A body with a knife in a back with Hans' prints on it?
If you actually had one of those - and, indeed, any evidence at all that Nina was actually stabbed with it - Hans might very well be guilty.
But honestly I'm very interested in what appears to be a completely novel line of prosecutory reasoning - "in an alternate universe, where we have a bloody knife with Hans' prints and Nina's blood on it, he'd be guilty; therefore, in this universe where we have none of that, he's guilty too." Very interesting. Is that how it works in Canada?
Are you actually insinuating that such knowledge requires residence and is unavailable abroad?!
No, but such knowledge requires actually having it, and you've made it abundantly clear that you don't, like when you asserted that American criminal trials require nothing more than the preponderance of evidence, which is obviously false.
As to my "speculations" they were all either patently obvious observations or statistical data.
You haven't presented any relevant statistical data.
Also never did I indicate anything about "confidence beyond all doubt".
Sure you have. You've implied it in ten different posts. The slightest argument that Hans might actually be innocent sends you literally off the rails. Prosaic explanations for the not-at-all-incriminating "evidence" earns your unmitigated scorn.
There's something profoundly wrong with you. Either Hans said something mean to you once - at which point it's hardly seemly for you to agitate for his conviction on inadequate evidence simply for a few flames on the Internet - or he's essentially nobody to you, at which point your obvious bloodlust for a man who's done nothing to you is even more perverse.
Hans is "the nearest man"?! You gotta be kidding.
Why would I be? That's your argument, after all - when a woman goes missing, it's her most intimate male acquaintance who's the immediate concluded perpetrator, to the exclusion of all others. Especially if he said something mean on the internet, once. Why, that and a missing car seat - proof positive!
To wit, one needs to present a pasport with a valid Mexican entry visa
It's amazing how you get the burden of proof so completely wrong. Maybe it's a function of living in Canada, but here in America, it's the prosecution who has the burden of evidence - and therefore you who shares it - not the defense. Whether or not there's evidence of Nina's embezzlement, her flight to Russia, or anything else is irrelevant - it's up to the prosecution to prove that those things aren't true, just as it's the prosecution's defense to prove that she was actually murdered, and that Hans did it. For every "suggestive" piece of evidence you and the prosecution has, Hans and his defenders have a plausible explanation. The prosecution can't disprove those explanations.
Thus, Hans must be found innocent. That's the result of the presumption of innocence in our criminal justice system. If it works differently under yours, remind me not to visit Canada.
We do not know what actual means he used
So you can't establish that Hans had those means, or that he had the opportunity to use those means. That's two out of the three required elements of the crime that you simply don't have. That necessitates a finding of not guilty. Sorry, but that's how it works under our system.
Us the "bloodthirsty" ideologues who insist upon such heretical notions as addmitance of circumstantial evidence and comparing the probabilites of events
Oh, now you're comparing probabilities? And what are those probabilities? Be specific. Show your math. (I think this is the second time I've asked you to do that.
A car missing a seat has nothing to do with murder.
wet floorboards
Cars get wet. It has nothing to do with murder.
blood specks all over
Nobody's proven that it's Nina's blood, or that it is even blood at all. And you might have forgotten that women have an orifice that blood comes out of, and it's not uncommon to find a woman's blood on the various items she has regular physical contact with.
Define "resonable" then in terms which do not involve evaluation of probabilities, cretin.
"Cretin"? What, did somebody find their copy of Richard Scarey's Big Book of Namecalling?
Wikipedia references "proof beyond reasonable doubt" as the standard required by the prosecution in most criminal cases within an adversarial system. This means that the proposition being presented by the government must be proven to the extent that there is no "reasonable doubt" in the mind of a reasonable person that the defendant is guilty. There can still be a doubt, but only to the extent that it would not affect a "reasonable person's" belief that the defendant is guilty. If the doubt that is raised does affect a "reasonable person's" belief that the defendant is guilty, the jury is not satisfied beyond a "reasonable doubt".
It's abundantly obvious that you are not a reasonable person, as you've made consistent factual errors, attempted to speak authoritatively about the laws of a nation you don't even live in, and have made it abundantly obvious that your deep personal enmity for all things Hans Reiser have already prejudiced you against him, to the point where unverifiable speculation about what people you don't even know - people whose names you don't even know - "would do" constitutes ironclad proof against him, absent body, weapon, or any physical evidence that there even was a crime, much less that Hans was involved. So your confidence beyond all doubt is hardly indicative; you're not a reasonable person.
So no circumstantial evidence convictions for any crime then.
Circumstantial evidence usually is insufficient for conviction, and that's how it should be. Sure, all the murderers who murder without leaving any trace at all get away scot-free. I don't know what to do about that. Your solution of simply locking up the nearest man doesn't strike me as better. But by all means, agitate for that standard to be applied in Canada. Or move down here and run for office with the Republican party. "Double Guantanamo" if you want, whatever.
Did you actually know anyone who attempted to board a plane for Russia (or to anywhere in Europe) in Mexico?
Sure. Do you?
It doesn't even have to be a plane, either. Less than 10% of ship cargo coming in or out of this country receives any kind of inspection whatsoever. It's estimated that as many as 20,000 individuals are smuggled into the United States for sex trafficking alone. Contrary to your insult-laded diatribe, it's remarkably easy to get human beings in and out of this country surreptitiously, for the right organizations; one of those organizations is Russian organized crime. The borders of the United States are remarkably porous, same with Canada; even more so in Mexico. The phenomenon of human trafficking proves it.
Again the odds of this woman planning and executing such an elaborate escape sequence, sparing no expense and risking pretty much everything in order to do... what exactly?
Flee prosecution for criminal embezzlement. Try to pay attention, ok?
Maybe it would help if you took notes or something.
The odds of an ex-husband jerk bashing his ex-wife over the head with something
What's your evidence of head trauma?
We are talking kids of a Russian citizen who was married to a US one.
So why apply for Russian citizenship? You act like that's just a bookkeeping thing, but it costs hundreds of dollars and take
I am getting tired of your stupid shtick wherein you speculate wildly and with no evidence whatsoever on why "crooked cops with an agenda" and "overzealous railroading DAs" are after poor, poor innocent Hans
Then stop with your wild speculations on "what cops would do" and "what lawyers would do" and "what Russian mail-order brides would do" and I won't have to counter-speculate.
The simple truth is that you haven't offered one single piece of evidence for either the murder or Hans' involvement in it, and neither has the DA. Not one single piece of evidence - just nonsense speculations about what people you don't even know "would do."
What the fuck do you think the words "beyond reasonable doubt" stand for? What is "reasonable"? It is the code word for "most likely".
No, it's not. "Most likely" means "preponderance of evidence", and while that's the evidentiary standard for civil trials, criminal convictions require a greater standard of evidence. Specifically, "proof beyond a reasonable doubt", which is a far stricter standard than simply "most likely." It's not sufficient to prove that Hans is "most likely" guilty (although even that's too strong a claim for what the evidence against him proves.)
If you demand it, you might as well demand that 99.9% of criminals go free.
More like, 90%. As in, "better 10 guilty men go free than one innocent man be convicted." You know, the legal philosophy that underpins our system of criminal jurisprudence.
What "better" alternatives?
The ones I mentioned. The ones where you have an actual body, actual evidence of a murder, and an actual murder weapon with actual evidence tying it to Hans.
Try to keep up, ok? I don't know how you're getting lost on this stuff.
if you discard all circumstantial evidence trials you will disard most trials in the US and a huge percentage of murderes will go free.
Nobody's discarding all circumstantial evidence. But the evidence against Hans doesn't even rise to "circumstantial." There's no evidence of a murder - just a mysterious disappearance. There's evidence Nina had a plan to disappear to Russia. There's nothing tying Hans to the murder, because the murder isn't known to have happened; there's no way to establish that Hans had means and opportunity because neither the means nor the opportunity have been specified.
As for a "huge percentage", it's already the case that only 64% of murder investigations end in conviction, and that includes confessions and guilty pleas. So it should be abundantly obvious to you that "beyond a reasonable doubt" is already the legal standard at work in the United States.
Because if she somehow made it to Canada or Mexico then she would have to show up with a proper Mexican or Canadian visa at the airport to leave those countries for Russia.
Because, God knows, Mexico is a dystopian security state. You're an idiot.
Here go look up this page in a US consulate in St. Petersburg to see rules applicable during travel for these non-existant (according to you) dual US/Russian citizens.
If you had even read your own link, you would have seen that it confirms what I'm talking about:
However, a person who acquires a foreign citizenship by applying for it may lose U.S. citizenship.
And you'll notice that the page you cite has no mention of Russian naturalization law, which does require those applying for Russian citizenship to renounce citizenship of other countries.
It is conceivable but it involves large amounts of cash and organized crime and, as I pointed out many, many, many times, in the case of Nina it would have been completely, utterly counter-productive since she had absolutely nothing to gain from spending piles of money with the mob on such an escape from an idiot bankrupt nerd.
Besides, that is, prosecution for felony embezzlement. You seem to keep forgetting about that.
since I am a Canadian.
That certainly explains your critical ignorance of American law.
Cops do not give a rat's ass about Hans and would trade him up for something bigger (specially a serial murderer) in a flash.
Again, you claim knowledge that you couldn't possibly have without mental telepathy. The simple truth is that your speculations on what unspecified cops would do is completely irrelevant and is no basis to conclude anybody's guilt.
The facts are than Sean Sturgeon claims to be a killer many times over, and that hasn't been investigated at all. And it's just as likely that a zealous DA would want to railroad the suspect he has, rather than drop the charges mid-trial and start all over again.
Practically however it means that the odds of him doing so are very good.
The odds, huh? Why don't you show your math on that, if you're talking about probability, now?
Err, that would no longer be "under the circumstances", circumstances which involve...
Circular reasoning, then, if you're going to argue that it's the "best possible case" so long as you ignore all the better alternatives. Under these circumstances, you have no case at all. There's no evidence she was murdered, and it's more likely that she was not. That's the obstacle you have to overcome before we get into any question of Hans' guilt.
Look, we could set a standard where the minimum requirements for murder conviction would be
Or we could stick with the standard we have - proof of guilt beyond reasonable doubt. Your standard is different, it's apparently "as much proof as we're likely to have, given circumstances that result in their being no proof at all", and unfortunately for you and the prosecuting DA, that's insufficient to obtain a legal conviction in the United States.
In other words you want a successful disappearance of a body and a weapon to be a guaranteed walk-out-of-jail-free card for any murderereven happened, and you can't prove that the accused had anything to do with it, then yes, a "murderer" should go free - because he's clearly not a murderer, at least according to the law.
Innocent until proven guilty, remember? That's how it works, here.
First your not so thinly disguised USA #1, USA #1, USA #1 superiority complex..
I don't know what you think you're talking about; there's absolutely none of that in my post. With that kind of projection, you should work in the movies, moron.
it will probably shock you to know that a vast majority of people from the former Eastern block maintain citizenships in their old countries and procure them for their children.
It may shock you to know that neither the United States nor Russia recognize dual citizenship; both countries' State Depts. recognize an attempt to secure citizenship in that country to be renouncing citizenship of any other. Obtaining a foreign passport for American nationals for Russia isn't done simply to expedite vacations in Moscow; by legal definition it's a predicate to a permanent move. (And what a surprise, Hans' children have been moved to Russia, under the care of their grandmother - supposedly - and have no plans to be returned.)
And of course you did not answer the point about the means of such a trace-less "escape"
The means? The US maintains the single largest unguarded border in the whole world (and certainly did at the time of her disappearance.) Contrary to your delusions of Big Brother government, it's still quite easy to leave the United States under false pretenses.
That is not a question of just flaming
Oh?
I would suggest browsing mailing lists and net articles
So it is just internet flaming we're talking about. Gotcha.
As to the "hardcore SM enthusiast" who "killed" 8 people one wonders who the eight were and why isnt he under arrest for that "crime".
That's certainly a question Reiser's defense would like answered. I mean, it's not like the police would simply focus on their original suspect and overlook more promising leads once they'd committed to building a specific case, right?
Naw, that never happens, I'm sure.
That was not a "story" but an illustration of a common thought pattern amongst these ex-boyfriends
The problem is that it's a pattern of other people, not of Hans Reiser, and therefore it's essentially irrelevant (and prejudicial, if this were a courtroom.) There's no basis for securing a conviction simply because the defendant may be like some other people, some of whom have committed murder. Again if you have evidence that isn't simply your speculations about Hans' state of mind, we're waiting for it.
As to evidence of her murder it is as strong as one can reasonably expect under the circumstances.
Well, no, it's not. A stronger case would have an actual body, an actual murder weapon, and Hans' actual prints on it, for instance.
But none of that exists. It's only the convenient, easily-explained "disappearance" of a conwoman with foreign ties and reason to flee that suggests murder in the first place; I'm sorry but that doesn't begin to rise to the level of proof. No murder, no conviction. The prosecution has a double-uphill battle, here.
There is no record of her leaving the country
Well, of course there wouldn't be; that would defeat the whole purpose of setting Hans up for murder, now wouldn't it? Nonetheless there's ample evidence of her preparation for absconding to Russia; among other things, her efforts to obtain Russian citizenship for the children.
As to Hans "pissing people off", he did on many, many occasions demonstrate conclusively to us (by his own words and deeds) his abrasive, intolerant, self-centered, megalomaniac "personality" which, in retrospect, led many people to become highly skeptical about his painting himself as an innocent victim of some mealevolent forces arrayed against him.
And the fact that he flamed some people on the internet is not particularly suggestive, either. Or else there's a whole lot of Star Trek chatrooms that need to be investigated for murder.
You would be probably shocked to find that a jerk ex-boyfriend/ex-husband is statistically, hands down, a #1 candidate for a murderer of a woman.
Right, but statistically that murder is almost always predicated by abuse, and there's no indication that ever happened. If anything Hans was probably abused by Nina. (That she basically dumped Hans for a hardcore SM enthusiast is suggestive, here.)
And they had been divorced for years; hardly the timeframe for a "crime of passion."
How about a "no good Russian bitch" daring to defy a boy genius who is famous for throwing tantrums when some kernel developer dared to defy him about a line of code or two? How "dared" she try to live a normal life when he was reduced to begging his mother for food? "Its all her fault!", "I made her and I will unmake the bitch!" etc and so on. The delusions abouth her "embezzling" stuff fit nicely in the process of constructing an internal self-justification. He "could not" have been responsible for all of these financial disasters, he is a genius after all, she must have done it! Her... and... and... and all those conspirators helping her!
That's quite the fantasy you've concocted, but I don't see any reason to believe it has any basis in fact. You certainly don't provide any. I don't know much about Linux filesystems, but ReiserFS must really have pissed a lot of people off, judging by how much people like you are falling all over themselves to convict Hans Reiser of a murder that there's no evidence even happened.
Look, you're just proving the defense's case, then. If there's no embezzlement then there's no motive for murder. They were already divorced, after all.
I'm sure his lawyer told him many times not to f*ck around with custody and visitation or he'd end up with his broke ass in a jail cell and get only supervised visits.
You're sure, huh? You were there?
I only ask because, again, you're using these "facts" to reach a conclusion of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Do you think maybe not being able to reach a conclusion except on the basis of events and conversations you couldn't possibly have any knowledge about is, perhaps, the very definition of "reasonable doubt"?
Between the thought of violating a legal custody arrangement, and the thought of my embezzling fraud of a wife escaping to god-forsaken Russia with my children, that's the easiest decision in the world. And I don't even have kids.
All of the above rendering the whole scheme of "getting the US visa" utterly and completely useless....unless, of course, you wanted to live in the US prior to your disappearance to defraud your putative husband's company for all it was worth.
Which, you know, she did. Which would then make escaping to Russia - after the US visa became essentially useless - a great deal more attractive.
"No sense whatsoever as an accusation"? I think maybe you're not understanding the accusation.
He picked up the kids from school when it was Nina's turn... before anyone could have known she was missing...
If you're going to send the guy to the chair based on this one single act, then you'd better have more evidence than you've presented so far that it actually was Nina's turn, and that Paul Reiser never in his life forgot which day he was supposed to pick up the kids and which he wasn't, or that parents have never tried to antagonize each other and interfere with visitation/custody by picking up kids when they weren't supposed to, or that reasonable people can conclude that someone might not be there for the kids well before the legal definition of "missing."
Sorry, but it's simply not the linchpin you're making it out to be. It's almost more unreasonable to suggest that, in the middle of an acrimonious divorce with a lying, cheating swindler with a foreign passport, he'd ever have let her pick them up.
From here, they say he's guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
There's almost no evidence she's even dead. Motive, certainly he has. Opportunity? Impossible to say since the circumstances of her possible death are completely unknown. Means? Again, impossible to say for the same reason. That's one out of the three requirements. Maybe he killed his wife. Legally, there's no basis to convict him. The "he knew to pick up the kids" line of attack isn't nearly sufficient. You haven't established that he knew to pick up the kids; he simply did so.
He picked up the kids from school when it was Nina's turn... before anyone could have known she was missing...was Nina's turn, and that Paul Reiser never in his life forgot which day he was supposed to pick up the kids and which he wasn't, or that parents have never tried to antagonize each other and interfere with visitation/custody by picking up kids when they weren't supposed to, or that reasonable people can conclude that someone might not be there for the kids well before the legal definition of "missing."
Sorry, but it's simply not the linchpin you're making it out to be. It's almost more unreasonable to suggest that, in the middle of an acrimonious divorce with a lying, cheating swindler with a foreign passport, he'd ever have let her pick them up.
From here, they say he's guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
There's almost no evidence she's even dead. Motive, certainly he has. Opportunity? Impossible to say. Means? Again, impossible to say. That's one out of the three requirements. Maybe he killed his wife. Legally, there's no basis to convict him. The "he knew to pick up the kids" line of attack isn't nearly sufficient. You haven't established that he knew to pick up the kids; he simply did so.
If you're proposing a model of drift that results in fixation or conservation of advantageous traits, variable rates of change, and preservation of adaptive changes over maladaptive ones, I don't understand how you're not simply proposing "selection" under another name.
Humans didn't evolve in the presence of substantial amounts of electricity either, but we hardly consider electric lights abnormal today, do we?
In the context of human evolution, they certainly are. It would make zero sense to try to understand human behavior under electric illumination via evolutionary mechanisms, because we simply haven't had lights that long. Similarly, human behavior while intoxicated is irrelevant to the evolution of human behavior because intoxicants haven't been a part of the human environment for long enough.
We've been making beer for at least 7000 years
Not long enough.
The girl you pick up Saturday night after a great deal of partying just has to be willing
And, to some degree, "hot." That's where the mate choice comes in - the choice is who you find hot enough to sleep with.
That is, there is an apparently randomized drift, as one would expect, but there is no evidence that this drift results in a competitive advantage for one design over another, or is of any significance save as a habitual manner of making boats, or that the making of boats 'evolves' in any sense.
The conservation of traits is the evidence. We guess that the traits are conserved because they represent functional aspects of boats, and that's probably true, but it's really not important. The fact that the rate of variation in traits is not constant at all loci is the evidence for selection.
the change would not be random, but directed, according to the cultural preconceptions of the people attempting to solve the problem.
Only if you assume that human beings never design by trial and error. Surely we can dismiss that assertion by inspection. (Or perhaps you need to be told how many different materials Edison experimented on for his light bulbs.)
Which proves absolutely nothing, especially as the study was not set up in any way that could prove that natural selection was not 'weeding out inferior new designs'.
A finding that all traits varied at equal rates and never became fixed or conserved would have proved that natural selection was not weeding out inferior new designs.
Never gotten drunk enough to wonder who the woman you woke up with was, have you?;)
But isn't that kind of the point? If you have to be drunk to do it, is it really normal behavior? Humans didn't evolve in the presence of substantial ethyl alcohol, after all.
While this is reasonably true for women, it's much less so for men.
I think you'll find that even men exhibit mate choice. "Gentlemen prefer blondes", etc. Men aren't in general any less discriminate than women, even though the opportunity cost per mating is so much lower.
Which is, of course, a survival characteristic for men - spread your seed widely, hope some survives.
Sure, but its still not as random as you portray. While men nominally don't commit the same resources to reproduction as a female might - 9 months of pregnancy vs 20 minutes of effort - they have to commit time and resources to being accepted as mates, because female mate choice constitutes a limiting factor.
Or unwilling ones, for that matter....
Rape isn't a winning reproductive strategy in our species, thanks to various female countermeasures (like cryptic ovulation.)
All that aside, do you actually know someone who picked a wife/husband by "genetic examination"?
They're called "sperm banks". (I think maybe you misunderstood what I was saying.)
Well, it's more a question of what is meant by 'natural selection'; ask Darwin what he meant by 'Nature', not me.
It's not rigidly defined, because it really doesn't have to be. Everybody's familiar with the idea of a breeder selecting and breeding pigeons; Darwin's critical realization was that the same thing happens to all species without human breeders. Humans, too, and it really doesn't matter whether or not we're doing it on purpose or it's just happening to us. It's selection. Whether it's "natural" or not is immaterial. Selection is selection.
When I hear people claim that natural selection doesn't work on people and that evolution doesn't apply anymore to the human species, I bring forth some examples like the drunk teenagers crashing their cars (main cause of teenage mortality).
There's a much, much better example of natural selection operating on human beings - people tend to have sex with people they're attracted to, not at random. And they certainly don't have children with random people; there's always a selection involved, whether that's selection for resources, good genetics/immunotype (assessed instinctively by appearance, smell, or cognitively by genetic examination), or some other criteria.
So long as mate choice is being exercised, human beings are subject to natural selection. For some reason people always overlook that, but evolution doesn't care if your genes don't get passed on because you were killed, or because you couldn't get laid ever. Either way you've been selected against.
Fundamentally wrong. There's nothing in the law that limits the obligation of the business to inform in the way you describe. If they cause a breach of security of a system, they're obligated to inform - regardless of who is the maintainer of the data.
Who maintains the data is irrelevant. It's about who allows the breach of security. That's Best Buy, so their actions obligated them to inform.
Re:RTFL! Really. Read it. Here, let me help you.
on
The $54 Million Laptop
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· Score: 2, Insightful
It says PERSONAL INFORMATION maintained by the business.
Well, no, it says "person or business." Which includes the woman who lost her laptop, since she's a person.
There's simply nothing in the statue that appears to let BB off the hook, here, which is why even the local AG thinks they're not off the hook.
Obviously BB has liability here. I simply can't understand how you're reading the statute to apply only to data BB personally maintains; that's not what it says at all. BB's actions allowed "breach of the security of the system", period. It's those actions that expose them to liability, regardless of who was "maintaining" the data.
Try not just reading the part that you bolded. If you read the entire paragraph, as you seem loathe to do, it's obvious that it doesn't define liability, nor restrict it only to data BB personally maintains. It's simply a definition of the term "breach of the security of a system", and it's obvious that happened here. Because it happened by BB's actions, they're the ones who are liable.
Slashdot Mirror
A body with a knife in a back with Hans' prints on it?
If you actually had one of those - and, indeed, any evidence at all that Nina was actually stabbed with it - Hans might very well be guilty.
But honestly I'm very interested in what appears to be a completely novel line of prosecutory reasoning - "in an alternate universe, where we have a bloody knife with Hans' prints and Nina's blood on it, he'd be guilty; therefore, in this universe where we have none of that, he's guilty too." Very interesting. Is that how it works in Canada?
Are you actually insinuating that such knowledge requires residence and is unavailable abroad?!
No, but such knowledge requires actually having it, and you've made it abundantly clear that you don't, like when you asserted that American criminal trials require nothing more than the preponderance of evidence, which is obviously false.
As to my "speculations" they were all either patently obvious observations or statistical data.
You haven't presented any relevant statistical data.
Also never did I indicate anything about "confidence beyond all doubt".
Sure you have. You've implied it in ten different posts. The slightest argument that Hans might actually be innocent sends you literally off the rails. Prosaic explanations for the not-at-all-incriminating "evidence" earns your unmitigated scorn.
There's something profoundly wrong with you. Either Hans said something mean to you once - at which point it's hardly seemly for you to agitate for his conviction on inadequate evidence simply for a few flames on the Internet - or he's essentially nobody to you, at which point your obvious bloodlust for a man who's done nothing to you is even more perverse.
Hans is "the nearest man"?! You gotta be kidding.
Why would I be? That's your argument, after all - when a woman goes missing, it's her most intimate male acquaintance who's the immediate concluded perpetrator, to the exclusion of all others. Especially if he said something mean on the internet, once. Why, that and a missing car seat - proof positive!
To wit, one needs to present a pasport with a valid Mexican entry visa
Except, of course, when one doesn't.
Again, there was no official investigation
It's amazing how you get the burden of proof so completely wrong. Maybe it's a function of living in Canada, but here in America, it's the prosecution who has the burden of evidence - and therefore you who shares it - not the defense. Whether or not there's evidence of Nina's embezzlement, her flight to Russia, or anything else is irrelevant - it's up to the prosecution to prove that those things aren't true, just as it's the prosecution's defense to prove that she was actually murdered, and that Hans did it. For every "suggestive" piece of evidence you and the prosecution has, Hans and his defenders have a plausible explanation. The prosecution can't disprove those explanations.
Thus, Hans must be found innocent. That's the result of the presumption of innocence in our criminal justice system. If it works differently under yours, remind me not to visit Canada.
We do not know what actual means he used
So you can't establish that Hans had those means, or that he had the opportunity to use those means. That's two out of the three required elements of the crime that you simply don't have. That necessitates a finding of not guilty. Sorry, but that's how it works under our system.
Us the "bloodthirsty" ideologues who insist upon such heretical notions as addmitance of circumstantial evidence and comparing the probabilites of events
Oh, now you're comparing probabilities? And what are those probabilities? Be specific. Show your math. (I think this is the second time I've asked you to do that.
Except torn-out car seats
... what exactly?
A car missing a seat has nothing to do with murder.
wet floorboards
Cars get wet. It has nothing to do with murder.
blood specks all over
Nobody's proven that it's Nina's blood, or that it is even blood at all. And you might have forgotten that women have an orifice that blood comes out of, and it's not uncommon to find a woman's blood on the various items she has regular physical contact with.
Define "resonable" then in terms which do not involve evaluation of probabilities, cretin.
"Cretin"? What, did somebody find their copy of Richard Scarey's Big Book of Namecalling?
Wikipedia references "proof beyond reasonable doubt" as the standard required by the prosecution in most criminal cases within an adversarial system. This means that the proposition being presented by the government must be proven to the extent that there is no "reasonable doubt" in the mind of a reasonable person that the defendant is guilty. There can still be a doubt, but only to the extent that it would not affect a "reasonable person's" belief that the defendant is guilty. If the doubt that is raised does affect a "reasonable person's" belief that the defendant is guilty, the jury is not satisfied beyond a "reasonable doubt".
It's abundantly obvious that you are not a reasonable person, as you've made consistent factual errors, attempted to speak authoritatively about the laws of a nation you don't even live in, and have made it abundantly obvious that your deep personal enmity for all things Hans Reiser have already prejudiced you against him, to the point where unverifiable speculation about what people you don't even know - people whose names you don't even know - "would do" constitutes ironclad proof against him, absent body, weapon, or any physical evidence that there even was a crime, much less that Hans was involved. So your confidence beyond all doubt is hardly indicative; you're not a reasonable person.
So no circumstantial evidence convictions for any crime then.
Circumstantial evidence usually is insufficient for conviction, and that's how it should be. Sure, all the murderers who murder without leaving any trace at all get away scot-free. I don't know what to do about that. Your solution of simply locking up the nearest man doesn't strike me as better. But by all means, agitate for that standard to be applied in Canada. Or move down here and run for office with the Republican party. "Double Guantanamo" if you want, whatever.
Did you actually know anyone who attempted to board a plane for Russia (or to anywhere in Europe) in Mexico?
Sure. Do you?
It doesn't even have to be a plane, either. Less than 10% of ship cargo coming in or out of this country receives any kind of inspection whatsoever. It's estimated that as many as 20,000 individuals are smuggled into the United States for sex trafficking alone. Contrary to your insult-laded diatribe, it's remarkably easy to get human beings in and out of this country surreptitiously, for the right organizations; one of those organizations is Russian organized crime. The borders of the United States are remarkably porous, same with Canada; even more so in Mexico. The phenomenon of human trafficking proves it.
Again the odds of this woman planning and executing such an elaborate escape sequence, sparing no expense and risking pretty much everything in order to do
Flee prosecution for criminal embezzlement. Try to pay attention, ok?
Maybe it would help if you took notes or something.
The odds of an ex-husband jerk bashing his ex-wife over the head with something
What's your evidence of head trauma?
We are talking kids of a Russian citizen who was married to a US one.
So why apply for Russian citizenship? You act like that's just a bookkeeping thing, but it costs hundreds of dollars and take
Then stop with your wild speculations on "what cops would do" and "what lawyers would do" and "what Russian mail-order brides would do" and I won't have to counter-speculate.
The simple truth is that you haven't offered one single piece of evidence for either the murder or Hans' involvement in it, and neither has the DA. Not one single piece of evidence - just nonsense speculations about what people you don't even know "would do."
What the fuck do you think the words "beyond reasonable doubt" stand for? What is "reasonable"? It is the code word for "most likely".
No, it's not. "Most likely" means "preponderance of evidence", and while that's the evidentiary standard for civil trials, criminal convictions require a greater standard of evidence. Specifically, "proof beyond a reasonable doubt", which is a far stricter standard than simply "most likely." It's not sufficient to prove that Hans is "most likely" guilty (although even that's too strong a claim for what the evidence against him proves.)
If you demand it, you might as well demand that 99.9% of criminals go free.
More like, 90%. As in, "better 10 guilty men go free than one innocent man be convicted." You know, the legal philosophy that underpins our system of criminal jurisprudence.
What "better" alternatives?
The ones I mentioned. The ones where you have an actual body, actual evidence of a murder, and an actual murder weapon with actual evidence tying it to Hans.
Try to keep up, ok? I don't know how you're getting lost on this stuff.
if you discard all circumstantial evidence trials you will disard most trials in the US and a huge percentage of murderes will go free.
Nobody's discarding all circumstantial evidence. But the evidence against Hans doesn't even rise to "circumstantial." There's no evidence of a murder - just a mysterious disappearance. There's evidence Nina had a plan to disappear to Russia. There's nothing tying Hans to the murder, because the murder isn't known to have happened; there's no way to establish that Hans had means and opportunity because neither the means nor the opportunity have been specified.
As for a "huge percentage", it's already the case that only 64% of murder investigations end in conviction, and that includes confessions and guilty pleas. So it should be abundantly obvious to you that "beyond a reasonable doubt" is already the legal standard at work in the United States.
Because if she somehow made it to Canada or Mexico then she would have to show up with a proper Mexican or Canadian visa at the airport to leave those countries for Russia.
Because, God knows, Mexico is a dystopian security state. You're an idiot.
Here go look up this page in a US consulate in St. Petersburg to see rules applicable during travel for these non-existant (according to you) dual US/Russian citizens.
If you had even read your own link, you would have seen that it confirms what I'm talking about:
And you'll notice that the page you cite has no mention of Russian naturalization law, which does require those applying for Russian citizenship to renounce citizenship of other countries.
It is conceivable but it involves large amounts of cash and organized crime and, as I pointed out many, many, many times, in the case of Nina it would have been completely, utterly counter-productive since she had absolutely nothing to gain from spending piles of money with the mob on such an escape from an idiot bankrupt nerd.
Besides, that is, prosecution for felony embezzlement. You seem to keep forgetting about that.
since I am a Canadian.
That certainly explains your critical ignorance of American law.
Cops do not give a rat's ass about Hans and would trade him up for something bigger (specially a serial murderer) in a flash.
...
..
Again, you claim knowledge that you couldn't possibly have without mental telepathy. The simple truth is that your speculations on what unspecified cops would do is completely irrelevant and is no basis to conclude anybody's guilt.
The facts are than Sean Sturgeon claims to be a killer many times over, and that hasn't been investigated at all. And it's just as likely that a zealous DA would want to railroad the suspect he has, rather than drop the charges mid-trial and start all over again.
Practically however it means that the odds of him doing so are very good.
The odds, huh? Why don't you show your math on that, if you're talking about probability, now?
Err, that would no longer be "under the circumstances", circumstances which involve
Circular reasoning, then, if you're going to argue that it's the "best possible case" so long as you ignore all the better alternatives. Under these circumstances, you have no case at all. There's no evidence she was murdered, and it's more likely that she was not. That's the obstacle you have to overcome before we get into any question of Hans' guilt.
Look, we could set a standard where the minimum requirements for murder conviction would be
Or we could stick with the standard we have - proof of guilt beyond reasonable doubt. Your standard is different, it's apparently "as much proof as we're likely to have, given circumstances that result in their being no proof at all", and unfortunately for you and the prosecuting DA, that's insufficient to obtain a legal conviction in the United States.
In other words you want a successful disappearance of a body and a weapon to be a guaranteed walk-out-of-jail-free card for any murderereven happened, and you can't prove that the accused had anything to do with it, then yes, a "murderer" should go free - because he's clearly not a murderer, at least according to the law.
Innocent until proven guilty, remember? That's how it works, here.
First your not so thinly disguised USA #1, USA #1, USA #1 superiority complex
I don't know what you think you're talking about; there's absolutely none of that in my post. With that kind of projection, you should work in the movies, moron.
it will probably shock you to know that a vast majority of people from the former Eastern block maintain citizenships in their old countries and procure them for their children.
It may shock you to know that neither the United States nor Russia recognize dual citizenship; both countries' State Depts. recognize an attempt to secure citizenship in that country to be renouncing citizenship of any other. Obtaining a foreign passport for American nationals for Russia isn't done simply to expedite vacations in Moscow; by legal definition it's a predicate to a permanent move. (And what a surprise, Hans' children have been moved to Russia, under the care of their grandmother - supposedly - and have no plans to be returned.)
And of course you did not answer the point about the means of such a trace-less "escape"
The means? The US maintains the single largest unguarded border in the whole world (and certainly did at the time of her disappearance.) Contrary to your delusions of Big Brother government, it's still quite easy to leave the United States under false pretenses.
That is not a question of just flaming
Oh?
I would suggest browsing mailing lists and net articles
So it is just internet flaming we're talking about. Gotcha.
As to the "hardcore SM enthusiast" who "killed" 8 people one wonders who the eight were and why isnt he under arrest for that "crime".
That's certainly a question Reiser's defense would like answered. I mean, it's not like the police would simply focus on their original suspect and overlook more promising leads once they'd committed to building a specific case, right?
Naw, that never happens, I'm sure.
That was not a "story" but an illustration of a common thought pattern amongst these ex-boyfriends
The problem is that it's a pattern of other people, not of Hans Reiser, and therefore it's essentially irrelevant (and prejudicial, if this were a courtroom.) There's no basis for securing a conviction simply because the defendant may be like some other people, some of whom have committed murder. Again if you have evidence that isn't simply your speculations about Hans' state of mind, we're waiting for it.
As to evidence of her murder it is as strong as one can reasonably expect under the circumstances.
Well, no, it's not. A stronger case would have an actual body, an actual murder weapon, and Hans' actual prints on it, for instance.
But none of that exists. It's only the convenient, easily-explained "disappearance" of a conwoman with foreign ties and reason to flee that suggests murder in the first place; I'm sorry but that doesn't begin to rise to the level of proof. No murder, no conviction. The prosecution has a double-uphill battle, here.
There is no record of her leaving the country
Well, of course there wouldn't be; that would defeat the whole purpose of setting Hans up for murder, now wouldn't it? Nonetheless there's ample evidence of her preparation for absconding to Russia; among other things, her efforts to obtain Russian citizenship for the children.
As to Hans "pissing people off", he did on many, many occasions demonstrate conclusively to us (by his own words and deeds) his abrasive, intolerant, self-centered, megalomaniac "personality" which, in retrospect, led many people to become highly skeptical about his painting himself as an innocent victim of some mealevolent forces arrayed against him.
And the fact that he flamed some people on the internet is not particularly suggestive, either. Or else there's a whole lot of Star Trek chatrooms that need to be investigated for murder.
You would be probably shocked to find that a jerk ex-boyfriend/ex-husband is statistically, hands down, a #1 candidate for a murderer of a woman.
... and ... and ... and all those conspirators helping her!
Right, but statistically that murder is almost always predicated by abuse, and there's no indication that ever happened. If anything Hans was probably abused by Nina. (That she basically dumped Hans for a hardcore SM enthusiast is suggestive, here.)
And they had been divorced for years; hardly the timeframe for a "crime of passion."
How about a "no good Russian bitch" daring to defy a boy genius who is famous for throwing tantrums when some kernel developer dared to defy him about a line of code or two? How "dared" she try to live a normal life when he was reduced to begging his mother for food? "Its all her fault!", "I made her and I will unmake the bitch!" etc and so on. The delusions abouth her "embezzling" stuff fit nicely in the process of constructing an internal self-justification. He "could not" have been responsible for all of these financial disasters, he is a genius after all, she must have done it! Her
That's quite the fantasy you've concocted, but I don't see any reason to believe it has any basis in fact. You certainly don't provide any. I don't know much about Linux filesystems, but ReiserFS must really have pissed a lot of people off, judging by how much people like you are falling all over themselves to convict Hans Reiser of a murder that there's no evidence even happened.
Look, you're just proving the defense's case, then. If there's no embezzlement then there's no motive for murder. They were already divorced, after all.
I'm sure his lawyer told him many times not to f*ck around with custody and visitation or he'd end up with his broke ass in a jail cell and get only supervised visits.
You're sure, huh? You were there?
I only ask because, again, you're using these "facts" to reach a conclusion of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Do you think maybe not being able to reach a conclusion except on the basis of events and conversations you couldn't possibly have any knowledge about is, perhaps, the very definition of "reasonable doubt"?
Between the thought of violating a legal custody arrangement, and the thought of my embezzling fraud of a wife escaping to god-forsaken Russia with my children, that's the easiest decision in the world. And I don't even have kids.
How in the world do you defraud a bankrupt business with no assets, no customers and an overdrawn bank account?!
Try to be less credulous. Where do you think the assets went? Why do you think they were overdrawn?
Nina Reiser. Look, even the prosecution is using her embezzlement as motive for murder, so clearly it's a matter of public record.
All of the above rendering the whole scheme of "getting the US visa" utterly and completely useless. ...unless, of course, you wanted to live in the US prior to your disappearance to defraud your putative husband's company for all it was worth.
Which, you know, she did. Which would then make escaping to Russia - after the US visa became essentially useless - a great deal more attractive.
"No sense whatsoever as an accusation"? I think maybe you're not understanding the accusation.
He picked up the kids from school when it was Nina's turn ... before anyone could have known she was missing ...
If you're going to send the guy to the chair based on this one single act, then you'd better have more evidence than you've presented so far that it actually was Nina's turn, and that Paul Reiser never in his life forgot which day he was supposed to pick up the kids and which he wasn't, or that parents have never tried to antagonize each other and interfere with visitation/custody by picking up kids when they weren't supposed to, or that reasonable people can conclude that someone might not be there for the kids well before the legal definition of "missing."
Sorry, but it's simply not the linchpin you're making it out to be. It's almost more unreasonable to suggest that, in the middle of an acrimonious divorce with a lying, cheating swindler with a foreign passport, he'd ever have let her pick them up.
From here, they say he's guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
There's almost no evidence she's even dead. Motive, certainly he has. Opportunity? Impossible to say since the circumstances of her possible death are completely unknown. Means? Again, impossible to say for the same reason. That's one out of the three requirements. Maybe he killed his wife. Legally, there's no basis to convict him. The "he knew to pick up the kids" line of attack isn't nearly sufficient. You haven't established that he knew to pick up the kids; he simply did so.
He picked up the kids from school when it was Nina's turn ... before anyone could have known she was missing ...was Nina's turn, and that Paul Reiser never in his life forgot which day he was supposed to pick up the kids and which he wasn't, or that parents have never tried to antagonize each other and interfere with visitation/custody by picking up kids when they weren't supposed to, or that reasonable people can conclude that someone might not be there for the kids well before the legal definition of "missing."
Sorry, but it's simply not the linchpin you're making it out to be. It's almost more unreasonable to suggest that, in the middle of an acrimonious divorce with a lying, cheating swindler with a foreign passport, he'd ever have let her pick them up.
From here, they say he's guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
There's almost no evidence she's even dead. Motive, certainly he has. Opportunity? Impossible to say. Means? Again, impossible to say. That's one out of the three requirements. Maybe he killed his wife. Legally, there's no basis to convict him. The "he knew to pick up the kids" line of attack isn't nearly sufficient. You haven't established that he knew to pick up the kids; he simply did so.
If you're proposing a model of drift that results in fixation or conservation of advantageous traits, variable rates of change, and preservation of adaptive changes over maladaptive ones, I don't understand how you're not simply proposing "selection" under another name.
350 generations isn't long enough?
For primates? No way.
Humans didn't evolve in the presence of substantial amounts of electricity either, but we hardly consider electric lights abnormal today, do we?
In the context of human evolution, they certainly are. It would make zero sense to try to understand human behavior under electric illumination via evolutionary mechanisms, because we simply haven't had lights that long. Similarly, human behavior while intoxicated is irrelevant to the evolution of human behavior because intoxicants haven't been a part of the human environment for long enough.
We've been making beer for at least 7000 years
Not long enough.
The girl you pick up Saturday night after a great deal of partying just has to be willing
And, to some degree, "hot." That's where the mate choice comes in - the choice is who you find hot enough to sleep with.
That is, there is an apparently randomized drift, as one would expect, but there is no evidence that this drift results in a competitive advantage for one design over another, or is of any significance save as a habitual manner of making boats, or that the making of boats 'evolves' in any sense.
The conservation of traits is the evidence. We guess that the traits are conserved because they represent functional aspects of boats, and that's probably true, but it's really not important. The fact that the rate of variation in traits is not constant at all loci is the evidence for selection.
the change would not be random, but directed, according to the cultural preconceptions of the people attempting to solve the problem.
Only if you assume that human beings never design by trial and error. Surely we can dismiss that assertion by inspection. (Or perhaps you need to be told how many different materials Edison experimented on for his light bulbs.)
Which proves absolutely nothing, especially as the study was not set up in any way that could prove that natural selection was not 'weeding out inferior new designs'.
A finding that all traits varied at equal rates and never became fixed or conserved would have proved that natural selection was not weeding out inferior new designs.
Never gotten drunk enough to wonder who the woman you woke up with was, have you? ;)
But isn't that kind of the point? If you have to be drunk to do it, is it really normal behavior? Humans didn't evolve in the presence of substantial ethyl alcohol, after all.
While this is reasonably true for women, it's much less so for men.
I think you'll find that even men exhibit mate choice. "Gentlemen prefer blondes", etc. Men aren't in general any less discriminate than women, even though the opportunity cost per mating is so much lower.
Which is, of course, a survival characteristic for men - spread your seed widely, hope some survives.
Sure, but its still not as random as you portray. While men nominally don't commit the same resources to reproduction as a female might - 9 months of pregnancy vs 20 minutes of effort - they have to commit time and resources to being accepted as mates, because female mate choice constitutes a limiting factor.
Or unwilling ones, for that matter....
Rape isn't a winning reproductive strategy in our species, thanks to various female countermeasures (like cryptic ovulation.)
All that aside, do you actually know someone who picked a wife/husband by "genetic examination"?
They're called "sperm banks". (I think maybe you misunderstood what I was saying.)
You've written an incredibly long post, but I don't see where you've actually said anything.
And that is why the question is, in my mind, material.
That what? Did you intend to be abstruse, or was it by accident?
Well, it's more a question of what is meant by 'natural selection'; ask Darwin what he meant by 'Nature', not me.
It's not rigidly defined, because it really doesn't have to be. Everybody's familiar with the idea of a breeder selecting and breeding pigeons; Darwin's critical realization was that the same thing happens to all species without human breeders. Humans, too, and it really doesn't matter whether or not we're doing it on purpose or it's just happening to us. It's selection. Whether it's "natural" or not is immaterial. Selection is selection.
That's quite a hard-on you must have for hippie granola types to simply insert this diatribe in a topic that has nothing to do with environmentalism.
Doesn't natural selection have to be done by nature for it to be natural?
What do you think "nature" is, precisely?
When I hear people claim that natural selection doesn't work on people and that evolution doesn't apply anymore to the human species, I bring forth some examples like the drunk teenagers crashing their cars (main cause of teenage mortality).
There's a much, much better example of natural selection operating on human beings - people tend to have sex with people they're attracted to, not at random. And they certainly don't have children with random people; there's always a selection involved, whether that's selection for resources, good genetics/immunotype (assessed instinctively by appearance, smell, or cognitively by genetic examination), or some other criteria.
So long as mate choice is being exercised, human beings are subject to natural selection. For some reason people always overlook that, but evolution doesn't care if your genes don't get passed on because you were killed, or because you couldn't get laid ever. Either way you've been selected against.
Fundamentally wrong. There's nothing in the law that limits the obligation of the business to inform in the way you describe. If they cause a breach of security of a system, they're obligated to inform - regardless of who is the maintainer of the data.
Who maintains the data is irrelevant. It's about who allows the breach of security. That's Best Buy, so their actions obligated them to inform.
It says PERSONAL INFORMATION maintained by the business.
Well, no, it says "person or business." Which includes the woman who lost her laptop, since she's a person.
There's simply nothing in the statue that appears to let BB off the hook, here, which is why even the local AG thinks they're not off the hook.
Obviously BB has liability here. I simply can't understand how you're reading the statute to apply only to data BB personally maintains; that's not what it says at all. BB's actions allowed "breach of the security of the system", period. It's those actions that expose them to liability, regardless of who was "maintaining" the data.
Try not just reading the part that you bolded. If you read the entire paragraph, as you seem loathe to do, it's obvious that it doesn't define liability, nor restrict it only to data BB personally maintains. It's simply a definition of the term "breach of the security of a system", and it's obvious that happened here. Because it happened by BB's actions, they're the ones who are liable.