Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder

[Christopher Browne]

On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 11:54 AM, Sy Ali <sy1234-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 10:58 PM, Ansar Mohammed <ansarm-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>  > Well at least its open source and the project can continue without him. But
>  >  should they rename it considering the filesystem will be named after a
>  >  convicted felon.. I mean who wants to use MansonFS or McVeighFS :P
>
>  I'd be concerned if this happened.  Does one's future actions nullify
>  one's previous (or current) achievements?
>
>  I could cure cancer tomorrow, but if in 50 years I break the pope's
>  nose because he tries to save me on my deathbed I'd be remembered for
>  that instead.

It's absolutely possible, although it tends to require doing fairly
horrifying things, and tends to involve situations where the evil
actions are somewhat tied to the "achievements."

There were "medical developments" discovered Josef Mengele that are
likely of some kind of practical value, but that, since they came out
of the most horrifying of approaches, scientists shun any examination
of the results.

He was quite clearly a strong believer in the Nazi racial ideology;
that permeated much of his work, and to the extent to which that was
nonsense, some of the results would naturally be nonsense.  However,
the willingness to experiment to the point of death meant that he
measured things about the effects of extreme conditions on people that
it is somewhat tempting to know.

For instance, it is tempting to know some of the results regarding
hypothermia, as, in principle, this could help in treating people who
"get somewhat frozen."

The heinous acts surrounding his experiments have had the effect that
examination of the results is widely shunned by the scientific
community, irrespective of the fact that some utility might be found
from them.  I tend to agree with that shunning.

>  I'd rather see the filesystem project change or fail because of
>  technical reasons, and not social reasons.  For me, I choose to not
>  use that filesystem for technical reasons (and apathy) not social
>  ones.  This media crap would probably have me take a closer look, and
>  not develop an aversion.

In the case of ReiserFS, I have a different aversion, namely that the
fact that the "mind behind it" is:
a) Somewhat unavailable for maintenance, and
b) Evidently *somewhat* unstable in character (based on his displays
in the trial), and
c) Having some *serious* communications challenges,
this puts a crimp in the notions that:
 1.  The filesystem can be supported, and
 2.  We can have an expectation of its internals being sufficiently
widely + deeply understood.
-- 
http://linuxfinances.info/info/linuxdistributions.html
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and
expecting different results." -- assortedly attributed to Albert
Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Rita Mae Brown, and Rudyard Kipling
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists