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.
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2005-07-24
Member since:2005-07-07
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.
Member since:2006-02-05
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.
Member since:2008-06-11
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2006-01-16
Member since:2005-07-24
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.
Member since:2006-01-16
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!)
Member since:2005-06-29
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.
Member since:2008-04-10
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.
Member since:2006-01-16
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.
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2006-07-15
>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 ...
Member since:2006-07-12
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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.
Member since:2008-04-04
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
Member since:2007-03-29
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.
Member since:2005-07-08
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
Member since:2006-06-02
Unfortunately, some apparently very respectable academics do make this general comparison (Murray Bookchin, Peter Staudenmaier, Janet Biehl, Frank Uekötter), 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.
Member since:2005-07-06
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.
Member since:2006-03-10
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.
Member since:2005-07-06
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.
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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.
Member since:2007-10-18
Member since:2005-07-17
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
Member since:2008-06-11
RE[2]: Comment by Oliver
Member since:2005-08-12
Epic fail. You missed his point entirely.
Reminds me of something I recently read.
I am amazed to see so much stupidity.
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
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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 
)
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2008-04-10
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
Member since:2006-04-05
Member since:2005-07-06
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
Member since:2007-03-29
... and Hans Reiser is not Hitler.
This is really one of the most pointless Hitler references I have read in a long time.
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2005-11-13
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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.
Member since:2005-07-06
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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
For Reiser, this is not about videogames; it's about life and death. "Little boys take to violent computer games like monkeys take to trees," he says in a court filing. "[They] do not have instincts that favor combat rehearsal activities for no reason, they have them because they affect whether they live or die a significant amount of the time." Violent videogames are an ideal way to hone these survival skills, for several reasons, he says. A kid is clearly not going to become battle-hardened in the quiet, idyllic neighborhoods of the Oakland hills. Reiser believes that history â€" in, for instance, an Electronic Arts videogame set in Vietnam â€" is the best teacher, though he is quick to point out that the learning process will not necessarily be easy. "Becoming a man normally is psychologically traumatic for boys," he says. What matters most, he says, is that the exercise "allows him to achieve results in defending family and country."
Rory has nightmares. When he's awake, he spends time drawing monsters and soldiers, and he tells his mother that he and his father have a secret. Nina thinks that Reiser is still playing videogames with their son and worries that Rory is developing a condition called sensory integration dysfunction, which can make the smallest sound or touch overwhelming.
...
.....
"Note the similarities between how an effective army sergeant would rally frightened men to learn to attack the enemy and the technique I used to teach a small boy to deal with monsters in his dreams," Reiser adds. "One of the sad facts of dream life is that monsters who are lots of joy to blow up will start to leave one's dreams and not want to return."
Reiser says he has a right to blow up monsters, whether in dreams or videogames. The government â€" in the guise of family court â€" should have no place prohibiting him or his son from playing Battlefield Vietnam or Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic, a fantasy strategy game featuring elves, dwarves, zombies, and wizards. "Should the government be keeping me from showing my son how to direct brave goblin suicide bombers against their elven oppressors?" he asks.
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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?
Member since:2005-06-29
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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.
Member since:2005-11-13
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.
Member since:2005-07-06
"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.
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2006-08-09
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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.
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He's wrong.
Ultimately, an "asshole" will not be able to achieve truly great art. "
Sure you can. Just look at RMS.
Member since:2006-08-09
He's wrong.
Ultimately, an "asshole" will not be able to achieve truly great art. "
Sure you can. Just look at RMS. [/q]
I admit. You win.
Member since:2006-01-06
Emacs and the GNU Public License don't qualify as "art."
Edited 2008-06-09 22:05 UTC
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2008-06-08
Member since:2005-06-29
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.
Member since:2007-01-27
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.
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2006-11-24
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2006-12-16
Guilty as hell. Put him on death row like the other murderers. No special treatment.
Oh, and for you peopl