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Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

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Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#201

Post by jacquesm »

RajT88 wrote: post #160
starkparker wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those interested in the trial, the SF Chronicle's Henry K. Lee ran a very detailed blog on it: https://web.archive.org/web/20080501184401/http://www.sfgate...

I go back periodically and read the Wired article about it. It is totally bananas: https://archive.is/BcMRF The wildest part was the friend who had an affair with his wife who blurted out unprompted on the stand that he had killed 7 people. They let that guy go!

The 'weird nerds' defending Reiser brought this up time and again during the trial. But Reiser showed them all up by leading the authorities to where he had buried the body afterwards so I guess that that particular angle is now settled.

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#202

Post by bena »

RobotToaster wrote: post #50
dale_glass wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was far less of a mastermind than he fancied himself at the time. If I recall, he bought a book on murder investigations and a socket set after his wife's disappearance (which was easily tracked back to him), removed car seats (blood) from his car, and willingly testified in court that it was his manly dream to sleep in the car, or something along these lines. He could have likely gotten away with it if he kept hi…

Makes you wonder how many people do actually get away with it.

It really depends on what you're looking to get away with.

If you're looking to get away with orchestrating the murder of someone you know, it can be difficult.

However, if you're just looking to get away with murdering someone in general, that's surprisingly easy. Just go a town or two over and knife a random someone in a random parking lot. Police success rates are comically low.

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#203

Post by bawolff »

mardifoufs wrote: post #75
kstrauser wrote: post #56

That was fascinating. It sounds like he’s done some real introspection during his lockup, and I hope he’s able to apply those learnings to future situations. I felt bad for him[0] while reading. He was a brilliant young person with a big dream, yet without the interpersonal skills to help him realize it. I’ve seen that so often. Maybe this will help me look past the next person’s challenging communications, and think…

I don't believe he did. He's just angling for his next parole date as he got denied this year.

Would there be anything he could say?

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#204

Post by jacquesm »

kstrauser wrote: post #91
atemerev wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Rehabilitation” means that a person is suffering from some condition, and they are not personally at fault for their crimes. While there is some partial truth in this point of view, taking it at 100% face value is unfair, to say the least. People can be actually guilty of something.

Hard disagree. Rehabilitation means you take something that wasn’t working and you fix it so it can be useful again. Most convicts will eventually be released. In an ideal world, each of them will have learned how to participate in decent society so that they can be a good neighbor, employee, boss, friend, or whatever. I’m not saying that from a bleeding heart “prison should be a resort campout!” strawman perspective…

This is all conditional on the prison system of a country being a retributive or rehabilitation oriented element. The USA strongly leans towards retribution.

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#205

Post by narag »

sph wrote: post #19

I think about Hans Reiser pretty often, incidentally, because there is a quote from him I read as a teenager that stuck with me. "The utility of an operating system is proportional to the number of connections possible between its components, than it is to the number of those components." — Hans Reiser (from http://web.archive.org/web/20040126210110/http://unununium.o... ) It's hard to reconcile good things a person…

It's hard to reconcile good things a person might have said and done, with the bad.

It's very easy to reconcile that a person that has done very bad things can say insightful things or be competent.

Being bad doesn't mean being stupid.

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#206

Post by bena »

Arch-TK wrote: post #185
iaw wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect many are aware of this but for those uninformed: Reiser committed premeditated murder of his (ex?)wife Nina around 2006 and hid her body so well they could not find her. He made his children think either that their mother abandoned them. He had thought without a body he could not be charged and convicted. I believe he waited until it was apparent he would lose the trial and then plead down so that they coul…

Source on premeditated? Everything I saw made it look like it was spontaneous (and then he put a lot of work and some poor planning into trying to hide it). I could obviously be wrong, I didn't really spend that much time on it. (Note: I know he was initially found guilty of first degree murder but it appears that first degree murder doesn't necessarily require premeditation.)

Yeah, I don't think the murder itself was premeditated, but he did treat the event with a sort of self-serving callousness that gave the perception that he did not care about Nina's life beyond how it affected his.

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#207

Post by jeffrallen »

not2b wrote: post #70

I worked with Hans Reiser in the late 90s. He was a contractor with the company that I was working for, and he was doing that (working on logic synthesis for FPGAs) by day and trying to start his company at night. He was very passionate about his technical ideas, though in those days he had difficulty explaining them, so I went back and forth about whether he was a genius or a crank (I decided that he was some combin…

I met him at the same place at the same time and had the same reaction to him. Are you me?

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#208

Post by RajT88 »

jacquesm wrote: post #201
RajT88 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I go back periodically and read the Wired article about it. It is totally bananas: https://archive.is/BcMRF The wildest part was the friend who had an affair with his wife who blurted out unprompted on the stand that he had killed 7 people. They let that guy go!

The 'weird nerds' defending Reiser brought this up time and again during the trial. But Reiser showed them all up by leading the authorities to where he had buried the body afterwards so I guess that that particular angle is now settled.

Yeah, some follow-up reporting found that the guy was lying for some weird reason. He said as much. I forget the reason.

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#209

Post by jacquesm »

JadeNB wrote: post #175
iaw wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider it a Bayesian approach to understanding potential internal drivers. Someone who is not cold and calculating likely has less capacity to completely present the appearance of redemption whereas someone who is calculating has that capacity. So, someone who is demonstrated to be calculating has higher odds of faking a behavior if it is beneficial to them (e.g. leaving prison). It's for him to know, but I don't…

> It's for him to know, but I don't think it's ridiculous for me to question. My reference to ridiculous was to the ridiculousness of my thinking that I have any insight into Reiser's character—a disclaimer at the beginning that I was not presuming to offer any. I was in no way meaning to call you or your statement ridiculous. > I consider it a Bayesian approach to understanding potential internal drivers. Someone wh…

Great comment. For me that fact means that I don't just read it with 'a higher bar' but with the possibility that what I'm looking at is created with the express purpose of deceiving me so some of it reverses in meaning.
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