Submitted by The story of Hans Reiser, the eccentric file system programmer, is a tragic one. The author of the ReiserFS was arrested under suspicion of the murder of his wife Nina Reiser in 2006, and was declared guilty in April 2008. Some still placed doubts about the conviction, stating that he might be innocent. It now seems that all doubt has been quelled, since Alameda County District Attorney Thomas Orloff has revealed that Hans Reiser will disclose the location of Nina’s body for a reduced sentence.The deal is not yet finalised, though. “There’s been some overtures,” Orloff said, “But everything is in its preliminary stage.” The deal would reduce his conviction from first degree to second degree murder. In addition, an anonymous source close with the situation said that “the only real leverage he has is if he can provide a body. He really doesn’t have any options left. Even if he won a retrial somehow, he’d likely be convicted.”
The sad thing is that more people have worked on ReiserFS than just Hans; the ReiserFS file system is now being discredited solely by the actions of Hans, even though this, of course, in a professional way has no influence on the code or the possible technical excellence of the file system itself. I find that to be a very sad state of affairs, since art (which code pretty much is) should never be discredited on the basis of its maker.
As my teacher in Dutch Literature always used to say: “Most Dutch writers are assholes, but that doesn’t discredit their contributions to the world of literature in any way.”
Well, the deal is still tentative and in negotiations, but it’s looking like Nina’s body isn’t in Russia with the kids after all. So much for the conspiracy theories…
It was obvious right from the start to anybody with more than two functioning brain cells that Hans Reiser wasn’t acting like an innocent man. While the evidence in his trial were “circumstantial”, that’s a lot of circumstantial evidence to go by.
This development comes as no surprise to me.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-07/ff_hansreiser?cu…
That was the piece that did it for me. After that I didn’t have much in the way of doubt.
Yep. I remember that article well. Reiser was beyond geek a long time ago. Too bad he never got any help.
Anybody who ever thought there was a “conspiracy theory” was an idiot.
This is very interesting news.
But what I *don’t* understand is this unnecessary piece about ReiserFS. This story is about a mother of two children been murdered. And you have to whine about the outcome of a filesystem inside the news. How cynical!
Not cynical. And quite appropriate. The events surrounding Hans have effects upon a lot of people. These kids happen to have loving grandparents to take care of them. Far worse atrocities are occurring in the world at this very moment. We can’t and don’t mourn all of them. Getting all somber and respectful about one that happens to make the news is well intentioned, but essentially hypocritical.
I disagree. It’s right that this is not the place to discuss earthquakes. And live has to go on, etc. Sure.
The problem I see here is that we are talking about someone being murdered. If we do this, we should do it respectfully. Saying “there is news in the murder case. My opinion: please let the filesystem survive!” is just inappropriate.
If you talk about these things, you should mind what you have to say about it. Or just don’t do it. That’s my opinion on this. Think about being a family member googling on news about this case and reading this. How would you feel about this? (I’m not talking about cencorship here! Sure ReiserFS is another interesting topic! But if you talk about this case and you want to introduce a personal complaint about what happened, it should not be solely about the future of the file system!)
Except, that’s not what the news item said. The news item said that I find it unfortunate that a piece of code A LOT of people have worked on is now more or less reduced to nothing solely due to the actions of one man.
Look, when a football player’s family member dies, right now, during the European Championships, the sports news isn’t going to be about how sad it is for everyone – no, it’s going to be about how it is going to affect his or his team’s performance, and how that would affect the standings and outcome of the tournament.
Harsh, but that’s reality. Sure, it sucks for the kids and family that a person was murdered here, but 1) I can’t feel sorry for all the misery in the world, and 2) we’re a tech news website, and it’s the tech aspect that matters – not the personal aspect.
Cold, harsh, but/like reality. I’m sorry.
What do you expect of technology news sites? This is OS News, linking to Wired, and Hans Reiser’s personal life (guilty or not), or the personal life of anyone in the industry, shouldn’t be a part of technology news. It may sound callous, but if this were a case about anyone else, we wouldn’t care (at least not as much as we do).
If, on the other hand, the story were on a criminal news site (there must be a few, but I don’t know of them), then ReiserFS would be totally irrelevant. It would just be a story about a man suspected and convicted, however flimsily, of murdering his wife.
Just my two cents: whether or not he’s guilty, having no crime scene, no weapon, and no witness to any actual crime shouldn’t have resulted in a conviction.
What you say essentially translates to that “Hans Reiser Offers To Lead Cops to Nina’s Body” is totally irrelevant to this website and shouldn’t be covered here at all.
About the case: I think I’m with you about the conviction. Still it is not 100% clear to the public how much hard evidence they really had. From what I read from Wired’s blog, it should not be enough to convict anyone. Still I trust the jury more than my personal opinion which is only based on journalist’s coverage.
>As my teacher in Dutch Literature always used to say: “Most Dutch writers are assholes, but that doesn’t discredit their contributions to the world of literature in any way.”
This is a strong pragmatism Thom. But one question without any flame in it: would you use work of Charles Manson or maybe Hitler? Sure it’s not really comparable but I do think you know what I’m thinking of. That said, it’s hard to work with some stuff and forget about the person behind it. So the code isn’t the murderer, but …
Hitler was not an awful writer. The first part of mein kampf is actually quite enjoyable, and it gives insight to where his beliefs came from. You should spend and hour or two reading it.
If you find any portion of Mein Kampf remotely “enjoyable” you have issues.
It is substandard literature written by a frustrated artist with deliriums of grandeur. But then most German literature is boring as f*ck, so he may have not stuck out so bad.
In any case, since Hitler has been named… according to Godwin’s law, this discussion is over.
Godwin’s law
“As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”
I fail to see why the discussion is over according to Godwin’s law, since it don’t say anything about ending an discussion, just the probability of one involving Hitler or nazis.
Besides, even if Godwin’s law could be used that way, and imho it can’t, how would one discuss Hilter or nazism?
We should be able to discuss nazism without having a poor interpretation of Godwin’s law thrown in the face.
BTW, I think your using a little bit of Reductio ad Hitlerum, in the sense that you’re judging judgen’s mental state based strongly on his/hers taste in literature: if one likes Hitlers book, one must have “issues”
By your standards and use of Godwin’s law, your argument is void
Can you specify, what exactly you found “enjoyable”? German is my first language, so I had the chance to read the original. I didn’t make it beyond the first two chapters, because the language is just clumsy, awkward and pathetic.
It doesn’t even radiate the “evil grandeur” you would expect from it, just his frustration with the Weimar Republic which would deny him due recognition and had taken away the good old order. It lacks any intellectual depths or (evil) beauty.
Hitler may have been a master of mass psychology, think of the well-orchestrated party conventions, but he was an awful writer and an even worse artist.
There is one recording of him in a natural situation, where you here him talking in his normal voice (google for “Mannerheim tapes”), this also shows that he certainly hasn’t had the brightest intellect.
Certainly he would have been unable to deliver a work of true art and creativity as a a Linux file system.
Hitler was vegetarian, he hated tobbaco and alcohol and under his government germans were one of the first countries that had laws that protected animals against experimentation, etc. And I don’t think people looks at Greenpeace as a nazi organization.
What stops reiser 4 from getting more attention is mainly reiser4 itself, not Hans. Many people didn’t like reiser 4 before Nina’s dissapearance, many people don’t like it now. Compare it with the excitement that other filesystems have generated – like ZFS.
Edited 2008-06-08 16:50 UTC
Unfortunately, some apparently very respectable academics do make this general comparison (Murray Bookchin, Peter Staudenmaier, Janet Biehl, Frank Uek~APtter), see:
http://larouchepub.com/other/book_reviews/2007/3415green_n_brown.ht…
for a brief list of some of these arguments regarding ‘ecofascism’
Thankfully, a more mature debate is emerging:
http://www.fis-kultur.de/buecher/buchlisten/Die.Eroberung.der.Natur…
You pays your money and takes your choice – some researchers see conservationism, deep ecology, etc. and fascism as anti-modern, and hence from the same intellectual mould, others see Nazism here as as the epitome of instrumental rationalism, the technophile essence of which continues to destroy the natural environment.
Except that we do use the work of Hitler, and people worse than him. For example the medical experiments carried out at the Nazi concentration camps where horrendous beyond belief and most of it was simple sadistic torture without any notable scientific validity. Despite this some of the results, like those from their experiments on hypothermia, have been used by doctors around the world to save lives.
Now there are people who argue that this information should never be used, no matter what lives could be saved from it. Anything the Nazis discovered we should rediscover humanely. But it seems most people think that saving lives is of the highest priority even if the knowledge of how to do so came from monsters.
It’s a very compelling question. A bit OT (Hans did not commit murder to enhance his filesystem, I,m pretty sure) but certainly an interesting point.
It seems similar to this term I keep hearing on Law and Order, “fruit of the poisoned tree”. Evidence of a crime, no matter how conclusive of a defendant’s guilt, is not admissible in a trial if it was obtained by illegal means. Or course Sam Waterston & co. will usually find some clever way around this rule, and we’ll (or are expected to, I think) applaud them for it.
This behaviour is almost unique because, as you indicate with the Nazi example, we tend to regard knowledge as a Genie that can’t be kept in its bottle. We’re always told to learn lessons from the Nazi era, so should one be subjective in that enterprise? I’m sure that, if the powers who got hold of those research data had decided to bury them for moral reasons, they would still have leaked eventually.
Of course, turning your nose up at working on (or using) a bit of software because the author–one of the authors, for accuracy–did a Bad Thing is not really comparable to the above. The software still deserves to be evaluated on its own merits. I think, though, that that is exactly what is happening, and the suggestion of unfair prejudice based on Hans’s crime is spoken mainly by die-hard fans as an excuse, rather than an objective assessment of any community members’ behaviour.
Which is quite interesting in and of itself, since it seems to be a very American concept. In other countries all evidence, no matter how gathered, is admissible. It is then up to the lawyers to argue, in court, that the way it was collected makes it tainted, unreliable and thus should be ignored. If laws where broken in gathering the evidence, then that will be treated in a separate and unrelated trial.
Again it is hard case arguing which is prefereable. Letting a guilty person go free because some rookie cop forgot to dot every i and cross every t is on the one hand a bad thing. On the other hand the system does make sure that everybody involved in an investigation tries extra hard to stay on the right side of the law when gathering evidence, since doing otherwise might lead to a guilty person walking.
another very US concept is the reading of rights…
Don’t they do that in England too? I may be wrong, but I think they have similar laws regarding reading someone their rights when they’re arrested. Of course, it should be everyone’s business to know their rights, and where the rights of the police stop, but that is another matter, entirely.
they may have, but nothing to the degree of the miranda litany iirc
There is a reason why evidence has to bee beyond any reasonable doubt. For example, the cops could plant “evidence” and voila you are automatically guilty.
Also illegal evidence could be most likely due to entrapment et al. The whole point is that the state, who is the enforcer of laws, should not be above the laws it is trying to enforce.
It’s remixed a lot, but there’s the saying:
It’s better that 1000 guilty men go free than one innocent man be imprisoned
I understand the sentiment, but is it practical?
Suppose those 1000 guilty men who’ve just been freed kill two men, rape six women, kidnap a few kids, steal a bunch of cars, rob some convenience stores, beat a dog, etc.
Would the victims (and/or their families) truly be grateful for that one innocent man’s freedom?
Edited 2008-06-09 19:55 UTC
It’s a matter of what the people find to be more just. The count of free guilty people and imprisoned innocent people will never be zero.
So which do you favor, seeing more innocent people behind bars or more guilty people go free?
I’d rather be fearful of criminals on the loose than having to worry about a government that would imprison me just for wanting to be on the safe side.
“I’d rather be fearful of criminals on the loose than having to worry about a government that would imprison me just for wanting to be on the safe side.”
Exactly. My previous post says almost the same thing.
I’d like to see how these people who’d rather put an innocent in prison would feel if it happened to them: what makes you so sure that tomorrow you won’t be the victim of a miscarriage of justice?
Let me give you another example. I’m a vegetarian, for several reasons, one of them is the suffering we put animals through. Locked up in small cages for their whole (short) life, then transported across Europe, slaughtered, just to transport the meat back to the country where the animals came from (because slaughterhouses elsewhere do it cheaper).
In general I consider the ‘damage done’ when the meat is bought. Now if I’m someplace where meat sandwiches are passed around, and there’s one or two left over (that will be thrown away), I’m inclined to grab one. Why? Because after you’ve put those animals through all that suffering, the least you can do, is enjoy the result (I *do* like many meat products, I just don’t eat them – normally). If you don’t, all that suffering was for nothing.
So if people suffer, but something useful comes out of it, that can save others from going through similar suffering, use it! I’d almost say you owe that to the victims.
As for ReiserFS, I hope people will be sensible enough to separate Hans Reiser’s personal troubles from the merits of his filesystem, and decide its use on practical/technical merits alone. However, Hans Reiser’s situation can be part of that: if as a lead developer he’s unable to contribute any longer, and perhaps nobody else has enough of a grip on the codebase, it would go unmaintained soon. Now that is a practical issue to consider. Let’s hope there are enough interested parties, so that a good filesystem doesn’t go to waste.
Not that it matters much, perhaps: there’s so countless men-hours put into projects that go nowhere anyway, and there are other good filesystems to use with Linux (ext2/3, XFS, etc).
Edited 2008-06-08 23:14 UTC
The problem is, ReiserFS / Reiser4 simply isn’t that good a file system for actual production machines. It’s a niche FS without much general use.
@diegocg
“Hitler was vegetarian, he hated tobbaco and alcohol and under his government germans were one of the first countries that had laws that protected animals against experimentation, etc. And I don’t think people looks at Greenpeace as a nazi organization”
What is going on here? Even though i think that speaking about Hitler has nothing to do with the content of the present news, i feel the need to reply to this king of comment.
Let me ask you something. Have you ever heard that Greenpeace has killed thousand of people just because they were ***? Or have you ever heard that Greenpeace has organized, planed and supported one of the biggest genocide in the history of humanity?
Well i don’t think so…
Or maybe it’s that you are so f…k uneducated and stupid that you think Hitler was a good guy just because he did not smoke or drink alcohol?
I am amazed to see so much stupidity. How can anyone try to defend Hitler in any way or for any reason? Are you crazy or what?
And also to the people arguing that humanity is using anything that the Hitler regime could have created. You people are insane, you don’t know what you are talking about. Go to say this to someone who got his grand father/mother or father/mother or any relative killed in a gas chamber.
Think about it, and stop the bullshit, you are embarrassing the web. Go to school to educate yourself…..
Epic fail. You missed his point entirely.
Reminds me of something I recently read.
Except that I’m not. In case you still don’t get it, he was pointing out the absurdity of an association fallacy.
Edited 2008-06-09 12:59 UTC
If you agree with using highways, or building rockets, then you are agreeing with using the heritage of Hitler’s Third Reich.
Knowledge, or a filesystem for that matter, must not be valued according to what you think of the originator.
Other people were building rockets before Von Braun, and Germany is not the only country who came up with the concept of multilane driving surfaces.
So what is your point?
The point might be that Nazi Germany did the first working implementation, which either inspired others (highways & Eisenhower) or even became foundation for later works (rockets).
BTW highways – Germans also sort of invented automobiles, without which highways would be pointless ;P (but that’s out of scope of Nazi Germans of course
)
If you want another example: Today’s electricity safety standards are based on Nazi research how much electricity a human can have for how long.
By that logic, if you backpack across Europe, you agree with the Roman Empire’s violent march, and subjugation (or sometimes assimilation) of all cultures in their path, since you’ll probably be walking on a Roman Road, or riding a bus on a highway built over a Roman Road. Good can come of almost anything, and to ignore anything good because of it’s source is a waste. That can come out as “the ends justify the means”, but that’s a bit of an oversimplification. Roads weren’t Rome’s sole intention, they were a means to improve trade and troop transport through conquered regions. “The ends justify the means” would apply to the Pax Romana, or Roman Peace; unifying the known world in peace under the Roman government.
Edited 2008-06-09 05:20 UTC
Besides that, Manson released some decent folk rock albums
They’re not the best, but still ok…
Well, I happen to find the Tao Te Ching Italian translation by Julius Evola, a well known fascist, by far the best translation in any modern language.
Should I stop using it because he was a fascist?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Evola
… and Hans Reiser is not Hitler.
This is really one of the most pointless Hitler references I have read in a long time.
To all the morons who were claiming Nina was in Russia and had abandoned the family and were proclaiming the innocence of Hans, here is the proof in the pie. Enjoy eating it.
http://tinyurl.com/y2qogb
Did you read the sociological experiments he did on his son to proove his theory that desensitizing children with violent videogames is a good thing? and how he continued, even after telling nina he stopped (after she demanded it, as it was obviously screwing the kid up)
It amazes me how anyone could defend someone like reiser.
got a link to that?
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-07/ff_hansreiser?cu…
Really long and written in typical wired style, but ill quote the relevent bits
…
…..
I suppose if you’re going to murder a boy’s mother then immersion in violent video games is a good way to convince him that violence is a normal part of life …
i dont know if ecentric is to little or mad is to much.
something tells me that family had deep deep issues…
I’m not defending him, but simply having f–ked up ideas on child raising and generally being a little bit batshit insane, doesn’t automatically make you guilty of murder.
Regardless of whether there was a body or not, a lot of people believed that the conviction was unsafe. In many countries other than the USA he couldn’t have been convicted.
So you can’t call “morons” all the people who believed in his innocence. How would you likeif I called “morons” those who believed him guilty?
He’s offering to show them the body…
Those who thought he was guilty were right…not morons.
You must judge according to the evidence you have at the time,not the evidence which might be discovered later.
No, a jury must must judge according to the evidence at hand..
Common belief is different and has no bearing on the legal outcome of the case. You believe what you want, others will believe what they want.
Those that believed he was guilty, were correct.
“No, a jury must must judge according to the evidence at hand”
That is exactly what I meant to say. According to the evidence at hand *then* there was no body, nor enough evidence that Nina was indeed dead.
Oh, come one. There was more than enough circumstantial evidence (and no credible explanation from Reiser) to convict him. You only have to prove something beyond a _reasonable_ doubt – something that was very efficiently made, not least by Reisers self-incriminatory rambling on the witness stand.
In many countries other than the USA he couldn’t have been convicted.
Thats a shame, and here I thought the US justice system was screwed up. Maybe it works alright after all, considering that in other countries this guy (a convicted murderer) might be walking free right now.
So you can’t call “morons” all the people who believed in his innocence. How would you likeif I called “morons” those who believed him guilty?
Sure I can, I reserve the right to call anyone a moron
As for calling me a moron? Well I’m only human and have done some pretty moronic things in my time. I wouldn’t take it personally.
Seriously though, if I offended anyone then I’m sorry. Obviously I have strong feelings about this whole mess and was shocked that people were acting so blindly with the evidence that was available.
“Thats a shame, and here I thought the US justice system was screwed up. Maybe it works alright after all, considering that in other countries this guy (a convicted murderer) might be walking free right now.”
I am Italian. As everybody knows, my ancestors put the basis for modern law in many countries (but I am perfectly aware that English speaking countries were less influenced by Roman law).
We are of the opinion that it is better to have a criminal walking free than an innocent in prison.
I love England, where I lived for so many years, but the thought of becoming a victim of a miscarriage of justice used to terrify me.
I don’t have such a fear in Continental Europe.
He’s wrong.
Ultimately, an “asshole” will not be able to achieve truly great art.
Picasso by all accounts was somewhat a rotten human being. Heck we wouldn’t even let any hair dresser cut his hair, because he was convinced some of the women he had abused and used would be most certainly performing voodoo using his hair. So he only trusted a single person to give him hair cuts.
He managed to produce some magnificent art, while being a big asshole.
Good point.
Assholes cannot make true art ?
So I take it you have not seen “Two Girls and a Cup” ????
LOL
No, that’s how culturally deprived I am these days.
Sure you can. Just look at RMS.
Sure you can. Just look at RMS. [/q]
I admit. You win.
Sure you can. Just look at RMS. [/q]
Emacs and the GNU Public License don’t qualify as “art.”
Edited 2008-06-09 22:05 UTC
The story of Nina Reiser, slain wife of eccentric file system programmer Hans Reiser, is a tragic one.
I used “tragic” in a different manner than is usually the case in English. I’m referring to the Aristotle definition of tragedy, explained in his work Poetics. It basically comes to a play with a sad ending, but the key element is that the sad thing that happens to the main character is something that arises from his or her OWN imperfections – not through someone else’s nor by his or her environment. Like Hans Reiser.
By this classical definition, the story of Nina Reiser is, in fact, not exactly Aristotelean tragedy.
Now, I probably pushed it a little too far for a general audience by being so technical, but hey, I got to put my Latin/Greek education to use somewhere. Didn’t spend all those useless hours studying for nothing.
Not at all, in fact there are many scientists (and geeks) around (at least at my faculty) with a classical education and it hasn’t proven useless either, since it has allowed me to pick up on other languages much faster than without that education.
My final year Greek subject was Sophocles’ Antigone, so I know exactly what you mean (cf. the fall of Creon). I didn’t take Latin for more than 3 years though, because my course schedule was already full enough with language and science subjects evenly balanced and some economics thrown into the mix.
that only proves that he knows where her corpse is
Guilty as hell. Put him on death row like the other murderers. No special treatment.
Oh, and for you people who modded me down a month ago when I said he was as guilty as hell, mind modding me up now to make up for your [wrongly modded] mistakes?
You know fanboyism has gone too far when people defend a convicted criminal just because they like the criminals works.
Dave
Amen! ’nuff said…
Especially when this particular criminals work in itself can be judged to be criminal too, as it is the ONLY Linux filesystem that has lost me data !
To be fair to him, all file systems can lose data, I think it’s just luck of the draw to be honest. Many people swear by ReiserFS, I personally haven’t really used it, I’m happy using ext3.
It is sad to see a talented developer go this way, he did have a lot to offer the community.
That said, he was by all accounts, a particularly difficult man to deal with at the best of times, and did not like conforming to the Linux kernel coding standards. I’m glad Linus stood his ground.
Dave
… he has given them the indication that he knows where the body is? Or are they coming to him with a deal saying the only improvement you could even dream of getting is if you tell us where a body is? Just to be clear I read that article right.
Since he was already found guilty, he has nothing to lose by offering to disclose the location of the body. By doing so, he is hoping that his sentence will be reduced.
As far as I can see, the article doesn’t clearly state who approached whom or what Reiser has admitted. The article didn’t leave me with the impression that Reiser has admitted to knowing where the body was or even that there was a body. Then again, neither did it leave me with the impression that the prosecutors approached Reiser.
Clearly the prosecutors and the author of the Wired article wants us to believe that the first case is true, however they don’t provide any information to back that up – which makes me automatically think the second case is more likely. Surely if Reiser approached the DA, the DA would make sure the press knew that – likewise Reiser would only admit to the body once the deal was in place.
I certainly don’t see the article provides positive proof of Reiser’s guilt – but neither am I saying that he is definitely innocent – just that nothing so far has convinced me of his guilt. Neither does the information that juror no.7 disclosed lead me to especially trust judgment of the jurors (http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/04/reiser-juror-de.html) – he just sounds like a Daily Mail reader (sort of like a British Fox News).
As my teacher in Dutch Literature always used to say: “Most Dutch writers are assholes, but that doesn’t discredit their contributions to the world of literature in any way.”
What contributions?
Dutch literature (Thom’s teacher would have meant literature in the Dutch language, ie including that written by Flemish authors also) is relatively little known outside the community of native speakers, but it is a significant body of work.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_literature
I knew he was guilty, I said it from day one. His reputation and that of his filesystem has been tarnished. The reputation of Linux as a whole has been damaged. Im thinking of switching to BSD or Windows. She was a beautiful woman who had much to offer the world and her children.
I personally hope for this monsterous act he gets the death penalty.
Why would you switch OS just because of this? Think rationally for a moment, please!
There are worse punishments; death is the easy way out.
I recently ordered a Mac. This was so disheartning and a real wake up call that a Linux developer could do such a monsterous act. I am eBaying off my Linux PC’s and I will be on a Mac from now on. Goodbye Linux forever.
So it seems that ReiserFS might become a real killer application after all.
Personally I think they should rename it to either KillaFS, KillerFS or MurderFS.
Kinda gansta no?
I don’t understand it and there’s OJ who got away with murder simply because he use to run across grass holding a leather ball. He’s only meaningful contribution to society is playing a dumb @ss cop in Naked Gun series. What is he doing now? Robbing casinos?
What does this have to do with the price of eggs?
Why all these comments along the lines of “I called this the first time I heard about it. Everybody who showed any doubt as to his guilt are complete morons”. Since when did jumping to conclusions become virtue, and skepticism in the face of circumstantial evidence a sin?
Since we evolved into humans, or even earlier, I suppose. We are mammals – with exceptionally high intelligence, compared to other mammals – but we are still animals and this is how we behave.
I find myself telling the Reiser story to my friends who are otherwise not interested in free software, and they suck it up like sponges. Not flattering, but true.
I did not call it the first time I heard about it. I formed my opinion of his guilt later. I suspect that the criticisms are aimed more at the people who seemed to feel that he couldn’t be guilty because they really liked Reiser4.
Edited 2008-06-09 10:11 UTC
Jumping to conclusions is good in the way that being highly skeptical in the face of a mountain of circumstantial evidence is. Both extremes are pretty ridiculous.
To all the people saying, “WE WERE RIGHT, SEE!” I think you are missing the point. The people who were “defending” Reiser a few weeks ago were not “wrong” to do so. There was no direct evidence, so reguardless of how guilty he looked (or is) he should not have been convicted. The prosecution was sketchy at best, and relied on circumstantial evidence, and the emotions (they showed a video recording of the Reiser children’s birthday parties and asked them if they loved their mother, of which only the latter bore minimal relevance to the case) and simple-mindedness of the jurors. This case is a testament to everything that is wrong with the U.S. justice system.
Edited 2008-06-09 13:21 UTC
All this viewpoint does is ensure that anyone who can figure out how to hide, destroy, or otherwise mutilate a body beyond recognition will get away with murder.
I am as appalled by the justice system as anyone else, but this case was hardly any kind of travesty, nor was it emblematic of the real and actual problems of the justice system.
This is a pretty straight forward case.
He could easily have gotten away with it, if he had acted a little differently. Ask any cop: a truly intelligent criminal who plans well can get away with just about anything once, or multiple times depending on the crime.
The justice system did fail in this case. It provided a conviction when there was no certainty, even though there was a lot of suspicion. I’d much rather have a murder walking the streets then know that I could be convicted without evidence, merely based on the suspicions of some prosecutors and their skill at tugging the heart-strings of a crowd.
The very structure of the justice system is designed to prevent false *positives*, false negatives are not nearly as bad for liberty.
You cannot–should not, must not–view these events in terms of right and wrong. Your moral convictions are irrelevant to the discussion, as indeed is Reiser’s guilt. What’s important are two things: evidence and the law. First, what does the evidence prove? Not what do we suspect, not what do we think, what do we *know*, beyond a doubt, what can we demonstrate conclusively? Second, what does the law say about that? Not what do we feel, not what do we want to do to the offender, but what is written in to the contract by which we all co-exist.
In this case the law is clear and murder is against it. What is not clear is that murder took place; indeed, even if Reiser knows where his wife’s body is murder is not proven. All we know now is that he knows where her body is. Suppose she committed suicide? I don’t see any proof of that, but we are all without proof today. In the case of evidence there is very, very little. It is all individually inconclusive and collectively suspicious, but does not prove that Reiser killed his wife any more than it proves aliens attacked.
Any time when there is no *proof*, merely evidence of suspicious circumstances, the defendant should prevail. I know this is often not the case, but that would be just. Convicting someone without proof is always against the law.
This system ensures that people who are innocent are not imprisoned.
To all the people saying, “WE WERE RIGHT, SEE!” I think you are missing the point. The people who were “defending” Reiser a few weeks ago were not “wrong” to do so. There was no direct evidence, so reguardless of how guilty he looked (or is) he should not have been convicted.
……
This case is a testament to everything that is wrong with the U.S. justice system.
So what you are saying is that if the system worked correctly, then a murderer would be walking free right now?
He was tried in a court of law, found guilty and now is willing to show the location of the body. My god the system is obviously flawed!
With the events unfolded and his willingness to possibly show the location of the body, which pretty much destroys any innocence claim he had, I’m thinking the justice system here in the US worked just fine on this go ’round.
Bah.
I thought he was guilty months before the trial ever began.
And after that, I read this[1] and had no doubt.
He’s a nutjob.
[1] http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-07/ff_hansreiser
I knew there’d be a lively discussion when I saw that one of the OSAlert articles was about Hans Reiser. And I wasn’t disappointed. Personally I think that until he actually shows them a body, his conviction is still unsafe and it is not 100% certain that he committed the crime. We aren’t out of the woods yet on this one…
This comment I just could not pass up. How much more blindly will some people follow is amazing. The ability of some humans to believe in a position in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is a sad testament to the human mind and the idea of free thought.
It was bad enough to see the idiocy a few months back by all these pathetic apologizers. I especially loved all the Euros that cried about the evils of the US justice system and how flawed it was (as opposed to Europe where a child raping murderer can get off in 5 years!). This Reiser fellow was scum, and he deserved no respect. Due to the childish and insane defense of this loser, the Reseir FS is now invariably tainted. Not just by the name, but even by the pathetic attempts at defense of this monster by legions of blind and ignorant fanboys.
‘Euro’ is a currency, euros’ being the plural of such. Presumably you meant ‘Europeans’. Well Europe is made up of at least 50 nations, all with different laws. The assertion that a ‘child raping murderer can get off in 5 years’ is disingenuous at best and a belligerent, over-generalization at worst
BTW, there are numerous cases in North America (which I presume you are from) where child rapists have been given short prison terms. Though, just like Europe, this can hardly be considered the rule.
I’m sure you think that you are replying to a particularly ignorant post, but ‘fight fire with fire’ is a poor way to respond.
Edited 2008-06-09 20:18 UTC
Comments such as his are what give Americans a bad name in the eyes of the world
Speaking as an American, It can be rather annoying.
Who’s defending Reiser? I am one of the ones who objected to this case in the past and I will do so again today. You will accuse me of blind devotion, but this is not the case. My only devotion is to things I know to be true. I don’t know whether he did or did not kill his wife, nor do I care. His guilt or innocence is not important to me. What I do care about is the legal system in the USA, where I have lived all my life. This conviction is against the principles of the American justice system and should not have been handed down.
This is a case where the evidence was slim and circumstantial. Did he kill his wife? Let’s say for the sake of argument that he did. Does this mean he should be convicted for it? The answer to that is *only if it can be proven* that he killed here. There was no proof, there was very little evidence, and so there is an objection to this by me. He should not have been convicted, guilty or not, with so little evidence.
For the record, I use ext3 and have never been particularly enamored of reiserfs3 and never tried v4.
PREACH IT!
Seriously though, I agree completely… except about not using reiserfs
, I am using reiserfs v3, it’s a fantastic filesystem regaurdless of the alleged actions of its author.
My post seems to have got you quite wound up about all of the people in Europe so perhaps I should explain it a little more: Just because someone says they are going to reveal where the body is, does not prove that they have committed the crime. When he does actually reveal the body, then the probably of him committing the crime approaches 100%. There is the remote possibility that he didn’t commit the crime, has gone out of his mind and decided he is going to pretend to lead them to the body and attempt to escape.
I do not know Hans and do not care about what happens to him and I am certainly not one of his fans…
It is rarely, if ever, 100% certain that someone has committed a certain crime.
But we can and should do a lot better than this. There was literally no direct evidence presented, the case was built on circumstantial evidence and inferences.
The moral of the story is, if you murder someone GET RID OF THE BODY QUICK! Then claim that all other evidence is circumstantial because there is no body so it can’t be murder.
A body isn’t the only direct evidence.
I’m pretty sure he was paarodying all the people who thought the trial was a sham because there was no body and zOMG he must be innocent.
ReiserFS fanboy eh?