Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Programming IT Technology

Hans Reiser Interview from Prison 611

JLester writes "Wired Magazine has an interview this month with Hans Reiser (of the ReiserFS journaling file system for Linux) from prison. It contains more details about the murder case against him. Some of the questions still go unanswered though."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Hans Reiser Interview from Prison

Comments Filter:
  • obHumor (Score:5, Funny)

    by Megaweapon ( 25185 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @07:51AM (#19661737) Homepage
    In Reiser's case, a critical piece of data -- the location of Nina Reiser -- has gone missing.

    It should be in the journal somewhere.
    • Re:obHumor (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) * <bruce@perens.com> on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @08:32AM (#19662097) Homepage Journal
      In Reiser's case, a critical piece of data -- the location of Nina Reiser -- has gone missing.

      Ugh. OK, this is a crowd that makes rough jokes, etc. In this case I am having a bit of a problem taking it. I've met Hans and have spoken with Nina on the phone. Oh shit, I found that interview very unsettling and while reading it in the audience at a conference in Norway I got upset enough by page three that I did not continue it for fear of getting too visibly upset in front of the audience.

      Maybe we should have a bit more respect this time.

      Bruce

      • Re:obHumor (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @08:37AM (#19662129)
        You are quite possibly the only person on Slashdot (Or at least, the only person who posts under their real name) who has a personal connection to Hans & Nina Reiser. You shouldn't be too surprised that the vast majority of posters arn't going to take it as seriously.
        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by doom ( 14564 )

          You are quite possibly the only person on Slashdot (Or at least, the only person who posts under their real name) who has a personal connection to Hans & Nina Reiser. You shouldn't be too surprised that the vast majority of posters arn't going to take it as seriously.

          Try this idea on for size: suppose that Hans Reiser is an odd, cantankerous computer programmer, who really didn't kill his wife, and is now rotting in jail largely because he's an odd, cantankerous fellow.

          There are a lot of odd, canta

      • Re:obHumor (Score:5, Insightful)

        by c ( 8461 ) <beauregardcp@gmail.com> on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @09:13AM (#19662565)
        > Maybe we should have a bit more respect this time.

        Well, the original quote itself was from the article. Which is one of the... oddest articles I've read from Wired. When you give something like that to /. as source material you're going to get some wildly inappropriate reactions.

        For an article which is supposed to show the more "personal" side of things, the main thing I'm taking away from this is that the author is seriously fucked up. It's like the worst tabloid journalism combined with a Dvorak column. It certainly didn't do much to help Hans...

        c.
      • Re:obHumor (Score:5, Funny)

        by Lord Ender ( 156273 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @09:15AM (#19662591) Homepage

        Maybe we should have a bit more respect this time.
        Bruce Perens, welcome to the Internet!
      • Re:obHumor (Score:5, Insightful)

        by 0racle ( 667029 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @09:35AM (#19662865)

        Maybe we should have a bit more respect this time.
        Why? What makes Reiser above everything everyone else is subject to.

        It's going to happen every time someone dies, is killed or whatnot. It will happen when you die, when RMS dies, when Linus dies and when any celebrity dies. It might be hard to take for those who knew the person, but the vast majority of the world didn't and shouldn't be expected to act as if they had.
      • Re:obHumor (Score:4, Insightful)

        by sootman ( 158191 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @02:55PM (#19667457) Homepage Journal
        Maybe we should have a bit more respect this time.

        "Respect" != "being quiet." People joke about tragedies all the time--from the famine in Ethiopia to the Challenger disaster to the 9/11 attacks. It's what people do. Jay Leno's career got a huge boost by making jokes about O.J. (for a long time, Letterman didn't)--and we had a body in that case! I'm sure every slashdotter--even the ones posting the most tasteless jokes imaginable--respect Hans, the work he's done, and the contributions he's made.

        Everyone is offended by something. Does that mean that no one should ever joke about anything? As it happens, this is one of the few places where a joke about this would be understood--can you imagine Leno going on the air with a filesystem joke?
    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by D_Gr8_BoB ( 136268 )
      Also, Linux programmers don't go to prison, they just get put in a chroot jail.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Penguinisto ( 415985 )

      It should be in the journal somewhere.

      Yes, you're prolly gonna burn in hell for that one.

      OTOH, (damn your hide...) this is one of the few times when I really wish they had a special occasion mod limit of "6". Damned near bit my tongue in half in trying not to wake up my part of the cube farm this morning.

      /P

  • Juice! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Has he been in touch with the Juice to discuss strategy? Afterwards, they can go search golf courses for the real killers.
  • by Speare ( 84249 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @07:55AM (#19661775) Homepage Journal

    Some of the questions still go unanswered though.
    "Hans, on line 934 of journalcache.c, is that preincrement of bufptr really supposed to be a postincrement?"
  • by defile ( 1059 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @07:58AM (#19661789) Homepage Journal

    Isn't it weird how his gothy best friend who has had some kind of twisted sexual relationship with his wife is an admitted mass-murderer?

    I'm just saying.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      he claims to be a serial killer, but hasnt proved it. He's as likely to be lying as not.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Hal_Porter ( 817932 )
      Yeah but you can see why people get the wrong idea about Hans

      http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-07 /ff_hansreiser?currentPage=5 [wired.com]
      Reiser delves into this "culture of manhood" in a 32-page filing he submits to the court after Nina accuses him of hurting her. In it, he explains the difference between appropriate and inappropriate violence. Grand Theft Auto, for instance, demonstrates inappropriate violence because players can get away with killing innocent people. "Many other computer games heavily
      • Agreed.

        Just one question... define a "wrong person". To me that's rapists, child molestors, dolly parton and my prime minister... to someone with a lot more sanity than myself, I'm sure dolly isn't in that list...
    • Working out the reality is clearly a challenge.

      Of course, divorce court just makes people imagine the worst about one another.

       
    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      Did you read the article? First the CRX goes missing for a long time. Then...

      On September 13, the Oakland police get a search warrant to scour the Reiser household. They find a drop of blood on a support post in the entry. Oakland's crime lab identifies the sample as a mix of Nina's and Reiser's, though it can't determine how old the blood is. Five days later, the police follow Reiser to the CRX, which is parked on a quiet street in nearby Berkeley. He moves it to a secluded, wooded area of Oakland and d

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @08:01AM (#19661811)
    My theory is this: Nina went back to russia, and is now living there. The fact that the kids are in russia, and were supposed to return weeks ago, but haven't, makes me think that maybe they were reunited with their mother there. Just a thought.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @09:22AM (#19662689)
      problem here is that my gf was one of her best friends. neither she, nor any of her other friends, have heard from her. I (well, really my gf, who knew her) don't think that was in character from this woman. If she was back in russia, presumably her friends would know.
  • Choice bits (Score:5, Funny)

    by antime ( 739998 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @08:08AM (#19661885)

    Reiser is worried that Sturgeon is trying to teach Rory and Niorline that pain can be fun and is furious when Sturgeon gives them what Reiser refers to in a sworn court filing as "gender confused alternative sexuality dolls."
    Is that what they call Teletubbies these days?
  • Theres a Difference (Score:2, Informative)

    by otacon ( 445694 )
    Prison is where you go for periods generally over a year, after you have been sentenced. Jail is where you go when you are awaiting trial, or for minor offences, usually under a year.
  • by Idaho ( 12907 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @08:14AM (#19661939)
    The story about Hans Reiser gets weirder every time I read about it. It's like you're reading some surrealistic novel, or maybe a plot by Grisham.

    For one, there is the question whether he is being framed (by a former friend, russian mafia, ... ?)
    Also there is the problem of (suspected) murder, but no body has been found. So, all evidence will be circumstantial and therefore open to lots of discussion/interpretation. "The brothers Karamazov" by Dostojevski has some very nice examples of how wide apart such interpretations can be (without the reader being able to tell which interpretation is true). Probably someone could write an interesting novel based on this story as well. It's getting so weird, you just can't make such stuff up.

    It could become an interesting case to follow, so I'm hoping groklaw might pay some attention to it (if such hearings are even public - I don't have much clue about the US judicial system, but it seems unlikely).
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      Agreed, by the time I was done reading this, I couldn't decide if it was real or not. Kudos to the author for piecing together a lot of information in a compelling format. I especially enjoyed the code fragments related to the story - rather spooky.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by antime ( 739998 )
      Everyone associated with the case is fucking nuts and should be locked up just out of principle.
    • by Fnkmaster ( 89084 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @09:02AM (#19662451)
      Yeah, this was the first I'd read that his best friend has admitted to committing several murders in the past, and had been having an affair with his wife too. This has turned from a geek-commits-murder into a *really* crazy love triangle story.

      Sort of complicates the case for the prosecution. Though the missing passenger seat and condition of Reiser's car and his refusal to explain it certainly makes him sound guilty to a juror (or anyone else).

      After reading this article I did understand a bit better how a man could be driven to do something... drastic. If your wife started doing drugs with and fucking your tattoed, bi-sexual, BDSM-obsessed best friend, and then dumped you for him, and was exposing your children to that (at least until the judge forced her not to), well, I could see that pushing a guy who wasn't fully mentally grounded in the first place over the edge.
    • by Volanin ( 935080 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @09:39AM (#19662917)
      The last paragraph of the article references a piece of comentary in the Reiser4 code.
      For the geeks out there, here is it, edited to pass slashdot's "few-characters-per-line" filter:

      /* EVERY ZNODE'S STORY

      1. His infancy.

      Once upon a time, the znode was born deep inside of zget() by call to zalloc(). At the return from zget() znode had:

      . reference counter (x_count) of 1
      . assigned block number, marked as used in bitmap
      . pointer to parent znode. Root znode parent pointer points to its father: "fake" znode. This, in turn, has NULL parent pointer.
      . hash table linkage
      . no data loaded from disk
      . no node plugin
      . no sibling linkage

      2. His childhood

      Each node is either brought into memory as a result of tree traversal, or created afresh, creation of the root being a special case of the latter. In either case it's inserted into sibling list. This will typically require some ancillary tree traversing, but ultimately both sibling pointers will exist and JNODE_LEFT_CONNECTED and JNODE_RIGHT_CONNECTED will be true in zjnode.state.

      3. His youth.

      If znode is bound to already existing node in a tree, its content is read from the disk by call to zload(). At that moment, JNODE_LOADED bit is set in zjnode.state and zdata() function starts to return non null for this znode. zload() further calls zparse() that determines which node layout this node is rendered in, and sets ->nplug on success.

      If znode is for new node just created, memory for it is allocated and zinit_new() function is called to initialise data, according to selected node layout.

      4. His maturity.

      After this point, znode lingers in memory for some time. Threads can acquire references to znode either by blocknr through call to zget(), or by following a pointer to unallocated znode from internal item. Each time reference to znode is obtained, x_count is increased. Thread can read/write lock znode. Znode data can be loaded through calls to zload(), d_count will be increased appropriately. If all references to znode are released (x_count drops to 0), znode is not recycled immediately. Rather, it is still cached in the hash table in the hope that it will be accessed shortly.

      There are two ways in which znode existence can be terminated:

      . sudden death: node bound to this znode is removed from the tree
      . overpopulation: znode is purged out of memory due to memory pressure

      5. His death.

      Death is complex process.

      When we irrevocably commit ourselves to decision to remove node from the tree, JNODE_HEARD_BANSHEE bit is set in zjnode.state of corresponding znode. This is done either in ->kill_hook() of internal item or in kill_root() function when tree root is removed.

      At this moment znode still has:

      . locks held on it, necessary write ones
      . references to it
      . disk block assigned to it
      . data loaded from the disk
      . pending requests for lock

      But once JNODE_HEARD_BANSHEE bit set, last call to unlock_znode() does node deletion. Node deletion includes two phases. First all ways to get references to that znode (sibling and parent links and hash lookup using block number stored in parent node) should be deleted -- it is done through sibling_list_remove(), also we assume that nobody uses down link from parent node due to its nonexistence or proper parent node locking and nobody uses parent pointers from children due to absence of them. Second we invalidate all pending lock requests which still are on znode's lock request queue, this is done by invalidate_lock(). Another JNODE_IS_DYING znode status bit is used to invalidate pending lock requests. Once it set all requesters are forced to return -EINVAL from longterm_lock_znode(). F

  • by niceone ( 992278 ) * on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @08:16AM (#19661951) Journal
    Aren't there any other open source author's facing major criminal charges? All we get is Hans, Hans, Hans. If not it seems Microsoft's Black Ops. Dept.* has missed an opportunity.


    (* motto: "Beyond the blue screen")
  • "So, don't you wish real life had an undo button?"
  • by CastrTroy ( 595695 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @08:22AM (#19661987)
    From what I've read, he doesn't come off as very innocent. I read the article in the paper magazine last weekend, and he just seems like a really weird guy. Despite the fact that they picked this interviewer because they thought he would understand Reiser, because he is a misunderstood geek, he still came off as quite a weird guy. The whole part about playing battlefield vietnam with his 6 year old so he could "become a man" was just kind of weird, and really made me question his values. Not that I'm against kids playing violent games, but his whole reasoning behind it was just kind of creepy.
  • by Colin Smith ( 2679 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @08:32AM (#19662095)
    There's a scanner which can monitor brain activity realtime, depending on which areas light up, police can tell if you're lying or not. They don't even have to ask any questions, simply present evidence to you and watch what your brain does.

    e.g.
    http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.01/lying.htm l [wired.com]

    As a geek who's been falsely accused, I'm sure he'd be happy to submit to such a scan. Additional evidence for his defence lawyer.

     
    • Whether those techniques work at all in real world settings, and whether they work in a legal setting, are unresolved questions.

      It will take many years before such techniques can be used in the real world, even if they work.
    • As a geek who may at some point become falsely accused, how much trust would you really put in a piece of flashy tech like that? Unless the device was completely open-source and peer reviewable, and every last scientific principle behind the neural activity what the machine reads were completely understood (they aren't by a long shot,) I wouldn't want that thing anywhere near me in a life-or-death court case deciding my future.
    • by MoralHazard ( 447833 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @09:00AM (#19662433)
      There are two problems with machine-assisted lie detection: People who train to control their responses on a polygraph, and people who believe what they say, even though it isn't true. The brain activity monitoring method only attacks the first problem, not the second.

      Part of this is a philosophical problem: Someone with a false grip on reality (to a greater or lesser extent, all of us have some false perceptions or memories) may make a factual statement that is not consistent with objective reality, but if that person *believes* in the truth of the statement, should we even consider them to be lying? I think that the common definition of lying implies intent--you have to know that what you're saying is false. Otherwise, you're merely wrong or delusional.

      It doesn't take a complete nutter to believe in false things, either. Most people believe they are more attractive, more competent, and smarter than the rest of us would rate them. A fair number of people have body image or confidence issues that cause them to vastly underestimate their charms. Sometimes, people just ignore the unpleasant realities of life by not thinking about them. Even better examples come up in looking at objective assessments of eyewitness identification in criminal cases--people can fool themselves into believing all sorts of things.

      I mean, just look at the two different stories that Reiser's son told regarding the last argument between his mother and father: He had to have been making false statements in one of the two interviews, since they contain mutually contradictory statements of fact. But did he believe in the truth of what he said at the time? If you don't think this is possible, try to imagine the terrific psychological pressures on the boy's head over the last few years.

      Hence the problem with using brain activity as an indicator of truth: It can only tell you about the subjective truth of a person's statements, not the objective truth. There's a great potential for difference between the two.
  • by Chanc_Gorkon ( 94133 ) <gorkon.gmail@com> on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @08:46AM (#19662249)
    I find it really interesting if you look at the Russian mafia angle. Maybe Nina's in Russia?? I think that is where she really is considering that she had obtained Russian citizenship for both of her children. While Reiser is, shall we say, unique, he does not sound much different then alot of geeks. I hope something happens and he's freed. With the Children in Russia, there may never be a straight answer to what happened to Nina.
  • by ex-geek ( 847495 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @08:47AM (#19662259)
    First of all, what is it with the weird style this "interview" is written in? Joshua Davis should go off and write private investigator novels, instead of doing journalism on criminal cases. It was difficult to discern, where the claims of Reiser, Sturgeon or the DA end and where Davis' own storytelling starts.

    Hans Reiser has to be at least paranoid, which he apparently inherited from his father:

    "Reiser calls his dad and explains that unmarked cars and maybe an airplane are tracking him. In Ramon's opinion, it's an operation beyond the scope of local police. It sounds like the Russian mafia, Ramon says, or maybe the Russian spy agency, the FSB."
    Why would the FSB be interested in him? Don't they know that ReiserFS is open source?

    Another nugget is his insistence on playing violent video games with his six year old son. He defended this practise in a "32-page filing" on the "culture of manhood" during his divorce trial. That alone has nutjob written all over it.

    He believes mental health professionals scorn people who "teach the culture of manhood to little boys, with all of its inherent opposition to wallowing in wimpiness."
    Well, I don't see much of manhood in Hans Reiser's behaviour. He comes of as whiny and paranoid, accusing everybody but himself for his mistakes. And he appears even to be proud of conceiving a child in the first night with his mail order bride. That's both pathetic and idiotic!

    And don't even get me started on this Sturgeon guy. It seems like lunatics come in packs. I for one wouldn't take Hans Reisers advice on anything but file systems serious.
    • by Fnkmaster ( 89084 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @09:26AM (#19662751)
      And the wife doesn't sound like quite as much of a sweet, innocent victim anymore either. She started cheating on nutjob number 1 with even bigger nutjob number 2, the admitted murderer with bizarre sexual tastes, and exposed her children to that crap until a judge ordered her not to.

      This is an admittedly fascinating story for some reason. But when you remember that it's all real, you can't help but shed a few tears for these kids, who are going to grow up with no mother, with a twisted father who probably killed their mother and will be rotting in jail for years to come, with a paranoid, delusional grandfather and kook for a grandmother in the US.

      Maybe they're better off being in Russia after all. You come away from that story sort of despairing of their chances for growing up to be reasonably mentally healthy adults.
  • by mgiuca ( 1040724 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @08:54AM (#19662335)
    Read the whole article. It gets really creepy and bizzarre ... like when they start talking about brainwashing the kid and so on. The wife sounds really creepy .. but who knows, it was quite one-sided. Except for the end, interestingly enough.

    While he launches into the intricacies of database science, I'm thinking, "Where is the front passenger seat of your car?" He has never explained this. It seems a fundamental hole in his defense. But he won't stop talking. When I try to interrupt, he insists I let him finish. It's as if the file system holds all the answers.

    So I take the hint, and that night, in my office, I start scouring the 80,496 lines of the Reiser4 source code. Eventually I stumble across a passage that starts at line 78,077. It's not part of the program itself -- it's an annotation, a piece of non-executable text in plain English. It's there for the benefit of someone who has chosen to read this far into the code. The passage explains how memory structures are born, grow, and eventually die. It concludes: "Death is a complex process."
    Crazy ... does anyone know what the text of the passage is? I searched for "Death is a complex process" on Google code search, Koders, and Codase; got nothing...
    • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @09:37AM (#19662887)
      open last dir/patch at ftp://ftp.namesys.com/pub/reiser4-for-2.6 [namesys.com]
      file znode.c, item 5:

      diff -puN /dev/null fs/reiser4/znode.c
      --- /dev/null Thu Apr 11 07:25:15 2002
      +++ 25-akpm/fs/reiser4/znode.c Wed Mar 30 14:55:08 2005
      @@ -0,0 +1,1141 @@ /* Copyright 2001, 2002, 2003 by Hans Reiser, licensing governed by
      * reiser4/README */ /* Znode manipulation functions. */ /* Znode is the in-memory header for a tree node. It is stored
      separately from the node itself so that it does not get written to
      disk. In this respect znode is like buffer head or page head. We
      also use znodes for additional reiser4 specific purposes:

      . they are organized into tree structure which is a part of whole
      reiser4 tree.
      . they are used to implement node grained locking
      . they are used to keep additional state associated with a
      node
      . they contain links to lists used by the transaction manager

      Znode is attached to some variable "block number" which is instance of
      fs/reiser4/tree.h:reiser4_block_nr type. Znode can exist without
      appropriate node being actually loaded in memory. Existence of znode itself
      is regulated by reference count (->x_count) in it. Each time thread
      acquires reference to znode through call to zget(), ->x_count is
      incremented and decremented on call to zput(). Data (content of node) are
      brought in memory through call to zload(), which also increments ->d_count
      reference counter. zload can block waiting on IO. Call to zrelse()
      decreases this counter. Also, ->c_count keeps track of number of child
      znodes and prevents parent znode from being recycled until all of its
      children are. ->c_count is decremented whenever child goes out of existence
      (being actually recycled in zdestroy()) which can be some time after last
      reference to this child dies if we support some form of LRU cache for
      znodes.

      */ /* EVERY ZNODE'S STORY

      1. His infancy.

      Once upon a time, the znode was born deep inside of zget() by call to
      zalloc(). At the return from zget() znode had:

      . reference counter (x_count) of 1
      . assigned block number, marked as used in bitmap
      . pointer to parent znode. Root znode parent pointer points
      to its father: "fake" znode. This, in turn, has NULL parent pointer.
      . hash table linkage
      . no data loaded from disk
      . no node plugin
      . no sibling linkage

      2. His childhood

      Each node is either brought into memory as a result of tree traversal, or
      created afresh, creation of the root being a special case of the latter. In
      either case it's inserted into sibling list. This will typically require
      some ancillary tree traversing, but ultimately both sibling pointers will
      exist and JNODE_LEFT_CONNECTED and JNODE_RIGHT_CONNECTED will be true in
      zjnode.state.
  • Reasons? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Renraku ( 518261 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @09:02AM (#19662453) Homepage
    Not saying its a good excuse, but put yourself in the same situation.

    Your wife is in love/lust with your bi-S&M-druggie friend.

    She files for divorce.

    They conspire to take your company and everything you've worked for.

    You know (or at least think) that after this, there's never going to be anyone else. He had to turn to a Russian bride already. I bet his social skills aren't even that great. Its easy to envision living alone forever after that, while your friend and your ex-wife run off together.

    If you want to know why he looks/talks crazy..that's why. Doesn't justify murder, but might give some insight into why he looks shitty.
  • by MrJerryNormandinSir ( 197432 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @09:20AM (#19662659)
    Hmm.. It's pretty suspicious that Han's kids are still in Russia with his former mother-in-law.
    I think she's alive and well in Russia. If she was killed her body or parts of would have turned
    up by now. And if she is alive, maybe this was her parents way of getting her out of the US? She
    was a bright woman who started to take a pretty dark path. You could see all the classic signs here.
    Hans was too rapped up into namesys. He married a hottie wife who noticed that she was getting a lot
    of attention elsewhere. I think once Nina started messing around with other stuff her parents got
    her out of the country. The fact that the passenger seat is missing from the CRX and the fact that car
    had been washed out, casts some doubt on the belief that Hans is innocent here. He needs to come clean
    with information about that.

    I think the defense needs to monitor Nina's Mom and Hans' kids in Russia to see if Nina is there.

  • by GodfatherofSoul ( 174979 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @09:48AM (#19663013)

    "I'm not saying he should have killed her, but I understand..."

    Anytime you can't explain things like missing vehicles and scrubbed interiors, you got problems. I was expecting a police conspiracy after reading the comments, but there are a lot of arrows pointing at him. And, what's with his "friend" Sturgeon? It's almost as if he doesn't get that banging your buddy's wife might cause some strain on your relationship!

    No sympathy for the guy, though. A hot Russian mail order bride doctor and you don't suspect the package might be a little too good to be true?

  • by novus ordo ( 843883 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @10:07AM (#19663315) Journal
    I found the piece was terribly distraught especially this:

    While he launches into the intricacies of database science, I'm thinking, "Where is the front passenger seat of your car?" He has never explained this. It seems a fundamental hole in his defense. But he won't stop talking. When I try to interrupt, he insists I let him finish. It's as if the file system holds all the answers.

    So I take the hint, and that night, in my office, I start scouring the 80,496 lines of the Reiser4 source code. Eventually I stumble across a passage that starts at line 78,077. It's not part of the program itself it's an annotation, a piece of non-executable text in plain English. It's there for the benefit of someone who has chosen to read this far into the code. The passage explains how memory structures are born, grow, and eventually die. It concludes: "Death is a complex process."

    So I guess this is a confession now? I'm sorry but that's just deceiving and wrong. He calls a patch against the kernel tree a "program" and all the pluses he didn't remove before the code reaffirm this suspicion that he doesn't even know what proper code looks like. He makes it sound as if this comment describing how a specific file structure of the file system works as some sort of "secret confession" hidden there for the unscrupulous researcher. Joshua Davis, please turn in your geek badge!

    With someone that calls himself a geek to come with such a preposterous conclusion leaves me little room for hope that any sort of truth of this case from either side will come out or that any real justice will be done. It speaks volumes of the "blindness of justice" and how our prisons end up being jammed with people placed on death row with DNA evidence later exonerating them and having no recourse to repair their life or credibility. So truly, Death really is a Complex Process.


    Here is the actual passage he was talking about:

    +/* EVERY ZNODE'S STORY
    +
    + 1. His infancy.
    +
    + Once upon a time, the znode was born deep inside of zget() by call to
    + zalloc(). At the return from zget() znode had:
    +
    + . reference counter (x_count) of 1
    + . assigned block number, marked as used in bitmap
    + . pointer to parent znode. Root znode parent pointer points
    + to its father: "fake" znode. This, in turn, has NULL parent pointer.
    + . hash table linkage
    + . no data loaded from disk
    + . no node plugin
    + . no sibling linkage
    +
    + 2. His childhood
    +
    + Each node is either brought into memory as a result of tree traversal, or
    + created afresh, creation of the root being a special case of the latter. In
    + either case it's inserted into sibling list. This will typically require
    + some ancillary tree traversing, but ultimately both sibling pointers will
    + exist and JNODE_LEFT_CONNECTED and JNODE_RIGHT_CONNECTED will be true in
    + zjnode.state.
    +
    + 3. His youth.
    +
    + If znode is bound to already existing node in a tree, its content is read
    + from the disk by call to zload(). At that moment, JNODE_LOADED bit is set
    + in zjnode.state and zdata() function starts to return non null for this
    + znode. zload() further calls zparse() that determines which node layout
    + this node is rendered in, and sets ->nplug on success.
    +
    + If znode is for new node just created, memory for it is allocated and
    + zinit_new() function is called to initialise data, according to selected
    + node layout.
    +
    + 4. His maturity.
    +
    + After this point, znode lingers in memory for some time. Threads can
    + acquire references to znode either by blocknr through call to zget(), or by
    + following a pointer to unallocated znode from internal item. Each time
    + reference to znode is obtained, x_count is increased. Thread can read/write
    + lock znode. Znode data can be loaded through calls to zload(), d_count will
    + be increased appropriately. If all references to znode are released
    + (x_count drops to 0), znode is n

  • Guilty (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Captain_Chaos ( 103843 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @10:53AM (#19664039)
    I must say, the article describes some very damning evidence: "Police search the CRX and find that the front passenger seat has recently been removed. The floor is soaked, as if it had been washed. There are heavy-duty garbage bags, cloth towels, masking tape, and two books: Masterpieces of Murder and Homicide. Police also find another drop of blood and match it to Nina." This is after the police have (surreptitiously) followed Hans to the car and observed him moving it to a different location. What other explanation could there be for this than that Hans did indeed murder Nina, especially since (as far as I can tell from the article) Hans has offered no other explanation for the state of the car? Some of the rest of his interview sounds pretty creepy and paranoid too. For example, Hans says: "Male geeks, such as myself, are one of America's most hated cultural minorities," he writes. "Unlike racial hatred, it is considered socially acceptable to indulge in such hatred." This is obviously completely ridiculous. He then proceeds to use this as an excuse for a lot of strange behavior, such as wanting to "teach the culture of manhood to little boys, with all of its inherent opposition to wallowing in wimpiness" (talking about playing hours and hours of Battlefield Vietnam with his six year old son). None of that is evidence of murder of course, but it does make Hans seem unstable and paranoid and his explanations suspect. All in all it seems likely to me that Hans did indeed murder Nina. Of course in theory I suppose it's possible that he's the victim of some extremely elaborate setup (which I fully expect many people who watch too much CSI to claim), but in reality I think that's an very unlikely option. Having said that, this is just what I currently personally believe. If I was a juror I would vote "not guilty" on this evidence. I'm a big believer in "proven beyond all reasonable doubt." As long as there isn't even any evidence that Nina is actually dead, let alone hard evidence that Hans did it, I would have give him the benefit of the doubt, even though personally I find it more likely that he did it than not. To let off a murderer would be very bad, but in my opinion it would be much worse to wrongly convict an innocent man.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Fweeky ( 41046 )

      If I was a juror I would vote "not guilty" on this evidence. I'm a big believer in "proven beyond all reasonable doubt."

      Quite, but I have serious problems trusting a selection of my "peers" to be quite so impartial and clear thinking. Especially when a massive proportion of them repeatedly demonstrate their poor reasoning skills and/or ethics with beliefs like the creator of the universe has a personal relationship with them, crystals have healing energy, homosexuals are evil, atheists are worse, Bush is awesome, American Idol is pretty good, and the Iraq war is about the 9/11 terrorists.

      What's the criteria for deciding wh

      • Re:Guilty (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Captain_Chaos ( 103843 ) on Thursday June 28, 2007 @04:09AM (#19673367)

        If I was a juror I would vote "not guilty" on this evidence. I'm a big believer in "proven beyond all reasonable doubt."
        Quite, but I have serious problems trusting a selection of my "peers" to be quite so impartial and clear thinking.

        Actually I agree. By "if I was a juror" it didn't mean to imply that I approve of the jury system... I am actually strongly against it. In my own country professional (as opposed to elected or appointed) judges determine guilt and punishment, and while we have our share of miscarriages of justice on the whole I think it's a much better system.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by mqduck ( 232646 )
      I think you have one of the most reasonable takes on the article here on Slashdot. But I have some comments.

      "Male geeks, such as myself, are one of America's most hated cultural minorities," he writes. "Unlike racial hatred, it is considered socially acceptable to indulge in such hatred." This is obviously completely ridiculous.

      Yes, it is, as stated, a totally wrong opinion, I agree (anyone who thinks that personal_opposition_to_racism = lack_of_racism is sadly a fool). But there is some validity to the "it

  • personal theory (Score:4, Interesting)

    by phrostie ( 121428 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @11:20AM (#19664387)
    they won't find a body because she's not dead.

    she's been taking the money and gave it to her boy friend who loanded it back to hans.
    the interview never says how the friend came into that much money. did no one else notice this?

    they fake her death and frame hans.

    the friend can pass a polygraph because he "didn't kill her".

    as for the seat, i think they drugged him(yes, both the wife and boyfriend have a history of experimentation/use), drove the car to where they left it and let him wake up there.

    he knew where the car was, but has no way to explain how it got there. this would freak out most people.

    yes he could have done it, but this no more unrealistic than anything else i've read.
    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by hackus ( 159037 )
      I would like to add here that:

      1) Hans doesn't appear to have a history of violence. Going from no violence to murder, without a shred of real evidence beyond the circumstantial appears too good to be true. He would have had to screw something up. Unlike his friend who might I add is an accomplished assassin.

      2) He seems very gullible to me, and wasn't taking the advice of people who knew him.
      (Father calls him up to tell him the money is disappearing and he thinks the chix is soaking him.)

      3) Marries the c
  • Why Confine Hans? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ann Coulter ( 614889 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @11:32AM (#19664549)
    Even if Hans is guilty, he would serve society better if he can work on his filesystem instead of idling in prison.
  • by bioglaze ( 767105 ) on Wednesday June 27, 2007 @02:47PM (#19667335) Homepage Journal
    Hans shot first, so all he can do is to pray there'll be special edition where he doesn't.

Perfection is acheived only on the point of collapse. - C. N. Parkinson

Working...