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Well, you'd better hurry tell this to Dexter...

OJ did it!

I hear "Some Puerto Rican Guy" did it.

I hope this finally serves as a "wake up call" for Linux lickers and lovers that using Linux does increase chances of violence and murder. For too long now Linux lovers have accused Microsoft of tomfoolery, when Microsoft has only delivered wholesome, moral, and radidly patched products.

Perhaps now they'll finally start listening to the studies that Linux and open-source leads to genital herpes and PWNING your wife with a .45 and a shovel.

All coding and no play makes Hans a dull boy.
All coding and no play makes Hans a dull boy.

He doesn't know where he is, but he's got a lot of experience in building b-trees to locate things in sublinear time; how difficult can it be?

I guess this marks the end of ReiserFS. I'm sure no one in the Linux community wants to be associated to that piece of work.

Which, while it might be true, is still stupid.

Imagine if Albert Einstein had accepted the position of leader of Israel after World War II and ordered some massive war crime, like say slaughtering the Arabs with nukes.

Would we just toss aside General Relativity, never to see it again, because we don't want to be associated with the author?

They should at least rename it to try to distance the software as much as possible from its creator....

That raises the question; if Linus murders, will you stop using the kernel and everything associated with it?

Wow I feel like a moron for have ever attempted to defend Hans online at all.

You shouldn't. To most people, even people who "defended" him, it was more likely than not that he was guilty. But the legal criterion is "beyond a reasonable doubt". I think based on the publicly released evidence, there was still a reasonable doubt.

I still don't feel really comfortable with jurors making decisions based on "looking into people's eyes", as one of the jurors was saying; given how many people believe in astrology, mind reading, new age, and other supernatural stuff, I think there there's a lot of potential for bad decision making there. And there are, indeed, lots of wrongful convictions, so it's not like the system is working perfectly.

Still, it looks like the jurors were right on this one.

ReiserFS is maybe created by a murderer, but that doesn't mean it's bad. Hans Reiser may have comitted an intolerable crime, but if you would rob yourself of what might be the best filesystem for your application, it would just be a bloody shame. In my opinion using ReiserFS doesn't immediately mean you agree with his actions. It just mean that you prefer ReiserFS over other systems.

This being said though, I prefer ZFS myself :)

Also, considering Microsoft has so many employees, I have no doubt, that there have been people working there that comitted far worse than a crime of passion. Doesn't mean that the product is bad... Well, okay it is, but not because of some employee going nuts.
Besides, I think there are many CEO's or CFO's or any C?O's out there that have comitted far worse than a single murder, like Shell pumping oil in africa, killing thousands knowingly by pollution. If you'd go your route, you wouldn't be able to get groceries anymore in a normal fasion, because the truck getting the groceries might have filled it up with diesel at a shell.

It sounds like they're in discussions about it. Presumably the DA wouldn't leak something about a deal of that nature unless he's really bad at his job. I would think that kind of publicity from the DA could earn him some censure, at he very least.

Long terms in prison tend to be the result of mandatory minimum sentences. Politicians, in a zeal to "fight crime!!111" have placed certain minimum terms on crimes, so judges can have their hands tied in sentencing. For the record, depending on which case you're thinking of, the US couple got 99 days in jail. And none of it was related to the death of their child, it was for neglect of their other four children (being underweight and malnourished).

I thought the point of prison was to punish and correct the guilty and get them back into working order.

That can be a point of prison but there are at least four not always compatible reasons from prison:

1. Deterrence.
2. Reformation.
3. Punishment.
4. Removal.

Ultra long sentences serve 1,3, and 4 at the expense of 2. Furthermore, reform tends to get lip service at best in the US. We're generally a revenge minded lot Who Want Criminals Off The Street And Thinking Twice About Messing Up.

if you assumed reiser's innocence, take a good har dlook in the mirror

Everyone should be assumed innocent until it is proven beyond a reasonable doubt that they are guilty. I don't need to look in the mirror to know that...

tribal-level prejudice flows in your veins

Yup. I think that such biases are actually stronger in support of someone for irrational tribal reasons than they are, these days, when it comes to being irrationally against someone who's not in your tribe. Classic examples these days would be the small number of people who poll saying they'd vote against Obama because he's black, compared to the huge number who will (and say they will!) vote for him because he's (to whatever degree) black. The folks who completely tossed their reason out the window over Reiser because he's a fellow nerd really do get a chance to stop and think, now. It's very similar to those that tolerate script kiddies and web site defacers because they feel some kinship to them, despite the fact that if the same kids did something similar in meat space (to their car, with spray paint) they'd get all upset.

It was fair to assume Reiser's innocence until the testimony and his behavior started stacking up.