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Hans Reiser and the "Geek Defense" Strategy
lseltzer alerts us to a story in the Washington Post on the defense strategy in the Hans Reiser murder trial. "In the courtroom where Hans Reiser is on trial for murder, [the evidence] might appear to indicate guilty knowledge. But his attorneys cast it as evidence of an innocence peculiar to Hans, a computer programmer so immersed in the folds of his own intellect that he had no idea how complicit he was making himself appear. 'Being too intelligent can be a sort of curse,' defense counsel William Du Bois said. 'All this weird conduct can be explained by him, but he's the only one who can do it. People who are commonly known as computer geeks are so into the field.'"
Unless they found Nina's blood all over Reiser's car
I think they did, which is why he was charged over other possible suspects.
He designed and implemented on his own what normally takes many groups of people years to create. And his filesystem is (or at least was) competitive with the best in the field. There is little doubt he is (or was) a genius. Whether he committed murder is another question.
when in doubt, Wikipedia!
Linus Torvalds originally developed the Linux kernel as a hobby OS for the Intel 80386 CPU, incorporating elements from MINIX, although with entirely new code.[12] Initially Torvalds wanted to call the kernel he developed Freax (a combination of "free", "freak", and the letter X to indicate that it is a Unix-like system), but his friend Ari Lemmke, who administered the FTP server where the kernel was first hosted for downloading, named Torvalds' directory linux.Of course, nothing on Wikipedia should be taken as fact unless it can be backed up with supporting references, but that's how it goes.
Support the 30 Hour Work Week!!!
"An operating system (OS) is the software that manages the sharing of the resources of a computer and provides programmers with an interface used to access those resources. " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system Linux is an operating system.
Sometimes when I'm working on projects things disappear, I suspect gremlins.
Anti-social means something different than isolated or reclusive; it means actively doing things in disregard for the rights of others. Its symptoms are more likely to include a history of arrests rather than living a parent's basement plotting a prank on a boss. General use vs. proper use is generally okay, but in cases like these (including schizophrenic vs. DID), the general usage simply reinforces stereotypes of particular mental illnesses which stigmatizes patients and does little to educate the public about such illnesses.
The standard of proof in a criminal case is 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. This is far less than 'beyond a shadow of a doubt'.
But then again, I could be wrong.
According to reports I've read, he bought those books after he was treated as a suspect by the cops, not before the crime.
http://www.freax.org/ has a little more info
"Sean Sturgeon is a known killer,"
No, Sean Sturgeon *claims* to have killed a bunch of people. I don't believe he's been charged, much less prosecuted. He strikes me as a publicity whore, like that gut that confessed to the Jon Benet Ramsey killing.
"Nina Reiser was a physician"
That is either a huge non sequiter or I am missing something.
"Who the hell commits a crime with pair of books on crime in their vehicle, and then leave it all there for someone to find."
Umm, criminals? They aren't the smartest bunch, you know. Evidence? they get caught.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
She had taken a job interview, was accepted for the job (after negotiating an extra few grand because she was now going to be a single mother - you don't bother negotiating if all you're doing is setting up a story line), etc. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/07/BAOFUTA27.DTL
Also, Nina wasn't a "mail-order bride".
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/02/hans-reiser-m-3.html
So let's recap:
There's nothing idiosyncratic about a heater core leak, which is what usually dumps water/coolant into your floorboards in a failure. Heaters usually work by routing the coolant through another miniature radiator (the heater core) on your side of the firewall. When you turn the heater on, it opens a valve that starts routing coolant through that loop. Fans blow heat from the core into the cabin. This is why turning the heater onto full can lower the temperature on an overheating car--you're actually putting another radiator into action.
When that radiator fails, it will leak from under the dash onto the floorboards.
Lots of cars have this setup. I've had it happen in a Mazda-designed Ford and an older Chevy, and remember my dad's VW Rabbit had the issue too. It's a common configuration, and could be a perfectly good explanation for removing the seat so you can fully dry the carpet and work on it.
The entire point of being on a jury is to weigh available evidence and come to a *decision*. Sure, the defense attorney would love to get indecisive people, but the prosecutor will be looking for those who can think and come to a reasonable decision based on the available evidence. The judge is looking for people who can work within the rules of the system, but that surely doesn't preclude decision-makers either.
I've been on a jury before, and contrary to popular opinion, it was not composed of people who had nothing but time on their hands. Nearly everyone there seemed to be a businessperson or professional of some sort. Even so, no one complained about the time it took, as we all knew a young man's future was to be greatly impacted by our decision. As such, we took our job extremely seriously (and it wasn't anything so dramatic as a murder trial). While I'd never hope to spend another day surrounded by arguing lawyers, I certainly wouldn't go out of my way to recuse myself if called up again.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
I believe the reason the judge let the case go ahead was because Hans was demanding a speedy trial (as is his right) so the judge wanted to give the prosecution time to get their case together.. even after getting Hans to waive his right to a speedy trial and delaying it so Hans' lawyer could go on holidays, the prosecution still couldn't come up with any more evidence.
What really sucks is that at the conclusion of the prosecution, Hans' lawyer asked for the case to be dismissed on the evidence. Because this is a standard thing for the defense to do, the judge didn't even consider it. He has publicly said that the case has no evidence, but he won't throw the case out on two separate occasions.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I believe Hans actually purchased those books after the police started questioning him about his ex-wife's disappearance. In other words, if he's innocent, he was either a) trying to figure out what happened to her, or b) trying to figure out why the police thought he did it. (If he's guilty, he's trying to figure out if he missed anything.)
Looking up how a murder investigation works, once you become a suspect in it, is exactly the sort of behavior you'd expect from a geek. It would be my first impulse, too, except I wouldn't be stupid enough to purchase books and leave them laying around. He purchased them 'surreptitiously', whatever that means, I'd actually go past that and not purchase them at all, just reading them in the library and bookstore.
As for removing parts of a car: My car has all its seats, although I have ripped out the center console and rigged up an electrical switching system in the glove compartment running to the rear of the car. Geeks do weird things with cars, maybe he's just absurdly gas-conscious. (Someone above asked why he didn't rip out the backseat too...he has two kids, he needs a backseat.) I once considered using the fold-down backseats in my car to make a bed extending into the truck. I have at least two 'secret' compartments in my car that are simply parts of the interior not attached firmly that I can pull off and get into easily. I sometimes remove the inside of the gearshift so people can't steal my car, at least not until they figure out why the hell they can't shift into drive and find something to push the thing down.
Geeks do weird things to other stuff too, I used a TV for six years that wouldn't turn off, I had to flip a power strip. I've ripped out tape-deck guts from a boom box because they didn't work and it was lighter without them. Once I was in someone's house when they made a casual remark about wishing their fridge door opened the other way, and I pointed out that the door actually could come off and be reattached to the other side with a little bit of work, although they'd have to patch holes where sheet metal had been punched. It had never occurred to them to even look, whereas I already knew that factories weren't going to make two sets of parts so it was likely that everything was the same and it was just put together different. I then realized to most people, a fridge, and everything else you buy, are a single entity that just exists...you don't try to change it unless it's obviously designed for changing. You can change the faceplate of your cellphone, but you don't peel the CPU stickers off your laptop, or put tape over the idiotic bright blue lights, and you certainly don't open it up and remove them.
Now, I haven't done anything that I would consider suspicious, but there are certain things about what I do and have that I would have a hard time explaining to to the courts if it turned out one of them were suspicious. Us geeks and nerds are much more likely to actually understand how things work, and are willing to change them if that would suit us better, things that normal human beings would not consider changing. Or perhaps a better term to refer to us is 'hackers'.
Incidentally, killing someone in your car, or killing them somewhere and transporting them in such a way that they bleed on your car's front seat, is incredibly stupid and and incredibly easy to avoid. Hans actually sounds like a smart guy, so I'm having trouble connecting 'Oh, I'll carry this bloody corpse in my car's front seat' with him.
OTOH, the fact there were blood spatters doesn't look good for them, as does the fact he can't produce the seat. (Whereas I can, even now, produce the center console of my car complete with broken tape deck.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
As a matter of fact, I learned the hard way that late 60s Fords were especially prone to having this problem.
When that radiator fails, it will leak from under the dash onto the floorboards.Except that if the leak is near the top of the heater core it won't necessarily leak until the engine is hot enough for the thermostat to open, at which point it will exit the leak as steam and deposit a thin film of anti-freeze all over the inside of the windshield.
Of course if you want a Ford with a wet floorboard, get one of the ones that ran the brake line to the rear wheels through the passenger compartment under the back seat carpet and wait for it to spring a leak.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Translation: When in doubt, favor the accused.
**snort** Thank you for proving my point. I rest my case.
Having your fate decided by a bunch of random idiots is indeed a gamble. It is entirely possible that you will get a room full of bigots who will decide your fate simply by the way you look, your race, or some other completely subjective personal opinion. You can take some solace in the fact that it takes only one principled person who does not believe you've been shown to be guilty to hang the jury and cause a mistrial or acquittal. A jury trial could pay off quite well however if you're accused of something that the vast majority of citizens believe is not a crime. Note also that if you truly believe that all of your peers are "idiots" and/or can't handle treating them with the respect due a peer, you also have the option to waive your right to a jury trial in which case the judge alone will be the finder of law and finder of fact.