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Hans Reiser Interview from Prison
JLester writes "Wired Magazine has an interview this month with Hans Reiser (of the ReiserFS journaling file system for Linux) from prison. It contains more details about the murder case against him. Some of the questions still go unanswered though."
In Reiser's case, a critical piece of data -- the location of Nina Reiser -- has gone missing.
It should be in the journal somewhere.
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
Has he been in touch with the Juice to discuss strategy? Afterwards, they can go search golf courses for the real killers.
[
i smell a book deal.
Isn't it weird how his gothy best friend who has had some kind of twisted sexual relationship with his wife is an admitted mass-murderer?
I'm just saying.
out in cinemas August 2009
My theory is this: Nina went back to russia, and is now living there. The fact that the kids are in russia, and were supposed to return weeks ago, but haven't, makes me think that maybe they were reunited with their mother there. Just a thought.
... why can't Heiser? Well, it seems he is getting away with it, and blaming it on ReiserFirst question was "Tell me about your file system." For a guy that was accused of murdering his wife and put in prison, wasnt it a bit of a rude way to start the interview?
Because he can't afford the type of attorneys it would take to get away with murder. Jay-walking, maybe...but not murder.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
Prison is where you go for periods generally over a year, after you have been sentenced. Jail is where you go when you are awaiting trial, or for minor offences, usually under a year.
In a world of acronyms, the words are the real victims.
... generally swing for the experts, in this case the police. The only exception for this rule is if there is powerful evidence to the contrary. Given the same evidence (blood spots, missing chair, washed car, motive) I would no doubt of come to the same conclusions. The onus is on Reiser to come up with evidence - where is the chair? explain the blood, why was the car washed?
I have no doubt that Reiser is a genius, I uses reiserfs at home for many years and loved it. But I also have no doubt that OJ was once a great sportsman and regardless of the verdict I watched the court case and thought he did it.
Even great men are only human and capable of doing evil things in the heat of the moment.
The story about Hans Reiser gets weirder every time I read about it. It's like you're reading some surrealistic novel, or maybe a plot by Grisham.
... ?)
For one, there is the question whether he is being framed (by a former friend, russian mafia,
Also there is the problem of (suspected) murder, but no body has been found. So, all evidence will be circumstantial and therefore open to lots of discussion/interpretation. "The brothers Karamazov" by Dostojevski has some very nice examples of how wide apart such interpretations can be (without the reader being able to tell which interpretation is true). Probably someone could write an interesting novel based on this story as well. It's getting so weird, you just can't make such stuff up.
It could become an interesting case to follow, so I'm hoping groklaw might pay some attention to it (if such hearings are even public - I don't have much clue about the US judicial system, but it seems unlikely).
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
Aren't there any other open source author's facing major criminal charges? All we get is Hans, Hans, Hans. If not it seems Microsoft's Black Ops. Dept.* has missed an opportunity.
(* motto: "Beyond the blue screen")
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
Judging from Reiser's obviously unstable mental state (his obsession about violent video games with his little boy is disgusting), the good grounds for suspicion in the investigation (the blood, the missing seat), and his ex-friend's admitted murderous and perverse behaviour, I think his kids are better off with the Grandmother in Russia.
Hmm....blame Free Software for that?
(It's a joke. I prefer FS/OSS.)
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
Is this not the sort of event that opponents of Free Software would be having a wet dream over? Surely having a prominent programmer in jail or on remand for murder is worth a thousand patent FUD stories. Also it begs the question of whether it's advisable in the long run for prominent authors to put their names on the actual project itself - compare ReiserFS to say Samba (rather than Tridgeserv for example). Disclaimer: I use ReiserFS myself on my desktop!
"So, don't you wish real life had an undo button?"
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
From what I've read, he doesn't come off as very innocent. I read the article in the paper magazine last weekend, and he just seems like a really weird guy. Despite the fact that they picked this interviewer because they thought he would understand Reiser, because he is a misunderstood geek, he still came off as quite a weird guy. The whole part about playing battlefield vietnam with his 6 year old so he could "become a man" was just kind of weird, and really made me question his values. Not that I'm against kids playing violent games, but his whole reasoning behind it was just kind of creepy.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Working out the reality is clearly a challenge.
Of course, divorce court just makes people imagine the worst about one another.
Deleted
I think the real question on everyone's minds is: Will he be allowed to continue software development while behind bars?
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Because OJ had money, and that is the whole difference. Hans will lose.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Is it true Hans had to beat someone up or become someone's bitch in prison? Did he talk in a fem voice? REAL LINUX USERS WANT TO KNOW THIS.
It is a guiliani doll.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
There's a scanner which can monitor brain activity realtime, depending on which areas light up, police can tell if you're lying or not. They don't even have to ask any questions, simply present evidence to you and watch what your brain does.
m l
e.g.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.01/lying.ht
As a geek who's been falsely accused, I'm sure he'd be happy to submit to such a scan. Additional evidence for his defence lawyer.
Deleted
Until then, it's just FUD. Somebody needs to check if the DA is on the ext3 team.
If previous experience with the American judicial system has any bearing, he will walk. The OSS community will have more choices, so that their conscience is clear while using their favorite filesystem, while making their opinion known at the same time:
1. IRFS - Innocent Reiser File System
2. GAHRFS - Guilty as hell Reiser Filesystem
As per topic.
Seems a bit twisted.
But S&M with ecstasy?
I'm sorry I asked...
Whether those techniques work at all in real world settings, and whether they work in a legal setting, are unresolved questions.
It will take many years before such techniques can be used in the real world, even if they work.
I find it really interesting if you look at the Russian mafia angle. Maybe Nina's in Russia?? I think that is where she really is considering that she had obtained Russian citizenship for both of her children. While Reiser is, shall we say, unique, he does not sound much different then alot of geeks. I hope something happens and he's freed. With the Children in Russia, there may never be a straight answer to what happened to Nina.
Gorkman
Hans Reiser has to be at least paranoid, which he apparently inherited from his father:Why would the FSB be interested in him? Don't they know that ReiserFS is open source?
Another nugget is his insistence on playing violent video games with his six year old son. He defended this practise in a "32-page filing" on the "culture of manhood" during his divorce trial. That alone has nutjob written all over it.Well, I don't see much of manhood in Hans Reiser's behaviour. He comes of as whiny and paranoid, accusing everybody but himself for his mistakes. And he appears even to be proud of conceiving a child in the first night with his mail order bride. That's both pathetic and idiotic!
And don't even get me started on this Sturgeon guy. It seems like lunatics come in packs. I for one wouldn't take Hans Reisers advice on anything but file systems serious.
Wow that looks really nasty. People like Hans should be put in some kind of protected custody in prison I think. Whether or not he's a murderer he certainly can't look after himself in jail.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
So I take the hint, and that night, in my office, I start scouring the 80,496 lines of the Reiser4 source code. Eventually I stumble across a passage that starts at line 78,077. It's not part of the program itself -- it's an annotation, a piece of non-executable text in plain English. It's there for the benefit of someone who has chosen to read this far into the code. The passage explains how memory structures are born, grow, and eventually die. It concludes: "Death is a complex process." Crazy
Sure I have no proof but what if she's in Russia? As I see it now, she could comfortably be there now after slipping out of the country at the conclusion of this master plan. She'd be there with her children who are supposedly with her parents and no longer allowed to leave Russia, the money she embezzled from the company and the satisfaction of sticking it to her husband who she likely gained apathy towards over time after a combination of drugs and a more "macho" man comparison came into play.
Seriously though... she was involved in a number of circumstances individuals or their loved ones eventually have no recourse but to take drastic and dramatic action at times involving faking your own death or disappearing (e.g. hardcore drug spirals, weird religions/cults, severe psychiatric problems, mafia involvement in any way and so many more!)
That's just my POV... no more, no less.
Mod parent up!
Not saying its a good excuse, but put yourself in the same situation.
Your wife is in love/lust with your bi-S&M-druggie friend.
She files for divorce.
They conspire to take your company and everything you've worked for.
You know (or at least think) that after this, there's never going to be anyone else. He had to turn to a Russian bride already. I bet his social skills aren't even that great. Its easy to envision living alone forever after that, while your friend and your ex-wife run off together.
If you want to know why he looks/talks crazy..that's why. Doesn't justify murder, but might give some insight into why he looks shitty.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
If you just look at the superficial evidence, there's a lot of suspicious stuff to focus on Reiser. But if you look into the details further, the affair with the S&M guy who admits to being a mass murderer, accounting irregularities in the company, you start to wonder. There have been cases in real life, not just television, where murders have been faked. I remember once case where a young man faked his death in an auto accident by substituting another body for his own and ensuring it was so badly burned that identification was impossible. It sounds like a television plot but it's real.
While the circumstantial evidence makes him look like the prime suspect, the circumstantial evidence also casts a lot of doubt upon his associates. Just what the hell is going on here? It could very well be as the police suspect, a sloppy killing with him having to play catch-up to cover all the evidence, or it could be something weirder. I don't see this as a clean open and shut case.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Get remarried in there yet?
Hmm.. It's pretty suspicious that Han's kids are still in Russia with his former mother-in-law.
I think she's alive and well in Russia. If she was killed her body or parts of would have turned
up by now. And if she is alive, maybe this was her parents way of getting her out of the US? She
was a bright woman who started to take a pretty dark path. You could see all the classic signs here.
Hans was too rapped up into namesys. He married a hottie wife who noticed that she was getting a lot
of attention elsewhere. I think once Nina started messing around with other stuff her parents got
her out of the country. The fact that the passenger seat is missing from the CRX and the fact that car
had been washed out, casts some doubt on the belief that Hans is innocent here. He needs to come clean
with information about that.
I think the defense needs to monitor Nina's Mom and Hans' kids in Russia to see if Nina is there.
Only if you believe it's better to send innocent people to jail than let guilty people go free.
Why can't we do both?
I don't know. Maybe I'm just an idealist dreamer.
never underestimate a smart guy in jail!
Discussion on reddit
If you ever serve jury duty. That way they can dismiss you and choose jurors who can do the job correctly.
are the only words I can think of after reading this really weird, creepy story.
Bye egghat.
P.S. All my wishes to the kids.
-- "As a human being I claim the right to be widely inconsistent", John Peel
"I'm not saying he should have killed her, but I understand..."
Anytime you can't explain things like missing vehicles and scrubbed interiors, you got problems. I was expecting a police conspiracy after reading the comments, but there are a lot of arrows pointing at him. And, what's with his "friend" Sturgeon? It's almost as if he doesn't get that banging your buddy's wife might cause some strain on your relationship!
No sympathy for the guy, though. A hot Russian mail order bride doctor and you don't suspect the package might be a little too good to be true?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Have gnu, will travel.
They are deliberately cheesy.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Probably borrowed some money from relatives in his down years and never fully paid back.
The picture is the goatse guy.
While he launches into the intricacies of database science, I'm thinking, "Where is the front passenger seat of your car?" He has never explained this. It seems a fundamental hole in his defense. But he won't stop talking. When I try to interrupt, he insists I let him finish. It's as if the file system holds all the answers.
So I take the hint, and that night, in my office, I start scouring the 80,496 lines of the Reiser4 source code. Eventually I stumble across a passage that starts at line 78,077. It's not part of the program itself it's an annotation, a piece of non-executable text in plain English. It's there for the benefit of someone who has chosen to read this far into the code. The passage explains how memory structures are born, grow, and eventually die. It concludes: "Death is a complex process."
So I guess this is a confession now? I'm sorry but that's just deceiving and wrong. He calls a patch against the kernel tree a "program" and all the pluses he didn't remove before the code reaffirm this suspicion that he doesn't even know what proper code looks like. He makes it sound as if this comment describing how a specific file structure of the file system works as some sort of "secret confession" hidden there for the unscrupulous researcher. Joshua Davis, please turn in your geek badge!
With someone that calls himself a geek to come with such a preposterous conclusion leaves me little room for hope that any sort of truth of this case from either side will come out or that any real justice will be done. It speaks volumes of the "blindness of justice" and how our prisons end up being jammed with people placed on death row with DNA evidence later exonerating them and having no recourse to repair their life or credibility. So truly, Death really is a Complex Process.
Here is the actual passage he was talking about:
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
If you lock up the innocent, by definition you are letting the guilty go free.
According to the article, Reiser thought the Russian mafia or spy agency was tracking him. It was actually the local police, but because they used many unmarked cars and airplanes, he thought the tracking was beyond the scope of a local police force.
If you thought that the Russian mafia or spy agency was after you, would you be driving around in your personal vehicle that they know is yours? Or would you drive someone else's car? I don't think that I would have the courage to drive my own car if I believed some "serious people" were after me.
Also, I'm told that removing the passenger seat is common in the "ricer" community.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Reiser is being represented by Daniel Horowitz, who's wife was killed a month after Nina went missing. A young goth kid (Scott Dyleski) was eventually found to have committed the murder. That seems another bizarre coincidence in an already intriguing mystery...
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
OJ, wacko-jacko, or even Tux my bet is when they find out the chair is up a tree tied with ropes they can rule out a penguin "no thumbs"
If that's the code snippet they're talking about, that is some strange terminology. It seems like an odd mix of very technical terms with almost creepy descriptions (i.e. describing the birth, maturity, death, limbo of processes). I'm not a professional coder (though I did study programming for a few years and am an amateur geek), these comments seem really strange even by computer code comment standards.
but not your assertion that people break the law "because they don't have any other options." That may be one reason some people break the law, but the reality is far more complex.
Using your car analogy (/. loves those) it might be the case that some people run red lights because they're being tailgated. Far more common, however, is people who run the red light because they're in a hurry to get where they're going, or are driving too fast for the conditions and can't stop, who are too busy talkin on their phone to notice that the lgiht changed, or narcissists who essentially say to themselves "My desire for unimpeded travel outweighs the needs of others for the same." In my experience, morons and the selfish far outnumber cautious drivers trying to avoid an accident.
That said, I agree that any attempt to exploit this would probably fail. For one thing, tell the average person that "Some OSS programmer killed his wife" and you're going to get a blank stare and the question "What is OSS?" A backlash against precieved exploitation of the situation is another possibility. In addition, companies that have a legal department have to tread lightly in cases like this, since all you can say until he's convicted is "accused killer"--and even that is iffy.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
lying:
1. a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth; a falsehood.
It doesn't make any claims about determining truth. Now *that* is the philosophical question you were talking about.
Deleted
this fiasco is going to make one kick ass episode of law and order, you've got the husband suspected of murder; the wife's friend/lover who is serial killer but swears up and down he would never hurt her; and the douche bag reporter putting words into people's mouthes.
lose != loose
Agreed. The style was odd, but the story was well-told and cohesive.
this comment.
Best Slashdot Co
This is somehow off-topic but I've only seen a few videos of him where he looked a lot heavier and, err, well-nourished in comparison to the image in the Wired article. Did he lose all that weight in prison or was he on a diet before his arrest?
:/- spoon(_).
"Violence against your wife is inappropriate and illegal (unless of course it's to protect yourself from her)"
Bondage. S&M. You are wrong.
As to the rest of your moronic reply, YOU JUDGE A CASE ON THE FACTS, not on your imbecilic preconceived notions.
Do you have a problem with adhering to the Constitution?
sigh.
...
..therefore the onus is on him to provide an explanation or some form of defense. if he does not then can you see any Jury acquitting him? I'm not saying that the police should have the power to presume guilt - of course not - I'm saying that in this case him staying silent is really not a sensible course of action.
:-(
I'm not arguing against innocent until proven guilty, thats just as important in the UK as it is in the US.
what I *am* saying is that there are a number of huge unknowns here and some damn compelling circumstantial evidence. Amongst others
1. the missing car seat
2. the freshly washed car
3. the fact of the passport and wads of cash he had on him
4. the book on murder
5. the missing wife
6. the motive
7. thoroughly strange behavior (driving around, leaving the car)
I'll admit I phrased badly though.
Posting cowardly for this one:
When first heard the news about Nina missing I did a casework on her (check on the Silva Method for what casework is), what I got back is that she was killed by Hans and she is buried in some backyard, the yard is in some sort of downslope, no much grass, with tall trees behind.
Don't take this one for granted, I haven't practiced enough of this psychic stuff to be sure about this.
I must say, the article describes some very damning evidence: "Police search the CRX and find that the front passenger seat has recently been removed. The floor is soaked, as if it had been washed. There are heavy-duty garbage bags, cloth towels, masking tape, and two books: Masterpieces of Murder and Homicide. Police also find another drop of blood and match it to Nina." This is after the police have (surreptitiously) followed Hans to the car and observed him moving it to a different location. What other explanation could there be for this than that Hans did indeed murder Nina, especially since (as far as I can tell from the article) Hans has offered no other explanation for the state of the car? Some of the rest of his interview sounds pretty creepy and paranoid too. For example, Hans says: "Male geeks, such as myself, are one of America's most hated cultural minorities," he writes. "Unlike racial hatred, it is considered socially acceptable to indulge in such hatred." This is obviously completely ridiculous. He then proceeds to use this as an excuse for a lot of strange behavior, such as wanting to "teach the culture of manhood to little boys, with all of its inherent opposition to wallowing in wimpiness" (talking about playing hours and hours of Battlefield Vietnam with his six year old son). None of that is evidence of murder of course, but it does make Hans seem unstable and paranoid and his explanations suspect. All in all it seems likely to me that Hans did indeed murder Nina. Of course in theory I suppose it's possible that he's the victim of some extremely elaborate setup (which I fully expect many people who watch too much CSI to claim), but in reality I think that's an very unlikely option. Having said that, this is just what I currently personally believe. If I was a juror I would vote "not guilty" on this evidence. I'm a big believer in "proven beyond all reasonable doubt." As long as there isn't even any evidence that Nina is actually dead, let alone hard evidence that Hans did it, I would have give him the benefit of the doubt, even though personally I find it more likely that he did it than not. To let off a murderer would be very bad, but in my opinion it would be much worse to wrongly convict an innocent man.
I would have read the whole article were it not for the weird style.
I couldn't tell fact from fiction; was the interviewer trying to get me to think Reiser is innocent? Or was he trying to confuse me? Or was his style simply to make it sound like some weird cyber-book?
I'm confused - call me when it's decided.
they won't find a body because she's not dead.
she's been taking the money and gave it to her boy friend who loanded it back to hans.
the interview never says how the friend came into that much money. did no one else notice this?
they fake her death and frame hans.
the friend can pass a polygraph because he "didn't kill her".
as for the seat, i think they drugged him(yes, both the wife and boyfriend have a history of experimentation/use), drove the car to where they left it and let him wake up there.
he knew where the car was, but has no way to explain how it got there. this would freak out most people.
yes he could have done it, but this no more unrealistic than anything else i've read.
How do you do it?
Sincerely,
The Amazing Sarcasmo
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Even if Hans is guilty, he would serve society better if he can work on his filesystem instead of idling in prison.
Can't say I know the man from Adam however.
Sadly, much like cynicism is used a lazy-man's substite for critical thought, outrageous, contraversial, or vulgar statements are often used as a lazy-man's substitute for humor.
For what it's worth, may the truth of the matter, whatever that is, be ultimately determined.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Nina's parents managed to get custody of the kids. They fled to Russia and are staying there. I've said it from the beginning that Nina Reiser fled to Russia. Has anyone bothered to look for her there? With the kids staying in Russia because "they're too afraid to go back to the US", that just seems to indicate even more that she's there.
I've seen plenty of comments like these. Its hard to describe complex processes without using some sort of terminology, and for something like the life-cycle of objects, analogies to living things are quite common (even the term "life cycle" makes no sense for a non-living being, and yet it is used throughout computer science in contexts like this).
In the particular case of these comments, its probably a case of reading unintended meanings into some source code comments that are (taken at face value) humorous but not that weird.
Some of the other stuff in this story *is* positively bizarre and creepy though.
The prosecutors are going to need something more than what is public in order to prosecute Mr. Reiser.
Their most important witness, the child, is in Russia. And even his statements are inconsistent about whether his parents were fighting the day she disappeared, and whether he saw her leave the house alone.
The boyfriend she was leaving him for is an admitted sadomasochist and mass murderer who says he has "nothing to hide." Oh sure, you can trust him.
There is no body, and she's from another country (same country where her kid is at). So we don't even know if she's really dead.
The only real admissible evidence against him is that he left his Mom's car on the street behind her house with a passenger seat missing. Maybe he was cleaning it up after disposing of the body... maybe. But "maybe" is a far cry from being beyond a reasonable doubt.
Look for Mr. Reiser to be released from jail some time soon unless something new comes up. There is no way the prosecutors can go to trial on this evidence unless there is additional evidence that we don't know about yet.
not that funny really, not funny at all.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
Yes, it's alarming to get squid error messages like "dead sibling found" but it is a metaphor. This is obviously the same and people are grasping at straws to find a pattern to speculate on whatever happened. It's just like his silly illustrated dancing tree description elsewhere - the metaphor described in great detail perhaps becuase that's the way he likes to describe things.
If you lock everyone up, by definition you are locking up the innocent without letting the guilty go free. QED.
1. the missing car seat
2. the freshly washed car
3. the fact of the passport and wads of cash he had on him
4. the book on murder
5. the missing wife
6. the motive
7. thoroughly strange behavior (driving around, leaving the car) 1) What does a missing car seat prove? It could be missing for any number of reasons. If you are transporting a body you are not doing it in the front passenger seat. You are doing it in the trunk, or worst case the back seat. If he did remove the seat and not put it back it was because it was soaked with blood and was uncleanable. In a situation like that there would be significantly more than just a drop of blood left behind in other parts of the car, even after washing. It is very hard to get blood out effectively.
2) A freshly washed car proves nothing at all. My neighbors car is freshly washed, did they murder someone? An alternate explanation is that something nasty spilled everywhere in his car, including the front seat.
3) If I believed the Russian mafia or FSB was tailing me I would have as much money on me as I could along with my passport (and a gun).
4) I own books on murder, I am not a murderer. If he was smart enough to dispose of the body, murder weapon, and car seat without any evidence left why would he leave the books? Although if I were trying to frame someone for murder that I knew owned books on murder I'd plant them in their car...
5) She is a Russian mail order bride who may be mobbed up and may have stolen large amounts of money. The fact that she is missing doesn't prove that she was murdered or that if she was murdered Reiser did it.
6) Reiser is not the only one with motive. His psycho ex-friend has both motive and experience in murdering people and getting away with it. The Russian mafia has motive. The wife herself has motive to disappear.
7) He thought he was being tailed by the Russian mafia and/or the FSB, that usually makes people act very strange. Plus Reiser is a pretty strange guy to begin with.
For (7), I'd be acting strangely if I had random cars and planes following my every move. And the worst crime I've committed in years is jaywalking.
That would also explain the cash and passport -- if you're being chased, you want cash on you in case your enemies can trace your credit cards when you manage to lose them; and you want to be able to leave the country.
As for motive, his wife left him and started sleeping with someone else well before this. A very patient murder, if he's to blame.
There's clearly stuff he's not coming clean about, but for all I know it could be running drugs for the Russian mob, which would be a reason not to tell the cops about the car, and to check on it, and to scrub it and remove the passenger seat.
All's true that is mistrusted
Is it possible to convict someone for murder if no body is ever found? The CRX is a smoking gun, alas, it LOOKS very much like Reiser murdered his wife. The items found in it strongly suggest the crime, and, more importantly, how else would anyone else have used the car? I mean, the car was hidden somewhere that Reiser knew the location of, and he presumably had the only set of keys. It seems unlikely that Sturgeon had the keys. Heck, even if it were a frame up, how would Reiser have known where to get the car from?
It is pretty difficult to come up with a theory that fits the evidence that doesn't involve Reiser having killed his wife.
WITH THAT SAID, if no body nor sufficient blood to show a death occurred is ever found, what crime can he be charged with?
Hans shot first, so all he can do is to pray there'll be special edition where he doesn't.
Who is John Galt?
"Maybe we should have a bit more respect this time." - by Bruce Perens (3872) * on Wednesday June 27, @09:32AM (#19662097)
Agreed, 110% - it's "highschool $heet" for anyone to even begin speculating on it (because there doesn't seem to be enough data on it (yet)).
BUT, here's a picture view of humanity - the gossiping, libelling, slanderous rumor-mongering side, that is...
Anyhow/anyways - this is too bad about this guy, it really is (& I am DEFINITELY a "Pro-Win32" guy, vs. Llnux (but I respect what Linux REALLY, truly is - a "socio-cultural/technological phenomenon" for lack of a better expression - one that PROVES people still can & will do great things, for little to zero profit, of their own time & talents, freely given! In a way? It keeps my faith in humanity going strong, in that it shows that monies do NOT ONLY make the 'world-go-round', even today!)
APK
P.S.=> By the way, Mr. Perens: I've always enjoyed your posts, you seem like a reasoning man, & I especially liked your take about "Justified Anger is better than sitting around, while bad stuff happens!"... That's a compliment to you by the way, & an 'excerpt' of one of your posts here that I've used online, time & again, when it comes to 'flame wars' & such.... apk
of absolute freak?
And I thought I was weird. All I did was rob two banks, did some time and overeat burgers and Hagen Daaz.
I don't think I've ever had any friends who carved things into their arms (not that there's anything wrong with B&D, or other fetish behavior - except the juvenility of it all, of course.)
Humans are seriously fucked up.
This story is an example of how you seriously need to check out who you associate with. Other people will get you in prison as fast as you can do it on your own.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
What? He doesn't behave like the rest of us? What does that mean? That you aren't normal if you ain't got a normal 9 to 5 desk job, go home, eat dinner, walk the dog, sit in front of the telly, brush your teeth, go to sleep, wake up and do it all over again, ad infinitum?
So writing a book is strange behaviour? Or is it the aliens invading the earth? He does know that there are actually quite a lot of people writing about that? Some of them quite famous as well. Don't know how many of them have murdered their spouses though. Now that I think about it, maybe it was the video game... no, can't be, even Microsoft sells games nowadays so it can't be bad.
Even just the text "he lives in his own world of..." suggests that somehow he is an asocial person, a loner that doesn't get out much, who probably doesn't have many friends and is badly adjusted to the world around him. It sounds so damn PATRONIZING! Does this guy think he's a licensed psycho-analyst or something?
Owkee, seems he does.
If y'all don't mind I'll just wait for the trial and see what proof they have found (if any) instead of listening to some wanker from wired doing his Freud impression.
After reading almost all of the current replies....
The US law is "beyond a reasonable doubt". And with this freak show, I see all kinds of doubt.
There was some discussion about letting the guilty go free vs. putting innocents in jail. For some reason I don't think this individual is going to go on and kill more people (if he did kill his wife).
Yes, he is wacko. But circumstance, at least to me, is not compelling enough to take away someone's life.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
...When you watch the purported 'psychics' (!cough! !cough!) on Most Haunted, and think that its anything but total bullshit. Next you'll be getting 'possesed' by 'spirits'... just like Derek too. LOL! Utter crapolla. Now I know why Houdini spent all his time outing the spiritual hucksters.
"I am looking at what he said rationally and saying it looks like he was guilty."
No, you're not. You're taking your preconceived notions about behavior and assuming they apply in the absence of other evidence.
In other words, you're a fucking idiot.
You have yet to effectively demonstrate any point apart from proving you're unfit for jury duty.
Please don't ever serve, you're going to "look at something rationally" and convict an innocent man because he's weird and you're too stupid, bigoted, closed minded and self assured to realize that doesn't mean he's guilty.
This has been an excellent dialog on your shortcomings as a person. Take this opportunity to come to some understanding of why two completely unrelated individuals would go out of their way to not just disagree with you, but do so vehemently and repeatedly.
It's not us, baby.
Can't you see it?
There's a piece of evidence here so glaring. Any smart person in law enforcement would see it too.
He went out and bought a book "Masterpieces of Murder", after the fact, and left it in the car.....
This is the equivalent of the paper passport conveniently found in the street the day after 9/11
(you know, the one that survived a steel melting fireball)
Items like this are clearly marked "For public consumption"
(unless... he either wanted to get caught... or is playing a very dangerous double bluff)
Hans Reiser has always felt like a "wimp" before his father who was a torturer in Vietnam, and that's why he tried to make his own 6-year-old son a "real man" by teaching him in a "psychologically traumatic" way how to "defend family and country" by use of massacres and goblin suicide bombers. He thinks violence is good as long as no sex is involved, whereas "gender confused" dolls are straight from hell. In other words, he's a fascistoid nutcase. I hope his children stay safe of him for the rest of their lives. Even if he hadn't killed his wife it would be better to keep him locked up.
The article did mention something about solitary, so it looks like the jail is taking some measures to protect him. (The main difference between protective custody and solitary is that the former has a nicer name).
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
...who at least understands and to some degree supports what he was doing with his son. Granted BFV is probably not the best method to introduce a child to violence, but too many Americans do not seem to realize that only a tiny portion of the country is actually Disneyland. At least when I was in elementary school, which would have been the first half of the 90's, our history classes were full of war: the strategies, the civilian casualties, and particular emphasis on all those who died in the civil war that were only a few years older than we were. I don't talk to kids all that often, as I have none I am aware of, but whenever I have spoken to my father's younger step children, they are completely ignorant of these things. Granted that is not a statistically significant sample, and it is also quite probable that they are just piss poor students, I do get the impression that such things do not get the proper attention in modern schools. American youth (I am one of them, I can talk) grow up thinking they deserve all their freedoms and never realize that what they deserve is irrelevant; you have what you can take and defend. We are currently just riding on the accomplishments of past generations as the spoiled progeny of far greater people. When John Stewart had the Palestinian president as a guest on The Daily Show, the president mentioned once how terrorists detonated car bombs on a bridge, and he took that bridge to work the next morning. Stewart said that he certainly handled the situation better than he would have, and the president just said "I know." The audience sort of did a dry heave of a laugh as they realized the absence of any joke. Perhaps if our youth did get proper exposure to violence, people would not be able to fire off 170 rounds with handguns in crowded buildings without someone jumping them when they tried to reload, and hijackers would be met by angry business class passengers brandishing uncapped ink pens. But that is just my opinion.
I did not appreciate the incredibly lame peppering of filesystem code throughout this article. It felt like the author of the article was trying to turn this story into a cyberpunk thriller. Yet the filesystem code does not advance the story or characters -- real or otherwise -- in *any* way.
While it reminds me a little of the quote at the beginning of William Gibson's "Count Zero", the Wired article's attempt to use technical kitch was clumsy, pointless, and utterly tasteless.
The redeeming qualities of the article are its collection of the facts and reasoned attempt at avoiding judgement.
Also consider the word "proof". This is not "proof" in the scientific sense. I doubt most judges or lawyers even have enough of a science background to understand what the scientific sense is. As best as I can tell, "proof" means anything that has not been cast into some degree of doubt by the other side, where doubt must also be "reasonable".
So what is this reasonableness, anyway? What I regard it as being is likely totally different from anything anyone else sees it as being. To me, "reasonableness" in a legalistic sense would mean "if you had N people of average or above average intelligence, from a uniformly random cross-section of the population, who were honest to themselves and others and who held no preconceived notions on the subject, the majority would reach a similar or the same conclusion".
(I'm crudely basing that on the whole notion of the jury being "twelve good men and true" and the requirements for impartiality and fairness that can be traced through history to the very origins of the legal system.)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
What if it is a setup? What if Nina, all by herself, or with the help of the rusian mob poured a pint or two of her own blood all over the front seat of his car and then disapeared.
... "Gee officer, I really didn't kill my estranged and recently missing wife - she just poured her blood all over the seat to frame me."
Put yourself in his shoes - what would you do? You come out to find your blood all over the seat of your car and put that together with the rest of what's going on. Maybe you stash it out of sight while you try to locate her - but she's disapeared. Do you really think going to the police with that story is going to hold up
Me - I'd do what he did. Clean the car and hope I could swing some reasonable doubt from the jury. Which there is plenty of in this case. My gut says he did it - but hopefully the jury votes with their heads and not their gut. My head tells me there are to many what-ifs to send a guy to prison for the rest of his life based on what we've heard so far.
"Should the government be keeping me from showing my son how to direct brave goblin suicide bombers against their elven oppressors?" - Hans Reiser
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Passenger seat recently removed: maybe he was preparing his hotted up CRX for racing?
The floor is soaked: maybe the car leaks or a window wasn't fully closed?
Garbage bags, cloth towels: cleaning car or preparing for racing?
Masking tape: maybe they mean gaffer tape, otherwise known as race tape?
Drop of blood: ever cut yourself when working on/cleaning a car?
Two books on murder: his ex-friend is an admitted murderer and his wife was missing. Maybe he was trying to gather evidence to go to the police?
With the right twist, anything can be made to look damning. But if this is the best the police can come up with, then the case is weak indeed. No body. No witnesses. No weapons. If he gets convicted on this is will be a travesty.
And I said 'someone should grep the reiser codebase for comments'. And the journalist who wrote this article did, at the end. Kinda creepy, although crafty journalism was shown throughout the article. Very good read, although long, like a real live murder mystery for geeks.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Linus can only be killed by a bus.
If the recounting of the evidence against him is accurate: Wife boffing S&M admitted murderer boyfriend, wife and boyfriend robbing seriously socially challenged geek hubby blind, wife filing for divorce, wife disappearing (I doubt ex-wives like this amazing piece of work stick around their ex-husbands), no body, no murder weapon, no evidence of any crime--a washed car with a missing passenger seat is weird, but not evidence of a crime--just a drop of blood, and suspicious books purchased AFTER ex-wife's vanishing act (aren't those usually acquired BEFORE a nefarious deed)--if all this is more or less accurate despite its utter zaniness, I'd say there plenty of "reasonable doubt" that the dude committed any crime.
Of course, the case could always go to court. Prosecutors have been known to try cases on such thin evidence. But unless the guy actually stood up in court and confessed to doing it, I doubt that any reasonable jury would convict the him. There is just way too much doubt. It's more likely that the case will get kicked over to Missing Persons, where it will stay unless something more concrete as evidence shows up.
that Han's was ever brought to trial. The entire evidence against Hans seems to be that "he's kind of a weird guy."
Really, what other evidence is there? They found a drop of blood *in their home*? What home *doesn't* have genetic evidence *of the people that live their* scattered about. Nina disapeared in her car, away from home. If there was a struggle, it would happen there, not in their house. This entire thing is just stupid, and it sounds like someone, either the police or the DA are just trying to get some publicity and a collar.
The two most suspicious persons that are involved in the case, are of course Sturgeon, an admitted serial killer and generally fucked up guy, and *the wife*, who had every reason to skip town. Sturgeon may be a little weird, but he's not a known criminal, and that's what should count in a case like this...
*Seriously*, though, why isn't that Sturgeon guy in jail? He's *admitted* to commiting murder. What's wrong with the justice system in this country?
Everybody has "psychic abilities", they are senses just like any other.
Intuition? Instinct? The ability to perceive something without knowing exactly how you are able to perceive it does not make you a psychic. And anyone can have weird dreams about real people and places - sometimes these correlate to reality by chance.
However, the people who run Snakeoil Method courses have a vested interest in convincing their students they are psychic, so they will come back and part with more money, or tell their friends to do the same. It's a confidence trick, like Scientology. Lots of intelligent people fall for confidence tricks, so you shouldn't think any less of yourself for being tricked in this way, but don't waste any more of your money on "psychics" because it's money down the drain.
For some proof of this, tell your "psychic" friends about the James Randi Foundation and ask them why they don't want the $1m prize for demonstrating psychic abilities in a laboratory. I am sure they have a better reason than "Randi will expose us as frauds and ruin our business model", which is, of course, the actual reason why psychics avoid Randi like the plague. I expect their answer is "it doesn't work like that", which is another way of saying "it doesn't work". Normal senses like hearing and vision always stand up to laboratory analysis, but "psychic powers" never do... why is that?
What is the fascination with a drop of blood ? If you shone that fancy CSI light in the front passenger seat of my car, you'd find loads of blood, both mine and my wife's. But I haven't killed her.
See, we use the car to go to the hospital sometimes. Like when we're bleeding. So far I've had one trip with my wife for stitches in her hand after she put her hand through a glass pane while helping me fit a door. Then there was the time I rode in that seat while bleeding out of my head after an egress from the loft went a little wrong. So there you have it - both of our blood, mixed, in my car. God help me if I wash it because then I _must_ have killed my wife, right?
The same goes for in the house. You'll find bits of our blood all over the place. The kitchen, from little nicks and cuts while cooking. The lounge from the big DIY project to refit the room. The office, from slicing ourselves on cheap assed computer cases and dripping on the floor before we realised we were bleeding.
So without enough blood to show someone died by exsanguination, what the hell does a drop of blood here or there show? That might be enough for a warrant, but surely not enough for charges.
Microsoft announces a breakthrough in the development of WinFS.....
/You never know; //How far do you want Gates/Balmer to go today?
WinFS is the fastest filesystem.
WinFS is an atomic filesystem, which means that your filesystem operations either entirely occur, or they entirely don't, and they don't corrupt due to half occuring. We do this without significant performance losses, because we invented algorithms to do it without copying the data twice.
WinFS uses dancing trees, which obsolete the balanced tree algorithms used in databases (see farther down). This makes WinFS more space efficient than other filesystems because we squish small files together rather than wasting space due to block alignment like they do. It also means that WinFS scales better than any other filesystem. Do you want a million files in a directory, and want to create them fast? No problem.
WinFS is based on plugins, which means that it will attract many outside contributors, and you'll be able to upgrade to their innovations without reformatting your disk. If you like to code, you'll really like plugins....
WinFS is architected for military grade security. You'll find it is easy to audit the code, and that assertions guard the entrance to every function.
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Get a grip dude, all the smarts in the world can't protect you from big dumb guy who means you serious harm and is too stupid to understand the consequences of attacking you.
It reminds me of deterrence theory actually. If you have an opponent who is rational, it is possible to deter them. For example I'd never attack anyone since I don't want to go to prison, lose my job and so on. Probably most of the world is like that - they are like the Soviet Union or America in the Cold War. It's not that they are good it's just that they know if they are too bad then terrible things will happen to them.
But there are a few very stupid people around who'll break a glass over your head whilst drunk and then wonder why the police arrive to arrest them the next morning. These are like a sort of nightmare rogue state because they basically don't understand the consequences of their actions. Like Saddam did't in the first Gulf War for example. They basically end up in prison, just like Saddam eventually did because they can't forsee it.
Now the problem is that if you're smart and in prison you're surrounded by these people - people who are essentially too dumb to be deterrable opponents.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Ocham's Razor - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocham's_razor
There is reasonible doubt, but even OJ tried to defend himself instead of refusing response. And if she really did fun off and leave him, maybe he's dead inside anyway (ReiserFS sings "I'm an emo kid non conforming as can be... ").
I've been in prison myself for quite some time and it learned me a lot about things I would have never have known or ever had the chance to experience and you know what "dude" I and honestly say prison was the most awakening part of my life. I'm glad I had the experience no matter how bad it was and trust me its not good. One thing tho everybody in prison is more or less the same as yourself, everybody has fear everybody has is the same everybody is in the same boat.
I can also say I met some of the best people I've ever met in prison, good people! I'm not saying I was in the worst prison in the world but it does hold more prisoners that have murdered than most prisons in the world. You say dumb people, you sir need to get a grip!
I made an Inkling prediction market for the probability of Hans being convicted. No real money involved, just the pride from knowing you were right. ;)
~moofbong
If 'con' is the opposite of 'pro', what is the opposite of 'progress'?
If you look at Joshua Davis' past articles on Hans (here and here, you'll see that he has been quite sympathetic to Hans' plight. Yet this particular article is much more ambivalent. I suspect the explanation for why this most recent story seems a bit confusing, and the author some what ambivalent, is that his sympathies and opinions about Hans' guilt or innocent have shifted over time.
I was contacted by the author in late March to give background information on the technical facts in the article, and he has never claimed that he was a technical person or in possession of a geek badge. My input into the story was solely on things like "what is a b-tree", and to eliminate the really embarrassing technical errors and misconceptions that the author might have had. At one point I believe the Joshua Davies wanted to put a spin on the "geek tragedy" that Reiser4 was this ground-breaking filesystem with great ideas that was languishing because its author/architect was languishing in fail. So I was given entire paragraphs of technical detail where I had to say, "no that's wrong," and "no, not quite", etc., etc. As far as whether or not Reiser4 was great, ground-breaking filesystem, I tried very hard to give both sides of the story --- that some people would say it was great, and other people would say that Hans had a tendency to fudge benchmarks ---- and I made it very clear that some people might consider that my views were biased, due to my past and continuing work on the ext2/3/4 filesystem, and that the author should definitely contact other people and get their opinions. So I disclosed all, which in my opinion was the only responsible thing to do, and I tried to be very, very careful about labelling what was fact and what was opinion.
(I'm of the opinion that if you want better technical understanding by journalists, if someone approaches you requesting background information and promises that you won't be quoted, you should spend time educating them about technical details, since that's the only way we can improve technical accuracy in reporting. Another interesting thing which I learned is that while Wired rights about subjects at are of interests to geeks, they do not assume that their articles will be written by geeks and they pitch their articles to be understandable by the general public; also, that most of their writers are not geeks themselves. All not surprising if you think about it a little, and especially if you reflect that the intersection of strong technical clue and strong writing skills is pretty rare.)
In the end, the story was about as good as you might expect. The facts of the story are confusing, as there were and there are no clear heroes and several suspicions and deeply flawed human beings that could possibly be villains but for which we can't really say for sure. There are no obvious technical errors in the story, except for one that I noticed, where the word registry is misused and should have been replaced with "data structure" instead: "It contains a single registry -- known as a balanced tree -- to organize every piece of data in the operating system". A lot of the details about reiserfs and reiser4 was ultimately cut out, as being not very relevant to the storyline that Joshua ultimately chose to tell.
I have to say that having spent several hours talking to Joshua Davies, and talking to his editor who spent a lot of time doing fact checking on the technical details and background, that both he and his editor have my respect seekers of truth. He went into this with point of view that I believe was very, very sympathetic to Hans, and it would have been very easy to turn this into a stock storybook story with the police cast as the cardboard, clueless villians, and Hans the hero languishing in jail, the victim of said clueless Keystone Kops. But he didn't do that. He
Hint: there's this concept we have called 'innocent until proven guilty'.
"Innocent until proven guilty" establishes the ultimate burden of proof. It does not mean that the defendant can afford to leave significant questions unanswered.
For example:
[and borrowing a little from the Danielle Van Dam murder case}
The victim was your neighbor.
Thousands of images of child pornography and rape were found on your computer. Blood and hair from the missing girl were found in your R.V. Something about the size and shape of the child's head was smashed against the wall above your bed.
Where is the sleeping bag you bought at WalMart last week? What sudden impulse drove you to take a 200 mile run to nowhere out in the desert?
These are the kind of questions that left unanswered end in a verdict of "guilty as charged." Danielle Van Dam Murder Case
"You're a fucking idiot"
That summed it up. Were you not an idiot, you'd realize I had no intention of reading anything you post ever again.
Yes, she's a stupid human who should never share her opinion because it's moronic, and I'm an abrasive human who is right.
I'm happy with my position in this production.
And isn't it funny that you only address her tone and not the content of her post? We both know why you avoided that, because you know she's wrong.
On his blog, Nikita Danilov claims that he (NOT REISER) wrote the birth to death story of a znode. See http://nikitadanilov.blogspot.com/2007/06/and-now- to-subject-of-death.html
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
The fact that ElleyKitten is not making personal attacks and you are is proof positive that she is a better human being than you.
That is all that matters.
Could there be some statistics of Violence in households of Geeks ? I am sure.. Geeks are an unhappy bunch people, who can never explain there indulgence in Computer screen rather than there wives/gf's arms.
0 0
The linux sound system used to be so simple. You had a kernel sound driver for your card and some nodes in /dev. And it all worked nicely. End of story. Then someone came along and thought "hold on , thats way too simple , lets make a far more complex and error prone system that no mortal could ever understand let alone set up" and lo , ALSA was born.