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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

#361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you believe in evil. I'm not christian so I don't see the world like that. He killed his s/o, like what 15 years ago now? People change and deserves a second chance.

Evil is not a religious concept.

Evil as a moral judgement isn't. Acts can be good or evil. In more secular terms we prefer to say "harmful" or "unjust" but the meaning is arguably the same.

But the idea that "evil" is an attribute a person can possess is 100% a religious one. If you're not religious, there can be no evil person unless you think there is an "evil" gene or an "evil" psychosis - "sociopath" and "psychopath" are often used this way but usually in ways that have very little to do with diagnostic criteria and more with trying to sound more profound than just calling someone a bad person; in pseudoscience this also sometimes manifests as the idea that some people are more predisposed to crime, though usually nowadays this more often manifests as vague notions of "racial culture" than measuring skull shapes, but this too is just a more elaborate way to call groups of people inherently bad.

As a religious concept, "evil" can be somewhat nebulous where people just take some wrong turns and "evilness" seeps into them making them irredeemable: many Christians (especially certain sects of American protestantism) believe "sins" (i.e. disobeying God's rules, not necessarily causing measurable harm to others in secular terms) work kind of like this where habitual sinning in one way can lead to sinning in other ways as sinfulness takes over the person's life (like an addiction spiraling out of control). It can also be a much more literal idea of outright demonic possession (e.g. the kind of thing you need an exorcist to help with) or demonic presence (e.g. evil people actually being lizard people masking themselves as fellow humans to hide among us). And yes, I'm labelling certain fringe conspiracy movements as religious as they operate on a similar framework and often have direct ties to religious traditions and concepts.

Conversely, not only are "evil people" a religious concept but so are "good people". If good is something you do that means you need to continously demonstrate your "goodness" by doing good things. But if good is something you can be then any accusations of wrongdoing are highly suspect because a good person would do no such things. This is why most people don't take kindly to being told even in the most polite terms that something they did was kinda racist (or sexist, or misogynist, or...) because "I'm not a racist" (i.e. thinking of it as an innate attribute of their character rather than one of their actions and hence something they can and need to actively control) - mind you, liberals did not do a good job with this distinction either over the past decade because as it turns out even self-professed non-religious people often have religious upbringings that stick with them (i.e. self-applied labels like "feminist", "anti-racist", etc should only ever be read as statements of intent and dismissed if they do not manifest in their actions which they rarely do).

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could imagine being in the process of installing a flat surface after removing the car seat.

Of course! Who doesn’t decide that they would rather sleep in a car the moment their significant other goes missing? It’s just to get away from the press and the house where you had all those memories! And of course you’ll start researching crime scene analysis and cleaning methods right after she goes missing as well, because you know you’re the number one suspect, and you just want to help find the guy that did thi…

> Of course! Who doesn’t decide that they would rather sleep in a car the moment their significant other goes missing? It’s just to get away from the press and the house where you had all those memories!

Well, this depends a lot on what kind of people you spend your time with. I know at least two people in my circles (let me put it this way: they both slightly schizophrenic traits) about whom I would not be surprised if they came up with such ideas.

I guess I have a light tendency to gravitate towards smart mavericks in my social life. :-)

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That sentence is a guiding principle of software design that I cannot often quote, without entering into a huge discussion on the pain Reiser has caused That's a shame. He did something awful, but that's nothing at all to do with the idea in the quotation. Ideas shouldn't be cursed because the wrong person said them; they should stand or fall on their own merits.

Certainly, I have an issue with this idea that everything a person does gets cancelled because the person gets cancelled. Particularly in this era of intense political polarization.... It is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The world is full of examples of art and science from troubled individuals; much of our foundational understanding of certain areas of science is derived from the learned experiences of i…

> Certainly, I have an issue with this idea that everything a person does gets cancelled because the person gets cancelled. Particularly in this era of intense political polarization...

I think it's the crazyiness of this era. We expect people to be either "100% good" or "100% bad".

Of course we, as a society and as individuals, are (unsurprisingly) deeply surprised when we find out somebody we like isn't "100% good" and can't accept that somebody we don't like isn't "100% bad".

[edit: this is not 100% related to Hans Reiser, of course, more on a general tangent].

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#364

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…

No. He had sex with boys, and he had sex with boy prostitutes while traveling abroad. > In fact, the guy he went to prison for being a lover to was 21. Yes, he had sex with adult men too. Also with adult women too - he was married to one and they had kids.

It's not like I didn't already cover that in my comment above...

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#366
post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evil is not a religious concept.

Evil as a moral judgement isn't. Acts can be good or evil. In more secular terms we prefer to say "harmful" or "unjust" but the meaning is arguably the same. But the idea that "evil" is an attribute a person can possess is 100% a religious one. If you're not religious, there can be no evil person unless you think there is an "evil" gene or an "evil" psychosis - "sociopath" and "psychopath" are often used this way but…

Evil is an attribute that people may come to possess through various means (ideology is a big one), which becomes manifest through their actions when they demonstrate severe selfish disregard for the lives of others.

The above does not rest on religion. Christians/etc having their own theories about evil is irrelevant. When most people say Pol Pot was evil, they're not talking about demonic possession or some silly nonsense like that; they mean he was a mass murderer, which is evil.

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#367
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my conclusion is that some of what's there is playing to an invisible audience My impression was that he got an assignment in class to write a letter where he reflects on bad interactions in the past, apologize, and try to put them behind him. I also got the impression that he really wants people to write/call him and discuss computer stuff, so this might be part of the motivation for writing it. But I don't know h…

I've not done it, so I don't know, but I suspect you can never fully get to "I completely regret what I did because it was wrong" without having somewhat of "I completely regret what I did because I got caught". I do think we wants to discuss computer stuff; he seemed entirely unaware of SSDs and how that has (and should) change filesystems, and still thinks Slashdot is a place to post things.

> Slashdot is a place to post things

It is! But this isn't there :)

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything I've seen indicates that the "court" seemed to think it was a case of "murder in red blood" or whatever they call getting angry and killing your wife these days, with a dose of "very intentional coverup afterwards". Had he driven the car with her dead body directly to the police, he probably would have received the three year sentence or even less.

More has come out since the trial (and mostly on account of Reiser himself making very hard to walk back claims on the record in another court case).

Did more come out or did Reiser make up claims that he though would help his case? That would make him an idiot but doesn't really give any real evidence towards the murder being pre-meditated considring all his other bad decisions in court.

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#369
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> anyone who volunteers to be a killer has something wrong in him Consider the native american indian warriors who volunteered to defend their land against the invaders. Or jews in Poland who volunteered to defend against the Germans in WW2. Does your statement apply to them as well?

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…

This is such a naive point of view. Imagine seeing somebody getting assaulted, genocided, murdered in front of your eyes and then closing your eyes for the sake of 'peace,' or the idea of it that you have in mind anyway.

You should tell the Polish people in 1940s that they should only treat wounds and not fight back.

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#370
post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. There are literally thousands of examples throughout history of smaller ethnic groups that were completely wiped out by their bigger and more aggressive neighbors. Do you think these small groups were provoking their neighbors? Why? Did they all…

> There are literally thousands of examples throughout history of smaller ethnic groups that were completely wiped out by their bigger and more aggressive neighbors. Exactly. Figting and killing didn't help them in any way. > Do you think these small groups were provoking their neighbors? Why? Did they all have a death wish? The wrong decision in that case was deciding to be separate from their neighbors despite the…

Appeasement didn't work in 1939, it wouldn't work now.
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