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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
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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.
"If I coded it, here's how I coded it"
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 ReiserThe 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.
"The onus is on Reiser to come up with evidence - where is the chair? explain the blood, why was the car washed?"
Hint: there's this concept we have called 'innocent until proven guilty'.
I couldn't be arsed to read more than a couple of pages of the article with its silly format, but what's so surprising about finding traces of your SO's blood, or in washing your car?
Maybe he is guilty, I have no idea; but it's up to the police to prove that he is, not for him to prove that he's innocent.
Nonsense. It shows that the interviewer cared about the guy's work and accomplishments, not just his alleged crimes. For someone who has been sitting in prison, going to court hearings and meetings with lawyers and talking about nothing else, it was probably nice to talk filesystems for a change. I imagine the interviewer was the first person he'd seen in months who knew what a filesystem even was.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
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.
"It's also one of those concepts which looks great on paper, but is sadly shown as so much idealistic BS in the real world."
Only if you believe it's better to send innocent people to jail than let guilty people go free.
Right, sort of like the monkey boy, who gets hypered easily in public conferences and meetings. Oh, and let's not forget him vowed to kill one another, and threw a chair across the room.
Well, if Steve Ballmer's children and wife gone missing one day, I bet the public may not apply the same prejudice to his case.
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.
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
There are two problems with machine-assisted lie detection: People who train to control their responses on a polygraph, and people who believe what they say, even though it isn't true. The brain activity monitoring method only attacks the first problem, not the second.
Part of this is a philosophical problem: Someone with a false grip on reality (to a greater or lesser extent, all of us have some false perceptions or memories) may make a factual statement that is not consistent with objective reality, but if that person *believes* in the truth of the statement, should we even consider them to be lying? I think that the common definition of lying implies intent--you have to know that what you're saying is false. Otherwise, you're merely wrong or delusional.
It doesn't take a complete nutter to believe in false things, either. Most people believe they are more attractive, more competent, and smarter than the rest of us would rate them. A fair number of people have body image or confidence issues that cause them to vastly underestimate their charms. Sometimes, people just ignore the unpleasant realities of life by not thinking about them. Even better examples come up in looking at objective assessments of eyewitness identification in criminal cases--people can fool themselves into believing all sorts of things.
I mean, just look at the two different stories that Reiser's son told regarding the last argument between his mother and father: He had to have been making false statements in one of the two interviews, since they contain mutually contradictory statements of fact. But did he believe in the truth of what he said at the time? If you don't think this is possible, try to imagine the terrific psychological pressures on the boy's head over the last few years.
Hence the problem with using brain activity as an indicator of truth: It can only tell you about the subjective truth of a person's statements, not the objective truth. There's a great potential for difference between the two.
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?
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.
"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!
The thing is: For every innocent person in jail, there's a criminal that got away with the crime. Having an innocent person in jail isn't just bad for that person, but bad for society as a whole.
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."
Well, I'm much more disturbed by Reiser playing graphically violent video games with his young son - to the point where the kids has nightmares - in order to "teach the culture of manhood", than by the fact he has a friend into BDSM and cutting. (Of course, Sturgeon's claim later on that he killed a bunch of people is more disturbing than either, and certainly throws dobut into the case against Reiser.)
BDSM? Body mod? Somebody you know is into it or something equally "strange", but hasn't told you. That normal-looking coder in the next office has a pierced penis; your brother's art history professor used to be a professional dominatrix. In every day "normal" society you're never going to find out.
Spend some time in the "alternative" cultures, though, and you'll find out how gloriously weird your neighbors are.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
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.
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.
Care to back that up?
Sure. Read the definitions of Black's Law Dictionary http://west.thomson.com/store/product.aspx?product _id=40231642&promcode=520963, the definitive source of such definitions in American jurisprudence. (Hint: Reiser is held in an American facility facing American charges in an American court. Thus, American definitions words apply.)
In England (where I expect you sourced gaol from), jails == prisons; the same facilities are used for both unconvicted inmates "on remand" and those who have been duly convicted and are serving out their sentences.
In America, jails (except for Texas, which has "state jails" for sentences up to 2 years, and the federal system, which often houses in BOP "prison" facilities pre-trial) are used for pre-trial detention and for sentences up to a year. Prisons are much larger facilities exclusively for sentenced inmates serving a year or more.
geek. lawyer.
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.
Don't take this one for granted, I haven't practiced enough of this psychic stuff to be sure about this.
'preciate the heads-up
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.
There is nothing strange about the terminology Hans used. Speaking of data structures or objects as 'live' entities with a 'life cycle' is normal in computer science. Objects are created ('born'), they live and then they are eventually destroyed. That last part is sometimes referred to as getting 'killed', such as by receiving a 'kill signal'. Because some objects are older than others, terms such as 'generations of objects' are also used.
Read the rest of this comment...
Hans shot first, so all he can do is to pray there'll be special edition where he doesn't.
Who is John Galt?
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