Hans Reiser and the "Geek Defense" Strategy 738
lseltzer alerts us to a story in the Washington Post on the defense strategy in the Hans Reiser murder trial. "In the courtroom where Hans Reiser is on trial for murder, [the evidence] might appear to indicate guilty knowledge. But his attorneys cast it as evidence of an innocence peculiar to Hans, a computer programmer so immersed in the folds of his own intellect that he had no idea how complicit he was making himself appear. 'Being too intelligent can be a sort of curse,' defense counsel William Du Bois said. 'All this weird conduct can be explained by him, but he's the only one who can do it. People who are commonly known as computer geeks are so into the field.'"
All geeks are the same (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
/. defense (Score:5, Funny)
The Geek Defense Argument (Score:5, Funny)
2. the accused is a geek
3. geeks cannot have wives
4. the defense rests
Re:My Suspicion (Score:5, Funny)
Well, at least some symbolic links.
Re:The Geek Defense Argument (Score:5, Funny)
beyond the shadow of a doubt (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine if they looked in our basements... I can hear the cross examiner already: "sir, can you explain to us what made you so angry that you shot this Compaq server 382 times with a
Fortunately, we are innocent until proven guilty...
Re:Desperate Twinkies (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, no shit.
Re:peers? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:/. defense (Score:4, Funny)
Re:All geeks are the same (Score:5, Funny)
Easy way out ;) (Score:2, Funny)
Sure your honor, but my wife didn't run Windows like my PC did.
Re:We are all the same. (Score:3, Funny)
Why are they picking on Hans Reiser for strange behavior? Read this quote from the article about what his father is doing:
Ramon Reiser was waiting in the courthouse to testify in his son's murder trial, and he was folding a pair of pants. Who takes their laundry to the courthouse? Why was Ramon Reiser standing around folding up pants??? Something very suspicious is going on here! Was Hans's mathematician father sending secret signals with the pants? Some sort of topology-laundry cipher system?
Re:A curse I've had to live with . . . (Score:4, Funny)
Re:All geeks are the same (Score:3, Funny)
I think you'd call that manus rea. :-D
Sigh. Maybe the lawyers will laugh, anyway.
Re:All geeks are the same (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, I believe you. I too have had to remove my passenger seat and hose down the floor board. Mainly because they were soaked in my ex-wife's blood...
Since then I always keep tampons in the glove compartment.
Re:What serious evidence is there against him? (Score:5, Funny)
If BDSM is not your piece of cake, fine, but do not put it at the same level as killing people because you simply do not understand it.
*sighs*
You OS X people are all alike. And it's "BSD", not "BDSM."
Re:Desperate Twinkies (Score:5, Funny)
William Du Bois
Imagine a Turing Machine and a set of instructions. Can anybody tell, if the machine, running those instructions will ever stop? And more important: can we program a Turing Machine, so that it decides whether a set of instructions would cause a Turing Machine to halt eventually? But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Everything. Ladies and gentlemen, this case completedly depends on it! It does make a lot of sense! Look at me. I'm a lawyer defending a software engineer, and I'm talkin' about Alan Turing!
Now how can it be, that this halting problem is undecideable? Because, if we hypotheticaly have a Turing Machine that solves the halting problem, we could use it to construct another Turing Machine that does not halt when it should, and thus, when given to itself to test for halting, would contradict its own behavior!
Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am making perfect sense! And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberatin' and conjugatin' the verdict, do you know wheter you will ever stop deliberatin'? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, you will never know! If the jury doesn't halt, you must acquit! The defense rests!
Re:All geeks are the same (Score:4, Funny)
Re:All geeks are the same (Score:2, Funny)
Re:All geeks are the same (Score:4, Funny)
Re:All geeks are the same (Score:2, Funny)
They're orthogonal. I reject your entire argument.
Re:Detective fiction (Score:3, Funny)
Bill Cosby was right - "Parents aren't intrested in justice, they just want quiet".
Re:All geeks are the same (Score:2, Funny)