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Live Blogs From the Hans Reiser Trial
whoever57 writes "The Hans Reiser trial has been underway for some time now, the prosecution is moving towards the end of its case. For those interested, not only in the outcome of the trial, but a detailed description of the trial, including some insights into police methods, two reporters are live-blogging. One report is by Henry K. Lee for the San Francisco Chronicle and the other is by David Kravets and published by Wired"
If the tree doesn't balance then you must acquit!
but this doesn't sound good
When you give me a hard stare and (inaudible) that you are very good at combat, your request that I drop domestic-violence charges against you, it very much sounds like another threat
snip
You don't need to prove to me that you are a strong man. I never questioned that.
telling your wife you're good at combat? lol. I can almost imagine this as the comic book guy saying it.... and the marines are good at combat, hans reiser probably not so much.
The Wired link is interesting if only for the sketches, which resemble the work of the "usual gang of idiots" from MAD Magazine. All that's missing is Sergio's doodles in the margins.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
http://boards.insessiontrials.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=465
(Well, this is not blog... Does it really matter?)
Hans Reiser is a programmer who developed the ReiserFS file system as well as Reiser4. He's on trial for the murder of his wife who disappeared in 2006.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
It is a case without a body, nor evidence that the wife is dead and had not, as she threatened to do so I understand, returned home to her native Russia. The DA had better have some better evidence than a fart in the face, which is all I'd picked up thus far.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
1. have no justice system at all
2. have a human system of justice
which means you have all manner of abuses and failures and stupidity at every step of the system
those are your choices. 1 or 2. there is no
3. have a perfect infallible system of justice
sorry, never will be
to have this sort of disdain for the entire justice system because it has human flaws doesn't make you wise, it makes you naive
of course things can be improved, and that is where our disappointment in the system should be channeled. but this is not the vibe i get from some people. some people i get this vibe that they hate the idea of police and courts, rather than they'd like to improve them. which is an attitude which is bizarre and ignorant
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
...but what the hell is indymedia.com supposed to be? Looks like some scumbag grabbed that domain for the advertisement value of http://www.indymedia.org/.
Which is kind of hilarious.
Truth arises more readily from error than from confusion. -Francis Bacon
What disturbs me a bit is that one of the blogs doesn't mention the word 'linux' even once, while the other mentions it in almost every entry: "Hans Reiser -- the popular Linux programmer who is accused of killing [...]", "The trial of the Linux programmer, who is accused of killing his estranged wife", "Hans Reiser, the Linux developer accused of murdering his wife", "the 31-year-old estranged wife of the Linux programmer who authorities say murdered her"...
Of course, his work on the linux kernel might be what he's most known for and if you don't know him, then mentioning that is the right thing to do. But mentioning it so often creates an odd and disturbing link between 'murder' and 'linux'. Especially since as far as I know, his work on linux plays absolutely no role in the murder case.
the worst part, have you ever sat on a jury? I have been in 2 and some people's "justifications" are insane. One trial 2 women were willing to send the guy down the river 30 secodns after we got in the room, they based it on what the DA said that the judge told them to strike from the record. It was pure fantasy on the DA's part and we were instructed to not consider it.
People are people. They are this way today, were this way 10 years ago, they were this way 200 years ago. That's why we have a jury system so rigged such that a *single* person can hang the jury and let the defendant go.
we spent the next 8 hours going over things and trying to get these ditsy two to actually think. And this is the norm in Jury duty.
See?! It works! This is why the jury system is so beautiful! (And why it sucks so bad for those of us that think a little bit) Most people suck. But the odds of everybody sucking when you get 12 random people together drops rather dramatically.
Welcome to jurisprudence! BTW: my heart-felt thanks for serving on jury duty!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Agreed; I'd hate to end up in court over ANYTHING. Guilty, innocent, or entirely unaware of what I was being accused of, I'd probably still push the wrong buttons on the jury, just be being a geek.
;)
One thing I find interesting though, is the legal systems assertion that you're entitled to a "jury of your peers". What exactly do they mean by that, I wonder? Can you say you consider your peers to be other geeks? People of the same non-judgemental religion? Literally, peers on your P2P network? Other pimps?
My late Dad, a retired Cop used to say, "We would rather let 9 guilty ones go free to protect the 1 innocent."
Now it seems that the cops think "We'll convict 9 innocent ones to get the 1 guilty."
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
No, not necessarily. Because there wouldn't be the wrong decision. There also wouldn't be an encumbrance to acquittal. So if I was afraid of falsely convicting someone and serving the time they were sentenced, then the easiest way out of it is to acquit and not have anything hanging over me at all.
The only way you could determine the wrong decision was made is to replay the entire trial to people who haven't talked about it or the outcome in any way since the conclusion. the easiest way to get around that might be to seat two or three juries and take the popular opinion. but anything done after the fact has the benefit of information not present in the original trial being presented as well as information being presented differently. If the first jury didn't buy that the reasons his fingerprints where on the gun and powder residue on his hands was because he took it to the shooting range the very same day it was used to kill someone, they could bring in others at the shooting range that saw him shooting it. If he claims it was stolen on the way home and there was a police report about it, then he has a plausible excuse for something that would normally be a conviction of guilt.
but it wouldn't have to stop at that. Anything could keep the fact the same and be presented differently if only in the words being used to change how convincing something is. The prosecutor could say something different and lose creditability and so on. It wouldn't be the same trial and the decisions wouldn't be the same.
Maybe forcing the jury to do interviews with the state and defense counsel and allowing stuff discovered in this way to be grounds for a retrial could be the answer. Otherwise, it depends on the other members to be reasonable enough and assertive enough to make the right things happen.
i was complaining about the morons who have 0% faith in the system
you are complaining about the morons who have 100% faith in the system
both extremes, of course, are moronic
the true attitude we should all have is found somewhere in the middle
the justice system, like most human endeavours, is severely compromised and insufficient and error-prone and manipulated
and yet, life without it is even worse
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Nina Reiser discussed mediation between the two in the e-mail, which she apparently wrote on June 19, 2005. The judge said the jury will hear a redacted portion of the e-mail. Goodman then read sentences from Nina Reiser's e-mail that the jury will not be allowed to hear because the prejudical effect outweighs the probative value: "I will not continue mediation if you keep threatening me. When you give me a hard stare and (inaudible) that you are very good at combat, your request that I drop domestic-violence charges against you, it very much sounds like another threat. I warn you that if you are going to communicate with me in this manner, I will have to end mediation and report it to the police. However, threats are not part of the mediation process."
But of course, that's not admitted.
This is my sig.
"We spent the next 8 hours going over things and trying to get these ditsy two to actually think."
Most people are not consistently able to be logical. Even judges often give me the impression that they are lucky not to be programmers. They are sometimes so unable to be logical that they would not be able to debug their programs.
States often hold cases in local city neighborhoods so that it can be comfortable for people to observe. For example, I watched a state supreme court case in an auditorium at a local junior college in which a man was being tried for doing something that was illegal when he did it, became legal later so that he was allowed to go without punishment, and later was made illegal again. The prosecutor was like an attack dog; he gave the impression he wanted to convict anyone for anything.
The state supreme court judges seemed sleepy; they seemed willing to put in an amount of energy that was comfortable for them, not the amount of energy necessary to make the right thing happen.
To serve in government, there should be comprehensive tests of ability to be logical. Maybe no one should be allowed to be a lawyer except if he or she wrote a complicated program and debugged it.
We live in a culture that is absolutely dependent on careful logic. However, people who are logical aren't respected. Our culture is also absolutely dependent on understanding of technology, but people who understand technology are called disrespectful terms: "geeks" and "nerds".
The amount of money available to corrupt the local governments and the federal government in the United States is huge. Millions are available to elect those who are intellectually lazy or easily influenced to be corrupt, judges included. In my state, some judges are elected; the money to create recognition of their names apparently comes from those who want corruption.
Read your state laws. They were written by people who were elected for their popularity, not for their ability to be logical, leaving numerous opportunities for corruption. Laws often (usually?) have numerous logical shortcomings, such as edge cases which often happen but are not considered by the law. A programmer who didn't handle exceptions would be fired; people like George W. Bush, who has apparently never shown any willingness or ability to be carefully analytical, are re-elected.
Another part of the problem is that lawyers make far more money if the law is confusing and illogical.
Correction: it'll end all convictions, period.
There's absolutely no reason for me to put someone away if I can be personally punished for making a mistake, but not be personally rewarded for making the right decision.
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Of course the suggestion is a little over-simplitic, but you have to start somewhere. The key is that the investigators, prosecutors, and courts have near-zero personal liability even when they act maliciously.
Actually, what's needed is to find out who in the system was responsible for what the jury heard or didn't hear. Quite often it will probably be the prosecutor who does the time (can you say "Nifong" boys & girls) for hiding exculpatory evidence or putting forth a bogus case. Other times it could be a cop or witness with an ax to grind who abuses the system.
Frog-marching an occasional jury, judge, cop, and/or prosecutor would work wonders.
But...
Unless the jury can be shown to have received deceiving testimony, they should be held to account. Use the same standard as in any other negligence case for this.
And the whole concept of a guilty plea needs to be abolished completely. Too many guilty people take "the deal" and get off light, whereas an innocent who pleads their case can be ramrodded into a major sentence. Make all cases go before the jury (properly sworn to personal liability) and a whole lot of bad cases are simply... gone.
Oh... and if acquitted, the courts should pick up the defendant's legal bill and reimburse for lost wages and other damages incurred.
You're technically right, but you hint at a tremendous breath of possibility for improvement without making those suggestions.
Allow me to offer some of those options:
Every one of these suggestions would dramatically change the system of justice in the US, and each would come with its own set of new problems. If I were less prone to keeping comments short, I could write pages worth of evaluation of each of the suggestions above and they're an off the cuff group to begin with. There is absolutely no reason we cannot change our justice system for the better, and there are plenty of people who could offer better solutions than some random /. poster. The real question is whether we believe they would be better. The system may suck, but it sucks less than many others. If we're not satisfied with it though, lets not dismiss the possibility that there could be a better one but I'm with you on your end point, let us dismiss those who criticize without suggesting improvement.
Back in my day when we chiseled our bits into stone and sent them by mule train from village to village...
Here is a link in one sentence:
Hans was regularly going to Russia to hire Russian hackers to work on reiserfs (now included into Linux tree), and this is the location where he ordered Nina (from Russian Bride catalogue), who became his wife...
see?
"Hans Reiser killed his wife..." See this comment from on old Slashdot story: "My personal opinion is that she is not in Russia."
Maybe no one should be allowed to be a lawyer except if he or she wrote a complicated program and debugged it.
Lawyers are trained in logic, but they use words rather than mathematical constructs. Judges are not trained to rely purely on logic, and they bring in their experiences and personal preferences. It is impossible, and likely not desirable, to have a legal system that is run by humans attempting to engage in robot logic exercises. The worst excesses of the law are as likely to be from logic divorced from reality as from excess emotion.
The ability to debug a program is not always an indicator of capability in pure logic. You likely know some programmers who are marginal at best, and some who have finely honed logic skills. Then there are mathematicians who embrace logic in a more pure form than most programmers you'll ever meet. Logic of that sort is, like all human abilities, relative.
Laws are indeed made by elected representatives who were chosen for a wide variety of reasons by a conflicted mass of people who can barely agree on anything. But can you seriously imagine what a group of mathematicians and programmers would do if elected? Have you ever worked in a university? Have you seen the ego wars and backbiting and general b.s. that happens? The ability to perform mental calculations in the cold, abstract world of computers and math doesn't necessarily translate at all to the fuzzy-edged world of human beings. It would be nice if the world of human interaction could be reduced to formulas, but that just isn't the way things are. And that's why, sad as it is, we have a complicated legal structure and bozos in public office.
Another part of the problem is that lawyers make far more money if the law is confusing and illogical.
Here's a first year law school problem for you. Try to write a rape statute. Write down what you think the definition of rape should be and the punishments for it. Then show it to three female friends and three male friends and ask them to poke holes in the statute.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
but "Do away with the lawyers"? wuh? how's that supposed to work?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I write sci-fi for metalheads
the problem with judging cases with a professional class of adjudicators is that over time, the adjudicator forms an agenda, and his or her judgment becomes less and less about the actual case in front of them, and more about his or her abstract approach to a certain kind of crime. judgments on one case begin to color and cloud judgments on others. this is extremely dangerous
btw, this effect is absolutely certain. it's called the seduction of power. no one is immune to it. to say anyone is immune to it, is to simply admit that one is also blind to their own weaknesses
say for example you have an expert on dna evidence. the man has various personal opinions of his own on certain procedures and such. it is impossible not to have these opinions. anyone who studies any special class of knowledge has certian passionate opnions on the subject. it is impossible not to. no one devotes years of their life to a subject matter and has a robotic neutral outlook on the subject matter. its simply impossible. if someone had such a neutral uncaring attitude on a subject matter, they would never get involved in studying in it in the first place. catch-22
so these underlying passions are always in danger of seriously clouding an experts agenda. there is no such thing as an expert on any class of knowledge that is also impartial and without an agenda. i repeat: it is impossible for a human being to be learned in a subject matter and not also have a dangerous (dangerous in terms of an ability to judge impartially) ideological agenda on that subject matter
furthermore, much of education really isn't education, but indoctrination into the dominant opinion on a subject matter within a given academic clique. for objective sciences, like physics, or math, this is less so, but still prevalent. go ahead, ask any doctoral student in any university if there is no soap operas and cliquish political drama and pressure to conform to the dominant opinion. for soft sciences, like psychology and criminal justice, this effect is massive. the end result is those who are supposedly annoited with the most objective knowledge on a subject, also saddled with the most subjective attitudes and agenda on the subject matter
this is why a jury of impartial peers is superior to a professional class of adjudicators: they don't care. your professional judging class of swedes DO care. about an ideologicla agenda. a concept absolutely anathema to the idea of impartial justice
universities, by bequeathing the imprimature of truth and knowledge, merely rubber stamp and give weight and credence to something that is nothing more than intellectual fashion and vogue in the soft sciences. go ahead and compare dominant attidues on controversial topics from now and 30 years ago. you can say new research merely changes attitudes. except that a lot of this new research often boils down to the conclusions of folk wisdom from 5 centuries ago! pfffft. it's all bullshit
so so-called experts have something to prove, an axe to grind. this will color their judgment on cases, espcially as they blur together. his or her judgment on cases begin to resemble less a search for impartial truth, and more a soapbox for him to push his agenda. i am deathly frightened of being judged by an "expert". he won't see and my case at all. he will see his or emotionally invested theories, and how my case befor ehim or her could prove or disprove his theories. frightening
meanwhile, the stupid, uninterested guy on the street who would rather be drunk? i MUCH RATHER be judged by him. the experts can be in teh courtroom to guide him or her about scientific facts and opinion. and taken as one or the other, the man on the street can most definitely have some really bad prejudices. but averaged out over 12 people, those prejudices cancel out. those prejudices don't average out that way with a bunch of so called experts, all born of the same university clique, deciding amongst themselves who is deserving or not, simply because they conform to the same opinio
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This would cause the entire legal system to collapse. No jury would convict if they were personally liable. There would be no reason to do so and every reason not to.
Plea bargaining is problematic. However, in the system as it stands, it's not going to go away. The courts only hear between 2-5% of criminal charges; the others are dismissed or plea-bargained away. If you get rid of plea-bargaining, either the number of people charged needs to drop dramatically or the number of judges needs to increase dramatically.
Why should the Court be responsible? Perhaps you mean the Attorney General's office? Again, you create the same problem. Why would the DA/ADA prosecute if s/he is going to be held liable for doing so?
There's a reason why, generally, officers of the court are immune while in the exercise of their duties. It's because otherwise, the system would fall apart, just like without privilege.
"It is possible to commit no errors and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." -Peak Performance
until you need one
;-)
a professional class of people whom you hire to guide you through a complex legal system is absolutely a necessity because
1. you will never find the time to learn the complexity of your legal system on your own unless you are a lawyer yourself
2. if your legal system isn't complex, it is simple and brutal and you are living in a barbaric society
so there's simply no way around lawyers. they are necessity. a disgusting necessity, but a necessity nonetheless
when people say they hate lawyers, what they are really saying, in a deferred way, is they hate the fact that justice is a human, flawed endeavour
that the lawyer class seems to attract the slimiest of human beings, rather than more virtuous ones, is an observation i won't touch, because i, er, agree with it
oh what the hell: shoot lawyers on sight, you win
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
From the blog published by Sfgate: "In all, Nina Reiser was about $30,000 in debt, he said."
More testimony:
"She seemed honest, right?" Du Bois asked.
"She definitely seemed honest, yes," Erwin said.
"You had the impression she was an honest person?" Du Bois asked.
"Yes," Erwin said.
"She exuded honesty?" Du Bois pressed as a juror in the front row appeared to have a bemused smile.
"Yes," Erwin said.
And this seems interesting, from the Wired blog:
"The Reiser couple's young son, now 8 years old, had told local child protective services officials and testified before a different judge during a 2006 preliminary hearing that he did see his mother drive away after his mother left him and his little sister for the Labor Day weekend. Before the jury, he did not testify he saw his mother leave the house."
This too:
"But on Wednesday, the scientist testified on cross examination that errors she made meant it was unclear whether there was two sources of blood -- meaning it could be the wife's or the husband's -- or blood from both of them. She testified she was not '100 percent certain' whose blood was on the pillar.
"It's an important distinction. There are two pieces of forensic evidence linking the husband to allegedly killing his wife. The other forensic evidence is a sleeping bag cover found in the defendant's car stained with the woman's blood. The rest of the evidence is circumstantial, including the husband's front passenger seat vanishing."
It is a scary system you have.
Our system is a final check on government power, and that's come in handy on many occasions. A jury's conviction can be overturned, but an acquittal can not.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I'm often curious as to what those faceless FOSS contributors are doing instead of programming while I'm waiting for them to deliver their next milestone, as they blow their next deadline.
"Murder trial" usually doesn't occur to me. Usually something more like "new videogame release" seems more likely.
--
make install -not war
I write sci-fi for metalheads
however, your atittude and your sig is disturbing. you have a profound mistrust of government, lawyers, and politicians. not that you should like them, but i think your severe dislike of them speaks more about your own personal failures in an ability to fundamentally trust than anything a lawyer or politician ever did to you. i wouldn't be surprised if your mistrust also poisoned your personal relationships. it is bad to trust too much in this world. it is also bad to trust too little
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
My first and only experience as a juror was the exact opposite. Everyone on the jury behaved completely reasonably and deliberations went quite smoothly. (Disclaimer: I ended up as foreperson.) The judge was also very competent - sarcastic, but competent. What wasn't reasonable was the case itself or either of the lawyers.
Without getting into too much detail, the prosecution didn't even come close to proving their case. Had the defense attorney simply said "the defense declines to present a case and sends this to the jury without argument" we would have had no choice but to find the defendant not guilty on all six counts he was charged with (four of them quite serious).
But rather than take this course what does the defense do? Why, they put the defendant on the stand and he promptly proceeds to make the prosecution's case for them! He admitted everything, claiming he acted in self-defense. Trouble is, uncontested physical evidence clearly demonstrated that four of the six counts couldn't possibly have been self-defense. My mouth was literally hanging open as I watched this guy convict himself and I could see that most of the other jurors were just as shocked.
The first words out of one of the other jurors' mouth when we entered the jury room were along the lines of, "We should let this dumb bastard off and charge both the attorneys with incompetence!"
Anyway, my advice to anyone serving on a jury where the case lasts for more than a day is to try and get to know the other jurors if at all possible. Go out to lunch together or something. You can't talk about the case but nothing prevents you from talking about other stuff. The only difficult part for the jury I was on was deciding the two counts where the self-defense claim could possibly have been legitimate. A little knowledge about the other jurors really helps when making decisions like that.
You have presented two options as the only ones possible.
You present scorched-earth "no justice" as the alternative of the current "broken" system.
That is false choice. There are reformist or radical reimaginings of the justice system that could be better.
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
that if he didn't name the file system ReiserFS, then would as many people be paying attention to this particular trial?
these are valid concepts, everyone, including you, has a vested interest in. it benefits your life, whether you realize it or not. some entity has to represent these concepts
i agree with you 100% that plenty of politicians do an awful job represrnting these concepts. but not all of them
and there is no way, in this world, to protect and promote these concepts without a governmental body
in other words, government is often a failure in the many ways you can demonstrate it is. and it is still essential to your life, and preferable to no government at all
therefore, in order to be a morally and intellectually honest person, you need to stop attacking the concept of government and politicians, and start using your words and your thoughts to improve them
accept the idea of government and poltics, make peace with the necessary evils of life in the real world. at the same time, fight with all your fury against bad government and bad polticians. get it? get the difference between that attitude and your current attitude?
because currently, you sound like a big fool
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Laugh all you want, but those "professionals" work for the state, do they not? In Common Law countries it's tradition that the state doesn't get to put you away without convincing a jury of your peers that you did in fact commit the crime in question.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
you just reworded my choice #2 and said i did not put forth that option
just read a comment in its entirety before responding to it next time please
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
if I can be personally punished for making a mistake,
Well, they'd have to put you in front of a jury to punish you, of course.
And, of course, civic duty, mumble mumble, doing the right thing, mumble, its own reward, mumble.
Really, tho, the system should contain more incentive to reach the *right* verdict, rather than *a* verdict or a sides verdict, and while that might include the jury, it should definitely contain stronger incentives for the other members of the system.
No, in fact we don't have such a system.
We have a system where we have a judge and a bench. Sitting on the bench are ordinary people. The difference is that they are not sitting on the bench for one trial or two, but for a lot of trials. They are appointed by the political parties (but usually not politicians themselves).
Our courts are modeled on the old "ting" (gathering - a > 1200 year old tradition), though it is many times removed from it. The big difference is that we do not have the system of common law (we did away with that som 800 years ago).
Yes, I am a biological organism. All rumors to the contrary are just that, rumors.
Do I really? Consider this: the means to destroy all of humanity -- nuclear weapons -- are under the control of politicians. These politicians are no more intelligent than you and I, no more moral, and no wiser. If you're not willing to trust me with such destructive power (not that I'd want it), then why in the names of all the demons ever worshiped by man would you trust such power to people who actually seek out power over others? That's what a politician is: somebody who actively seeks authority over others.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
part of the american system is shit like oj: morons floored by celebrity letting off a double murderer
and yet with that flaw, the amrican jurist system is still superior to the swedish classist one
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
one big evolutionary step was democracy. in a democracy, you can have a moronic frat boy like gw bush in the white house, and in 4 or 8 years, he is gone. in other words, he does not hold absolute power, like vladmir putin, nor is the government controlled by a clique of technocrats in beijing, nor is it controlled by some cranky old men who say they speak for god, like in tehran, nor is it controlled by some asshole whose great granddady won a battle, like in monarchy
what politicians do do, in order to win votes, is water themselves down to the lowest common denominator in their words to appeal to the most people. such that you are disgusted, rightfully, by their emptiness. and yet it is necessary to do this to appeal to the most bnumber of people weakly, rather than appealing storngly, to only a few, if you stick tight with your convictions
and yet, this sliminess in democracy is still superior to authoritarianism, technocracy, theogracy, monarchy, etc.
now you could improve upon this: not being beholden to corporations, for example
but the way you are oging to do this is not by rejecting the valid functions that governments serve in society, but by enunciating a way to fulfill these functions in a way better than we currently do
and no, firned, libertarianism or some flavor of anarchism is not that way, sorry. people don't govern themselves. they really don't. nothing about education or income level about it, sorry. get used to the fact. we'll do better osme day than we ar enow, absolutely, but by finessing the goals of the system, not by rejecting those goals
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The man himself might be gone, but the executive orders he issued are still in force. The precedents he set (such as his liberal use of signing statements) remain. Any abuses of power that he might have gotten away with serve only to embolden the next person to hold the office.
As for Congress, well, let's just say that Mark Twain was right: No person's life, liberty, or property are safe when Congress is in session. And, in the wake of Kelo vs. New London, CT, the same can be said about the Supreme Court.
What we have isn't a democracy. It used to be a republic, but now it's just an oligarchy dominated by the military-industrial-congressional complex. I doubt that reform will be possible; there are too many people with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. Revolution (violent or nonviolent) that replaces the existing government with a new one will do nothing but sow the seed of a new tyranny.
but by finessing the goals of the system, not by rejecting those goalsYou make a mistake by reifying the government. The system has no goals. It is the people who run the system and exploit it for their own ends that have goals.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
1. if everyone is self-interested and barely invested in outcomes, a democracy still functions better than all other governmental systems so far devised by mankind. because your eager beaver citizen test is frankly, laughable: no average citizen, in any country that has ever existed, currently exists, or ever will exist will meet your standards. so you raise your eager beaver citizen litmus test as a valid concept simply out of your ignorance of the reality of humankind.
people are mostly self-interested and inward. that's reality. who said your agenda was sueprior to theirs? who said what your list of what people should know about their world is a natural agenda? that's all your eager beaver litmus test is: "abide by my agenda, or you are bad citizen". what you propose is worse than ignorance and selfishness. you propose indoctrination into an agenda. that's what you "education" is, it's just ideological indoctrination. but, for the sake of argument, let's asusme you actually have a lis tof valid neutral educational items everyone should have. do you really think that is goign to be rammed down people's throats without some propaganda going along for the ride? remember, the government is doing this "educating", right? i'd PREFER people to be ignorant and selfish than your idea of what citizens should be: brainwashed. you don't know that's what your opinion means, but that's what it would be in the reality of its execution
2. yes, i absolutely agree 100% with you: some people are most definitely more competent than others. after that, we radically diverge on the conclusions of that observation. i actually do believe that people are better and worse than other people, on a whole number of judgment calls. however, there is no one out there who can accurately measure those qualities in any trustworthy way
therefore, you have no choice other than to start looking at people as equals, and let things fall as they may. proof by outcome of life. no test can test for the qualities that are important in leading, for example. the only honest way to look at your fellow human being is as an equal. there is no magic test or projected characteristic that is a shortcut for making a determination of a complicated quality of that person. race for example. income another example. all failures at judging someone's true value
take a test for intelligence. can you even define intelligence? how incredibly complex a topic are we dealing with? do you honestly think it can be measured in such a way as to find the best leader out there? your standard iq test has things for example that put value in manipulating 3D shapes in your head. there are autistic people who can do that. meanwhile, some guy fails miserably on an iq test for manipulating 3D objects in your head. ok. that same guy is extremely gifted in many leadership qualities: persuasion, instilling trust, etc. so what is the point of this stupid iq test again in determining worthiness in life? zero
so the idea of drawing people into classes in terms of good potential to lead or not lead, vote or not vote, is completely a nonstarter. it's not that people aren't better or worse than another. i believe in fact they are. it's just that there is no way to determine that objectively, so you can't go down that path in any moral or intellectually honest fashion to start trying to determine that objectively, or subjectively. the only thing you can do is treat everyone equally, even though you know they aren't. simply because there is no more morally or intellectually honest way to proceed
3. "No revolution gives power to the people like you seem to think; they put new aristocracies in place, which can be good or bad."
us democracy is poisoned by corporate money. the ideal democracy wouldn't be poisoned by money in this way. however, corporations influencing government via $ is a LOT BETTER than the heads of corporations outright running the country, which is what aristocracy is
in other words aristocracy!=corporatocracy. corporatocracy is an e
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
you are part of the system, and you can exert control in it
this is absolutely true
but you don't believe that, which points to a flaw in your personality and your psychology, not any superior understanding of reality
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=254503&cid=19968459
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Round here Grand Jurors apply, provide references, and interview for a year-long term on the jury. These are not draftees who couldn't get out of jury duty.
You are apparently just displaying your ignorance. Remember that the U.S. justice system with juries was an improvement over the prior justice system that had no juries. The idea is that if 12 average people acquit you, you are acquitted. There can be no retrial. If 12 average people convict you the judge still has the power to overturn it and acquit you. It's a rarity but it does happen when the judge looks at the facts of the case and decides that the prosecution did not make a sound legal argument. Note though that to a judge circumstantial evidence is still evidence so I think Hans is probably going to be found guilty. The majority of cases are based on circumstantial evidence. It's not like criminals are going to help the prosecution make the case by leaving all sorts of clear evidence of the crime.
Occasionally this means that people get acquitted for something they are very likely to have done. And of course sometimes people get convicted for something they did not do. But you cannot blame the jury system for that. That is no more likely to happen in the jury system vs. the non-jury system. The bias is heavily in favor of the defendant. Both a jury and a judge have to convict a man. If either one acquits him, he's free.
And that, frankly, is about the best we can do. Some people argue that judges should be appointed and not elected so they don't have to bow to political demands and indeed our Supreme Court is stocked with lifetime appointees. At the local level though it's far more common for judges to be elected. Even if the jury convicts a man and the judge does not acquit him because it would be dangerous to his political career there is still a chance that an appellate court will overturn it. And if that fails there's a chance that the state's supreme court will overturn it. And if that fails there's a chance that the federal Supreme Court will overturn it.
You have to be very guilty to be convicted of anything in this country. Even if you are found guilty there are a lot of chances to get it overturned. And if you cannot afford an attorney there are thousands of them that you can contact who will take on your appeal pro bono. Reiser may even get one of these attorneys after he is convicted. And he may not be convicted if the jury doesn't believe the lab worker who changed her story.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
Forensic evidence IS circumstantial evidence.
For example, if they found five gallons of her blood in his car, this would lead on to infer that he had her body in that car. This, it is circumstantial evidence that he killed her, not direct evidence that he killed her.
Circumstantial does not mean "weak".
The cake is a pie
Breakfast served all day!
"Why don't you shut the fuck up and go work on that low-budget horror movie of yours?"
Why don't you pay attention to who you're conversing with so you can realize more than one person here feels it necessary to tell you you're full of shit?
"Been there, done that, got the t-shirt."
Like I said, excuses we've heard before. You couldn't have proven my point about you better if you tried.
My only guess is that DuBois is trying to point out that Reiser couldn't have easily used his hatchback to transport a body, but I'm not really sure. All I know is, either DuBois is really bad with simple arithmetic, or he was making a point that sailed right over Brock's head. (Seven feet by seven feet by seven feet is 343 cubic feet. Twenty-three cubic feet, on the other hand, is a pretty tiny space. Yes, I'm sure you can cram a body into that, but it takes a bit of effort.)
I've noticed (as it appears to me in viewing it right now) a bug in comment threading in this article. The comment thread entitled "Linux Defense" ("If the tree doesn't balance, you must acquit.") is duplicated on two pages in its entirety when I view the comments at a -1 threshold. The initial comment that appears twice has the same comment ID number in both places -- it's not just a double post.
Not sure if anyone will notice, or if this will help or not, but FWIW. Thx.
sigfault (core dumped)
Truth, Justice, ... and the American way.
Well, how about a combination of the two? A jury of 9- 3 judges and 6 people.
OSx86 FTW
I write sci-fi for metalheads
There seems to be this misconception that circumstantial evidence is inadmissible and therefore doesn't count. I got corrected on this by my wife and several friends who are lawyers. Circumstantial evidence still counts, there doesn't have to be a smoking gun for a conviction. I think people are swayed too much by the courtroom dramas on TV and see attorneys who yell "Objection! Circumstantial." and think it means something. It doesn't. It's a well-worn theatrical device to draw tension and emotion to the scene.
/. fix. ;-)
The fact is all of those things mentioned are evidence, all of them are admissible, all of them can point to a guilty man. One suspicious thing pointing at Reiser may have been passed off, but you can't just throw off all of these things as mere coincidences.
BTW, sorry for the late post, but that's what happens on a long work day without my
Comment removed based on user account deletion
qwerty
You see when politicians want to pass a new suckworthy law, it is lawyers reading those laws and lobbying for them to be softened or abolished if politicians want to make it legal to impose full body cavity searches when you go to the airport. I have personally spent substantial amounts of time pawing over new laws in our "cybr-tewworism" society that would have made IT professionals liable for 15 years gaol (jail) for using a tools like netcat or nmap. As a coder, lawyers are the closest thing that I know as a kindred spirit. Law is at least as complex code and don't forget a fair bit of hostility is directed in OUR direction for controlling an everyday person's destiny on a computer.
Sure not all lawyers are great people, but a lot of them volunteer their time to stop politicians passing stupid laws. So before you go criticising lawyers why don't you pick up a new stupid piece of legislation and start looking over it and see how poorly it is constructed. Put another way imagine what sort of code your local representatives would write and imagine it controlling your life, because that is the reality.
Essentially a lot of lawyers debug the law. Sometimes they get it wrong because they don't know the specifics of a certain segment of society, like trying to debug code that you have no idea what it does - not easy. This is a big reason for IT professionals to (at least) examine laws that are related to IT so we get laws that make sense. I can tell you from experience it's well within a IT professionals capability to understand.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
I do apologize. I was treating OP as if he was an American and thus should have learned of this in primary school. Obviously he was a Swede since he identified himself as such. And for what it's worth, most Americans wouldn't remember that they'd learned it in primary school, much to our detriment.
The prior system would of course be the very old (pre-Norman) Engish system and the systems generally used throughout Europe, even today. So give the Brits credit since it is English Common Law that brought about the jury trial. It was the U.S. though that codified it in its constitution and almost immediately refined it in the 7th amendment to the constitution.
Doing some limited googling it seems that the big change with the U.S. system was that trial by jury is the default in the U.S. system whereas trial by jury had to be requested under Common Law. Under the U.S. system you can request a "bench trial" meaning that the judge alone will rule on the case. Therefore, if you feel the evidence does not show your guilt but a jury may find you guilty because they don't like you you can waive your right to a jury trial and have a judge decide the case purely on its merits. Therefore, if you like the Swedish (and much of the rest of Europe) system you can simply request it.
I wish I could think of it now but at least I recall being told probably way back in middle school or something that the right to a trial by jury was considered of utmost importance to prevent political imprisonment. That is, people were being imprisoned by the English for treason with only English-appointed judges making this verdict.
Remember that the U.S. system is explicitly designed to allow another revolution. In a sort of queer way though the very things that allow for a revolution allow us to avoid a revolution. Reagan commented on this in his January 1981 inaugural speech which is probably one of the greatest speeches of all time.
It should be noted though that revolution did happen once in our history and failed. Historians later referred to it as the civil war which is somewhat inaccurate.
Most countries that do have jury trials restrict them to criminal (felony) cases rather than petty offences.
(One fun twist was that in France people were often reluctant to have jury trials as it used to be impossible to appeal the result of a jury trial - the people had spoken, that was that.)
Watch this Heartland Institute video
you're replying to the wrong guy
let's put it this way: if i have hope, am i a fool?
and if you are certain we are all nothing but slaves for generation after generation, no hope of change, aren't you part of the problem? isn't the way you think the way a slave thinks? hopeless and helpless to exert any change?
you have a slave's mentality: bitch and moan, but don't believe in positive change. for you, it's all the same, and never changes. that makes you a slave, and a loser
i'm sorry i don't think like you
i'm not a slave, like you
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
any civilization of sufficient complexity is beyond the complete understanding of any one person, no matter how intelligent they are
in fact, the richer and larger the civilization, the more complex. so your desire to see less complexity is actually a desire to see a more brutal stunted civilization
you need to make peace with the fact that you will not be able to understand it all. no one will. and that's a good thing, as a measure of how large and rich our civilization has become
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It is not like you are making a great discovery.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I think the prosecutor is more to blame most of the time. The jury doesn't have the resources to investigate everything, they have to believe what they're presented with. The prosecutor has all the resources of the State, and yet so many of them don't give a crap, or purposely ignore the truth. Look at the prosecutor in the Duke Lacrosse case... the ONLY reason he got in trouble was that he took on some very rich people who don't mind spending a few pennies on vengeance.