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Hans Reiser Sued By Own Kids For $15 Million
New submitter haruchai writes "The Reiser kids, now aged 12 and 11, have had a lawsuit filed against the former Linux developer, inventor of ReiserFS and convicted murderer of the mother of his children, to the tune of $15 million. It's believed he may have hidden assets and a judgment is sought so a search for these can be conducted."
A judge denied requests that the kids testify or return to the U.S. for their own well-being.
This just shows that FOSS fanatics are maniacs in real life too, and can't be trusted. I mean come on, you put your business into hands of these maniacs? Maniacs!
Sure...
His kids don't know what the heck is going on. As always, the kids are just tools in the machinations of the adults.
Hmmm, I guess the guardians can't wait that long. Besides, what are they going to do if he doesn't cooperate, throw him in jail?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Reiser is the author of reiserfs. A filesystem in the linux kernel.
If they become Linux developers then sure
Come on, man, you know perfectly well why the story was posted: because it's going to get upwards of 200 comments and a whole lot of pageviews because we're all morbidly interested in the nextgen filesystem developer turned murderer.
Now, what you really meant to say is: Fellow geeks, we ought not to take interest in this story.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
It's believed he may have hidden assets and a judgment is sought so a search for these can be conducted.
Probably in an vnode. Try "reiserfsck".
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I stand corrected. Now let's do some programming!
I wonder who really initiated the suit. Not likely the kids: what do they know about money, at that age, let alone law suits? Why would those children suspect the existence of hidden assets? They probably don't even know what the word means.
So other than these two children, who's going to benefit? Is this initiated by some lawyers that do the suing on behalf of the children? Is it initiated by their legal guardian who hopes to get access to (part of) that money?
It's stuffed in the back seat of his car!
If Hans offers to drive his children to where the money is hidden, I hope they will have the sense to take a cab instead.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
IIRC Reiser was trying to sell his company after he was arrested, but I doubt he got 15*10^6 USD for it, and a lot would have gone to lawyers.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
while noting your location with a GPS
Yeah but what happens if you forget the coordinates? You write it down. Then what happens if the police find a WGS84 coordinate in your stuff?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
And your point is?
"Mania" is no joke. A symptom of my own Bipolar-Type Schizoaffective Disorder, Mania is a euphoric state of mind that, while it can feel good, is very very dangerous. Manic people are extremely creative, but when manic, have no way of distinguishing really good ideas from really bad ones.
For example, a man with Bipolar Affective Disorder - Manic Depression - drank eighteen beers one day then knocked over a bank. He carried his loot across the street, sat under a bush then quietly waited for the police to arrive.
I pull stunts like that myself from time to time, but fortunately for me Mania is quite rare. I'm the opposite kind, in that I spend much of my life contemplating suicide.
Good Day.
Michael David Crawford, who invites his critics to take a flying fuck at a rolling donut.
Before Hans Reiser when debating one man projects they would always say "what if the lead developer gets hit by a bus?" now it's said "what if the lead developer gets arrested for murder?"
The only reason the bank protected peoples' money for many years in the first place, and why Switzerland draws so many international deposits, is because they have a long record of effective government, an independent legal system and bank controls. Moreover, given that most modern governments guarantee deposits up to a certain level (100k CHF in this case), much of the depository risk is borne by the government and ultimately the tax payer, not the bank. And the bank has already made its (legitimate) profit by having access to the principal to lend against for many years. But hey, when you can ignore those inconvenient facts to privatize profits while socializing the risk, you gotta do it, right?
It's five in the morning here and I am in no mood to be charitable.
The lawsuit was initiated by the children's grandmother. Their legal guardian. Her lawyers are working pro bono.
No fees. No slice of the pie. Got that?
Moving on.
Reiser is defending himself.
In a way, he is always defending himself. Reiser, it seems, can do no wrong.
He is the one who asked the judge to drag the kids into court.
"Why?" you ask.
What he wanted to do was to draw them into a grandiose scheme to promote his new and improved conspiracy theories and defense for the murder. The judge isn't playing along.
He claims his wife was abusing the kids, that she had Factitious disorder by proxy --- often referred to as Munchausen syndrome by proxy --- where a caregiver harms or even kills someone they are in charge of in order to gain sympathy and attention. During the 2008 trial, Reiser alluded to that as well, accusing his wife of having the disease when she wanted to get their son surgery for severe hearing loss.
In the unlawful death case, he now says why: ''I defended my children from harm.'' He added that, by murdering his wife, ''I stopped multiple felonies by doing so.''
In his papers, he accuses the courts, the prison system, county children's services, his trial attorneys and others of conspiring against him, during his murder trial and now in the civil case.
''There are extensive legal grounds under multiple arguments for defending an innocent child when the state will not, at the cost of a non-innocent party's life,'' Hans Reiser wrote.
Convicted of Murder, Linux Guru Hans Reiser Returns to Court to Fight Civil Suit
"Wired" has it all, in Reiser's own handwriting.
More.
The beginning of Monday's trial was marked by impatience from the judge and the children's legal team. The complaint against Reiser was originally filed in August 2008 by the children's maternal grandmother and legal guardian, Irina Sharanova. The case has been stalled as Reiser filed various motions to delay proceedings and claimed that he has not had adequate access to his legal documents while at Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga.
''This trial has been pending for a really long time,'' said Judge Dennis Hayashi about the pretrial claims. ''I also made it clear that I'm not delaying this any further. ... We need to move on.''
Reiser, dressed in his orange prison uniform and appearing antsy at Hayashi's denials, has subpoenaed his children to appear in court.
They are living in Russia with Sharanova and are not expected at the trial, [Sharanova's attorney] said.
"I personally don't think it would do the children any good to come here and testify in this trial,"
"They'd have to relive what they went through as very young children."
Both of the children were at their father's house in the Montclair district when the killing is believed to have taken place.
Jury selection begins in Hans Reiser civil trial
The Olsen Twins have a *dad*
I always thought they were some kind of fungus.
It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for being subtle.
I am not a lawyer, but it seems plausible that this can be used as an evidence of fraud in Hans' marriage/divorce/custody, what substantially changes the circumstances of killing Nina Reiser, invalidating the whole previous trial.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
This is a great example of why you should never take advice from Anonymous Cowards.
The lawyers are working pro bono, which you would no if you read the article. Not that I expect you to know what it means.
Firstly, lots of people have bad divorces. That's never going to fly as circumstances for reducing a murder charge.
2nd, he already tried the "Munchhausen by Proxy" defense in the original trial. It was sad, pathetic, bullshit by a raving lunatic then, and it still is. (Just read the first-hand trial accounts...)
Last, Hans has already admitted to the crime and voluntarily waived all appeals. (He revealed the location of the body in return for a sentencing reduction.) This act of fighting the wrongful death suit is just another way for Hans to re-try the case he lost, and lost badly. He'll lose again, and lose badly, since he is so adept at making an utter fool of himself in court.
In Hans' world, everyone is to blame Nina's death, and his conviction for it, but himself.
Was Namesys really that successful, or did he get his wealth some other way? $15 million is a fair bit of cash.
I hope you see it for the illusion that it is. Albait one that feels quite real, I know.
Bill Gates never tried to kill Melinda. That's why I run Windows.
Linux is the wild west.
In most cases, all the suing party will have to do is submit a copy of his guilty plea. The arguments will be about damages.
A civil trial doesn't require much in the burden of proof ("50% plus a feather"), so his guilty plea in open court will meat the is he liable portion. Then its about damages.
It means that it's just a little more obvoius that the lawyers are lying scumbags. If you believe they are working for free, I have bridge to sell you.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Actually, "maniac" is a word in common usage to refer to extreme (often violent) behaviour with no reference to manic-depression at all.
You can have violent criminal maniacs such as gangsters who are psychologically "normal", albeit sociopathic.
Few, if any, manic depressives are murderers. .
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
/. is not a tech or science site. It covers news for nerds. Often tech/science stuff falls into that category; but so do other things too. In particular, nerds tend to be interested in what's happening to famous (among nerds) nerds.
Yeah that 60% cut off the pro bono fee is going to be humongous.
The children's guardian (grandmother) initiated the lawsuit, in looking out for the best interest of the children. Were I in a similar situation, I would also use the full force of the law to ensure the assets were located and set aside for my wards.
That's just being a good guardian.
The lawyers are working pro bono, which you would know if you had read the article. It never ceases to amaze me that some people are willing to spew out hundreds of words, while jumping to some asinine conclusion, without taking the time to read the associated article.
Money does not cure mental illness or emotional instability.
He means all bait. Like "all jailbait".
I switched to btrfs - Beater File System.
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;
His mouth was what got him convicted in the first place. The prosecution's case against him was circumstantial. It was fairly good, but as I said circumstantial, no physical evidence, not even any evidence his wife was dead. While they can and do get convictions on that (they wouldn't bring it to trial if it never worked) it is harder.
There is a reasonable chance he may have gotten off had he kept his trap shut and let his legal team work. They did have an at least somewhat plausible theory: That his wife had run off to Russia. While that isn't without issues to poke holes in, it might just have been plausible enough, combined with the lack of physical evidence, to generate reasonable doubt.
However he insisted on taking the stand and that was the end of him. Between his completely arrogant attitude and his logical inconsistencies, the prosecution was able to just skewer him on cross examination, sealing the outcome.
The problem is he has a sever case of something many geeks seem to have: Smartest Motherfucker in the Universe Syndrome. He really believes he is WAY smarter than everyone else and he's not afraid to let everyone know it. While he may consider that he's doing people a favour by "enlightening" them to his superior intellect, most people see that as being an arrogant prick and don't like him for it. Also, it leads him to believe he can get away with shit like, say, murder. He can do as he pleases because he's so much smarter than everyone, there's no way those poor dummies can ever catch up with him.
Hence, this bullshit. He still thinks he's smarter than the courts, the police, the lawyers.
First off it is complete bullshit. Reiser is just making up shit. None of his accusations have a basis in reality.
However even if they did it doesn't matter. Killing someone is justifiable in only a very limited set of circumstances. The specifics vary state to state and you can look them up if you wish but it is serious things like preventing yourself or another from being murdered. Also one thing that is always consistent is it is only justifiable to prevent something immediate. So if someone is threatening to kill you, and has the means to do it, like they are pointing a gun at you, you are justified in killing them. However if you believe someone might kill you at a future date, but they are doing nothing to threaten you right now, you are not justified in killing them.
Then there's the fact that any justification you had goes out the window if you cover up what happened. The idea behind justification is you believed what you did was right, was necessary, and did it because of that. If you go and cover shit up afterwards well then that is rather a sign that you knew what you were doing was wrong.
So no, none of this would allow for a new trial. Also, after the trial, he copped a plea: He showed them to her body in exchange for a lesser charge.
It's not reasonable for the money to go toward the support of the children? Reiser himself placed the burden of raising the kids on their grandmother by killing his wife.
Nothing, because they're actually coordinates that I converted to NAD27 before I wrote them down!!!
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
I always knew journaling file systems were evil.
make sure it is required in judgment that the money do not go to the guardian, but is stored on an account which can't be touched until 18, and on which the guardian has no procuration.
In other words, make sure the kids are raised in poverty.
Really? Albeit. There you go.
The dictionary backs you up.
Free Martian Whores!
GIS humor!
They should check his journal...for the missing assets. LOL!
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!