way too much CSI if you think this evidence isn't enough to take a case to trial."

I'm not sure what you are alleging here--that the standard of evidence to convict shouldn't be high, or merely stating how the judicial system typically works these days.

If the latter, I agree; the standard to prosecution, and often, conviction, is low. However, I'm one who feels that shouldn't be the case.

Back to CSI--CSI seems to have actually raised the standard with juries; Scientific American had an article about this a few issues ago, calling it appropriately the CSI effect. Prosecutors were apparently annoyed that they were being held to a new (higher) standard.

My opinion of this is, generally, that it's damn about time. Now, my opinion is heavily biased given I've seen police officers outright LIE on several occasions on misdemeanors (2 my own) including creating explanations when they didn't know the answer, and twice otherwise, one in booking a fellow in downtown DC, one in some revisionist history on how a witness was treated (which I also witnessed).

See, when an officer says something, people believe them, because of the mere fact they are an officer; same with a seemingly credible witness. And yes, that's how how judicial system works. That doesn't make it better or correct in handing out judgments, esp. when higher standards are clearly available (such as technological, i.e. no state mandates video records of speeding infringements, despite it being trivial in today's world of cameras and speed traps).

"In many situations, the blood in his car *by itself* would be enough for a DA to decide to try the case."

Sorry, that's just SHIT if that's the standard or the excuse to prosecute. Amount of blood, DNA match, and age of the blood are relevant, and except for maybe the latter, all are COMMON tests these days.

Prosecution and finding someone guilty should have a higher standard than mere suspicion and prosecutorial presentation. Unfortunately, the same way the government plays on terrorism fears also applies to overzealous prosecution of crimes too many times; playing to people's fears, making them feel comfortable by putting someone away for said crime. It's like the "fact" that loners commit crimes more often than "social" people--while true, it's based on successful prosecution; it's easy to put away someone less socially inept (same way as putting away the indigent), esp. one that is often not going to have an alibi 90% of his or her today anyways.

How bad is it? In my state, there are people in jail that are likely innocent, except the state apparently doesn't want to pony up for the DNA tests, since it would cost them money and open them up to financial suits. A review committee hearing suggested that in nearly every case of an innocent person who was convicted and cleared was because of the judge allowing evidence that shouldn't have gone through or instructing juries unfairly, the prosecutor overzealousness, eye witness testimony, and crappy police work.

In other words, sans DNA, mistakes were made, and you want to return to that crap because some blood was found?

"As for not having a body, that is certainly a problem when attempting to prove murder (it's one more reasonable doubt the defense can introduce).. but again, the presence of blood, especially if there turns out to be a large quantity of it, has been used many times in the past to infer murder in the absence of a body."

Talk about an understatement. You're taking a "it's been done before" and trying to make it into a "it's not uncommon" which is completely untrue. Whose playing "watched too many tv shows" fiction now? No body is a HUGE PROBLEM. There are certainly cases where successful prosecution occurred without a body, but that is definitely not common nor the standard.

A body and the likely weapon are key pieces of evidence. Situationally, it looks bad right now, but it's seems odd a person who was trying to hide a car and toss evidence would leave blood splatters, as you say, lying around, and time everything to coincide when she would have just knowingly visited him (to drop off the children).

Re:As expected

[kitzilla]

Point well-taken. :-)

Re:As expected

[Reservoir Penguin]

He is over 100K in debt. I'm not sure he can even afford a lawer.

Re:As expected

[Reservoir Penguin]

So maybe he didnt have time to study a theoretical law book. He just needeed quick practical answers, something like a "for dummies" book.

Re:As expected

[Reservoir Penguin]

That's nice. Do you practice Death Yoga by any chance?

Fabulous quote

[joaommp]

"I can't say I didn't see it comming"...

Re:Fabulous quote

[ReidMaynard]

I think Lyamin meant the arrest of Reiser not the disappearance/murder of his wife. Of course, I'm probably bitting the troll.

Re:Fabulous quote

[epiphani]

After reading the article, the context isnt quite clear. I dont think the speaker was saying "I cant say I didn't expect Hans to kill his wife." We should probably avoid assuming as much.

Re:Fabulous quote

[jimicus]

Hans' wife has been missing for some time.

In these cases, spouses and ex-spouses are always the first suspects.

Regardless of whether or not Hans has done anything wrong (and the public have no evidence either way), it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that unless convincing evidence to the contrary turned up, he'd be arrested.

Re:Fabulous quote

[Anonymous Coward]

He's quoted horribly out of context. Courtesy of another poster, the complete quote:

Yes, we are rather shaked and stressed at moment, altough I can not say, we didn't seen it coming.
I, personally, really like how US police acted exactly like their russian counterpart: e.g. sitting on their ass for whole month, waiting, so they can declare person officially missing and then just press charges against whoever looks most vulnerable. Well, probably I am wrong. Time will show.

They saw a murder coming?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about you, but if I had reason to suspect my boss wanted to kill his wife outside of the regular jokes this might be a slight reason for concern.

Re:They saw a murder coming?

[MartinG]

The way I read it, they saw an arrest coming.

You know maybe...

[ellem]

maybe she should have been so enamored with GFS. How about that? Huh? How about she just stop talking about how great Google's File System is FOR ONE MINUTE? Did anyone think bout that?

Re:You know maybe...

[Goaway]

I award you one not-allowed-to-moderate-any-more point!

Re:You know maybe...

[cloudmaster]

It was all just a big misunderstanding - she was talking about the global file system...

Re:You know maybe...

[Anonymous Coward]

hahah oh my god!

Keep working.

[suntac]

I do not think they will stop working on the projects however I think that if he is convicted this will have a serious drawback to the project and the developments will slow down for some time.

But in the end they will keep working on it,.... I think and I hope.

Not Surprising?

[rjstanford]

One employee admits, 'we are rather shaken and stressed at the moment, although I cannot say we didn't see it coming.'

Your boss is arrested for killing his wife, and nobody in the office is surprised? You know, I've worked in some pretty annoying companies before, but I've never been able to say that. Nor would I want to. If anyone else is in the same position, I strongly suggest that you get off your ass and jump ship. Low standards is one thing, but c'mon guys. I don't care how sweet their after-hours-pizza-reimbursement policy is, that's just fucked up.

Re:Not Surprising?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever considered that this investigation has been going on for well over a month?

If he was the only real suspect they had, and they had no reason to assume that he hadn't done it, why wouldn't they arrest him? "We saw it coming" refers to him being arrested, not to him (possibly) killing his wife.

Re:Not Surprising?

[Calinous]

He might have been rich as Bill Gates, and he still should have been a suspect. Anyway, I've read one of the previous articles about the arrest, and I was awed at how much information was available in posts (some probably from complete strangers) It would be possible for an employee to heard as much in gossips, and draw its conclusions about what the police would do

Re:Not Surprising?

[oyenstikker]

After the disappearence of his wife, they saw the arrest coming. (If your estranged wife disappeared you would be the number one suspect.) He did not say that he saw him killing his wife coming, or that he even thinks he did it.

Re:Not Surprising?

[rjstanford]

He might have been rich as Bill Gates, and he still should have been a suspect.

Oh, absolutely. But most suspects don't get arrested. Suspects against whom the prosecution feels that it has enough evidence to make a strong case get arrested. Being an estranged spouse isn't usually, in and of itself, damning evidence in a murder trial. Prosecutors don't generally play the "let's just arrest everyone we can think of and see which case will stick," method.

Re:Not Surprising?

[Anonymous Coward]

Common. Give me a break.

All they would have to have done to not be surprised/see this coming was read the news. I could entirely believe Hans is innocent and the best boss in the world (etc, etc), and I still would not be surprised when he was arrested if I was also aware that the police believed he was a prime suspect.

Hell, on the flip side, how many people do you think are out there that think OJ was guilty? Now, how many of those do you think would claim to be totally surprised/didn't see it coming that he was not convicted?

Re:Not Surprising?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well ...
1. Mrs. Reiser has been missing for some time
2. Close relatives are *always* the first suspects
2.1. Especialy if they are in the middle of ugly divorce
2.1.1 AND there is some other pending litigation

Please look up some relevant news about this unfortunate case.

ANYBODY should have seen *some* unspecified problems comming
in this situation.

Re:Not Surprising?

[orangesquid]

I think what the employee meant was that *after* his wife went missing, it was obvious that he would be suspected of something, since he was the last to see her, IIRC. "see it coming" -- "it" wasn't Mr. Reiser murdering his wife -- "it" was Mr. Reiser being arrested given that his wife had disappeared.

Re:Not Surprising?

[Anonymous Coward]

No I'm sure GP didn't consider it. Why would a /.er consider facts when he has the chance to take a jab to get a +1 Funny?

Re:Not Surprising?

[chrismcdirty]

But that's how they do it on Law & Order and CSI! Are you telling me TV has been lying to me all these years?

Re:Not Surprising?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's more like "Let's arrest the FIRST person we can think of and see if the case will stick".

Re:Not Surprising?

[Calinous]

Even if the prosecutors feels they have a good case, that doesn't mean he's guilty. And maybe they put him in jail with some dangerous people trying to get him to cut a deal (you say you killed her, you get easy detention in a minimal security facility - you say you don't, if we convict you, you go to ...)

Re:Not Surprising?

[evilviper]

But most suspects don't get arrested.

Most suspects, who decline to answer questions, do.

Suspects against whom the prosecution feels that it has enough evidence to make a strong case get arrested.

No. "Arrested" and "Tried" are seperate, and very different. They may arrest multiple people before they bring one all the way to trial.

Re:Not Surprising?

[shokk]

Perhaps they saw him sucker punch her at the company picnic and verbally abuse her with a few classic phrases like "I'm gonna kill ya bitch!" and the ever glamorous "why... won't... you... die?!?!".

Can you say "subpoena"?

[OpenBSD101]

"although I cannot say we didn't see it coming."

I hope that was taken out of context.

In other news...

[Dystopian Rebel]

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer reminded corporate customers that the Open Source model is dangerous to their business.

"I squirt a picture to you, you squirt multimedia back to me," said Ballmer. "Sure, boom boom boom, we can do that and we ~do~ do that. In fact, no one squirts better than we do. But with Open Source, you don't know whose rights you are violating when you squirt.

And worse, open-source programmers tend to have police records. I'm just sayin'."

Re:In other news...

[clickclickdrone]

>no one squirts better than we do
The thought of Balmer saying that just makes me shudder and not in a good way.

Re:In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/aa/McMi llan_as_Harkonnen.jpg

Re:In other news...

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

There's a good way to shudder?

Re:In other news...

[pixr99]

There's a good way to shudder?

Absolutely. Allow me to introduce you to the "O Face."

For shame!

[10Ghz]

None of this would have happened if devs had just included Reiser4 in to the kernel....

OS Developers arrested

[uneek]

Hi:

This makes me wonder how many other primary authors of open source projects have been arrested in the past and how this has affected their projects?

Uneek

Re:OS Developers arrested

[Pharmboy]

This makes me wonder why they didn't put a link to info about his arrest in the article. Not everyone knew this, and it is just sloppy of the editors to NOT include a link to give a bit of context about the arrest.

I found info here, here, and here

Re:OS Developers arrested

[rsidd]

This makes me wonder why they didn't put a link to info about his arrest in the article.

The link does contain info, as well as further links.

it is just sloppy of the editors to NOT include a link

Slashdot is sloppy; if you want examples you can find plenty. But, on this occasion, the sloppiness is on the reader's part.

I found info here, here, and here

You could have found more and better info by just typing "reiser" into Google News.

Re:OS Developers arrested

[WWWWolf]

Hmm, right now, the only name that springs in mind would be Alaa, who runs Egyptian LUG. Not sure if he developed anything though =)

Re:OS Developers arrested

[Mike89]

Was it too much for you to even glance at the title of the ONLY Related Story - you know, right below the summary?

Re:OS Developers arrested

[$1uck]

Doesn't this highlight another positive for OS? No seriously, so the lead developer is arrested/killed/in a coma. This means the project *is* not dead, someone somewhere can pick up where he/she left off. If it was closed source, and the lead developer was more than just a cog in a large corporation, who could/would pick up the slack? The source code could conceivably being floating in legal limbo until the affairs are settled. Or am I just being myopic?

Re:OS Developers arrested

[jalefkowit]

If you're curious, why limit the inquiry to just open source projects? Surely you'd be concerned if the primary developer of a commercial product you depend on was arrested on the same charge, right?

This actually brings up one of the strongest points in favor of open source -- even if Hans Reiser never walks free again, if there's enough people who find value in his work they can pick it up themselves and continue moving it forward. If ReiserFS was a commercial product, that wouldn't be possible.

Re:OS Developers arrested

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this "google" of which you speak?

Re:OS Developers arrested

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you saying that it's impossible for a company to hire a new developer?

If it's an commercial product which enough people find valuable the company is likely to do what ever they can to find someone who can pick it up. For a open source product though most users can just watch helplessly and pray that someone will pick it up since very few has the skill and time to move it forward themself.

Re:OS Developers arrested

[Mr. Underbridge]

Doesn't this highlight another positive for OS? No seriously, so the lead developer is arrested/killed/in a coma. This means the project *is* not dead, someone somewhere can pick up where he/she left off. If it was closed source, and the lead developer was more than just a cog in a large corporation, who could/would pick up the slack? The source code could conceivably being floating in legal limbo until the affairs are settled. Or am I just being myopic?

I'd say that in practice, with open source, if the person responsible for development leaves the project, it often withers. In theory, someone could come along and do it, but theory is just that. Of course companies can fold for the same reason. I'd say in either case - open or closed source - if the project is big enough and has enough developers, it will keep going for better or worse. If it's small, the project can die, whether the source is open or not.

The one major difference is if a company goes bankrupt, at which the code will be part of bankruptcy proceedings for years possibly, and at that point it's a major benefit to being open source.

Re:OS Developers arrested

[MMC Monster]

One would guess that the large corporation would hire someone else to fill the gap. With money.

Re:OS Developers arrested

[cosminn]

This means the project *is* not dead

That remains to be seen, right now we have some optimism from the devs working there, but who knows if they'll remain on the project in a few months, and also where the project will go w/o Reiser.

If it was closed source, and the lead developer was more than just a cog in a large corporation, who could/would pick up the slack?

Lead devs leave companies all the time. If you have good stanards for documenting your work, and smart people on the team working on that project, someone else will step up, or they can just hire someone else.

Re:OS Developers arrested

[Anonymous Coward]

One example of usefulness of open source is hsqldb, it is a for from Hypersonic SQL, done when main developer abandoned the project.

Re:OS Developers arrested

[Anonymous Coward]

So in other words, corporations see people as merely expendable cogs, to other people they are beautiful snowflakes.

Care to add anything new to the discussion? We already know that corporations think that everyone is replacable and that death rates on the order of one in a million is perfectly acceptable to their bottom line. The only question I have is why you think that its not possible to find a replacement programmer to lead a complex opensource project while also believing a company just has to pull some code monkey off the street to lead a commercial project of the same complexity. You should work in a clocktower, the cognitive dissonance must be audible from miles away!

Re:OS Developers arrested

[mspohr]

Well, we do know that Microsoft (developer of a popular operating system) has been tried and convicted of abuse of monopoly market position on several continents... does this count?

Re:OS Developers arrested

[ffflala]

Doesn't this highlight another positive for OS?

No. No it does not highlight a positive. While what you say may be accurate except for the word "highlight", what this will actually highlight is a negative perception of an OS project.

The bad press in this one is not of the there-is-no-bad-press kind. It has the potential of having the effect on ReiserFS that Jonestown did on Flavor-Aid or OJ's effect on Isotoner gloves. People won't be interested in the robustness of a project to survive its namesake's (possible) conviction on a murder charge -- they'll be interested in the murder charge.

Sex and violence -vs- advantages of project administration.

Please folks -- if your name is so strongly associated with a key part of an OS project, please don't *appear to have quite possibly* killed your wife, or anyone else, and hid the body. K?

Re:OS Developers arrested

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably many of us have been arrested at some time, if you count protests.

But I suspect you're more concerned about long-term arrests, i.e., conviction + prison time.

Re:Who cares?

[Lord Bitman]

Yeah, I know; but, http://www.mugshots.org/misc/bill-gates.html

Finally, Linux has its killer app.

[Anonymous Coward]

And Netcraft confirms it.

Problems for Namesys?

[NekoXP]

"I do not think that just being arrested will affect anything so long as Hans is not actually convicted," says Oleg Drokin, the former release manager at Namesys. "If he is convicted, that might cause problems for Namesys [because] it is operated solely by Hans."

I don't understand. If the guy who runs the company goes away usually it's fairly easy process (albeit longwinded and boring) to get a new general manager, CEO or whatever. Namesys isn't a public company, so they could name their Thanksgiving turkey the CEO. The problem might be, if Hans acted as accountant etc. and did some funny number crunching that is going to drive them into the dirt; of course that would add to Hans' problems, too, if they were ever revealed :D

Is Hans really that important to ReiserFS? Isn't this the whole beauty of GPL code, that there are thousands of people out there who can pick his work up without even involving him, Namesys etc., and continue the 'legacy'?

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Hans really that important to ReiserFS? Isn't this the whole beauty of GPL code, that there are thousands of people out there who can pick his work up without even involving him, Namesys etc., and continue the 'legacy'?

Can't speak for how important Hans was to ReiserFS and Namesys, but NO, it's not the beauty of GPL code, it's the beauty of Open Source code, of which GPL is a subset. Call me pedantic, but it's an important distinction here.

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[jimicus]

Depends how large the company was and how big a role the CEO has in running it.

In larger companies, the CEO generally plays golf most of the time.

In smaller companies, it's quite common for the CEO to be designing the products in great detail, and many a promising open source project has withered for lack of a leader - though I can't see that happening in the case of ReiserFS because it's too big and important.

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[swv3752]

Hans is that important to Namesys and Namesys is the only group really working on ReiserFS. It is possible for some other group to pick up the project, but Hans aggravated alot of other developers, so...

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[Rambo]

I don't understand. If the guy who runs the company goes away usually it's fairly easy process (albeit longwinded and boring) to get a new general manager, CEO or whatever.

    If the company is founded as a sole proprietorship and the owner/proprietor disappears things can be very difficult. I was part of a company that started that way and once they got big enough they had to register as a corporation to avoid having the company dissolved if something happened to the owner. I'm unclear on why this happens but I expect it has something to do with the idea that the owner literally owns the company's assets and if they should die the state may try to claim those assets.

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[ball-lightning]

so they could name their Thanksgiving turkey the CEO.


I think that's the problem, there IS no they. Without Reiser, there is no one with the authority to name a ceo, or even pay the bills.

Of course, he could always name someone to take over, but I don't think anyone at the current company can...

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[revery]

Is Hans really that important to ReiserFS? Isn't this the whole beauty of GPL code, that there are thousands of people out there who can pick his work up without even involving him, Namesys etc., and continue the 'legacy'?

I think Hans might very well be just that important to ReiserFS. I've worked at companies where if a certain person died or decided that they didn't want to work there any longer, it would be very hard to replace them.

There are some tasks wherein the set of people who are both qualified and interested is quite small. This might well be true of the ReiserFS internals.

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[squiggleslash]

I believe Reiser owns Namesys, he's not just the guy who runs it.

As such, his disappearance, for whatever reason, will have a profound effect on the company if he doesn't take steps to ensure otherwise. And he may not be able to take those steps at all if he's convicted.

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[novus ordo]

I think what he means is that it is Hans Reiser's company. You can't just take someone else's company and let someone else run it without the owner's consent. Calling him important is an understatement. Read this interview if you would like to know how important. As for letting someone else run the company...hah I can't even describe the irony. Here's the rundown: Basically he got this guy named Sean Sturgeon run his finances "1999 through 2002 and had access to and control over deposits, withdrawals and funds at the Patelco Credit Union."

Reiser said Sturgeon "worked with my wife Nina Reiser and eventually drugged her with ecstasy and seduced her." Reiser alleged, "He then engaged in Bondage, Domination, Sadism and Masochism techniques and continued to redrug her repeatedly over time." He said Sturgeon engaged in those techniques "in an effort to show that he was a better man than I and to convince my wife Nina to conspire with him to steal the Namesys Inc. company assets." He said Sturgeon engaged in those techniques "in an effort to show that he was a better man than I and to convince my wife Nina to conspire with him to steal the Namesys Inc. company assets." Reiser alleged that, "Sean has threatened to have me beaten up by some of his associates in illegal activities and that he would hurt me, my mother or my children if he did not get what he wanted." He also accused Sturgeon of engaging in extortion by threatening to make calls to the Internal Revenue Service to report him and his mother. In addition, Reiser alleged that Sturgeon wrote into a contract that Reiser must participate in "Death Yoga," which he said has the purpose of "slowing down one's heart to the point of death."

You think he might have second thoughts on letting someone else run the business? Just maybe?

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[NekoXP]

You think Hans Reiser won't let his employees take over the company if he went to jail?

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[NekoXP]

Here, every comment I have had on this is proceeding from the point "if he should die".

There is a possibility he could be executed for his crime if he even committed it, but that takes years. He could even commit suicide? But basically he is just going to go to jail for a very long time if it's true, and only after a longish trial. Namesys can be transferred in that time if he so needs it to happen, if he isn't legally entitled to do it himself while under arrest, he can sure get his lawyer to handle it.

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[anotherone]

Wow, he sounds like a total nutjob.

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[novus ordo]

Well, he basically dedicated his life to this and has made great sacrifices(no pun intended) and I doubt he will just give it up.

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[maxwell demon]

I expect it has something to do with the idea that the owner literally owns the company's assets and if they should die the state may try to claim those assets.

Except for inheritance tax, I don't see how the state should be able to do that.

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless what he said is true.

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[Anonymous Coward]

He hasn't disappeared. We know exactly where he is.

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading comprehension isn't your strong suit, is it?

Slow Down Cowboy!

Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.

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Reply to: Re:Problems for Namesys?

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Re:Problems for Namesys?
(Score:1)
by Anonymous Coward on 2006-10-12 11:05 (#16408625)
He hasn't disappeared. We know exactly where he is.
[ Reply to This ]

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Re:Problems for Namesys?
(Score:?)
by Anonymous Coward on 2006-10-12 11:12
Reading comprehension isn't your strong suit, is it?

Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Please use fewer 'junk' characters.

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[charlesnw]

Seriosuly. A contract with a death yoga clause? Come on.

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[nomadicGeek]

I don't understand. If the guy who runs the company goes away usually it's fairly easy process (albeit longwinded and boring) to get a new general manager, CEO or whatever. Namesys isn't a public company, so they could name their Thanksgiving turkey the CEO.

It all depends on how the company is setup. For example it could be an S Corp with Reiser as the only shareholder. In that case, he is the company. There is no they to do anything. He may be the only one who can write checks, file taxes, etc. As for the Thanksgiving turkey, I hope that you don't think that it is that easy to run even a small company.

Theoretically, the employees could form another company and carry on that way. Obviously not everyone has the aptitude and intestinal fortitude to pull that sort of thing off.

Is Hans really that important to ReiserFS? Isn't this the whole beauty of GPL code, that there are thousands of people out there who can pick his work up without even involving him, Namesys etc., and continue the 'legacy'?

I think that this is part of the falacy of opensource. In theory you are right but something along these lines takes a highly qualified programmer focused on the task a long time to write and test. During that time the programmer needs food, shelter, clothing, utilities, insurance, transportation, computer equipment, etc. Start to work out the logistics for yourself. I'd love to work on it but I can't figure out a way to pay all of my bills while I am doing it. I imagine that I am not alone. I don't have enough spare time to work on it. I imagine that it would take quite a bit of time and effort to even get up to speed. When you start looking at the details, you are really lucky if your theoretical thousands doesn't in fact turn out to be one or two.

I think that when you look at any opesource project, you will find that there are maybe a small handful of people that are able to devote the time and effort to keep it going. Sometimes they get grants or sponsorships and sometimes they just don't mind being flat broke all the time. There certainly aren't thousands makeing really meaningful contributions. There is a small handful without whom the whole thing falls apart.

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[nuzak]

You mean your contract doesn't have a death yoga clause? I thought those were pretty much standard.

Damn, I gotta go talk to a lawyer.

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Seriosuly. A contract with a death yoga clause? Come on.

"I swear, I'll never bitch about a Microsoft EULA again!"

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[Omnifarious]

Wow. Either Hans is much nuttier than I thought (I thought he was just a bit of an egotist) or he managed to get into business with someone who was really awful. That story is on the edge of nutty, but it's just plausible enough to not be completely dismissable.

"Death Yoga" is a little out there though. I've seen references to the idea, but it seems a bit much for someone to demand that a business partner commit suicide in a particularly weird and unusual (and possibly impossible) way. Claiming it seems paranoid and delusional.

Anyway, the employees could just quit Namesys and form their own company that does the same thing. I'm sure that the people who made business arrangements with Namesys would understand the situation.

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[Omnifarious]

After reading more articles about this and thinking for a bit. It seems likely to me that Hans Reiser is suffering from a serious mental illness. *sigh* What awful consequences for Nina.

I really like ReiserFS though, and I hope work continues on it without him.

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[Anonymous Coward]

read the fine print again, it's in there

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[Omnifarious]

My conclusion is that Hans Reiser is likely a paranoid schizophrenic.

First he insists that his business associate was doing all this stuff with his wife behind his back, alleging a secret conspiracy. But, it turns out that his wife had a boyfriend who wasn't this business associate. The rational behavior for his wife would be to make the secret relationship public knowledge after the divorce, not to start a new publicly acknowledged relationship.

Hans contends that the relationship continued with his business associate in secret. The only reason she would do that would be to personally make his life unpleasant. But other aspects of her behavior don't fit this. Besides, it's not like people to engage in a secret conspiracy to ruin someone else's life for no benefit to themselves.

This also fits with his outbursts about code reviews and opinions about ReiserFS on LKML being politically rather than technically motivatd.

I'm inclined to believe that he murdered is wife, but it is only an inclination that I base on available evidence and is subject to change in the face of contradictory facts. But, I'm also inclined to believe that he should be classified as insane.

I'm really sad about this. Both for the tragedy of it (I'm aware enough of the idea of the monkeysphere to not pretend that I cared for his wife and kids since I've never met or talked to them and didn't even know they existed before this story), for Hans personally (as I've exchanged words with him on mailing lists), and for the beleagured future of my favorite filesystem. :-(

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[gamer4Life]

Look at the timelines. It's very possible that Nina cheated on her husband with Sturgeon, his financial agent, a couple years ago. And more recently broke up with Sturgeon and started oing out with this other guy.

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[zsau]

My conclusion is that Hans Reiser is likely a paranoid schizophrenic.

I would be very surprised if someone who managed to run their own business had paranoid schizophrenia. People with schizophrenia generally have enough trouble holding down a job; and running your own business would probably be too much exposure. Also, being a coder who's managed to write his own filesystem would be another giveway he didn't have schizophrenia; that usually comes with lowered intellectual abilities.

Still, when I was reading that stuff it did come over as nutty. I wouldn't be surprised if he had a delusional disorder; but I would be if he was schizophrenic.

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a conclusion based on speculation and reasoning not a conclusion based on verifiable facts.

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[Omnifarious]

That's true. :-) I never tried to claim it wasn't.

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[Anonymous Coward]

Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Scott McNealy all seem to fit the paranoid schizoprenic profile.

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[Omnifarious]

I would be very surprised if someone who managed to run their own business had paranoid schizophrenia. People with schizophrenia generally have enough trouble holding down a job; and running your own business would probably be too much exposure. Also, being a coder who's managed to write his own filesystem would be another giveway he didn't have schizophrenia; that usually comes with lowered intellectual abilities.

I've likely taken away entirely more than was warranted from "A Beautiful Mind". :-)

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[Omnifarious]

Yes, except that I believe Hans claims she's still seeing that guy. I recall reading a statement to that effect when he was talking about the current suit.

Re:Problems for Namesys?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, being a coder who's managed to write his own filesystem would be another giveway he didn't have schizophrenia; that usually comes with lowered intellectual abilities.

And some of them go and win Nobel prizes.....

Re:Not Surprising? -- read the story

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should read the story before you go half cocked next time -- "Hans suspected that he would be suspected from the very beginning,"

Even if not guilty

[L-s-L69]

The loss of his wife is likely to have a profound impact upon his work and any future development. I can only hope the community and the other developers are able to step up and carry on the work.

Re:Even if not guilty

[JonathanR]

Does the open source development model now extend to housework?

Re:Even if not guilty

[QuantumG]

his ex-wife.. who's contribution to his work was to claim that he was earning money that he wasn't paying her to raise their children, when actually he was $100k in debt (yeah, couldn't see that coming "let's make a filesystem!" "let's give it away for free!" how could you lose money on that?!) This is one of the reasons why the cops didn't mind arresting him. He really does look like he wouldn't mind seeing her dead.

Then again, who doesn't feel that way about their ex-wife.. except, ya know, those few freaks who part on good terms and have each other over for dinner with their new partners. *shudder*

Re:Even if not guilty

[AaronW]

Actually, in this area I don't know that 100K is all that bad, especially considering that houses usually go for 500K+, though a lot of areas of Oakland are considerably cheaper. Oakland is a sore spot in the Bay Area with a high crime rate compared to most other areas. There are many areas of Oakland where I and most people I know will avoid because it just isn't safe. Oakland also has a fairly high homicide rate. See c rime.asp?city=Oakland&state=CA</a> for some statistics. The murder rate is 3.5 times the national average. The city I live in, about 25 miles south is 0.13 times the national average for murder. Berkeley, which is right next store to Oakland is 0.75 times the national average, and Alameda who also borders Oakland has had zero murders, with a population of 74K people. San Jose, a city with about twice the population of Oakland is 0.42 times the national average. Now there are a number of really nice and expensive parts of Oakland, where the murder rate is a lot lower, such as in the Oakland hills, which just indicates how bad that 3.5 times average is. There are areas of Oakland where you just don't want to go.

I hope that she is found alive and that if not that Hans Reiser had nothing to do with it. I also don't have a lot of confidence in the Oakland police department.

Re:Even if not guilty

[Anonymous Coward]

those few freaks who part on good terms and have each other over for dinner with their new partners. *shudder*

Or those freaks who invite their ex-wife to their new wedding, and pair her with a homosexual, hehe.

Re:Even if not guilty

[Abcd1234]

Uhh... please tell me you understand the difference between $100k of straight debt and a $100k mortgage.

Re:Even if not guilty

[dfghjk]

so being in debt means you're not earning money? I suppose no one told her that her husband's commitment to open source meant that her life and work must be free as in beer.

"This is one of the reasons why the cops didn't mind arresting him."

Cops don't mind arresting anybody.

"Then again, who doesn't feel that way about their ex-wife."

Feel what way? Are you saying you know how he felt? You think everyone has murderous feelings? Perhsps the cops shouldn't mind arresting you.

Re:Even if not guilty

[QuantumG]

Feel what way? Are you saying you know how he felt?

Yes, that's what I'm saying, I'm a fuckin' empath. Alternatively, maybe I was refering to the previous paragraph, where I described how he might be feeling towards his ex-wife after their bitter breakup.. yeah, that could be it.

Re:Even if not guilty

[ralphdaugherty]

Actually, in this area I don't know that 100K is all that bad

      It was $170K that he blogged he was in the hole, and there was a reference to him living there for 25 years, so it doesn't appear that the $170K included a mortgage.

  rd

Can't live with them...

[taff^2]

Can't kill them.

Last I had heard though, she was missing, and the evidence was only circumstantial. Have they found a body?

Re:Can't live with them...

[craagz]

or the murder weapon..

now, i wonder what Mr. Reiser cud have used if indeed he committed the crime. Xkill?

Re:Can't live with them...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Hans has shown us all the the old addedage needs to be updated. Can't live with 'em, CAN kill 'em so long as they never find the body .

"I didn't kill my wife!"

[BeeBeard]

Well no, Hans Reiser didn't do it. A one-armed man sent by a pharmaceutical company did it.

Re:"I didn't kill my wife!"

[dknj]

Poor moderators don't get the Harrison Ford, Fugative reference :(

But considering half of slashdot is under the age of 17, I'm not surprised. Anyway, I would have marked you funny

Re:"I didn't kill my wife!"

[Anonymous Coward]

And you're too young to remember that Harrison Ford was in the movie based on a TV show from the 60's, presumably... Still funny, of course.

Re:"I didn't kill my wife!"

[stuntpope]

I guess the pharmaceutical company reference tied it to the movie remake, I'm sure young slashdotters wouldn't get the 1960's TV show "The Fugitive" reference.

Re:"I didn't kill my wife!"

[Anonymous Coward]

And you're too young to remember that Harrison Ford was in the movie based on a TV show from the 60's, presumably...

And you're too young to remember that the TV show from the '60s was based on the case of Sam Sheppard.[*] It doesn't bode well for Hans, though - Sheppard spent 10 years in jail before they set him free.

[*] - Okay, I'm probably younger than you, but I read it somewhere and knew to look for it on wikipedia.

Re:"I didn't kill my wife!"

[JustOK]

...but I thought Hans shot first?

Re:"I didn't kill my wife!"

[Kelson]

the TV show from the '60s was based on the case of Sam Sheppard.

Not to mention Les Misérables, although that has more to do with the lone inspector obsessively chasing one fugitive through the years than with the initial criminal case.

At least Gerard though he was pursuing a killer, not a guy who stole a loaf of bread 20 years earlier.

Re:Who cares?

[ettlz]

Wearing that shirt, alone, should be an arrestable offense.

Some Related Reading

[RAMMS EIN]

I've been reading a bit, trying to get a handle on what's been happening and what may be next for the people involved in this (I trust the filesystem will be fine). Here are the most interesting parts of what I've read:

AUTHORITIES SEARCH HOME OF MISSING WOMAN'S HUSBAND

ATTORNEY: HANS REISER 'DISTRUSTFUL' OF OAKLAND POLICE

UPDATE: POLICE CHARGE HANS REISER WITH MURDER

Missing woman's blood found in husband's house

All in all, it's very disturbing. I get the impression at least one of the people involved in this is completely insane.

Re:Some Related Reading

[jackbird]

Wow, completely insane doesn't even begin to describe it. My favorite line:

"In addition, Reiser alleged that Sturgeon wrote into a contract that Reiser must participate in 'Death Yoga,' which he said has the purpose of 'slowing down one's heart to the point of death.'"

Re:Some Related Reading

[Anonymous Coward]

Missing woman's blood found in husband's house

You got to be shitting me, they found his wifes blood in his house! Must clearly be guilty. I mean i cant think of any way her blood would be in his house unless he murdered her by carving her into chunks with the blunt and rusty end of a circular saw.

Open and closed case chief... chocolate or sprinkles?

Re:Some Related Reading

[squiggleslash]

...and in his car, and the passenger seat had been removed for no explained reason. (The car is small, it's a hatchback and thus it would be hard to put a large object in without removing a seat.)

This is circumstantial evidence, and is presumably what the arrest is based upon. It could be that the explanation is as simple as Nina having a nose-bleed in both places, and that Hans removed the passenger seat as he needed to transport a server between two offices. But the police, right now, apparently don't have an explanation they're willing to believe.

Personally, I'm having a hard time understanding how Hans would have been able to do this without his children seeing what was going on, but without knowing all the facts, it's hard to draw a conclusion. I guess if there is a trial, we'll find out then.

Re:Some Related Reading

[RingDev]

The time line seems hard to figure out though. She drops off kids at his house, then isn't seen of again.

So either he killed he in front of the kids or He left the kids to kill her. And then some how disposed of the body while working and having the kids?

I don't know, I mean, I was a fairly self entertaining child, I had a brother who was a year and a half older than me. But at that age, we didn't go for very long with out either being checked up on, or checking up on our parents. So this guy would need enough time to dispose of the body, the seat, the car, clothing, weapon, etc... get cleaned up, and return to a somewhat normal emotional state, all while his kids are right there with him.

He definitely seems a likely candidate, but it could be circumstantial. I drove my car around for a few weeks with only 1 seat. A small amount of my wife's blood is likely in my car. And my wife's blood is definitely in our house. In my case though, the one seat was when I was fabing up brackets for a new racing seat. The blood in the car is from a sneezing nose bleed. And the blood in the house is from any number of remodeling/cooking/cleaning accidents.

-Rick

Re:Some Related Reading

[Migraineman]

And the blood in the house is from any number of remodeling/cooking/cleaning accidents.

Soooo ... how many times have you tried to kill her?

On a more serious note, all women bleed on a pretty regular basis. Without knowing more about the details, I'd be inclined to say that finding blood in a house where a woman lives is pretty normal for us hyu-mons. Drops on the inside of the bathroom trashcan? Definitely. That pool of dried blood under the couch? Erm, maybe that's a bit odd.

Re:Some Related Reading

[Anonymous Coward]

"In addition, Reiser alleged that Sturgeon wrote into a contract that Reiser must participate in 'Death Yoga,' which he said has the purpose of 'slowing down one's heart to the point of death.'"

Sounds like a period of paranoid schizophrenia -- and have to say your stereotypical introverted, obsessive, male geek profile typically increases the possibility. Add enormous emotional stress caused by divorce and there you go. However, given his age it would have surfaced long before this -- but who knows maybe it did and that was part of the reason for the divorce. Seems like he did have some difficulties behaving in socially accepted ways towards other people.

Re:Some Related Reading

[Lemmeoutada Collecti]

Can't say I'd come up clean housed either. Since my girl *is* female, and thus afflicted with the usual female cycles, I'm certain there is some of her blood around my house, and probably the passenger seat of my car (I usually drive).

And my hair and her hair all over. I, too, have a book on police procedures. A gift from my father, who is an ex cop.

Um... I'm beginning to think I should click that anonymous checkbox now... ok, bye bye...

Re:Some Related Reading

[Mechanist]

From TFA at http://cbs5.com/localwire/localfsnews/bcn/2006/09/ 19/n/HeadlineNews/POLICE-DISTRUST/resources_bcn_ht ml :

Oakland police said at Monday's hearing that they have "secret" information about Reiser but they can't reveal it, according to the defense lawyer.

What the...? Secret evidence? Have they taken him to Gitmo or something?

Re:Some Related Reading

[g1zmo]

From the 4th link:
Investigators have also recovered books on how police investigate homicides, which were obtained by Hans Reiser a few days after his wife's Sept. 3 disappearance, the sources said.

Man, that's worse than looking up money laundering in a dictionary.

Re:Some Related Reading

[Anonymous Coward]

Comparing this to what has happened to "terror detainees" shows your ignorance of both a murder investigation and the way our president has been acting.

Re:Some Related Reading

[Pecisk]

Damn, this is freakingly nuts. Most of stuff reads like Reiser has lost his mind and definetly has been killed his ex-wife :( (In the begining I hoped that it was just checking) And it was heartbraking to read about her current boyfriend. Damn, that is simply hard.

Sad.

Re:Some Related Reading

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, that's pretty much what I would speculate based on that information.

I've seen what happens when a paranoid schizophrenic cracks before, and it's very, very sad :(

I wouldn't claim that he's one (I'm not a doctor and I have no way of knowing), but if that information is actually true, that's exactly what it would lead me to believe. A big stressor like debt or business failure is exactly the thing that can drive a big crack through an otherwise mostly-sound mind, too.

I really hope this speculation is way off base.

Re:Some Related Reading

[Anonymous Coward]

You really can't make determinations like that from a bunch of media soundbites: media tend to focus on the nuttiest statements anybody makes. "Alleges" can mean anything from "cynical side-remark" to "foaming at the mouth rage".

Re:Some Related Reading

[Achromatic1978]

(The car is small, it's a hatchback and thus it would be hard to put a large object in without removing a seat.)

I don't know - presuming rigor mortis hadn't set in, seems to me a seat would be rather specifically built to carry a large object like a person...

Re:Some Related Reading

[Mechanist]

So then you're not the least bit surprised that the police are apparently using secret evidence in a criminal trial? Obviously Reiser isn't a terror "detainee", but I'm not sure I'm aware of any other situation in the US where this is done.

Re:Some Related Reading

[ralphdaugherty]

Personally, I'm having a hard time understanding how Hans would have been able to do this without his children seeing what was going on, but without knowing all the facts, it's hard to draw a conclusion.

      I have a thread with my thoughts on it at
Noted coder Hans Reiser arrested for wife's disappearance
http://www.justiceforchandra.com/forums/viewtopic. php?t=2899

      There are other cases like this as in, for example, Sue Ann Ray in the Atlanta area. The guy leaves his estranged wife's vehicle somewhere looking like she went shopping after dropping something off at his house, but she in fact had never made it out of his house alive.

      In this case it looks to me like he left the children with his mother at home after she dropped them off and followed his estranged wife to the supermarket and attacked her similar to the murder of college student Dru Sjodin in a mall parking lot in North Dakota.

      Several bags of groceries were found in her minivan, however, I saw no mention of anyone such as a checkout clerk in the store saying they saw her. It could have been after she came out, or he could have bought the groceries to place her at the supermarket, which is the critical piece of making it look like a stranger attacked her in a parking lot, such as for example Tracey Tetso whose car was found in a parking lot in Baltimore.

      In all these cases the women disappear, and the ex ain't talking. Unfortunately, the site is full of them.

  rd

Steve Ballmer Vs. Hans Reiser

[Anonymous Coward]

I was going to do a google fight but the original version appears to have been replaced with some javascript bogosity. I guess we should put it to an open vote instead.

Re:Steve Ballmer Vs. Hans Reiser

[maxwell demon]

I didn't have any problems.

Result:

Steve Ballmer
3,510,000 results

Hans Reiser
3,720,000 results

Re:Steve Ballmer Vs. Hans Reiser

[rbarreira]

You should put quotes around the names (in that case, the result is the opposite).

Last months media coverage

[btarval]

Oh please. The reason why it's not a surprise is probably because lots of people knew about the situation beforehand. This has even been mentioned on some Linux mailing lists already, so it's really no surprise if you've been following this.

Here's a link to some of the media coverage from last month:

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=local&id= 4558883

Good thing he's not in texas

[bahwi]

Because down here we ain't got no good judges.

http://www.dallasobserver.com/Issues/2006-10-05/ne ws/feature.html

From the article:
An examination of the trial transcript, witness statements, police reports and appellate briefs reveals something even more shocking.

Except for an alleged motive, there was no evidence against Karage.

"I couldn't believe it," says Lawrence Mitchell, one of the top criminal appellate attorneys in Dallas, who represented Karage on appeal. "There's not a shred of evidence he committed the crime. I don't know how Karen Greene came to the conclusion he was guilty. It's bad judging all the way through. I think a first-year law student would have seen he wasn't guilty. I have never seen a case this egregious."

The project is GPL right, so it will go on anyways, perhaps a new name, but, that wouldn't be right either.

Re:Who cares?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

He must have been stoned or something, because judging by that enormous goofy grin, he is having waaay too much fun for someone who had just been arrested.

Strange way to prosecute in the US

[kooky45]

Perhaps someone can explain how homocide cases in the US go? Here in the UK it's unusual for the police to make blatant press conferences announcing the evidence they have against a suspect and why it must point to him being guilty, but in the US it seems commonplace. Often the public in the UK don't find out about crucial evidence until the trials are over. The US police try the suspect in front of the media before going to court. Are they trying to have public opinion sway the court process in their favour?

Re:Strange way to prosecute in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in the UK it's unusual for the police to make blatant
press conferences announcing the evidence they have against
a suspect and why it must point to him being guilty

You don't use Stockwell tube much, do you ..

Re:Strange way to prosecute in the US

[david_g17]

Are they trying to have public opinion sway the court process in their favour?

You missed the OJ Simpson trial, didn't you?

Re:Strange way to prosecute in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this happens all the time in the US. I don't know if it's the police so much as the prosecuting attorney's office that leaks the information. News agencies thrive on these kinds of details, as well as the public here, so there is a lot of pressure to release information as it comes in. There police will generally release information only if there is a continuing danger to the public.

Re:Strange way to prosecute in the US

[JPMH]

You're right. The press in the UK are very limited in how they can report before and during criminal cases -- the journalists must take extreme care to avoid any "substantial risk" that the fairness of a jury could be "seriously prejudiced" as a result. Otherwise the judge can find them guilty of contempt of court, and send them to jail. So pre-trial reports on UK cases tend to be quite limited, both as to facts and even more so as to speculation, and presented in extreme neutral language.

On the other hand in the States what the journalists have more or less a free hand to slant things how they want, both before and during the case -- this is seen as part of their free speech, protected by the First Amendment. So in the U.S. there is a tendency for both sides to go very public, and for both the defence and the prosecution (and the police) to try to spin their point of view.

Some BBC stories discussing the difference:

* Q&A about journalists and contempt -- following the 2001 discharge of a jury after a "prejudicial" newspaper article, in the case of 2 Leeds footballers accused of attacking a student.

* UK silence over bombings deafens -- Why much more information about the 2005 London bombings came from the NYPD than the Met.

* Media coverage and the 2005 Michael Jackson trial.

Re:Strange way to prosecute in the US

[Spokehedz]

Yes. It's called "A Trial by Public Jury" and you can bet your ass that the police in this stupid country leverage this to every benefit they can get from it.

In the US, you are tried by a jury of your 'peers'... Which is hardly the case. A nuclear scientist can be tried by janitors and bus drivers--but more likely, it's by anybody stupid enough not to be able to get out of jury duty.

Re:Strange way to prosecute in the US

[NDPTAL85]

Here in the US we just think its good public policy to have the police declare WHY they have charged someone with a crime BEFORE the trial instead of AFTERWARDS so that if anyone knows anything they can come forward DURING the trial to reveal the truth. And make no mistake, US police do withhold certain details from the public so they can verify that certain people who "confess" aren't just making it up. But from the way you describe the UK criminal justice system the police can just arrest anyone they want and not have to declare why until the person has already been convicted. Is my interpretation correct because if it is that sounds like a dictatorship, not a democracy.

Re:Strange way to prosecute in the US

[Maxo-Texas]

I've been on juries and a lot of good *citizens* go down and do their duty and take it *very* seriously. Tho one time we did have trouble convincing one juror that it was *innocent until PROVEN guilty* and not the reverse.

If you are ever arrested, I hope all the qualified people are not too stupid to avoid your jury trial.

Re:Strange way to prosecute in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

>Is my interpretation correct because if it is that sounds like a dictatorship, not a democracy.

Neither, the UK in fact has a constitutional monarchy. Duh!

Re:Strange way to prosecute in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

but more likely, it's by anybody stupid enough not to be able to get out of jury duty.

Speaking of stupid, it's comments like this that really underscore why our system is screwed up. If you are so damn smart, then why are you trying to get out of jury duty? It's one of the privileges in our country, and there is no reason why you should not participate. It's one of the checks to keep the system honest, and by getting out of it, you are only contributing to the *apparent* problem...

Re:Strange way to prosecute in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

What's Democracy got to do with it anyhow. Democracy is purely the process of having a publically elected (by free vote) government. If everyone in the states voted in a Far Right, Christian fundamentalist nutter - then he'd be democratically elected, by majority. You're talking about civic freedom, which is a different issue to how you elect your government and heads of state.

Re:Strange way to prosecute in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

The OP is correct - the press confrences in the stockwell tube incident were held only after the police found the defendant guilty.

Re:Strange way to prosecute in the US

[rk]

Odd, I did a stint as a juror, too, believing it to be my duty and take it seriously, only to find that 2 other jurors felt that it was guilty until proven innocent, and the nine others were sheep. I stood up to the bullies and said "We will look at this evidence from the point of view of assuming his innocence, or I can just simply say 'not guilty' until the cows come home." I know the bullies didn't like it, but by God, I made sure that guy got a fair trial. By the way, we did find him guilty on all counts (a carjacking). But he was truly innocent until proven guilty.

That pretty much convinced me that if I were to be tried for a crime, I'd waive my rights to jury and take my chances with a panel of judges.

Yes, the plural of anecdote is not data.

Re:Strange way to prosecute in the US

[Maxo-Texas]

God, having been on juries I would *SO* take a jury over a judge eight days a week.

You get the wrong judge- you are screwed. At the least get a good lawyer who can let you know if your judge is a hanging judge or not.

I'm really proud to hear about your behavior. You did the right thing.

Re:Strange way to prosecute in the US

[itsdapead]

But from the way you describe the UK criminal justice system the police can just arrest anyone they want and not have to declare why until the person has already been convicted.

Er, no - here in the UK we think its a good idea if the evidence is presented to the public at a thing called a trial with a judge and a jury and a prosecution and a defense and due process and stuff. Its a bit like what you have in the US, but with more fancy dress.

We just think its a good idea if all the potential jurors haven't already seen the TV miniseries with the girl they quite fancied from "Lost" as the victim and that British guy who always plays the baddie in superhero films as the accused.

And, yes, arrests are reported, the charges are reported, and police do call for evidence - there are just rules to stop the media (mis)reporting the unchallenged case for the prosecution before the trial.

Of course, the guv'ment wants to bend the rules for spies, terrorists etc. but the UK is hardly alone in that, and they haven't entirely had it their own way.

Re:Strange way to prosecute in the US

[dfghjk]

It's called jury duty, not jury privilege. In what way does jury duty keep the system honest? It has nothing to do with that.

Re:Strange way to prosecute in the US

[Berre]

This may be due to the fact, that most of the lead officials (Sheriff, Attorney General, etc.) in the US are elected.
Besides doing their jobs, they have to continually inform the public, that they are doing it well. They have their reelection to worry about.

Re:Strange way to prosecute in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

the press confrences in the stockwell tube incident were held only after the police found the defendant guilty.

The *police* found the defendant guilty? My, things have changed in the U.K. since I was last there!

Re:Strange way to prosecute in the US

[westlake]

Perhaps someone can explain how homocide cases in the US go?

There are preliminary hearings in the U.S. in which the state must show some of it cards in ordere to establish probable cause for the arrest, argue for the denial of bail, and so on.

Some recent examples pulled from Google:

LHS Math Dept. chairman waives probable-cause hearing in rape case

Judge finds probable cause in city razor blade fight

Probable cause found in Centralia man's alleged bomb threat.

Americans have chosen to keep the investigation of crime and the prosecution of crime as open and public a process as possible.

It is worth mentioning in this context that the stiffest resistance to President Bush's proposed rules for military tribunals came from within the American military justice system itself anf from those like Senators McCain and Warner steeped in its traditions and values.

Re:Strange way to prosecute in the US

[turgid]

And what's more, it's perfectly fair and just, since the police here in Blighty aren't sexist, racist, homophobic or politically or religiously biased any more. They say so on TeeVee and Radio, on the BBC as well and in the news papers.

Re:Strange way to prosecute in the US

[Anonymous Coward]

Name one Austrian dictator who was elected democratically. Hint for the less than avg smart American who hasn't been taught in history class: Godwin's Law. (Just kidding on the American ;)

Re:Strange way to prosecute in the US

[Spokehedz]

The jury is an antiquated system, still in place to placate the people into thinking that the government isn't running the show.

It doesn't matter what the facts are, they will believe whatever the lawyers can twist the words they are saying into whatever it is he wants them to believe. On both sides.

People are sheep. Lawyers are sharks. And if there was such thing as a land-shark, I'm sure they'd eat sheep for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Re:Strange way to prosecute in the US

[Spokehedz]

I've been on JD many times, and I've never gotten out of it once. Not that I couldn't, but I didn't want to. I enjoy watching the system fail, and being on the inside is the best seat in the house.

Hmmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

So now we're on the lookout for the next killer app?

About the company

[joaommp]

The company and the project should continue to run. A persons "personal life" should not be an excuse until the moment he/she is being missed in the project beyond reasonable.

This was posted under "Hardware"?

[david_g17]

what? are people hardware or something?

Re:This was posted under "Hardware"?

[eclectro]

what? are people hardware or something?

Maybe because they get hacked.

I think the most shocking thing about this is

[le0p]

that a Filesystem designer actually had a wife.

Re:I think the most shocking thing about this is

[maxwell demon]

A file system designer should know best how to give her a good fsck.

Re:I think the most shocking thing about this is

[Anonymous Coward]

Except she was a Russian (mailorder?) bride.

Re:I think the most shocking thing about this is

[metamatic]

Umm, Russian bride. You can mail order them.

Re:I think the most shocking thing about this is

[Anonymous Coward]

But the point of journaling file system is to minimise the fscking... Maybe this has lead to the divorce stuff?

Re:I think the most shocking thing about this is

[Black.Shuck]

I hear he also had trouble with mounting.

Re:I think the most shocking thing about this is

[zdv]

I understand one of the features of ReiserFS is that fscks are shorter and less frequent..

Actually, here in the US...

[Anonymous Coward]

The US police try the suspect in front of the media before going to court. Are they trying to have public opinion sway the court process in their favour?

Actually, here in the US, it's more like *THE MEDIA* who tries the suspect in front of the public before going to court. The media thrives on sensationalism, and since it is they who control what gets published with whatever spin they desire to put on the story, they are very expert at making it artificially look like it is the police who are conducting the media trial and the media is just there merely reporting it. Sadly enough, most Americans are so gullible they easily fall for this.

who's going to pay them?

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll probably just get other jobs...

Efficiency gains

[InterruptDescriptorT]

If he did kill his wife, which is nowhere near certain, and then subsequently chopped up the body, I bet the pieces are of manageable size and spread evenly throughout a wooded area for easy, order-N retrieval...

Re:Efficiency gains

[anno1a]

Clearly you haven't studied how reiserfs (3 at least) works. It doesn't use block sizes, it puts the data as compact as possible and uses a tree to figure out exactly where it is. This is obviously important if the police is ever to have a chance at finding the body. He'll probably have an algorithm at home, such that if they find one piece, they can find the rest following that. :)

Re:Efficiency gains

[maxwell demon]

If you want to find her, just look out for dancing trees!

Re:Efficiency gains

[elbobsa]

Personally, I hope he beats it, like OJ.

A jury of his peers, who should be computer guys, many of whom had shrew wives leave in disgust. A M$ bent keyboard with blood in it (Reiser uses a normal keyboard), a small glove in his yard. If someone overheard him say anything about killing his family, well, there are lots of times we Unix folk talk about kill -9 and killing children, parents, etc. But someone in the know knows that we mean no one any real harm. Actually, Reiser's wifey poo probably heard this type of talk from him in his sleep, and she paniced and fled to another country. And being an evil, non-technical woman, probably left blood everywhere to set him up.

Then, after he beats the rap, Reiser could tour Linux conventions around the world searching for the real killer.

Re:Efficiency gains

[metamatic]

OK, congratulations, that's the first Hans Reiser joke I've actually laughed at.

I'm so going to hell now.

Re:Efficiency gains

[PCM2]

Clearly you haven't studied how reiserfs (3 at least) works. It doesn't use block sizes, it puts the data as compact as possible and uses a tree to figure out exactly where it is. This is obviously important if the police is ever to have a chance at finding the body. He'll probably have an algorithm at home, such that if they find one piece, they can find the rest following that. :)

Either that, or they should just start digging under the tree.

More than just a shred of evidence in this case...

[everphilski]

they found blood in his car

She's quite cute.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.ninareiser.com/photos.html

Great

[rbarreira]

However, Lyamin expresses the cautious hope that the case will go the "way we hope it will go."

I read this sentence like 3 times, each of them failing to get any information from it. Can someone help me?

Can he continue to work?

[EllisDees]

Do prisons ever have internet connections? I'm being completely serious.

Re:Can he continue to work?

[CCFreak2K]

Believe it or not, some of them do. I don't know my correctional facilities as much as some people do here, but some places are pretty damn nice places to be.

Re:Can he continue to work?

[dfghjk]

Can he continue to work? If he's in jail I certainly hope not. That's the point.

Yes, some prisons have internet, but I'm confident it's not fulltime broadband in private cells. ;-)

Re:Can he continue to work?

[Senzei]

Can he continue to work? If he's in jail I certainly hope not. That's the point.

Being prohibit from making a productive contribution to society is the point of prison? That is a new one to me. Granted there are details that would have to be worked out - granting internet access for that task exclusively being one of the more difficult - but I think if he wants to keep working on it that should at least be considered.

Re:Can he continue to work?

[dfghjk]

Just because he may work on a project of personal interest to you doesn't mean that he makes a "productive contribution to society". Prison deprives all prisoners of making such contributions. If Reiser is convicted and sent to jail, he can make productive contributions by picking up trash on our highways just like others do.

Prison is specifically about denying criminals their freedom and the impact to society is one of the costs that we bear. Sorry, but if Reiser goes to jail he forfeits his ability to freely choose the manner in which he spends his time. Too bad if that costs you something in the process. ReiserFS isn't as valuable as a human life. If it were, how many free murders would Linus be allowed to commit?

Re:Can he continue to work?

[Anonymous Coward]

> If it were, how many free murders would Linus be allowed to commit?

None, because Linux doesn't work on ReiserFS

Re:Can he continue to work?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Just because he may work on a project of personal interest to you doesn't mean that he makes a "productive contribution to society".

Don't people in prison generally have at least some free time? Time to keep a journal, or write a book? Or read a book?

What about letters?

ReiserFS isn't as valuable as a human life. If it were, how many free murders would Linus be allowed to commit?

This is not the point.

Contrary to popular belief, no healthy programmer spends 100% of their free time coding. They go out for beer, or for a walk. They do things online other than work on their own project.

Give Hans a computer and an Internet connection. Filter the hell out of that connection -- email only, and only on the reiserfs lists. Web restricted to distro updates and kernel.org. Is that really so different than giving him a pen and some paper and letting him write a book?

It certainly won't mean he isn't punished. And punishment isn't always the real point of prison -- if he gets life, it means he won't be able to kill again. Internet connections won't change that.

Re:Can he continue to work?

[Senzei]

Just because he may work on a project of personal interest to you doesn't mean that he makes a "productive contribution to society"

To turn your own bad argument against you, how many people must have a personal interest in what he is doing for it to be a productive contribution to society?

Prison deprives all prisoners of making such contributions.

Yes, but why should it always do so? If a prisoner wants to make a productive contribution to society and it is not exceptionally difficult to allow that to happen, why not?

Prison is specifically about denying criminals their freedom and the impact to society is one of the costs that we bear. Sorry, but if Reiser goes to jail he forfeits his ability to freely choose the manner in which he spends his time.

No, he forfeits most of the choices available to those who are not in prison. Last I knew reading books was (mostly) just as much of a choice available to prisoners as staring at the wall. What I am proposing is that continuing to work on something that a larger community finds valuable is an acceptable choice to offer to him.

ReiserFS isn't as valuable as a human life. If it were, how many free murders would Linus be allowed to commit?

Did slashdot screw up and post half of someone else's comment in with mine? I never once made any statements about the relative values of ReiserFS and human life, nor did I say that he should be allowed to go free because of his contribution to society. Either the system is screwy or someone has serious reading comprehension issues.

Also, applying the concept of value to human life is inherently flawed unless you also consider another person to be capable of being a posession. Asking me about the relative value of human life is like asking how many numbers are in infinity, the two concepts are mutually exclusive.

Re:Can he continue to work?

[dfghjk]

"Don't people in prison generally have at least some free time? Time to keep a journal, or write a book? Or read a book?"

I think they get a lot. It's the professional time they don't get any of.

"This is not the point."

People seem to feel that somehow and exception should be granted for this particular case. The absurdity of that was my point.

"...Is that really so different than giving him a pen and some paper and letting him write a book?"

Yes, it's entirely different. There is no justification for allowing exceptions for certain inmates to continue their professional work once incarcerated.

"And punishment isn't always the real point of prison"

no, but it's part of it. Giving up your freedoms is part of the cost of committing crimes. If convicted he forfeits his ability to continue his business. The fact that others are disappointed is irrelevant. Perhaps he should have consulted the community before (allegedly) committing the murder.

Re:Can he continue to work?

[dfghjk]

"To turn your own bad argument against you, how many people must have a personal interest in what he is doing for it to be a productive contribution to society?"

The two are unrelated. That is my point and apparently yours as well. Not all convicted felons were deadbeats before their sentencing and Reiser wouldn't be special in any way.

"Yes, but why should it always do so? If a prisoner wants to make a productive contribution to society and it is not exceptionally difficult to allow that to happen, why not?"

Because that's how our punishment system works. A prisoner can certainly contribute once incarcerated. He can make license plates for example.

"No, he forfeits most of the choices available to those who are not in prison. Last I knew reading books was (mostly) just as much of a choice available to prisoners as staring at the wall. What I am proposing is that continuing to work on something that a larger community finds valuable is an acceptable choice to offer to him."

He forfeits all of his choices. Book reading is a priviledge that inmates are granted but is not their right or choice. No one cares what you propose. It's a prison, not a democracy, and the system doesn't concern itself with the larger community. The government doesn't give a crap about Linux or ReiserFS and it shouldn't. It cares about bringing a murderer to justice.

"...nor did I say that he should be allowed to go free because of his contribution to society."

No, you proposed that an exception be granted to allow an inmate to continue his profession while in jail for no reasonable justifacation other than the "larger community" wants his free software.

"Asking me about the relative value of human life is like asking how many numbers are in infinity, the two concepts are mutually exclusive."

I never asked you about the value of human life. I made a blanket statement that can't be refuted. A person has apparently been murdered and you, and others here, seem to think the potential contributions to open source by the (alleged) murderer are more important than justice. Who gives a shit about ReiserFS in the context of a murder?

Re:Can he continue to work?

[Senzei]

Obviously one of us is talking about what we think should be, while the other is discussing what is. I don't know that continuing to debate this discrepancy would prove fruitful or entertaining, so I am fine leaving it at this.

Re:Can he continue to work?

[SanityInAnarchy]

People seem to feel that somehow and exception should be granted for this particular case. The absurdity of that was my point.

I don't, I'm just not entirely aware of the rules surrounding this.

Yes, it's entirely different. There is no justification for allowing exceptions for certain inmates to continue their professional work once incarcerated.

So you couldn't give pen and paper to an author?

Of course the author couldn't sell books while in prison. But presumably Hans would no longer be a Namesys employee anyway, just a volunteer.

Giving up your freedoms is part of the cost of committing crimes.

That loses sight of the goal. Granted, often part of the solution is making jail unpleasant. However, the real goal is to reduce crime. Now, Hans is not being accused of computer crimes of any sort, so this isn't like a hacker case where you take all computer privileges. Certainly, he can't be free to roam the streets, but he should be harmless on the Internet.

Of course, you also have a point, and IANAL, nor am I a sociologist.

Re:Can he continue to work?

[dfghjk]

Would you think it should be different had this specific case not come up? Is Reiser somehow different enough to warrant a rethinking of centuries old techniques? Denying inmates their freedoms (including work) is certainly not controversial. I think what motivates so many to take the oposing viewpoint isn't that they question the justice system but rather that they want ReiserFS more than they care about crime and punishment.

Re:Can he continue to work?

[Senzei]

Would you think it should be different had this specific case not come up?

I have felt this way for quite a while. If a prisoner wants to do something that would be a productive contribution to society and it is easily within the means of the prison system to make it possible I don't see why it should be prevented. Someone who wants to spend their time doing something to help society would be, at the very least, not spending that time doing something self destructive.

Is Reiser somehow different enough to warrant a rethinking of centuries old techniques? Denying inmates their freedoms (including work) is certainly not controversial.

No, my issue is with the technique. Anyone who is sent to prison is given very few chances to improve themselves there, even if they want to. Unless you plan on giving people life sentences there better be something in place to try and ensure that they are better people when they get out than they were when they came in ... or at the very least no worse.

Would allowing Reiser to continue working on his filesystem in prison make him a better person? No, probably not. It would, however, give him something productive to do that with himself and (hopefully) keep any existing problems from getting any worse.

I think what motivates so many to take the oposing viewpoint isn't that they question the justice system but rather that they want ReiserFS more than they care about crime and punishment.

Possibly. I would hope that there are at least a few people like me who see this as an opportunity for the justice system to allow someone who has (supposedly) committed murder to do still do something marginally helpful with his life/time. Is it atonement on his part or absolution on the system's? No, of course not ... but I have a hard time imagining that letting him rot (here defined as: sit around doing nothing productive at all) in a cell is the better way to handle it.

Re:Can he continue to work?

[dfghjk]

I'm not defending the current system nor do I know a great deal about it, but there are certainly jobs to be done by inmates while they are in prison. They get their choice on whether to participate but there are incentives to work. Many of the jobs help run the facility but some benefit society directly and all help reduce costs and theretically help with rehabilitation.

If you expand that concept to allow inmates to pursue certain careers then you have a host of new hardships. What jobs will you allow? Who will pay for the needed facilities? Where will the additional work space come from? Who will provide support? How will earnings be divided? What will happen when internal jobs go unfilled because the Reiser's of the jail are busy earning personal wealth while society pays for their incarceration?

I don't think the point is that people like Reiser want to work to benefit society so much as they work to get paid and some, like him, are lucky enough to be doing exactly what they want. There's a commumity that's enthusiastic about his work and hopes it continues but they don't get consideration from the legal process.

There's a continual argument over punishment vs rehabilitation that's more at the root of your specific comments, but that argument has been going on a long time. The fact is that prison is for both punishment and rehabilitation even if the balance isn't what it should be. Prison sentences are also a deterrent, so if Reiser is convicted yet continues his profession while incarcerated, especially if he keeps his earnings, then what deterrent does that really provide?

Re:Can he continue to work?

[Senzei]

If you expand that concept to allow inmates to pursue certain careers then you have a host of new hardships. What jobs will you allow? Who will pay for the needed facilities? Where will the additional work space come from? Who will provide support? How will earnings be divided? What will happen when internal jobs go unfilled because the Reiser's of the jail are busy earning personal wealth while society pays for their incarceration?

One thing I failed to mention was that I don't think getting paid for the work should be an option. If you want to do something to help the community while you are in jail then you will be doing it without (material) personal benefit. In this specific case there is the question of Reiser being able to maintain (and upon release bank on) his status in the community. Is that enough of a concern to prohibit him from working on ReiserFS? Probably, but it should at least be considered.

There are also obvious logistical questions involved in providing a prisoner with the tools necessary to conduct any socially-beneficial task, but I don't know that those questions can be answered on anything but a case-by-case basis.

There's a continual argument over punishment vs rehabilitation that's more at the root of your specific comments, but that argument has been going on a long time. The fact is that prison is for both punishment and rehabilitation even if the balance isn't what it should be. Prison sentences are also a deterrent, so if Reiser is convicted yet continues his profession while incarcerated, especially if he keeps his earnings, then what deterrent does that really provide?

I agree there. Somehow I doubt that my personal method of handling the situation (go do the work, but you don't get paid) would be utilized by many inmates. That said, for the few who would use it I think it is a worthwhile effort to make the option available.

Re:Can he continue to work?

[dfghjk]

If you refuse to allow earnings (or you require his earnings to be paid to the state) then there would be those who would raise the concern over his children and their financial welfare. If, taking Resier's specific case, the state allows him to continue his work unpaid, then there's still the matter of increasing value in the product he works on and the IP that's generated. Our government, through it's prison system, should not be subsidizing a private corporation or an open source project that releases under the GPL since both would discriminate against competitors.

Of course we have this situation anyway to a limited extent because we allow inmates a certain amount of liberty. They are allowed to write and that, in and of itself, is potentially profitable. Certainly there are celebrity inmates that seem only to become more valuable for their prison experience as well. These issues aren't justification for allowing more though.

I think you'll find it true in general that there will always be someone who will be wronged by the continuation of work while in prison. I suspect that any work projects for inmates must be the created by the prison system itself in order to avoid competing with the private sector. I doubt that's the primary reason for denying inmates work but I think it would make such a program difficult.

Re:Can he continue to work?

[dfghjk]

To elaborate on the GPL comment, if a programmer were to contribute to a software effort while in prison, the benefits of that work should either be granted to the state (to the profit of the prison system), to the people (through a BSD-style license), or to the public domain. The GPL discriminates against proprietary competitors through it's forced GPL licensing of derivative works and therefore is inappropriate. The government should not be sponsoring projects whose idealogical goal is to bankrupt certain business models.

if you like reiserFS ...

[kylie69]

... collect some money to buy Hans a laptop in prison :P

Reiser Sent to Userland Jail

[Prototerm]

Anyone else see the irony here?

Dear Slashdot

[scotch]

Please do not follow this story. The last thing we need it periodic stories over the next year as the trial progress with fighting and uninformed commentary from the peanut gallery on criminal matters. It will be like having our our own little scott peterson case, which I'm sure we can all agree, would be a big fucking waste of time for everyone.

Thank you.

Re:Dear Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

death yoga

Re:Dear Slashdot

[eclectro]

uninformed commentary from the peanut gallery

Speak for yourself. The rest of us happen to have expert criminal forensic knowledge to go with the best non-lawyer legal minds around.

Re:Dear Slashdot

[balthan]

would be a big fucking waste of time for everyone.

Welcome to Slashdot, you must be new here.

Re:More than just a shred of evidence in this case

[anandsr]

You didn't read the article pointed by the parent. There also the same evidence existed. Apparently Blood can be found due to many reasons if the person has used your car for some times. They should try to find out how old that blood is. But I guess that is not possible. It is only possible to check who's blood it is.

If the Car blood can be problematic then of course the house blood could also be problematic.

Obligitory, with apologies to Kevin

[Ravenscall]

Free Hans!

Re:Obligitory, with apologies to Kevin

[slysithesuperspy]

I prefer Free Hat!, from South Park.

Re:Obligitory, with apologies to Kevin

[Anonymous Coward]

Free Hat!!!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Life outside of coding

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of people these days forget that there is life outside of coding. Apps could move to the web - pictures, movies, whatever could enter your computer - but your kids and wife can't. Go on and camp, cook barbecue go to the beach, teach yer kids to read, make love to your mate, eh

LIVE

This is really a tragedy of the dehumanization and digitalization of human relations.

Re:Life outside of coding

[iBod]

I think there's truth there.

Working intensly on one single thing (esp. software) just fucks your brain eventually.

Your partner, kids, family and friends should be the biggest kick in your life, not some stupid pile of fucking code.

I used to be really proud to be a software designer, thinking software apps were a big boon to mankind. The more I look around me, the more I think that computer tech (and particularly the web) is isolating and dehumanising us all.

Re:Life outside of coding

[fumblebruschi]

Working intensly on one single thing (esp. software) just fucks your brain eventually. I don't agree. I think you're confusing cause and effect; that is, I think some people are drawn to occupations or hobbies where they focus intensely on one subject, because that's what appeals to them. Your partner, kids, family and friends should be the biggest kick in your life, not some stupid pile of fucking code. Why? I see this sentiment a lot on /., and as far as I'm concerned statements like this are just another way of saying "Everyone should do what *I* think is right instead of following their own inclinations."

Re:Life outside of coding

[Anonymous Coward]

I also disagree as firsty statistically this just isn't the case. If coding makes you abandon your family and sends you in to a psychotic rage then I would say it would be best for you not to attempt anything that requires too much of your attention. I thought being able to focus and control your thoughts was considered a good thing, I mean meditation which is the epitome of such activity tends to have the opposite effect.

Your partner, kids, family and friends should be the biggest kick in your life, not some stupid pile of fucking code.

This is true to an extent but only with everything in sensible balance. I mean you have to look after your self before you can look after others and part of that is following your own passion. Incidentally in this case that 'pile of fucking stupid code' fed and housed himself, his family and a small team of Russian programmers so please if coding is not your vocation then find yours and give yourself some time for yourself, you never know it may make you a better person.

anyway I'm off to whip up some management code which'll probably mean I'll kill the wife and if I feel like really selfish I'll create a revolutionary filesystem which'll probably mean I'll murder a small village.

Re:Life outside of coding

[RAMMS EIN]

``Your partner, kids, family and friends should be the biggest kick in your life, not some stupid pile of fucking code.''

On the other hand, the code you write can improve the lives of millions, having a vastly greater positive impact on the world than interacting with your family would. I think that's certainly the case with ReiserFS, and would have been the case with Reiser4 if it hadn't been for the politics and bickering around inclusion in the kernel.

Re:Life outside of coding

[/dev/trash]

A mate??!?!

Re:Life outside of coding

[Anonymous Coward]

"Your partner, kids, family and friends should be the biggest kick in your life, not some stupid pile of fucking code."
You see after unziping he spawned at least on child process.

Re:Life outside of coding

[pingveno]

But other people should be the most important thing in a person's life. Achievement should never eclipse having a life.

Re:Life outside of coding

[fumblebruschi]

But other people should be the most important thing in a person's life. Achievement should never eclipse having a life.

Translation:

But $WHAT_I_THINK_IS_RIGHT should be the most important thing in a person's life. $ANYTHING_THAT_IS_NOT_WHAT_I_THINK should never eclipse $WHAT_I_THINK_IS_RIGHT.

Re:Life outside of coding

[Anonymous Coward]

Working intensly on one single thing (esp. software) just fucks your brain eventually. Your partner, kids, family and friends should be the biggest kick in your life, not some stupid pile of fucking code.

I disagree. Judging by his disagreements with the Linux kernel guys, Reiser had a personality defect that was exacerbated and perpetuated by the fact that he was really, really, really smart. Far from giving his wife inferior treatment to his work, he had the same problem with his work that he had with his wife. He had such an obnoxiously one-sided view of himself and his work, refusing to admit even the smallest shortcoming, that in the end, people began to excuse themselves from the obligation to treat him decently. Guys like him do end up being treated badly when people run out of patience. Their paranoia comes from the fact that all of their friends and associates do, in fact, eventually turn on them.

Every person, idea, and piece of work needs a balanced treatment. If a person constantly presents a one-sided vision, other people will supply the missing side. You can fish for compliments through self-deprecation; some people fish for love by hating themselves. Logically, the natural response to self-love and self-praise is hatred and denigration, so I imagine Hans Reiser is rarely at peace with anyone. If he had worked 9-5 and stayed home with his family, the only difference would be the nonexistence of ReiserFS.

Leadership is important.

[Vellmont]

Is Hans really that important to ReiserFS? Isn't this the whole beauty of GPL code, that there are thousands of people out there who can pick his work up without even involving him, Namesys etc., and continue the 'legacy'?

Not many people think about it, but in any software project (open or close) the most important thing is leadership. Good leaders are hard to come by, and they aren't replaced by thousands of people who can pick up work.

So Does Bill Gates

[SammyTheSnake]

Microsoft CEOs also have criminal records... Bill Gates' Mugshot

Re:Editors

[Valdrax]

This is the sort of quality control and fact-checking that a real editor would be responsible for doing -- to make sure that a quote, taken out of context, doesn't give the exact opposite impression of its intention.

Usually, the only place you get away with that is partisan political hackery and other arenas where winning an argument is more important that presenting facts. Of course, here, I believe Hanlon's Razor applies.

Let me guess....

[tgatliff]

I know this is probably kind of mean to say, but someone has to say it...

I suspect they arent going to find anything on his HD. Just a guess.... :)

Re:Who cares?

[dculberson]

I would argue that's the coolest Bill Gates has ever looked. It was the 70's after all!

moderator on crack again

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

How is the parent a troll?

Re:moderator on crack again

[denebian devil]

How is the parent a troll?

I guess it's not cool to make fun of AOL. Or police investigations.

I'm actually not surprised by the modding. I was hoping people would take my comment humorously, as it was intended, but I guess some people took offense on behalf of Reiser.

Saw it coming

[Davorama]

For those who don't live out here the 'saw it coming' part *should* have been refering to the month long drama that has preceded this. Reiser going in to talk to police repeatedly, then refusing to cooperate, camera crews chasing him around, interview with his (or her?) mother. It's the full three ring treatment really but I don't know that it's gone into full circus mode nationally yet.

Re:Saw it coming

[PCM2]

I live in the Bay Area and never heard a thing about it until he was arrested. I guess I don't watch a lot of local news, though; I get most of it from NPR.

"Benevolent"?

[john-da-luthrun]

From the ReiserFS Wikipedia entry: "Hans Reiser ... is referred to as the project's Benevolent Dictator for Life."

The "benevolent" bit may need rethinking if the guy's convicted...

Re:"Benevolent"?

[MrYotsuya]

From the ReiserFS Wikipedia entry: "Hans Reiser ... is referred to as the project's Benevolent Dictator for Life."

The "benevolent" bit may need rethinking if the guy's convicted...


If he's convicted, you can probably scratch everything before "for Life".

Probable Cause

[westlake]

To arrest someone you have to have evidence
No you don't. Police can arrest anyone at any time.

As as mattter of law, this is simply not true.

"PROBABLE CAUSE - A reasonable belief that a person has committed a crime. The test the court...employs to determine whether probable cause existed for purposes of arrest is whether facts and circumstances within the officer's knowledge are sufficient to warrant a prudent person to believe a suspect has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime. U.S. v. Puerta, 982 F.2d 1297, 1300 (9th Cir. 1992)." Legal Definition of Probable Cause

Re:Probable Cause

[Anonymous Coward]

Dream on guy... what the fuck do you think Bush Co has been doing in the last two terms?

There's two things here you're forgetting (1) what the law says and (2) what actually happens in the real world.

Re:Probable Cause

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm all for Bush bashing but man some of you guys are retarded. Buy your self a clue.

Re:Probable Cause

[maynard]

This is absolutely correct, and especially relevant for an investigation as serious as capital murder. There's absolutely no way the police arrested Reiser without at least circumstantial evidence that he committed the crime, along with a reasonable expectation of forensic evidence forthcoming. For example, I note that the investigators believe they have discovered his wife's blood in the house. If they match blood type, then they could arrest prior to conclusive DNA evidence.

Further, unlike a beat-cop making a bad arrest, these are professional detectives and a lead prosecutor - all of whom know their legal boundaries and will act accordingly to make sure they get a conviction. The arrest and murder charge is a good indication that the prosecutor believes he or she has sufficient evidence to sustain a conviction, even if they believe there is further evidence to collect in order to slam-dunk the case.

Which is not to say detectives and prosecutors don't make mistakes. Nor that Reiser is guilty - we still presume innocence until conviction.

Re:Probable Cause

[shakah]

To arrest someone you have to have evidence

No you don't. Police can arrest anyone at any time.

As as mattter of law, this is simply not true...

"PROBABLE CAUSE - A reasonable belief that a person has committed a crime. The test the court (emphasis added) employs...

Please note that the court gets involved sometime after the arrest, so as a matter of law your comment is simply not true.

You can be arrested but released w/o a charge without the court getting involved. Perhaps you're trying to point out that the court gets involved once (at the point?) you are actually charged with a crime (at the arraignment?), at which juncture the court applies your "probable cause" test. Perhaps you're also trying to suggest that if a police department made a habit of arresting people without reasonable "probable cause" they'd eventually run into a judge that slapped them down in some fashion.

Of course, if you are not charged within a reasonable timeframe (72 hours in the US?), you can (in all cases, at least pre-Bush) instigate the court's involvement by requesting "a writ of habeas corpus -- a judicial mandate to a prison official ordering that an inmate be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he should be released from custody."

Re:Probable Cause

[drinkypoo]

No you don't. Police can arrest anyone at any time.

As as mattter of law, this is simply not true.

Yeah, and it would be nice if the police followed the laws.

Since they don't have to, they typically don't. How many times have you seen cops driving over the speed limit without the strobes on? It's a stupid, trivial example, but on the other hand, we should expect the police to uphold the law equally. They don't; it's all selective enforcement. Sometimes people who get pulled over for a drug offense go to jail, and sometimes the cop asks them what the going rate is.

The law, of which you are so enamoured, says that a police officer may arrest you if he has reason to believe that you have commited a misdemeanor or felony. It also says that they do not have to charge you with a crime for something like forty-eight hours.

The simple fact is that the entire system is rife with abuse and people are regularly arrested when there is no evidence beyond some simple hearsay that would never hold up in court - and sometimes, there's even less than that. Besides which, so-called probable cause has no reasonable value whatsoever. I mean, in most states, having a grateful dead sticker on your van is legitimate probable cause (when you get to court) to search a vehicle for drugs. And no, I am not making this up or exaggerating.

Re:Probable Cause

[cfulmer]

You're making a rather odd argument. Of course the police "can" arrest anybody they can actually put handcuffs on. Heck, I "can" arrest anybody also.

The questions are (1) is it legal to do so, and (2) what's the remedy if it's not legal and a cop does it anyway.

And, the answers are:

(1) No. Except for some thin circumstances like protective custody (the drunk tank being a good example), a cop is not allowed to arrest somebody without probable cause.

(2) The remedy is a civil suit against the officer and the department for unlawful arrest and/or false imprisonment. At the extreme end, it might even be kidnapping, which could be prosecuted as a crime.

Re:Probable Cause

[srussell]

"PROBABLE CAUSE - A reasonable belief that a person has committed a crime. The test the court...employs to determine whether probable cause existed for purposes of arrest is whether facts and circumstances within the officer's knowledge are sufficient to warrant a prudent person to believe a suspect has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime.

Maybe eight years ago. Now the government can arrest you, fly you to a different country, and hold you indefinitely. They aren't required to provide evidence of probable cause to any court, and you can't challenge it. The only "probable cause" they need to demonstrate is their word that they suspect that you're associated with terrorist activities, including, but not limited to, indirect financial transactions or other support. They don't need to have a warrant, or to prove probable cause.

I keep wondering when they'll start arguing that providing "moral support" is sufficient, and at what point (if any) the American people will decide that they've had enough, and whether or not it'll be soon enough.

--- SER

Re:Probable Cause

[shakah]

Of course the police "can" arrest anybody they can actually put handcuffs on. Heck, I "can" arrest anybody also.

The only thing that restrains (1) is the judiciary, either actively through their say over what is "probable cause" or an after-the-fact civil/criminal proceeding against the police. As for (2), the police themselves largely keep your efforts at bay.

As for the oddness of the argument, my post was simply pointing out that the judiciary is an "after the arrest" check on the police. Our posts are not in opposition.

Re:Probable Cause

[ScrewMaster]

I keep wondering when they'll start arguing that providing "moral support" is sufficient, and at what point (if any) the American people will decide that they've had enough, and whether or not it'll be soon enough.

People generally ignore potential consequences that can only theoretically happen to them. Look how many people continue to smoke ("yes yes, I know it causes cancer but my Uncle Dudley smoked a thousand packs a day and lived to be a hundred and seventy so it won't happen to me") when they absolutely do know better. Human beings are, at the core, not rational animals. We are rationalizing creatures who, except in rare cases, require substantial training to become rational ones.

We are remarkably efficient at finding reasons to do what we want to do even when we know we shouldn't, and are even better at justifying to ourselves doing absolutely nothing when there's every reason to believe that we should do something. I can't see such a fundamental defect in human nature correcting itself in the near future, so I'm not sanguine about our ever deciding that we've had enough.

And if we do ... we, exactly, will we be able to do about it?

Re:Probable Cause

[Slashdot Parent]

The remedy is a civil suit against the officer and the department for unlawful arrest and/or false imprisonment.

That statement is true, but it only tells half the story. In practice, you will likely lose that lawsuit even if you happen to be a minority, and if you are not a minority, then you are going to lose.

The courts give tremendous latitude to law enforcement to "do their job." Unfortunately, one person's 24-48 hour inconvenience is not enough to restrict the police's arresting powers. So say the US courts, anyhow.

In practice, a cop can arrest you for any reason or no reason, and there is little, if anything, you can do about it. Unless that cop is arresting you every thursday morning just to mess with you, you're going to have no recourse as a practical matter.

By far the most stupid thing i've read all day...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and I just had a chat with 12-year-old script kiddies.

The public is told what they need to know, and nothing more.
From the way you describe it, the police could just arrest anyone and not tell the judge or the jury or anybody why. That is absolutely not the case.
E.g. If you really had any substantial evidence in this case, what more would you need to know than "Hans Reiser is being tried for murder" to come forward? You shouldn't really make your decision to testify based on what FOX NEWS told you about this Vicious Murderer and Open Source Programmer.

Guantanamo

[metamatic]

I have. What a beautiful place, espcially when compared to any place that the pieces-of-shit who are being held there have visited.

I agree that Brooklyn, NY is a piece of shit, but Jose Padilla quite likes it, and Chicago's not as bad as you're saying.

Guantanomo is a fig leaf

[A nonymous Coward]

distinction between enemy combatants sincerely interested in attacking a foreign country, and someone who is either a citizen or resident alien

Would that the Bushies could! There have been, I believe, two US citizens in Guantanomo, and Bush has made it crystal clear that he thinks he has the power to send US citizens there without being hindered by the courts or Congress or even common decency. Independent reports suggest that most of the Guantanomo prisoners are innocents picked up either because they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, or because someone with a personal grudge dropped anonymous hints. Such is to be expected when the process of law is denied.

Besides which, the only logical rationale for keeping the prisoners there, out of touch with any decent legal system to protect the innocent, is to torture information out of them or to keep them out of circulation. Torture has been shown to produce unreliable info; the only other reason is to exact revenge, which is not a particularly noble goal, certainly not mine, and a sorry goal for any government. As for keeping them out of circulation, a standard legal process would serve just as well.

Guantanomo has no purpose other than to make the Bushies look like they are doing something useful.

Dear Slashdot Reader

[RAMMS EIN]

Please do not follow this story. The last thing we need is periodic comments over the next year as the trial progresses from readers who aren't interested in the matter and feel a need to bother other readers with that sentiment. It is not like anyone is forced to read these threads, which I'm sure we can all agree, would be a big fucking waste of time for everyone.

Thank you.

Re:Dear Slashdot Reader

[scotch]

Don't go all meta on me.

who are these people?

[minus_273]

to put faces to names
hans reiser
nina reiser

Reiser support: any question for $25...maybe $15k?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.namesys.com/support.html

"$25 gets you an answer to a question about anything."

Heck why not pony up the $15k reward for information, send it through that cgi, and just ask Hans: "Did you kill your wife?"

"If you don't get a solution that satisfies you, and you haven't asked us to do more than $25 of work, you get your money back. Just ask Reiser@namesys.com If it is more than $25, then refunds are at Hans Reiser's discretion, who claims to be reasonable."

MOD PARENT DOWN

[nead]

What kind of junior-league ignorance is this, do you not read the news? Just because it's written down somewhere doesn't mean shit.

BTW: Presumption of Innocense Still Applies

[Anonymous Coward]

Need I say it: "Here I am."

Name change for ReiserFS

[Anonymous Coward]

If true, this is awful. Suicide would have been a better choice.

In case is proven beyond doubt, Is a name change appropriate?

1. No Stay with ReiserFS (in honor of Nina Reiser or the children).
2. RiserFS. Yes, just use the english word "riser".
3. RFS or rFS.
4. NameFS

oblig.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your partner, kids, family and friends should be the biggest kick in your life, not some stupid pile of fucking code.

You must be new here.

Wait, where is the body?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's still in jail? But there is still no evidence that the crime was actually committed?

Shouldn't governments be reluctant to arrest people and defame them before they actually have evidence that a crime was committed? If the woman shows up alive and well, Reiser should be compensated into a wealthy retirement courtesy of garnishment from everyone involved in his arrest.
Seriously, *one single mistake* of that magnitude should end the government's authority to govern. Look at it this way, they are going to possibly execute someone on a mistaken premise, it should be okay to execute the governor as a consequence for that mistake.

With this much evidence...

[scoobrs]

Enough to implicate him? If this amount of evidence was brought against George W. Bush, there would be an arrest warrant out for the cop already and pundits on every station talking about treason and how the officer assists Al Qaeda with evil roofing projects on weekends. They'd say it was suicide and how she dumped her own body and hid the car to make him look especially guilty.

Hans is Innocent

[Anonymous Coward]

There were two major suspects here, Hans and Nina's backstabbing loser traitor boyfriend.

Nina's boyfriend is known to have had an affair with a married woman, practices "death yoga", is into BDSM, and allegedly raped Nina.

Hans is a software engineer.

Which one do you think did it? And don't give me some BS about blood in his car and house. Wow amazing, Nina's DNA is in Hans' car, maybe because THEY WERE MARRIED!!!

Also removing the passenger seat from CRXs is very common, people do it all the time for weight reduction. Tons of people pimp out their CRXs with Integra engines. Light weight + DOHC VTEC = one fast CRX. Go to any import show and in the parking lot you'll find a dozen CRXs with passenger seat removed.

Free Hans.

Re:Hans is Innocent

[luther349]

the removed seat doesent prove anything thats true. but hiding the car made it look bad. not talking to the police was smart of him even thow it probly did piss them off. as it says the police will use anything you say agenst you so say knothing thats your right. i have no clue why the police are crying abought him not talking to them. and your right she had a insane bf im shure hes on the list they did say thers 2 other arrest just not disclosed yet. saying there shure hes guilty should have gotten whoever said that fired you cant say shit like that. if hes proven not guilty if i was him after that i would sue all of them after i can think of a few things that would work to.

Here y'go found one

[Anonymous Coward]

... it is just sloppy of the editors to NOT include a link to give a bit of context about the arrest.

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/11/01 42216

I'd say the Sturgeon dude looks guilty

[MrJerryNormandinSir]

According to the reports, the Sturgeon dude looks like a prime candidate. It appears that Sturgeon drugged his wife and raped her.
And.. it sounds worse. Possibly she's still alive in some make shift dungeon somewhere. the Sturgeon dude sounds sadistic.
I agree, cops will automatically assume the husband is guilty. Possibly he's arrested for his own protection, maybe they are putting a case against Sturgeon. The more I read about this the more I believe Sturgeon is the prime suspect, at least I hope
Hans didn't loose it.

Maybe Nina's family can get the Russian Mafia to shake down Sturgeon. At least that's what I would do in this situation.
Sturgeon appears to be a sick bastard to begin with. Hans refused to pay his business loan with him because of this.
I highly doubt Nina wanted to takeup with this Sturgeon loser just to get back at Hans.

Well, due to the Patriot Act I am sure Sturgeon's phones will be tapped.

Re:I'd say the Sturgeon dude looks guilty

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that was Hans Reiser's side of the story, the story he filed in a lawsuit.

Reiser's story is basically this Sean Sturgeon guy brainwashed his wife with drugs and sex and had her help him loot his company. Allegations he made in a previus lawsuit. So if any of it is true, then Sturgeon would have had multiple motives to kill Nina once he was done with her. But it all sounds very elaborate a story and even if it is true then Hans Reiser also had motive to kill his wife, though probably more motive to kill this Sturgeon guy.

The kids could probably verify at least the part of the story where Sturgeon was accussed of staying over the house. The rest seems like it would be a mess to prove one way or the other. Hopefully, the police looked into the story. Either way, whether it was true or reiser merely believed it to be true, then it would provide the basis of a motive for either man.

Re:I'd say the Sturgeon dude looks guilty

[belmolis]

I don't think that the Russian mafia is quite the public service organization you think it is.

Death Yoga Clause

[itomato]

It's more common than you think..

Take a deep breath

[alienmole]

Good, you apparently have a finely-honed sense of skepticism. Now, you simply have to learn to combine that with your intelligence, and don't allow yourself to be driven by the knee-jerk response to stories in the media whose full context you don't seem to currently understand.

The reality is that ordinary criminals, such as murderers, have all the rights they've always had, including that they can't legally be arrested without probable cause. If someone is arrested without probable cause, habeas corpus still applies, i.e. they can't be held in jail for long without being charged, and if their lawyer can show that they were arrested without probable cause, a judge will set them free.

Now, if you're suspected of terrorism, then High Fuehrer Bush's nonsense comes into play, but no-one who's only suspected of murdering his wife has yet been classified as a terrorist. Not that that couldn't happen, and not that Bush's nonsense isn't a bad thing which needs to be fixed. But try to keep a sense of perspective about how it does and doesn't apply.

Your ignorance only makes the situation worse, it doesn't help to correct it.

Re:Take a deep breath

[drinkypoo]

The reality is that ordinary criminals, such as murderers, have all the rights they've always had, including that they can't legally be arrested without probable cause.

And the reality is that the cops don't in general give one fuck of one shit about probable cause if they can get the arrest to stick in court.

We don't live in a library. We live in the real world, in which the laws are usually shat upon by all involved - especially those who are supposed to be upholding them. Consider this little item: One supreme court justice illegally stopped the florida recount in 2000. If the highest court in the land is willing to take blatantly illegal actions, do you really believe that you're going to get fair treatment anywhere? Your picture is in the dictionary under naive.

Re:Take a deep breath

[alienmole]

And the reality is that the cops don't in general give one fuck of one shit about probable cause if they can get the arrest to stick in court.

If they can get the arrest to stick in court, then the judge agreed that there was probable cause, and can usually back that up, otherwise there's grounds for appeal. So what you're saying is that cops care about probable cause to the extent that judges do, which is quite a bit, in practice. This has nothing to do with "living in a library".

We don't live in a library. We live in the real world, in which the laws are usually shat upon by all involved - especially those who are supposed to be upholding them

"Usually" shat upon by "all" involved? You're being irrational, and it won't help make things any better, because you just come off as both hysterical and ignorant. Tens of thousands of arrests and court hearings happen every day, and in most of them, justice is done just fine. Sure, there are cases where racism, bias, and whatever else skew the results, but they're the exception.

Consider this little item: One supreme court justice illegally stopped the florida recount in 2000. If the highest court in the land is willing to take blatantly illegal actions, do you really believe that you're going to get fair treatment anywhere?

I'm no happier about the result of that election than you are, but you're not being very rational. We're discussing what happens with people who are arrested, and the rights and conditions under which such an arrest can be considered legal, and made to stand. The connection to the Florida situation is marginal, at best. In that case, there's no body to which habeas corpus applies, for example. And the reason you're not bringing up examples of murderers being held without probable cause is because, guess what, it just doesn't happen that much.

Your picture is in the dictionary under naive.

And by the sounds of it, I'll see your picture on TV at one of those ineffective protests against global trade, full of ignorant people yelling about stuff they don't understand - the modern-day equivalent of Luddites. Get a clue -- if you have some real beef about the way the world works, you have an obligation to yourself to educate yourself about what's really going on. Otherwise, you're just ranting at all the wrong things. Try to learn to put what you see in TV in its proper perspective.

New Workplace Rule

[Cid Highwind]

When you would no longer be surprised to hear that the boss has been arrested on suspicion of murder, it's time to quit.

Re:New Workplace Rule

[iggymanz]

what if I live in a country where the execs and congressman are like that?

We Don't Know

[Christopher B. Brown]

There's something suspicious about the missing car seat, but the findings of blood strike me as less than "total proof of guilt."

It is not evident from the reports what kind of sensitivity the blood tests had, which is an issue. If you searched about my apartment, you'd find some of my blood here and there, due to a nose bleed or two. I, of course, am not dead, it would be downright silly to conclude, from the finding of blood, that I had been murdered. I don't know to what degree the police findings suggest any particular action at all.

I'd frankly expect there to be some blood found in a number of places in the Reiser "matrimonial home." Women have a monthly cycle that involves some emission of blood, which would be likely to leave a "trail" in the bathroom, and which could show up elsewhere. Uncareful kitchen work with knives could leave some blood there.

At the more unfortunate end of things, if things had gotten heated between the Reisers, a physical blow could induce (say) a nose bleed. That could well represent a criminal act, and cause the things seemingly observed by police, but not, in fact, be murder.

I'm not looking to find Hans Reiser innocent, or guilty; that's not my place. I don't know if he killed his wife; if he did, then, barring pretty wild circumstances, he's presumably guilty of murder. If he didn't do it, then he's not. There is a whole lot unfortunate about the situation, regardless.

What has been publicized thus far does not point particularly strongly at any option yet being most probable.

Re:We Don't Know

[arth1]

I'd frankly expect there to be some blood found in a number of places in the Reiser "matrimonial home." Women have a monthly cycle that involves some emission of blood, which would be likely to leave a "trail" in the bathroom, and which could show up elsewhere. Uncareful kitchen work with knives could leave some blood there.

Don't forget that they've been separated for more than two years.

Re:We Don't Know

[freakmn]

But how often does the average geek clean? I know I pick up often, but the scrubbing, etc. (that which would get rid of blood) isn't quite as frequent. Just offering another possibility.

Re:We Don't Know

[jd]

We only have your word for it that you're not dead. Why should we believe you on that? You might have been trying to trick us.

Seriously, it is certainly possible there is an innocent explanation. For example, she may have cut herself and been driven to the emergency room in his car. The DNA will remain viable for testing for some time, and mitochondrial DNA can be salvaged even after tens of thousands of years. Without knowing a little more about how they tested and what they tested, we really don't know what sort of timescale the bloodstains could apply to.

I don't particularly want to think bad of Hans - he has had his share of bad breaks in life, from what's been said about his life. Furthermore, as others have noted, he should be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond all reasonable doubt to the satisfaction of a jury of his peers. (And even then, he may actually be innocent - that happens more often than people like to admit.) On the other hand, many people go free who are guilty, as well. That's why double jeopardy was abandoned in the UK. (A bad move that will certainly get abused, but an inevitable one given the failure rate of the system.) Because Hans has posted some fairly angry stuff on the Internet, he is unlikely to get a fair trial, though we can all hope he will. And whether he is innocent or guilty, released or imprisoned, it will do nothing for anyone. Nobody benefits from the penal system as it exists. This is not to say it should be scrapped - nobody has much of an idea as to what it would take to make a system that was beneficial. No point replacing something defective with something worse. The best one can hope for is that the truth will out, because that's the only thing that can happen now that has any positive aspect.

Re:We Don't Know

[dinkydo]

A quick lesson on blood analysis. They can tell if it's just a nosebleed or you cut you finger simply by the location of where they found the blood . Drips are the easiest and you can even tell if the person bleeding was moving and in what direction. They can also tell approx how long the blood has been there and if the person lost a large amount that they are probably dead. One thing they can tell very easily is if the blood is menstrual blood. I'm not trying to make fun of you but did you take even the basic Health classes in Jr. High school? Menstrual blood will have uterine cells that are clearly visible with a simple microscope and a good blood analysis can look with his eye and know the difference in the blood. It's color. I don't know if the guy did it or not. I don't even think that with what evidence they are saying they have will even be enough to get a judge to let the prosecution take it to trial. Although it is suspicious and weird that he removed the seat from the vehicle and tried to hide the vechile from police , a good defense attorney can easily get the case dismissed on that little bit of evidence. With Daniel Horowitz joining the defense team, Hans Reiser will at least be out on bail very soon unless they can come up with a lot than what they have. And then he could be a huge flight risk. I think the prosecuters jumped the gun by arresting him too soon with too little evidence.

Work in Prison

[drgonzo59]

If he is found guilty we should all petition the judge to us hook him with a laptop in prison and let him continue working on his project. Murderer or not his filesystem works great, one could argue that it would hurt technology worldwide (I'm exaggerating here of course) if he could not continue developing his fs.

If he is guilty then let Bubba pound his ass every day in prison, but in between the "poundings" he can develop software.

Excerpt from hypothetical email from prison:

Sorry guys, gotta cut this message short, Bubba is back for more. For the holidays, please send more vaseline, and we need to do more testing on the new module, ok gotta go!

Sounds pretty bad - article with evidence

[AaronW]

After reading this article, it sounds like the circumstantial evidence may be fairly strong.

Re:Sounds pretty bad - article with evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, the unreleased police files state that it is extremely likely Hans Reiser went to homicidal rampage after being forced to sign up to read an article.

she's not dead she's fucking Sean Sturgeon again

[justdrew]

you can bet on that. Maybe if police spent a little time looking into this piece of work Sean Sturgeon, they might be on to something. but no, they let themselves be lead by this psycopath Sturgeon, typical.

Sounds good to me.

[Kadin2048]

I bet some of the code comments that he'd write would be priceless.

In all seriousness though, I'm all for having people doing life (or other long) sentences do productive work, in whatever way they're capable, as long as it doesn't present a threat to society. I don't like paying my tax dollars so they can sit around and work out at the gym for 12 hours a day.

And hey, maybe he could do some Linux evangelizing from the "inside." Maybe they could even develop a PrisonLinux distro.

Re:Sounds good to me.

[freakmn]

Hmm, would a PrisonLinux distro have everything inside a chroot jail?

You can't be!

[Arivia]

Jack McCoy would never talk like that!

Not that hard to believe.

[Kadin2048]

As other people have pointed out, though, it's much more believable that you would buy a book like that if your ex-wife had just disappeared and you wanted to understand what was going on around you, than if you had just killed her.

You'd have to be pretty stupid to buy a book like that if you had killed her, and Reiser doesn't seem like he's quite that dumb. Maybe he is, and if he's convicted then I'll be the first to say "wow, what an idiot."

But if you put yourself in the position of someone who just had their ex-wife disappear, presumably killed, and who wants to know what the hell the cops are doing to figure the whole thing out...it's not implausible that you'd buy a book like that.

Seems more plausible to me than Reiser just being so retarded that he'd buy it after the fact and leave it sitting around.

OpenSuse

[Espectr0]

They removed reiser3 from its upcoming version citing it was unscalable, while version 4 is still unstable.

I never liked reiser myself, i trust ext3.

Not entirely true

[phorm]

This would only be true in the case of a premeditated murder. In the case where a spur-of-the-moment crime of passion or rage has occured, there would be no such forethought, but a lot of scrambling afterwords to try and mitigate the damages.

I got a good offer today....

[EmbeddedJanitor]

from some nice people who want me to cum like a porn star. If it works I'll put it in cvs.

Conspiracy?

[Analein]

I suspect Steve Ballmer to have fuckin' killed Nina Reiser with an office chair.

Dear Shortsighted Poster:

[joe_n_bloe]

Finally, we computer nerds have our own sensational murder trial.

I for one hope there will be daily updates on Wikipedia News, live webcasts, podcasts of commentary, talking-head blogs, real crime experts whose expertise is acceptable to geeks, and all that, for years. Maybe Reiser is the smart man's Scott Peterson!

ReiserFS has already been renamed

[joe_n_bloe]

It's now called ServesYouRightFS.

Question

[SanityInAnarchy]

What has happened to this boyfriend? Has he also bene arrested?

But thanks for posting this. Nice to have some hope.

Wikinews?

[/dev/trash]

They might report about his arrest in 2009.

DesoxyriboNukleinSäure?

[n01]

Or maybe he was just used to the german abbreviation where S stands for Säure instead of A for acid. On the other hand A's right next to S, so maybe it's just a typo

This is a ..more accurate?..picture of Hans

[Anonymous Coward]

Hans Reiser
Its hard to believe this is a picture of the same person. I have found several picture of Hans, and in all they look like the picture I posted.

American law and the Patriot Act

[Anonymous Coward]

Under American law and the constitution "probable cause would be required". However, under the Patriot Act every single American, from child to adult, is a terrorist until proven innocent and then is still a terrorist. "Probable cause" is no longer required under American law, because the Partriot Act supersedes both American law past and present and renders the U.S. constitution to a scrap of paper. Cops love this, because now they have no constraints and can do whatever they wish.

SuSE should buy Namesys to save

[egghat]

Good for the employees of Namesys. Good for SuSE. And perhaps without Reiser himself there even a chance that the disputes with the kernel team can be solved.

I don't see any other solution. Else ReiserFS will fade into obscurity. It may well be that it's already too late to save ReiserFS.

Bye egghat.

Nina is Dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Netcraft confirms it

My wife's blood is in my car

[Slashdot Parent]

I'm sure any forensic detective worth his salt could find my wife's blood in my car, but I can assure you that she is very much alive (at least, as of 10 minutes ago).

What a trip to the emergency room that was, though.

Most probable?

[Slashdot Parent]

My wife's blood can be found in my car. Does that mean that it is "most probable" that I murdered her?

In your answer, please address the fact that she is alive and well.

Re:Most probable?

[_xeno_]

Sure.

1. Has your wife been missing for over a month? You indicate she is alive and well, therefore I'm guessing not, greatly decreasing the probability that she is dead in the first place. To approximately 0, I'd guess.
2. Are you and your wife going through a two-year long divorce process? Again, I'm guessing not.

#1 explains why murder is even in the equation. Nina Reiser has been missing for over a month with no trace. This greatly raises the chances that she's dead. It also raises the possibility that she's been murdered.

The main point is probably #2 - Nina Reiser has been separated from Hans Reiser for two years. There's very little reason her blood should be in his car and house considering she doesn't live with him and hasn't for two years.

There's more evidence than just blood mentioned in the linked article, by the way.

Re:Most probable?

[Slashdot Parent]

1. How old is the blood stain?
2. How do they know it's Nina's? DNA testing? Where did the known good sample come from?
3. Did Nina have access to the car during the divorce?
4. Did anyone else have access to the? Like that shady character she was with who made Hans do "Death Yoga"?
5. She was last seen by Hans at his house before she made a grocery run. Her car was found with those groceries.

So the evidence would suggest that the computer programmer, who would be both logical, and calculating, decided not to murder his wife at his home. Rather, he tailed her to the grocery store, brutally murdered her in public, and then, without bothering to coat her body or his car in plastic, shoves her bleeding body into his car and goes on his merry way to dispose of her body.

Most probable, indeed. I mean, he knew where she lived, and they're two years into the messy divorce. He's had ample opportunity to do a good job killing her. Why would he do it in such a messy, haphazard way?

Re:Most probable?

[_xeno_]

Here, just read the Wikipedia article on Hans Reiser and check the sources listed there. They give a fairly good run-down of the case against Hans Reiser. Another good source is Arstechnica's synoposis.

It's still not clear how solid a case it is, but it's solid enough to say it's the most probable. Not "beyond a reasonable doubt" probable, but more probable than Hans not having murdered his wife.

...ashes that have remnants of the victims DNS...

[hicksw]

so the police can reconstruct her ip address.

look in the mirror sherlock

[Anonymous Coward]

...and your comment is different from the parent... how?
          I still read... "I think this sentiment that I am reading doesn't agree with [whatever I think], so I will tell him to knock it off, because it doesn't match my idea." --here, it could be that you don't think he should be making an effort to persuade anyone else to believe as he does. ...So, how are you doing anything different?
          Am I wrong? ... did you really mean to say; "You're right. I actually agree with you but be careful, someone else might not."
          I assume you know what you are doing, (mainly looking like a hypocrite), but perhaps I have missed your coy message.