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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

#311

Post by ajb »

keeganpoppen wrote: post #309

wow, he is an amazingly compelling and articulate writer. definitely gives me a bit of an eerie feeling, of course, because he seems like a very meticulous person and perpetrated a heinous crime in a most meticulous fashion... but... it is very hard to completely discount the idea that he has learned something from prison in a way that makes him redeemable, though i'm a bit of a softie-- him bending over backward to…

He's serving 15 years to life, and has already served 15 years (next chance of parole in 2027). So he's at the point where its very important for him to look like he's a reformed character. That makes it particularly hard for us to judge, at this distance. If he'd remained cold and calculating, this is still exactly what we'd expect him to write.

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#312

Post by flatt »

kstrauser wrote: post #306
flatt wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean nothing personal by it but all I see when I see posts like yours (and many others in this thread), is that the average person understands nothing about psychopathy. What he did was premeditated. His brain is wired in such a way that killing his wife was always an option. No amount of neuroplasticity will override this baked-in reality of who this man is. Teaching psychopaths social skills will not provide them…

Is he a diagnosed psychopath? I'll grant that murdering one's wife seems like good supporting evidence, but I'm not aware that he's known to be one.

It's not even the murder so much as it's the premeditation. Even the most non-psychopathic mentally ill individuals with the most awful intrusive thoughts will still have an active conscience telling them not to do the things their minds are telling them to do. This is a big part of the torture schizophrenics are going through. Psychopaths do not have a conscience and psychopathy is not a diagnosis. The diagnosis given to psychopaths is typically Antisocial Personality Disorder, of which I have no idea if Reiser personally qualifies. But yes, premeditated murder is going to rank quite high in the scoring criteria. Hans believes/believed that he had the right to kill his wife. Even if he legitimately feels sorry (and I would be highly skeptical), the question becomes whether he actually feels sorry for the murder or the fact that it has landed him in prison (and that he only really feels sorry for himself).

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#313

Post by Eisenstein »

kstrauser wrote: post #254
ghaff wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an argument for copy-on-write filesystem options but it's pretty hard to argue there needs to be more than 2 or 3 "traditional" journaling filesystems like maybe ext4 and XFS.

His letter contends that ReiserFS was intended to be more than just a filesystem, and that jibes with what he was saying about it at the time. I think that it was meant to be a queryable database that happened to be good at implementing traditional filesystem semantics, but also optimally useful through some other kind of API.

Can you explain what that means? What are 'traditional filesystem semantics' and how would it be useful through 'some other kind of API'?

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#314

Post by coldtea »

hulitu wrote: post #291
coldtea wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Pedophile" back then often just meant "gay". In French pedé (pedophile) was the regular way to say "homosexual". Also the age of consent was lower back then, and untold numbers of "normal respectable ethical people" who back then would otherwise condemn Wilde as "pedophile" did marry girls at 14 or so. Before the 20th century basically after 13-14 kids were considered more like short adults than as a special categor…

Yeah, right.

Yeah: right.

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#315

Post by IlliOnato »

dspillett wrote: post #53
hinkley wrote: post #3

I thought the usual solution when we disagree irreconcilably with a maintainer was to fork and rename? I always thought it a bit weird that we were naming parts of Linux after people. We already did that once and that kinda uses up your freebie. Seems like everyone quit Hans and nobody rallied the project back together.

> I thought the usual solution when we disagree irreconcilably with a maintainer was to fork and rename? Yes. But that requires someone, or a group, to take responsibility for that and support the fork. Maintaining a filesystem can be a complex undertaking. > Seems like everyone quit Hans and nobody rallied the project back together. I think it was more like he was the core of the project with others contributing. On…

If I remember correctly (and I followed the discussions on LKML at the time, but it was a long time ago), Reiser4 was not merged because it had some "cool" features that could cause problems.

For example (again, IIRC), it allowed directories to have hard links. Al Viro was adamantly against it, showing that this potentially creates some very serious problems. In particular, it allows for cycles in the directory graph (it's no more a tree), and Viro has shown that detecting or preventing such cycles may by prohibitively expensive, and undetected they would cause any program that does directory walking (like search) to loop infinitely.

This was not the only problematic feature, just the one I remember more vividly (in part, because of Al Viro's caustic argument style :-) ).

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#316

Post by Eisenstein »

_chu1 wrote: post #241
revel wrote: post #94

The contents of the letter are interesting in their own right, but there are 2 aspects that strike me as particularly interesting. First off, he doesn't seem to regret killing his wife, more the consequences of his crime. He doesn't mention her by name or say that she didn't deserve it. Secondly, the person he's corresponding with, Fredrick Brennan is fascinating in his own right. He's one of the 3 central characters…

> QAnon I have never heard of, seen or even got wind of a "QAnon" member, group, theory, website or whatever they say it is outside of mainstream news. According to them it's some huge group of evil people but I can't tell myself that they're a real thing. If anyone has any real world, personal experience I would love to hear it.

You can get personal perspectives here:

* https://www.reddit.com/r/QAnonCasualties/

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#317

Post by ajb »

mpol wrote: post #67

A few things that stuck out to me. SuSE supposedly failed. I don't know who told him that. He might have expected it to be a RedHat or Ubuntu by now, which it isn't. But failed is very black and white. I would argue, if they still exist as they do now, they are quite successful. He talks about Reiser V4. I think there is a Reiser V5 now? Or am I wrong? I cannot find that on Wikipedia. Anyway, the chances of it ending…

He is also still talking about spinning rust (rotational delay). I forget the timeline, but maybe he went into prison before SSDs became ubiquitous? (I know they are still in servers)

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#318

Post by stickfigure »

jacquesm wrote: post #235
cachvico wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Premeditation means planning it beforehand. The books were purchased after the deed was done. A crime of passion can be covered up without making it premeditated.

I'm not going to split legal hairs here, merely point out that 'sudden strong impulse' (a requirement for 'crime passionel') is incompatible with subsequent testimony by Reiser claiming that he had 'killed their mother to protect his children'. That's one of the problems with all of the Reiser defenders: they are usually unaware to what degree Reiser has incriminated himself.

I take offense at being called a "Reiser defender". I think we can all agree that he's a creep, a manipulator, and a murderer. I don't hear anyone defending him.

The guy strangled his wife. I don't think that's the kind of thing you premeditate. He's also a liar; I wouldn't read too much into his attempt to manipulate his later civil jury. The crime-of-passion narrative would still find for the plaintiff, so he made up some nonsense that the jury saw right through.

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#319

Post by ako »

ryandvm wrote: post #194
robertlagrant wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because he's not like the rest of us I don't think we can know this, and there's no point speculating. I would say that the letter doesn't read as someone who's imperfectly simulating regret.

Of course - this entire thread is nothing but speculation. That said, the premeditated murder of someone, let alone your wife and children's mother, is not something that the average person is capable of. It is entirely different than the crimes one may commit out of rage, fear, or passion (i.e. when your amygdala is driving). I don't believe in capital punishment or lesser forms of punitive justice, but I have a har…

The letter reads like Reiser thinks the firmware bug is fixable, and it’s more a case of nurture over nature. Don’t know if that’s true, but it’s not unthinkable.

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#320

Post by scotty79 »

fl7305 wrote: post #262
scotty79 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course. Some of them. Not everone who joins the army is a volunteer killer. Some people just want to help. Treat wounds. Recover wounded. Scare the enemy away. Some tentatively accept that some people might die in the process. People tend to accept that in war people die. They are more like armed robbers who'd love to have their goals met without killing anyone but some are accepting that someone might die in the…

Are you a pacifist who thinks that it is never OK to take a life, no matter the circumstances? In that case I understand what you think, even if that is not my way of thinking. If you are not a pacifist, then I don't understand how you think a peaceful society should act when an aggressive neighbor tries to kill all of them?

I think it's ok to take life if it's your own life or help someone to take their own if there are good reasons for it.

I don't know how a peaceful society should act if neigbour tries to kill them. I think if that's the case, they made a lot of mistakes already, if they reached that point.

Probably the only thing to do is gather your killers and send them to kill and tell everybody it's ok this time. And most likely just die regardless of what you decided to do. If this society somehow survives it's way ahead because they not only repelled foreign killers but culled their own. That's pretty much was the result of WW2. Europe was destined for prosperity after it no matter who won. Just because higher fraction of killers than normal people died.

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