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It's easy to identify with wrongly convicted people. It happens, and it's widely reported, but it's rare. Many people are so horrified by the thought of going to prison for something they didn't do that they forget how unusual it is.

Because he was a programmer, contributing to Linux, people on /. and elsewhere wanted him to not be guilty. They identified with him on some level. As the evidence started to mount against him, it made people look for crazy ways in which he could not be guilty.

I agree with you, he's a psychopath. This new story is just further confirmation that he's lost touch with reality. All you have to do is go back and read his postings to linux-kernel to realize he's also a huge dick.

Oh, and reiserfs sucks.

> Oh, and reiserfs sucks.

I was with you until here. T'so is quoted as writing that btrfs has a lot of the same design ideas of ReiserFS, and that he supports btrfs as the way forward (he particularly disliked Hans and Namesys, though): http://lkml.org/lkml/2008/8/1/217

Some distros moved to ReiserFS by default, too.

Somehow I've never found the time to properly try it out, but I never really got the impression from others that used it that it sucks. I might be wrong, though.

> I was with you until here. T'so is quoted as writing that btrfs has a lot of the same design ideas of ReiserFS,

When I was using reiserfs years ago, it ate all my data (/home unraveled). I like the features, and it was nice and fast for the time but I've held a grudge against it for years as a result. Looking at dumps of the on disk data structures showed massive corruption.

At work, we used it for a long time in a project where tail-packing is a huge win (many many small files). Never had any problems there.

So, it doesn't really suck I just had a bad experience.

I had too, at a time, and it was because of a flakey ATA controller (some VIA-based shitty mobo). Don't throw the baby with the bath water :)

Some distros moved to ReiserFS by default, too.

SuSE, who later realized it was a mistake and moved back to ext3?

Even though they denied it, I'm willing to bet that SuSE (and others) made the move after realizing the Reiser community was about to be abruptly beheaded.

Not just beheaded (a particularly gruesome term in light of this topic), but to have a very negative association. Remember that SuSe is open-source but supported by the very corporate Novel. I don't know that I'd want that association with my company, and the suits running Novel are probably less inclined.

The arrest was likely the instigator, but at that point it had long been clear that Reiser4 wasn't going to be accepted in the kernel mainline, and Reiser3 had gone off into an 'unsupported' limbo. The switch would have happened sooner or later.

It happens, and it's widely reported, but it's rare

Why should we assume that? Based on incentives, one would expect false convictions to be rather common: after all, when false convictions are discovered, there's no punishment meted out to the judge, jury, prosecutors, police and forensics experts that helped wrongly convict in the first place.

The Innocence Project states that there have been 266 post conviction DNA exonerations in the US.

http://www.innocenceproject.org/know/

I'm of the opinion that it's basically impossible to know how many wrongful convictions have taken place, but those 266 cases are surely the tip of the iceberg when you consider the difficulty in identifying the cases, determining if potential exculpatory evidence existed, testing that evidence and then pushing all of that through a courtroom.

"The Innocence Project states that there have been 266 post conviction DNA exonerations in the US."

But were they really innocent?

DNA evidence can be misused in the courts:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727743.300-how-dna-e...

Did you read that article and decide that people are getting off due to questionable statistics? As far as I can tell, the article is about calculating the probability of random people matching a particular DNA sample, not about excluding people, which is a lot easier.

"As far as I can tell, the article is about calculating the probability of random people matching a particular DNA sample, not about excluding people, which is a lot easier."

No.

The article is very clearly questions the role of DNA evidence as a whole.

A couple of relevant quotes:

"Defence experts were trusting that the scientists had interpreted the data correctly. This perpetuated the myth that DNA is infallible."

"There's a considerable lack of understanding, not just from the public, but from the judges and lawyers."

"This week we show how, even when analysts agree that someone could be a match for a piece of DNA evidence, the statistical weight assigned to that match can vary enormously."

This seems to be the author's opinion about what the article is about.

I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about this.

Make of it what you will. The article speaks for itself.

It does, and when it speaks, it speaks of different statistical methods for calculating the probability of a random match to partial DNA samples.

edit: BTW, it's a very interesting article - thanks for pointing it out.

There's this fellow who posts by the name "gnosis" on the interwebs, and I'm pretty sure he's the real killer of JFK. The DNA evidence for his innonence is . . . wait for it . . . NONEXISTENT !!!11!!! OMFG CALL NANCY GRACE NOW !!!

There's a statistical bias in this argument; we remember the cases in which we've learned people were convicted on shoddy evidence, but pay little attention to the overwhelming vast majority of uneventful cases in which justice is (at least nominally) served. I think it's facile to suggest that false convictions are common, and I think it's possible to point that out without arguing that we should be any less vigilant against false convictions.

There's also a countervailing bias that I suspect is far more important: most wrongly-convicted defendants have no way to prove their innocence, and so we never learn that they were wrongly convicted. Many criminal defendants are not sophisticated about the law, and their cases are handled by overworked public defenders. The courts in many states are extremely stingy about giving defendants access to evidence or legal appeals post-conviction. So even if potentially-exculpatory evidence emerges, the convict often can't do anything with it.

This is one of those statistics that will never be known with any precision, but even if the number of known exonerations is small (which I don't know to be the case) that doesn't prove that the number of innocents in jail is small.

I would think that most mistaken convictions happen to cases that receive very little scrutiny, including by the media (think poor uneducated ethnic minority with state-provided overworked lawyer).

> overwhelming vast majority of uneventful cases in which justice is (at least nominally) served.

You are assuming in that statement that there is an overwhelming majority of cases in which justice is served. You even try to leave yourself an out with the "at least nominally", which demonstrates part of the problem with your argument.

Among the problems with this argument: the assumption that many of the crimes we are convicting people for are actually bad, and thus worthy of being considered crimes. The assumption that convicting and imprisoning people for the crimes that they commit is just, or even that it achieves whatever ends it is supposed to achieve. The assumption that people are convicted of crimes on the basis of whether or not they actually committed the crime, plus a small random factor due to mistakes, rather than systemic social reasons relating to class, race, poverty, and other social issues (even if many of the people who are convicted of crimes are actually guilty, if the guilty of one group are convicted at a far higher rate than the other group, it's not quite right to say that justice is served in this case).

You have to be careful about bias in the other direction; the just world fallacy. It's very easy to believe that we live in a just world (and part of why people find such hope in the idea of just deities); when something bad happens, many people try to find a reason or to justify it. But in fact, we do not live in a just world; we live in an impartial world, populated with imperfect people. Given that, you need to be skeptical of any time you find yourself thinking that the vast majority of any particular situation is just, especially with stakes as high as criminal justice.

I don't have any up to date figures, but http://www.caught.net/innoc.htm suggests that the rate of wrongly convicted innocent people could be around 10%. So the vast majority of convicted people belong there. Indisputably a lot of people walk free who are guilty. But there are also a lot of innocent people behind bars.

That assumes there is no internal "don't want to fuck someone's life up without cause" incentive internal to the individuals (i.e. that assumes psychopathy on the part of everyone involved in the justice system).

That we have police and courts at all assumes that people harm others without sufficient cause. Any argument that we need no external incentives for everyone involved in the justice system to do the right thing is an argument that we don't need the justice system in the first place.

What I meant was that to assume there was no incentive was to assume complete psychopathy on everyone's part. What you are saying is that while the basic empathy incentive may exist, it isn't enough. I agree with that just fine.

For those who don't appreciate exactly what psychopath means, see http://www.hare.org/links/saturday.html

An interesting read, but I will note that the linked article is from Robert Hare's own website, and it reeks of pop-psychology and pop-science (lots of anecdotal evidence, and claims of him being a misunderstood pioneer, not much in the way of actual verifiable arguments or even proper citations). I know that the idea of the psychopath, the unrepentant criminal or person without the ability for empathy, has become popular recently, but I am skeptical of some of the claims I've seen about the nature of the condition itself, the diagnosis of the condition, how common it is, and the possibility of any sort of rehabilitation.

It's on his site because he asked the author apparently if it is ok to reproduce it, but it's written by one 'Robert Hercz', it was the cover story of the Sep. 8th 2001 issue of Saturday Night magazine.

That's not exactly a scientific publication either, but it is not as if he wrote it himself.

Here's a blog that I ran into a while back. Lately the updates have been few and far in between. But it's still an interesting read. http://raising-a-psychopath.blogspot.com/

Thanks for that link, it wasn't the most pleasant piece I've read in the last month but certainly one of the more interesting ones.

Especially the bits about the fact that it's not a disease per se but more of a natural variation and the fact that it occurs as much as 1% of the time are quite something to absorb.

The first implies that there is no cure, the second that you probably know at least a few of them, even if they're of the 'subclinical' (according to the article) variety.

I think I've worked for one.

I think if he really wanted to try to hold onto and milk his supporters he would have never taken the police to the spot he buried his wife - instead clinging to the story he was an innocent man.

I think he's just f-n nuts (or possible brilliant and nuts).

Had he not led the police to the body, he'd have gotten life without parole: he was convicted of a particularly heinous first degree murder. It is still unlikely that he'll ever be released. But after revealing the body, he has, as a formality, a chance at eventual release. I don't think the tea leaves you're reading really say anything about his mental state.

Well he did get a sentence reduction out of that. He was initially convicted to first degree murder which carries 25 years to life minimal. For showing the body he got the sentence reduced to second degree murder which carries 15 years to life. So 10 years of life behind bars would probably have been a higher priority for him than milking his supporters.

Of course I doubt any of this matters, because it is doubtful he will get paroled. But hope spring eternal.

guiltyness and fair treatment by justice system are orthogonal. just saying, without commet as to this particular case.

if ones rights are trampled to prove their guilt then that guilt must be put aside / go unpunished. otherwise authority has very little incentive to abide your rights and very much incentive to violate them.

  Obviously a smart and practical person like him knows 
  that this will not work

It's interesting how people will acknowledge the guy is insane and in the same breath accuse him of being sane enough to understand something doesn't work. Arguments based on that premise can't hold: if someone is insane, all bets are off. Especially because you can't know how this huge failure (being incarcerated is losing the 'get-what-you-want'-game big time!) affected his mind.

I'll offer an alternative 'explanation': his mind does in fact contain all kinds of 'feeling guilty' thoughts, but it doesn't know how to handle them. Hell, the appropriate pathways may be missing. As a response, his mind comes up with some plan to restore her to life. Never mind his justifications: they may just be made up by other parts of his mind, so it can ponder a narrative that seems coherent/consistent to itself. He may just ve trying to silence nagging guilt in the only way he can.

hristov never said he was insane, he said he was a psychopath. Psychopaths are often _exceptionally_ rational people.

(Note: I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with histrov, I'm just saying that calling a psychopath "smart and practical" doesn't contradict his argument)

Note that I'm not necessarily disagreeing with hristov either. I'm just arguing that psychopaths are not just rational people and are known to behave in what are generally considered to be 'insane ways'.

The idea that psychopaths are often exceptionally rational people is a misconception, popularized by the common depiction of the 'accomplishments' of highly intelligent psychopaths. Most psychopaths are not highly intelligent. Moreover, as far as psychopaths seem to function as normal people, it's because they employ rational methods of thinking to know how to behave to get what they want. However, that their behavior is mostly based on rational ways of thinking, does not necessarily mean they are actually any good at those ways of thinking. Only the highly intelligent are.

And even then: point in fact: murdering your wife is hardly ever, and certainly not under the circumstances Reiser did, a rational thing to do.

Psychopaths behave in insane ways, specifically because they only employ rational modes of thinking, which are necessarily insufficient to make proper decisions about 'how to get what they want'. Why is that? Because you always lack enough information to make proper rational decisions. I can't rationally decide whether to eat another cookie.

> (Notice that he did not say that he wanted to give her her adulthood which she missed because he killed her).

Maybe he wants to kill her again.

That was uncalled for I think. It's not even remotely humoristic and if it was not meant as humor then this comment is probably a new low for HN.

The bit where he writes in this letter about wanting to raise her with his children to me clearly indicates the man is out of his mind, far more than his crazy plan of resurrecting her does (and as if murdering your wife isn't indication enough in that direction). I don't see any evidence that Reiser wants to kill his wife again but I do think that when he has served his sentence and is released that he probably should be placed in a hospital of sorts.

Of course his plan doesn't stand a snowballs chance in hell of working in the first place, clearly he has lost whatever marbles he still had.

Involving the kids in his minds view of this scheme is particularly painful, I think they'll need all the healing they can get without this sort of weirdness, they've been scarred for life already.

> clearly indicates the man is out of his mind

I'm not a psychologist, but I think you may be on to something here. Thanks, you've talked me out of donating.

> That was uncalled for I think. It's not even remotely humoristic

Come on, you didn't even give a small chortle?

No, I shook my head and pondered how clearly mentally unbalanced Reiser is.

At the very least, I think it shows that he wants a version of his wife that could be controlled and manipulated.

Really not a healthy mindset, I don't think. And that's not even getting into sexual issues.

How do you know that Hans Reiser is a pyschopath?

Maybe it's just a ploy for him to make money, or maybe that's his way of remorse.

Because he has continued to show any lack of remorse. Let's look even at this story. He did not say that he wanted to clone her to try to reverse the terrible thing that he did (i.e., murdering her). Or to try to give her life back that he took away. He said he wanted to give her the happy childhood that she missed.

I am not sure whether Nina had an unhappy childhood, but if she did that was clearly through no fault of Reiser's because he met her when she was an adult. So even in this he cannot bring himself to admit that he did something wrong.

The way you put that is kind of creepy. A clone of someone is a completely different person, who just happens to share DNA. To think of a clone as "Nina, reincarnated" or some such thing is not just wrong; it's potentially harmful to the emotional welfare of the clone in question.

Cloning someone can not reverse murdering them. Cloning someone can not give someone back any life they may have lost. Cloning someone can not give them a happy childhood. I know this is academic now, but if (when?) there are human clones walking around, this kind of thinking is going to be a problem.

I'm going to say something sounding terribly naive: It's almost as if Reiser thinks humans are essentially genetic code that can be duplicated to produce exact copies. It's like he's objectified people as physiological analogs of his own work.

He wants to make a symlink to Nina.

I think what you fail to see here is that the "creepiness" is built in to Reiser's ideology.

If he is really remorseful how about asking the public to donate to a fund that goes directly towards his children?

A pyschopath don't feel remorse, therefore it doesn't matter what he ask the public to do.

Remorse is an internal state. It would be like telling children to apologize without the children actually feeling bad for their action.