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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

#451

Post by mtrower »

tonymet wrote: post #411
sph wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, but this is personal philosophy I do not feel comfortable going too deep with on an Internet forum. From my point of view, people that are born with evil streak are vanishingly rare , as much as being born with two heads. What happens later is simply a product of nurture, upbringing, context, and chemical imbalances. Pure black and pure white do not exist in nature.

A 27-year-old Queens man is in custody for two subway stabbings on Wednesday -- at Columbus Circle and in the Bronx. The suspect was spotted in the Bedford Park station in the Bronx at 7:20 a.m. Thursday, and after a brief chase, was taken into custody. He was in possession of two knives at the time of the arrest. He has multiple prior arrests, including five in the last 12 months for charges ranging from assault to…

I mean clearly he’s a menace. Something needs to be done about him. That can be true, and it can simultaneously be true that he is not 100% “evil” or anything else.

A few incidents (or even many incidents) can paint a bleak picture, but they can’t really prove an absolute.

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#452

Post by pfisherman »

thih9 wrote: post #444
pfisherman wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He freaked out in the midst of an acrimonious custody battle. I don’t know if you know or have been close to anyone who has gotten divorced; but people can stop thinking straight when their kids are involved. This guy is what a mean bully looks like.[1] Crossed paths with him when we were kids and I am not at all surprised he ended up where he did. 1. https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2005/February/05_crm_...

Does it matter? Going through a divorce and freaking out doesn’t explain or justify murder.

I did not say or suggest that his actions were justified.

My point(s) is that he was relatively “normal” high functioning autistic guy, who ended up in an intense situation that he did not have the social / emotional / cognitive tools to deal with, and started acting erratically. The whole thing is a damn tragedy.

It is easy to point fingers and divide the world into the good guys and the bad guys. But the truth is that anyone is capable of almost anything under the right circumstances; and we never really know how we will react in extreme situations until we are in them.

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#453

Post by hnbad »

lupusreal wrote: post #398
hnbad wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Well, no. Most people I've heard say something like that would mean that he was innately evil as a person. They wouldn't spell it out like that but the underlying assumption is that a "normal human being" couldn't do what he did and therefore he was a…

Pol Pot wasn't "innately" evil and I doubt many people would say such a thing. Pol Pot is evil because he did evil things, not the other way around. For that matter, most Christians believe that all people are prone to sin and the difference between people is whether they seek forgiveness after giving into sin. The innate sense of evil exists in all people which is why Christ had to sacrifice himself to atone for tha…

> Pol Pot wasn't "innately" evil and I doubt many people would say such a thing.

> Personally I am not a christian

You really shouldn't extrapolate from yourself then.

I've seen this discourse repeatedly in Germany when it comes to Hitler and the Nazis:

1. Hitler did unspeakably evil things.

2. Therefore Hitler was evil.

3. However the evil he did was so uniquely evil he can not be compared to others.

4. Therefore Hitler was uniquely capable of committing such evil.

5. This implies Hitler was already innately evil prior to committing those acts.

This usually extends to falsely distinguish the evil SS from the "patriotic" Wehrmacht (who were "ordinary soldiers just following orders" and only "incidentally" ended up participating in mass murders). It's directly tied to the Great Man narrative of history: only Hitler could have been Hitler because he was innately different. The idea in the Great Man narrative usually being that a great leader emerges and changes history, rather than history changing through the conflict of material conditions (or ideas, if you're a Hegelian) and the actual figureheads being largely incidental (i.e. what Marxists call dialectical materialism).

According to demographic data, over 40% of Germans identify as non-religious whereas in the US it's a bit over 20%, so I would expect Americans to actually be more likely to think this way (if not outright going with the "demon person" idea of evil).

Also, according to most Christian faiths Jesus specifically atoned for the Original Sin (Adam and Eve disobeying God by eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil). The entire "redemption" thing is also a bit more complicated: in practice even Protestant and Catholic Christians generally behave as if they were following the Eastern Orthodox view of mortal sins where mortal sins are irredeemable and the separation from God they inflict on the sinner is permanent.

But this is a digression. The point is, most people view evil when it comes to person not as a mere descriptor of having done something but

- either: having a pre-existing innate essence of evil-ness that allowed them to do it

- or: having been so corrupted by the act itself that they now possess a permanent essence of evil-ness

or a combination of the two. In other words: an Evil Person™ is not just a person who has done an evil thing but a person uniquely capable of and predisposed towards doing evil things to a greater extent than a Normal Person™ would be. Pol Pot wasn't just evil because he did evil things, he did those evil things because he was Pol Pot, an evil person.

I'll shut up now before I get started on how different ideas of free will play into this.

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#454

Post by hnbad »

flatt wrote: post #354
hnbad wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(EDIT: Deleted my original reply because I made the mistake of trying to reply to the text in earnest despite your complete disregard for what I said in all of your replies so far. This is still said in earnest but I won't bother trying to continue the game of talking past each other and instead address the elephant in the room directly.) > You want these people out of prison and moved right next door to me and my fa…

Heh, okay, there's a lot to unpack there. It's a lot of facts but lacking in wisdom. The fact that you equate a person warning you about the dangers of toxic people with barely being better than one themselves means you personally need this knowledge more than anyone. You are very much at risk and certainly not from me, I can assure you. Calling out your naivete on the matter is not aggression. Far, far from. I suppo…

Oh, cool, so you just go on ignoring what I say and responding to a strawman of things I did not say (like empathy fixing ASPD or victimhood justifying harm against others or that therapy will always be successful and everyone can be a free member of society to the fullest extent).

> (hard) love

Yeah, there's my concern. That's literally a concept only abusers use to justify their abuse as "love". You may think you have empathy (after all you feel strongly about ASPD individuals so you can't be that) but I question to what extent you do genuinely love if you have internalized the idea that "hard love" is a thing.

> There's a certain catharsis in some Cluster B abuse recovery circles in passing around stories of the well-meaning idiots that go to dog rescues centers to adopt trained fighting pitbulls. They believe all the dogs need is a good, loving home and all will be well. Often, this is actually the case... right up until the moment that it isn't.

It says a lot when your path to what you see as healing is paved with schadenfreude. That's not a story of the folly of being a good person. That's a story of ignoring past trauma. Trained fighting pitbulls are traumatized. You wouldn't hand a gun to a Vietnam vet with PTSD. Dogs have natural lethal weapons. Handling an animal that can kill you must be deliberate. You can not reason with a dog so you must treat a traumatized dog as the loose canon it is. When people die to trained attack dogs, they die either because they didn't know about its past or because they (no longer) took it into account in their interactions.

I'm not concerned with psychokillers who want to wear my child's skin as a costume only because I'm far more concerned with the equally unempathetic billionaires, politicians, lobbyists and investors who don't even consider my child as their actions threaten their health and future. Our economic system encourages "sociopathic" behavior. The psychokiller (or the far more likely abusive partner) is just too impotent or incompetent to acquire a position of real power and their behavior is far more likely to get them in trouble.

The thread has rightfully been killed so I'll just say this: kiss your children good night. And maybe think about why you feel the need to frame those deepities as "hard truths" instead of considering that if you're a victim, you're traumatized and you're coming from a place of hurt and your pre-existing beliefs cloud how you can make sense of it all. If you find catharsis in the suffering of others, that should give you pause.

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#455

Post by themerone »

hnbad wrote: post #220
shzhdbi09gv8ioi wrote: post #28

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.

If you don't believe in evil (I don't) that not only means he isn't evil but that he also didn't murder his ex because he was evil. So there must still be something to him 15 years ago that made him plan to and murder his ex, hide the body, use elaborate lies to deny his actions and then only admit to it when offered a deal to disclose the location of the body to allow the victim's grieving family to bury her. That's…

If you don't believe in evil, then you must not believe in friendless, meanness, empathitic, or any other adjective for describing how a human acts.

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#456

Post by mindslight »

jonathankoren wrote: post #424
tabataga wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fanboys spilled over to HN as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=176098 They were even at it after Reiser led police to his wife's body: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=240814 Best comment on that thread, calling out their ridiculous takes: > I gotta say it: the guy was a f-cking murderer and yet you guys are arguing about whether he got a fair trial, even after he led the cops to the strangled, deco…

Nah man. The best is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=241000 Hans Reiser gives a jailhouse interview to Salon, and when he comes off as unremosrseful murderer, the peanut gallery says: > I find it to be just another case of math envy, the imbecile KNOWS that he could never in a million years achieve 1% of what Reiser has achieved, however Reiser is now a convicted murderer, thus the idiot can now feel better abou…

Bruh, it was a filesystem with online resizing.

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#457

Post by webnrrd2k »

adrianN wrote: post #434
webnrrd2k wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's certainly not common, but I had a friend in highschool that took out the front passenger seat of his VW bug, to make it easier to get surfboards into the car. He normally just had a folding chair for passengers.

Driving with a folding chair in the car seems very dangerous. Is that legal where you live?

No, not at all. But it was a while ago, safety laws weren't enforced as heavily, and we were young and felt indestructible.

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#458

Post by shepherdjerred »

jonathankoren wrote: post #357
shepherdjerred wrote: post #355

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…

You're being very unfair to my argument and implying that I think the poster is innocent.

Maybe I was unfair to you as well; if so, I apologize.

The reason I brought up that he might've been in the process of installing a flat surface was that your comment mentioned that attempting to sleep in your car without installing a flat surface would be too uncomfortable.

It's completely reasonable for me to, for example, want to convert my car and be in process of determining:

1. Is it reasonable to sleep on a bumpy surface? Let me try it out for a couple of night first. 2. Know that a bumpy surface is uncomfortable, and be in the process of figuring out a solution, e.g. what to buy.

Of course, in this specific case, those are irrelevant because Hans Reiser never intended to sleep in his car. But, they are perfectly valid reasons why one might remove a car seat without then immediately having converted it to a comfortable bed.

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#459

Post by etc-hosts »

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!

I've read the same Wired article you have, it's confusing but it does not actually say that Sturgeon testified during the trial. Read it again.

Sean Sturgeon was not called by the prosecution or the defense. He did not testify at the trial. The defense hinted several times during the trial that the police had not adequately investigated Sturgeon for the murder.

Before the trial, Sturgeon called the Oakland police and said "I've killed 8 and half people, but I didn't kill Nina." The police didn't know what to do with the 'half' part, and discounted him as a crank.

Re: Hans Reiser on ReiserFS deprecation in the Linux kernel

#460

Post by etc-hosts »

jonathankoren wrote: post #42
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…

I will always remember the Slashdot comment that said that removing the passenger seat of your car so you could sleep in your car was a reasonable thing to do, and everyone saying it was suspicious was a hater. (Bro. A car floor isn’t even flat.) I think it was my first experience with absolute egregious fanboism.

Here's a 16 year old Hackernews thread from the day after the conviction, you'll see lots of even to this day prolific HN commenters writing that well we don't know if he REALLY did it, and even if he did, he has definitely down a net good for humanity with his contributions to software (and then tptacek reliably shoots them down)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=176098

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