No doubt about it now.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...LDR8.DTL&tsp=1

--
old-polack
Of what use be there for joy, if not for the sharing thereof?

On Tuesday 08 July 2008 07:58, someone who identifies as *old-polack* wrote
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/

> No doubt about it now.
>
>
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...LDR8.DTL&tsp=1

Yep, read about it this morning. Seems I was wrong in my assumption of his
innocence. Still, I think that it must have been a case of manslaughter
rather than premeditated murder, though.

Probably they got into a fight and he hit her and she fell, and then seeing
her body he must have thought "What have I done?" and then in a panic
dragged her body out, took it far away and buried her.

Either way, it's tragic, both for her and for him, not to mention the
children... :-/

--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

On Tue, 08 Jul 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandriva, in article
<IeHck.262348$M63.60656@newsfe13.ams2>, Aragorn wrote:

>someone who identifies as *old-polack* wrote

>> No doubt about it now.

[URL clipped]

>Yep, read about it this morning. Seems I was wrong in my assumption of
>his innocence. Still, I think that it must have been a case of
>manslaughter rather than premeditated murder, though.

Standard assumption in most courts is that the accused is innocent until
proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It's not to say they never make
a mistake - that's pretty well known to be possible, but that's also why
we have reviews and appeals processes.

Manslaughter generally means accidental. The prosecutor managed to find
and present enough evidence in the courtroom to convince the jury of the
more serious charge.

>Probably they got into a fight and he hit her and she fell, and then
>seeing her body he must have thought "What have I done?" and then in
>a panic dragged her body out, took it far away and buried her.

You really do want to read the Chronicle article - I don't believe you can
get the trial transcripts yet. To quote:

Reiser also acknowledged that he and his wife had fought and that he
had strangled her, a source familiar with the investigation said.

That's not official, but it's probably got some basis of fact. If you
want the official statements, wait a few weeks, and the transcripts will
become available.

Honestly, there were 12 people in that courtroom who were convinced
beyond all reasonable doubt that he had killed her under non-accidental
circumstances. If even one juror was not fully convinced, the result
is a mandatory 'not guilty' verdict. It's not as if they are persecuting
him for the hell of it. You may not have believed the evidence that was
presented in court, but the jury did.

Reiser, 44, was convicted by an Alameda County jury April 28 after
a six-month trial in which the combative software programmer testified
over 11 days that he was innocent of killing his wife, who had not been
seen since dropping off the couple's young son and daughter at his home.
On the day Reiser was convicted, Hora said, "We have a body. We just
don't know where it is."

Six months. They didn't ram it through and the jury tends to be rather
careful, especially on a murder case. Both the prosecution and defense
are extremely careful to select jurors who don't have pre-conceived ideas
and who _will_ make a fair determination based on facts presented during
the trial. Also, this is a high profile case (the URL above is of a news
story that was on the front page of the major newspaper), so it's not as
if the prosecution can get away with slight-of-hand or smoke and mirrors.

Old guy

On Tuesday 08 July 2008 21:37, someone who identifies as *Moe Trin* wrote
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/

> On Tue, 08 Jul 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandriva, in
> article <IeHck.262348$M63.60656@newsfe13.ams2>, Aragorn wrote:
>
>> someone who identifies as *old-polack* wrote
>
>>> No doubt about it now.
>
> [URL clipped]
>
>> Yep, read about it this morning. Seems I was wrong in my assumption of
>> his innocence. Still, I think that it must have been a case of
>> manslaughter rather than premeditated murder, though.
>
> Standard assumption in most courts is that the accused is innocent until
> proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It's not to say they never make
> a mistake - that's pretty well known to be possible, but that's also why
> we have reviews and appeals processes.

Well, I have been following most of that trial - I think I may have missed
the first few sessions - via two independent sources. One was a live blog
from the courtroom with a pretty elaborate quoting of what was said in the
courtroom, whereas the other one was more of a short summary of the events,
with fewer quotes.

I stopped following the case once Reiser had been found guilty, because it
was then just only a matter of determining the sentence, and that was
scheduled to happen only in July, so the reports about this case also went
into a recess.

> Manslaughter generally means accidental. The prosecutor managed to find
> and present enough evidence in the courtroom to convince the jury of the
> more serious charge.

Well, see, on that I am not so sure. I'm not arguing that he's guilty,
obviously, but it was my impression that the prosecutor was freewheeling
and assuming a lot without presenting proper evidence, and that key
elements in the case were being totally discarded through prejudice.

If anything, it was a very sloppy case, and although Reiser is obviously
guilty and he was convicted, I see that more as a lucky strike on behalf of
the prosecutor.

No body had been found during the trial, Reiser was still maintaining his
innocence and certain paths and evidence were left unexplored. It was only
after his conviction that Reiser admitted to having killed Nina and that -
following his lead - her body was discovered.

By the same token he could have maintained his innocence and he even could
have been innocent and still sentenced on the grounds of circumstantial
evidence, because in the end, circumstantial evidence was the only thing
presented, testimonial of which is the fact that if he did indeed strangle
her, then the whole debacle of the blood stains on the sleeping bag cover
and on the pillar in the house of his mother, and him allegedly rinsing the
car "to get rid of all the blood from killing her" are moot.

>> Probably they got into a fight and he hit her and she fell, and then
>> seeing her body he must have thought "What have I done?" and then in
>> a panic dragged her body out, took it far away and buried her.
>
> You really do want to read the Chronicle article - I don't believe you can
> get the trial transcripts yet. To quote:
>
> Reiser also acknowledged that he and his wife had fought and that he
> had strangled her, a source familiar with the investigation said.

I _have_ read the article, but the word "strangled" must have eluded me
somehow. I had been awake all night and I've just had a terrible three
days behind me, so I must have missed that. ;-)

> That's not official, but it's probably got some basis of fact. If you
> want the official statements, wait a few weeks, and the transcripts will
> become available.

Probably yes.

> Honestly, there were 12 people in that courtroom who were convinced
> beyond all reasonable doubt that he had killed her under non-accidental
> circumstances. If even one juror was not fully convinced, the result
> is a mandatory 'not guilty' verdict. It's not as if they are persecuting
> him for the hell of it. You may not have believed the evidence that was
> presented in court, but the jury did.

Well, it was all circumstantial evidence, and even the District Attorney was
willing to acknowledge that. But as I wrote higher up, I believe that the
case hadn't been investigated with the proper earnest.

Had the investigators and the District Attorney's office done their jobs
well enough, then they would have seriously investigated every possible
angle to this case, and clearly that was not what was going on. They had
been investigating Reiser (and only Reiser) with prejudice from the start
and they made a case against him based upon circumstantial evidence,
presented in court with colorful propagandistic slogans and slides, and the
prosecutor was even given a second closing argument _after_ the defense
attorney had finished his. The jury needed several days to review and
debate this evidence, so they weren't at all sure about everything either.

And so they found him guilty. And now it turns out that he *is* guilty. So
the D.A. made a homerun. But - and I repeat - by the same token he could
have been innocent, and then all of this would have been just the circus
show it was presented as. This is not the way a serious investigation
should be conducted.

Don't get me wrong, though. I'm certainly not going to say that over here
in Belgium such a case would have been tried better. The big difference
however is that the equivalent of the district attorneys here - simply
called "Prosecutor of the King" in an archaic title - are not elected, and
neither are the chiefs of police or sheriffs - for the few remote areas
that still have an equivalent of a sheriff. All of the aforementioned here
are public servants and are given their rank and position based upon the
results of exams, diplomas and qualifications. In other words, they don't
have to win a case in court in order to ensure a re-election, and this adds
to their credibility.

> Reiser, 44, was convicted by an Alameda County jury April 28 after
> a six-month trial in which the combative software programmer testified
> over 11 days that he was innocent of killing his wife, who had not been
> seen since dropping off the couple's young son and daughter at his
> home. On the day Reiser was convicted, Hora said, "We have a body. We
> just don't know where it is."

Yeah, I've read that. And that is just one of the things that go to show
that it's all about slogans and propaganda. They did *not* have a body,
until Reiser himself presented them with one, *after* his conviction.
Slogans like that are religious, not factual.

> Six months. They didn't ram it through and the jury tends to be rather
> careful, especially on a murder case.

I don't agree with that. If that were true, then there never would have
been any cases of innocent people being sentenced for life or even being
executed, only to have the real killer turn up much, much later. Besides,
in the O.J. Simpson trial, the jury found the defendant not guilty and it
was later on discovered - and proven in a civil court - that he was.

> Both the prosecution and defense are extremely careful to select jurors
> who don't have pre-conceived ideas and who _will_ make a fair
> determination based on facts presented during the trial.

Jurors demographically represent the people and may therefore not be savvy
enough regarding technical details or investigation methods. Well, I'm not
a lawyer and who am I to criticize how the court works, but still, jurors
can be mislead easily.

> Also, this is a high profile case (the URL above is of a news story that
> was on the front page of the major newspaper), so it's not as if the
> prosecution can get away with slight-of-hand or smoke and mirrors.

Which is all the more reason to point out that in this particular case, they
actually did pull that off, even if they did turn out to be right in the
end.

Of course, Reiser's decision to take the stand is one of the key factors
that got him convicted. Not because of what he said or didn't say, but
because he managed to make himself very much disliked by both the judge and
the jurors - the blog reported on some of the jurors' facial reactions and
body language throughout Reiser's testimony.

Of course, whether the judge liked or disliked Reiser has nothing to do with
the verdict, as the judge seemed professional enough about it - he was
actually the only one who appeared credible throughout this trial - but
even jurors are only human.

Yet the fact remains that if Reiser had taken the advice of his attorney to
forego taking the stand - which as I understand it would have been his
legal right in the United States - then he'd probably have been acquitted.
And the key factor in all this is that even though he did take the stand,
there was actually nothing in any of what he said that contributed anything
useful to the resolution of the case, with the sole and sad exception being
that now, _after_ the proceedings, he has finally confessed and presented
the investigators with Nina's remains in order to get a sentence reduction.

As the OP put it, "there's no doubt about it anymore now". But up until
this "now", for me, there still was, despite the court's ruling.

--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

Aragorn wrote:
> On Tuesday 08 July 2008 21:37, someone who identifies as *Moe Trin* wrote
> in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/
>
>> On Tue, 08 Jul 2008, in the Usenet newsgroup alt.os.linux.mandriva, in
>> article <IeHck.262348$M63.60656@newsfe13.ams2>, Aragorn wrote:
>>
>>> someone who identifies as *old-polack* wrote
>>>> No doubt about it now.
>> [URL clipped]
>>
>>> Yep, read about it this morning. Seems I was wrong in my assumption of
>>> his innocence. Still, I think that it must have been a case of
>>> manslaughter rather than premeditated murder, though.
>> Standard assumption in most courts is that the accused is innocent until
>> proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It's not to say they never make
>> a mistake - that's pretty well known to be possible, but that's also why
>> we have reviews and appeals processes.
>
> Well, I have been following most of that trial - I think I may have missed
> the first few sessions - via two independent sources. One was a live blog
> from the courtroom with a pretty elaborate quoting of what was said in the
> courtroom, whereas the other one was more of a short summary of the events,
> with fewer quotes.
>
> I stopped following the case once Reiser had been found guilty, because it
> was then just only a matter of determining the sentence, and that was
> scheduled to happen only in July, so the reports about this case also went
> into a recess.
>
>> Manslaughter generally means accidental. The prosecutor managed to find
>> and present enough evidence in the courtroom to convince the jury of the
>> more serious charge.
>
> Well, see, on that I am not so sure. I'm not arguing that he's guilty,
> obviously, but it was my impression that the prosecutor was freewheeling
> and assuming a lot without presenting proper evidence, and that key
> elements in the case were being totally discarded through prejudice.
>
> If anything, it was a very sloppy case, and although Reiser is obviously
> guilty and he was convicted, I see that more as a lucky strike on behalf of
> the prosecutor.
>
> No body had been found during the trial, Reiser was still maintaining his
> innocence and certain paths and evidence were left unexplored. It was only
> after his conviction that Reiser admitted to having killed Nina and that -
> following his lead - her body was discovered.
>
> By the same token he could have maintained his innocence and he even could
> have been innocent and still sentenced on the grounds of circumstantial
> evidence, because in the end, circumstantial evidence was the only thing
> presented, testimonial of which is the fact that if he did indeed strangle
> her, then the whole debacle of the blood stains on the sleeping bag cover
> and on the pillar in the house of his mother, and him allegedly rinsing the
> car "to get rid of all the blood from killing her" are moot.
>
>>> Probably they got into a fight and he hit her and she fell, and then
>>> seeing her body he must have thought "What have I done?" and then in
>>> a panic dragged her body out, took it far away and buried her.
>> You really do want to read the Chronicle article - I don't believe you can
>> get the trial transcripts yet. To quote:
>>
>> Reiser also acknowledged that he and his wife had fought and that he
>> had strangled her, a source familiar with the investigation said.
>
> I _have_ read the article, but the word "strangled" must have eluded me
> somehow. I had been awake all night and I've just had a terrible three
> days behind me, so I must have missed that. ;-)
>
>> That's not official, but it's probably got some basis of fact. If you
>> want the official statements, wait a few weeks, and the transcripts will
>> become available.
>
> Probably yes.
>
>> Honestly, there were 12 people in that courtroom who were convinced
>> beyond all reasonable doubt that he had killed her under non-accidental
>> circumstances. If even one juror was not fully convinced, the result
>> is a mandatory 'not guilty' verdict. It's not as if they are persecuting
>> him for the hell of it. You may not have believed the evidence that was
>> presented in court, but the jury did.
>
> Well, it was all circumstantial evidence, and even the District Attorney was
> willing to acknowledge that. But as I wrote higher up, I believe that the
> case hadn't been investigated with the proper earnest.
>
> Had the investigators and the District Attorney's office done their jobs
> well enough, then they would have seriously investigated every possible
> angle to this case, and clearly that was not what was going on. They had
> been investigating Reiser (and only Reiser) with prejudice from the start
> and they made a case against him based upon circumstantial evidence,
> presented in court with colorful propagandistic slogans and slides, and the
> prosecutor was even given a second closing argument _after_ the defense
> attorney had finished his. The jury needed several days to review and
> debate this evidence, so they weren't at all sure about everything either.
>
> And so they found him guilty. And now it turns out that he *is* guilty. So
> the D.A. made a homerun. But - and I repeat - by the same token he could
> have been innocent, and then all of this would have been just the circus
> show it was presented as. This is not the way a serious investigation
> should be conducted.
>
> Don't get me wrong, though. I'm certainly not going to say that over here
> in Belgium such a case would have been tried better. The big difference
> however is that the equivalent of the district attorneys here - simply
> called "Prosecutor of the King" in an archaic title - are not elected, and
> neither are the chiefs of police or sheriffs - for the few remote areas
> that still have an equivalent of a sheriff. All of the aforementioned here
> are public servants and are given their rank and position based upon the
> results of exams, diplomas and qualifications. In other words, they don't
> have to win a case in court in order to ensure a re-election, and this adds
> to their credibility.
>
>> Reiser, 44, was convicted by an Alameda County jury April 28 after
>> a six-month trial in which the combative software programmer testified
>> over 11 days that he was innocent of killing his wife, who had not been
>> seen since dropping off the couple's young son and daughter at his
>> home. On the day Reiser was convicted, Hora said, "We have a body. We
>> just don't know where it is."
>
> Yeah, I've read that. And that is just one of the things that go to show
> that it's all about slogans and propaganda. They did *not* have a body,
> until Reiser himself presented them with one, *after* his conviction.
> Slogans like that are religious, not factual.
>
>> Six months. They didn't ram it through and the jury tends to be rather
>> careful, especially on a murder case.
>
> I don't agree with that. If that were true, then there never would have
> been any cases of innocent people being sentenced for life or even being
> executed, only to have the real killer turn up much, much later. Besides,
> in the O.J. Simpson trial, the jury found the defendant not guilty and it
> was later on discovered - and proven in a civil court - that he was.
>
>> Both the prosecution and defense are extremely careful to select jurors
>> who don't have pre-conceived ideas and who _will_ make a fair
>> determination based on facts presented during the trial.
>
> Jurors demographically represent the people and may therefore not be savvy
> enough regarding technical details or investigation methods. Well, I'm not
> a lawyer and who am I to criticize how the court works, but still, jurors
> can be mislead easily.
>
>> Also, this is a high profile case (the URL above is of a news story that
>> was on the front page of the major newspaper), so it's not as if the
>> prosecution can get away with slight-of-hand or smoke and mirrors.
>
> Which is all the more reason to point out that in this particular case, they
> actually did pull that off, even if they did turn out to be right in the
> end.
>
> Of course, Reiser's decision to take the stand is one of the key factors
> that got him convicted. Not because of what he said or didn't say, but
> because he managed to make himself very much disliked by both the judge and
> the jurors - the blog reported on some of the jurors' facial reactions and
> body language throughout Reiser's testimony.
>
> Of course, whether the judge liked or disliked Reiser has nothing to do with
> the verdict, as the judge seemed professional enough about it - he was
> actually the only one who appeared credible throughout this trial - but
> even jurors are only human.
>
> Yet the fact remains that if Reiser had taken the advice of his attorney to
> forego taking the stand - which as I understand it would have been his
> legal right in the United States - then he'd probably have been acquitted.
> And the key factor in all this is that even though he did take the stand,
> there was actually nothing in any of what he said that contributed anything
> useful to the resolution of the case, with the sole and sad exception being
> that now, _after_ the proceedings, he has finally confessed and presented
> the investigators with Nina's remains in order to get a sentence reduction.
>
> As the OP put it, "there's no doubt about it anymore now". But up until
> this "now", for me, there still was, despite the court's ruling.
>
When humans are involved, nothing is perfect. Such is life.

The U.S. "system" is pretty good, but much less consistent than, for
example, the French system, where there is no jury and the judge is
trained to serve in any or all capacities as director of
investigation, prosecutor, and advocate for the defense, and his job
is to determine the facts, determine the appropriate law(s)
applicable, and render judgment in accordance thereto. There is not
a lot of flexibility in the system, for good or evil.

Results in the U.S. vary from court to court, but generally my
estimate is that the principal problem is too great a tendency for
the guilty to get off, and continue by committing the same or similar
crimes. While an innocent can be convicted, that happens rarely, and
the damage in such cases is (for society as a whole) far far less
than the damage from repeat criminals getting off and repeating.

Cheers!

jim b.

--
UNIX is not user unfriendly; it merely
expects users to be computer-friendly.

Aragorn wrote:
> Yet the fact remains that if Reiser had taken the advice of his attorney to
> forego taking the stand - which as I understand it would have been his
> legal right in the United States

United States Constitution, Amendment 5: "No person ... shall be
compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself",
commonly called "taking the fifth [amendment]".

In the U.S., homicide is a state crime. (Actually, relatively few
things are federal crimes.) I was an alternate juror in a New York
State criminal case (not homicide) in 2004, and the defendant did not
testify, and we the jury were explicitly instructed by the judge (I
forget his exact words) not to let this affect our verdict.

Ethical question for anyone: Will this affect your decision whether to
use the Reiser file system? More generally, can an idea from an evil
source be morally good? (For example, I believe the Nazis were among
the first to mount an anti-smoking campaign.)

Adam
--
Email: adam seven zero seven at verizon dot net

Adam wrote:
> Aragorn wrote:
>> Yet the fact remains that if Reiser had taken the advice of his
>> attorney to
>> forego taking the stand - which as I understand it would have been his
>> legal right in the United States
>
> United States Constitution, Amendment 5: "No person ... shall be
> compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself",
> commonly called "taking the fifth [amendment]".
>
> In the U.S., homicide is a state crime. (Actually, relatively few
> things are federal crimes.) I was an alternate juror in a New York
> State criminal case (not homicide) in 2004, and the defendant did not
> testify, and we the jury were explicitly instructed by the judge (I
> forget his exact words) not to let this affect our verdict.
>
> Ethical question for anyone: Will this affect your decision whether to
> use the Reiser file system? More generally, can an idea from an evil
> source be morally good? (For example, I believe the Nazis were among
> the first to mount an anti-smoking campaign.)
>
> Adam
Morals have nothing to do with it. I will replace the Reiser file
system
because I don't want constant reminders of sad & irreparable events.

Morals have nothing to do with smoking either. If the NAZIs used
the idea that bad morals were promoted by smoking they were wrong.
Smoking is physically bad for one and the longer you smoke the more
damaging it is and the younger you start smoking the harder it is to
quit. More than likely they were concerned with the foreign exchange
advantages of curtailing tobacco imports.

later
bliss -- C O C O A Powered... (at california dot com)

--
bobbie sellers -(Back to Angband)Team *AMIGA & SF-LUG*
a retired nurse in San Francisco

"It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
It is by the beans of cocoa that the thoughts acquire speed,
the thighs acquire girth, the girth become a warning.
It is by theobromine alone I set my mind in motion."
--from Someone else's Dune spoof ripped to my taste.

On Wednesday 09 July 2008 00:57, someone who identifies as *Jim Beard* wrote
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/

> When humans are involved, nothing is perfect. Such is life.

Sad but true...

> The U.S. "system" is pretty good, but much less consistent than, for
> example, the French system, where there is no jury and the judge is
> trained to serve in any or all capacities as director of
> investigation, prosecutor, and advocate for the defense, and his job
> is to determine the facts, determine the appropriate law(s)
> applicable, and render judgment in accordance thereto. There is not
> a lot of flexibility in the system, for good or evil.

Hmm... I have no details on the French justice system and so you may be far
better informed about that than I am, but I'm actually surprised that it
would work that way in France. It would certainly be unique in Europe.

Here in Belgium, we too have courts where there is no jury, but those are
not supreme courts, and an appeal against a decision made by a supreme
court can only be made through an arbitration court, which will then
decide, not on guilt or innocence, but on whether the supreme court
conviction was the result of a legally technical error (or an equally valid
prejudice or foul play) or not; if it was, then the supreme court ruling
may be undone.

> Results in the U.S. vary from court to court, but generally my
> estimate is that the principal problem is too great a tendency for
> the guilty to get off, and continue by committing the same or similar
> crimes.

Hmm... I consider such an approach to be too rightwinged, if you will
forgive my saying so. In my opinion, it is unethical to "punish the good
with the bad and have $DEITY sort them out later". Innocent until proven
guilty, remember?

While it is of course possible that too lax a legal/law enforcement system
may yield an acquittal for the guilty, the problem we see here is rather
that of the guilty being able to do more "mischief" - by lack of a better
word - because of the whole treadmill of red tape cops have to go through
when they apprehend someone of whom they positively know that he's guilty.

For example, suppose the cops catch someone in the act of committing a crime
but this person is under age, then there are all kinds of loopholes in the
system - and the detention facilities are already overloaded and
under-staffed as it is - and so the juvenile delinquents are already back
home for dinner before the cops who arrested them get off duty that day.

Another example, albeit of a different nature. A number of years ago, I had
plans of getting into a business endeavor with someone whom I trusted back
then - sure, I was naive - and I lent that person a sum of money, to be
paid back in full with no interest charges after one year. The guy however
turned out to be a fraud, and eventually he fled the country. Twice
already so far.

I decided to take the matter to court and hired an attorney. My attorney
did all that was necessary, and the matter went to court. Two days before
the court hearing, the guy fled to Spain with his equally deceitful wife -
he's actually a bigamist because he's also still married to another woman
in South Africa, whom he married in order to get a permanent visa there,
and he never divorced that woman - only to sneak back into Belgium about
two months later.

Of course, the hearing went on in his absence and he was convicted to pay me
back in full, *with* interests, *plus* that he had to pay for the legal
expenses of the case, *plus* the legal expenses I had made so far in order
to take the matter to court in the first place - it's a new law that says
that in any court case between two civilian entities, the loser pays for
the expenses of the other party.

I was informed of the couple's whereabouts by a friend of the woman's
mother, and I took this information to my attorney, who contacted the
bailiff and had him cash in with the guy, or confiscate goods in the
meantime. Now, the guy runs his own business and has a car, a TV,
furniture, you name it. It all just so happens to be that it's registered
to someone else's name, and as the guy is not officially employed anywhere,
they can't confiscate (part of) his salary either.

So in other words, I was conned, I sued the guy and won the case, and
instead of getting my money back, I ended up paying for all legal expenses
as well. So in the end, it all cost me more than I had already lost, and
the guy is still out there, conning people.

> While an innocent can be convicted, that happens rarely, and
> the damage in such cases is (for society as a whole) far far less
> than the damage from repeat criminals getting off and repeating.

I'm sorry, but I do not agree with that statement, even if only because of
two things. First of all, the United States is still one of the few
nations considering themselves civilized and still executing the death
penalty - which as we all know, is irreversible - and secondly, lots of
crimes fall under the category of one-offs.

For instance, a man may be guilty of manslaughter but that does not mean
that he will kill again. By the same token, there is even the fact that
not all premeditated murders are committed by serial killers. By this I do
not mean in any way that premeditated murder should not be severely
punished, but only that some crimes are not necessarily up for repetition,
and that thus the "danger to society" should be taken with a spoonful of
salt, and that it therefore does not warrant the execution of an innocent
man in the name of protecting society, especially not in any of the nations
that (through black ops) sanction the termination of certain individuals
both abroad and on proper soil for the sake of the nation's socio-political
interests. The USA are such a nation, and so are Russia, the UK, Germany,
Israel, China, Zimbabwe and many, many others.

No offense intended. It's just that in my opinion a nation cannot protect
the innocent by indulging into criminal activities itself. It's the old
debate about protecting human rights by violating them, or of a government
assigning special privileges to themselves which common citizens do not
have. It's a charade. It's hypocrisy.

--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

On Wednesday 09 July 2008 02:12, someone who identifies as *Adam* wrote
in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/

> Aragorn wrote:
>
>> Yet the fact remains that if Reiser had taken the advice of his attorney
>> to forego taking the stand - which as I understand it would have been his
>> legal right in the United States
>
> United States Constitution, Amendment 5: "No person ... shall be
> compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself",
> commonly called "taking the fifth [amendment]".

Thank you for explaining this. ;-)

> In the U.S., homicide is a state crime. (Actually, relatively few
> things are federal crimes.)

Now _that_ sounds bizarre to me... 8-|

> I was an alternate juror in a New York State criminal case (not homicide)
> in 2004, and the defendant did not testify, and we the jury were
> explicitly instructed by the judge (I forget his exact words) not to let
> this affect our verdict.
>
> Ethical question for anyone: Will this affect your decision whether to
> use the Reiser file system?

Well, you must keep in mind that the Reiser filesystems - there are actually
two, i.e. /reiserfs/ as supplied as part of the vanilla Linux kernel tree,
and /reiser4,/ which is highly revolutionary and still relatively new -
were not developed solely by Hans Reiser. In fact, as shown throughout his
trial, he spent a lot of time in Russia hiring programmers to work on his
filesystems, and so their work is in those filesystems as much as his is.

> More generally, can an idea from an evil source be morally good?

I would say that this depends on the idea itself. And just because Hans
Reiser killed his wife - under circumstances that he and he alone knows
into detail - doesn't mean that everything the man did was evil. He made a
mistake, and a terrible one for that matter, but that doesn't turn him into
a monster yet.

> (For example, I believe the Nazis were among the first to mount an
> anti-smoking campaign.)

I wasn't aware of that, but this gives me one more reason to loathe the
Nazis (on top of all others) as I am a smoker myself and I am being
confronted all too often with the witchhunt on smokers through all the hype
and anti-smoking indoctrination in the media.

You know, here in Belgium - and I think it's all over Europe by now, albeit
that I don't know that for sure - packets of cigarettes are required to
have a text box in big print on both faces of the packet with a short text
in all three national languages saying that smoking kills you, or a similar
message - the actual message varies per batch.

A few years ago, it was decided that the back face of the packet should no
longer have that text but should have a picture in full color of a dying
person or some other distasteful picture instead.

It costs the cigarette manufacturers a lot of money to put that on those
packets - money which is recuperated by incorporating it into the retail
price, of course - while nobody actually even looks at the pictures or the
text anymore, and neither the text nor the picture have already made any
smoker give up on smoking - although the politically correct
goodie-two-shoes media do of course claim otherwise. Yet I know by my own
experience and from talking to other smokers that everyone simply dismisses
it as yet another way that the government waves its berating finger at us
again.

On the other hand, the government is equally hypocrite about it all, because
if every smoker in this small country were to quit smoking now as we speak,
then the government would have a serious and unrecoverable income balance
problem tomorrow, given how much of the price of a packet of cigarettes is
comprised of taxes. By the same token, the same thing applies to the taxes
on gasoline and dieselfuel, despite the government's propaganda to promote
bicycles and public transport and "penalize" private motorized transport.

Now, smoking may be bad for your health, but it does not - and I repeat
"not" - kill you. It just so happens to be a catalyst for cancer in those
subjects who have a predisposition to cancer in the first place.

Similarly second-hand smoke is by far not as dangerous either - don't get me
wrong though, I will *not* smoke in the presence of little babies, people
with asthma or some other airway condition - but with about 80% of all
vehicles in this country burning dieselfuel (and only a minority of those
equipped with a particle filter) a stroll along a busy street in any of the
country's major cities is far more hazardous to your health than breathing
in the smoke of someone else's cigarette.

And then there are those who say that "smoking stinks". Well, the
goodie-two-shoes health freaks who eat lots of garlic and then come breathe
in my face stink too, and then I'd rather smell burning tobacco instead.

But you know, that's just me... <grin>

--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

On Wednesday 09 July 2008 02:29, someone who identifies as *bobbie sellers*
wrote in /alt.os.linux.mandriva:/

> Adam wrote:
>
>> Ethical question for anyone: Will this affect your decision whether to
>> use the Reiser file system? More generally, can an idea from an evil
>> source be morally good? (For example, I believe the Nazis were among
>> the first to mount an anti-smoking campaign.)
>
> Morals have nothing to do with it. I will replace the Reiser file
> system because I don't want constant reminders of sad & irreparable
> events.

If you think that morals have nothing to do with it, then emotions should
not have anything to do with it either. I admit that I too will have
emotional/ethical considerations next time I decide to format a partition
on any machine, but this computer here has /reiserfs/ partitions on it and
I do not intend to convert them to anything less suited for my purposes.
Besides, the Reiser filesystems were not created by Hans Reiser alone; they
are the work of the collective coders at NameSys, and they are very good
filesystems.

Mind you that I am not saying that they are the best filesystems there are.
One's choice of filesystem should depend upon one's needs. On my heavier
system, I prefer using XFS, which is far more advanced than /reiserfs/ and
certainly more advanced than /ext3,/ but which may not be appropriate for
all kinds of implementations. For laptops, I recommend /reiserfs/ -
version 3.6, not version 4.0.

That said, RedHat's installer - and by legacy, therefore also CentOS's
installer - refuses to allow you to mount anything other than /ext3/ in the
system tree, or create anything other than /ext3/ at install time. And
this decision of theirs was already made long before Nina Reiser's life
ever came to such a tragic end.

--
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)