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UCLA Shooter Accused Victim Of Stealing His Computer Code

The gunman who shot and killed a UCLA professor on Wednesday has been identified as Mainak Sarkar, said Los Angeles police. Sarkar, a former doctoral student accused the vicitim William Klug, 39, of stealing his computer code and giving it to someone else. According to reports, Sarkar used a 9mm semiautomatic pistol to shoot the professor, and then turned the gun on himself. A March 10 blog post by Sarkar, now archived reads: William Klug, UCLA professor is not the kind of person when you think of a professor. He is a very sick person. I urge every new student coming to UCLA to stay away from this guy. [...] My name is Mainak Sarkar. I was this guy's PhD student. We had personal differences. He cleverly stole all my code and gave it another student. He made me really sick. Your enemy is your enemy. But your friend can do a lot more harm. Be careful about whom you trust.

4 of 396 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Mental illness by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well damn fool write some more code... your code is not like bodily fluids it is not that precious.

    In Engineering and Computer Science, code is quite valuable, particularly in PhD programs where the requirement is to demonstrate 5-10% new information as part of the program and do it within 6 years.

    Depending on the complexity of the work.. the code could potentially be worth a lot of money and taking quite a few years to perfect.

  2. Re:Wow, a page from the Valery Fabrikant by lgw · · Score: 4, Informative

    The UCLA shooter, Mainak Sarkar, apparently had a list he was working his way down. His ex girlfriend has been found dead, and was on his list. He's a Muslim from India, BTW, though Islam seems to be a coincidence for once.

    Of course, it's still early, and more details always come to light in the week following a shooting, but this really looks like a guy settling all his grudges on his way out.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  3. Re:the dark side of arduino by quantaman · · Score: 4, Informative

    https://arduinohistory.github....

    worth a read. I had no idea massimo stole the idea from his student.

    I think a lot less of massimo now, sad to say. yeah, he messed up the top .1 spaced headers (a crime in itself) but taking a student's work and calling it your own, that's really something to be publicly shamed over.

    and yet, massimo does world tours claiming he's the arduino inventor guy.

    just read the student's post about how HE came up with the concepts and had it stolen from him. I feel for him and I can imagine that happening, too.

    The student may have gotten shafted in the history though I'm not sure it's right to say his work was stolen.

    The student master's project consisted of creating a platform called Wired, this platform was released as open source.

    The supervisor, who certainly had some significant input and guidance on the project, forked the Wired project and turned it into Arduino. This is a completely standard and proper thing to do with open source projects, heck I've done it. There are two different visions for the project, forking means that both have a chance to succeed, it would seems that Arduino was the more successful vision.

    It could be something similar happened here, though obviously with a bunch of other personal issues added on the part of the shooter. Sarkar was working on a project and had some conflicts with his supervisor. The supervisor decided to put another student on the project. Sarkar felt like his work was being stolen and had some sort of break down.

    It's tragic but I don't see any evidence that the supervisor did anything wrong other than not knowing how to help a student who was in a really bad state.

    --
    I stole this Sig
  4. Re:I wish people would recognize... by KermodeBear · · Score: 4, Informative

    Of note: According to the FBI crime statistics, violent crime has been dropping steadily from 1993 through 2012. Crime, it seems, is not up at all - the media is just covering every single event with breathless desperation to make us think that there's some sort of massive, unheard-of epidemic going on. It's agenda driven, you can be sure.

    I think the USA should be lauded for this kind of progress. There's more work to be done, of course - one shooting is always one too many - but we're definitely on the right trajectory.

    --
    Love sees no species.