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I will always remember the Slashdot comment that said that removing the passenger seat of your car so you could sleep in your car was a reasonable thing to do,

I will always remember the Slashdot comment that said that removing the passenger seat of your car so you could sleep in your car was a reasonable thing to do, and everyone saying it was suspicious was a hater. (Bro. A car floor isn’t even flat.) I think it was my first experience with absolute egregious fanboism.

bdamm 3y ago
It was probably him.
wetmore 3y ago
It is reasonable, although niche enough to be a bad defense. Here is a popular Instagram account where someone does exactly what you are saying is unreasonable: https://www.instagram.com/salvagetoscenic https://www.instagram.com/salvagetoscenic
- johnchristopher 3y ago
  > Here is a popular Instagram account where someone does exactly what you are saying is unreasonable: https://www.instagram.com/salvagetoscenic https://www.instagram.com/salvagetoscenic Except they don't. First post shows them asking themselves if there's a more comfortable way, second post shows them installing a flat surface. https://www.instagram.com/salvagetoscenic/reel/CyGu0vUuXsz/ https://www.instagram.com/salvagetoscenic/reel/CyGu0vUuXsz/ https://www.instagram.com/salvagetoscenic/reel/CyWqTSSJV7U/ https://www.instagram.com/salvagetoscenic/reel/CyWqTSSJV7U/
  - carcampy 3y ago
    Except they do. They don’t reinstall the seat. And hence removing the seat for the purpose of camping was indeed a reasonable thing to do.
    - johnchristopher 3y ago
      > I will always remember the Slashdot comment that said that removing the passenger seat of your car so you could sleep in your car was a reasonable thing to do, and everyone saying it was suspicious was a hater. (Bro. A car floor isn’t even flat.) > (Bro. A car floor isn’t even flat.) > (Bro. A car floor isn’t even flat.) Do you dig it ? A car floor is not fucking flat. That's why it's suspicious to remove the passenger seat without installing a flat surface over it. That's why the instagram poster did install a flat surface. Because they didn't want to sleep on the car floor. Because it's not flat. It's not comfortable. And because it's not comfortable it's not reasonable. > As investigators follow Hans, they discover the missing CRX, but something is missing, says prosecutor Paul Hora. "He removed the front passenger seat. Then he completely disassembled, removed the rear cargo area of the car, threw away the carpeting that covered the spare tire and the cover that covered the spare tire." > When it was Hora's turn, he asked Hans why he had removed the front passenger seat from his car. "He said he removed the passenger seat in order to make a Honda CRX a more comfortable place to sleep," Hora recalls. "His explanations were ridiculous. I mean, they were lies. A Honda CRX is an awfully small car that wouldn't be comfortable no matter what you did to sleep in it." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/betrayal-29-12-2008/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/betrayal-29-12-2008/ > On October 11, 2006, law enforcement officials said that blood spatter had been found in Hans Reiser's house and car. Forensic testing (including DNA analysis) could neither confirm nor rule out Nina Reiser as the source of the blood. Officials had not located the missing passenger seat of his car. They also indicated that they had found in the car two books on homicide investigation purchased by Reiser on September 8 — five days after Nina Reiser's disappearance: Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon, and Masterpieces of Murder by Jonathan Goldman.[28] Daniel Horowitz, a high-profile defense attorney, joined the defense team[6] but dropped the case on November 28, citing Reiser's inability to pay for his services.[29] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Reiser#Murder_investigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Reiser#Murder_investigati... It has never been mentioned that the car was modified to accommodate for sleeping on the floor in a comfortable and reasonable way. The passenger seat, carpeting were removed but that doesn't make the floor flat. JFC.
      - jonathankoren 3y ago
webnrrd2k 3y ago
It's certainly not common, but I had a friend in highschool that took out the front passenger seat of his VW bug, to make it easier to get surfboards into the car. He normally just had a folding chair for passengers.
- sebastianz 3y ago
  Did this friend also do it exactly when the murdered wife and mother of his children went missing?
- adrianN 3y ago
  Driving with a folding chair in the car seems very dangerous. Is that legal where you live?
  - webnrrd2k 3y ago
    No, not at all. But it was a while ago, safety laws weren't enforced as heavily, and we were young and felt indestructible.
xtracto 3y ago
That /. thread was amazing. So many people trying to justify behavior that cleanly pointed to murder. Not every action by itself, but the combination of all of them: buying crime books, removing the seat, cleaning his car and there were more actions. But the slashdot technical community defended him until the moment he confessed. It was really cringey.
- montjoy 3y ago
  Don’t forget, leaving his cell phone at home on the day of his wife’s murder when he otherwise always carried it with him.
tabataga 3y ago
The fanboys spilled over to HN as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=176098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=176098 They were even at it after Reiser led police to his wife's body: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=240814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=240814 Best comment on that thread, calling out their ridiculous takes: > I gotta say it: the guy was a f-cking murderer and yet you guys are arguing about whether he got a fair trial, even after he led the cops to the strangled, decomposing corpse. And then complaining about the sheer brass neck of a journo who fails to show appropriate respect to this f-cking murderer. What, just because he hacked on Linux once upon a time? Jeez, you really couldn't make this stuff up.
- jonathankoren 3y ago
  Nah man. The best is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=241000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=241000 Hans Reiser gives a jailhouse interview to Salon, and when he comes off as unremosrseful murderer, the peanut gallery says: > I find it to be just another case of math envy, the imbecile KNOWS that he could never in a million years achieve 1% of what Reiser has achieved, however Reiser is now a convicted murderer, thus the idiot can now feel better about himself, and hurl contempt and scorn on Reiser. Like anyone gives a shit about some computer filesystem.
  - mindslight 3y ago
    Bruh, it was a filesystem with online resizing.
caeril 3y ago
It wasn't fanboism, it was something else entirely: solidarity of the ingroup. Hard to believe for the younger folks around here, who grew up in a culture that praised and valued technical skills, but Slashdot was a place for the prior generation, for whom technical skills were mocked and ridiculed. Hans was "one of us", and it's a very human thing to believe that a member of your specific outcast group would ever be one of the baddies.
etc-hosts 3y ago
Here's a 16 year old Hackernews thread from the day after the conviction, you'll see lots of even to this day prolific HN commenters writing that well we don't know if he REALLY did it, and even if he did, he has definitely down a net good for humanity with his contributions to software (and then tptacek reliably shoots them down) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=176098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=176098

bdamm 3y ago

It was probably him.

wetmore 3y ago

It is reasonable, although niche enough to be a bad defense. Here is a popular Instagram account where someone does exactly what you are saying is unreasonable: https://www.instagram.com/salvagetoscenic https://www.instagram.com/salvagetoscenic

johnchristopher 3y ago
> Here is a popular Instagram account where someone does exactly what you are saying is unreasonable: https://www.instagram.com/salvagetoscenic https://www.instagram.com/salvagetoscenic Except they don't. First post shows them asking themselves if there's a more comfortable way, second post shows them installing a flat surface. https://www.instagram.com/salvagetoscenic/reel/CyGu0vUuXsz/ https://www.instagram.com/salvagetoscenic/reel/CyGu0vUuXsz/ https://www.instagram.com/salvagetoscenic/reel/CyWqTSSJV7U/ https://www.instagram.com/salvagetoscenic/reel/CyWqTSSJV7U/
- carcampy 3y ago
  Except they do. They don’t reinstall the seat. And hence removing the seat for the purpose of camping was indeed a reasonable thing to do.
  - johnchristopher 3y ago
    > I will always remember the Slashdot comment that said that removing the passenger seat of your car so you could sleep in your car was a reasonable thing to do, and everyone saying it was suspicious was a hater. (Bro. A car floor isn’t even flat.) > (Bro. A car floor isn’t even flat.) > (Bro. A car floor isn’t even flat.) Do you dig it ? A car floor is not fucking flat. That's why it's suspicious to remove the passenger seat without installing a flat surface over it. That's why the instagram poster did install a flat surface. Because they didn't want to sleep on the car floor. Because it's not flat. It's not comfortable. And because it's not comfortable it's not reasonable. > As investigators follow Hans, they discover the missing CRX, but something is missing, says prosecutor Paul Hora. "He removed the front passenger seat. Then he completely disassembled, removed the rear cargo area of the car, threw away the carpeting that covered the spare tire and the cover that covered the spare tire." > When it was Hora's turn, he asked Hans why he had removed the front passenger seat from his car. "He said he removed the passenger seat in order to make a Honda CRX a more comfortable place to sleep," Hora recalls. "His explanations were ridiculous. I mean, they were lies. A Honda CRX is an awfully small car that wouldn't be comfortable no matter what you did to sleep in it." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/betrayal-29-12-2008/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/betrayal-29-12-2008/ > On October 11, 2006, law enforcement officials said that blood spatter had been found in Hans Reiser's house and car. Forensic testing (including DNA analysis) could neither confirm nor rule out Nina Reiser as the source of the blood. Officials had not located the missing passenger seat of his car. They also indicated that they had found in the car two books on homicide investigation purchased by Reiser on September 8 — five days after Nina Reiser's disappearance: Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon, and Masterpieces of Murder by Jonathan Goldman.[28] Daniel Horowitz, a high-profile defense attorney, joined the defense team[6] but dropped the case on November 28, citing Reiser's inability to pay for his services.[29] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Reiser#Murder_investigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Reiser#Murder_investigati... It has never been mentioned that the car was modified to accommodate for sleeping on the floor in a comfortable and reasonable way. The passenger seat, carpeting were removed but that doesn't make the floor flat. JFC.
    - jonathankoren 3y ago

webnrrd2k 3y ago

It's certainly not common, but I had a friend in highschool that took out the front passenger seat of his VW bug, to make it easier to get surfboards into the car. He normally just had a folding chair for passengers.

sebastianz 3y ago
Did this friend also do it exactly when the murdered wife and mother of his children went missing?
adrianN 3y ago
Driving with a folding chair in the car seems very dangerous. Is that legal where you live?
- webnrrd2k 3y ago
  No, not at all. But it was a while ago, safety laws weren't enforced as heavily, and we were young and felt indestructible.

xtracto 3y ago

That /. thread was amazing. So many people trying to justify behavior that cleanly pointed to murder. Not every action by itself, but the combination of all of them: buying crime books, removing the seat, cleaning his car and there were more actions. But the slashdot technical community defended him until the moment he confessed. It was really cringey.

montjoy 3y ago
Don’t forget, leaving his cell phone at home on the day of his wife’s murder when he otherwise always carried it with him.

tabataga 3y ago

The fanboys spilled over to HN as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=176098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=176098 They were even at it after Reiser led police to his wife's body: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=240814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=240814 Best comment on that thread, calling out their ridiculous takes: > I gotta say it: the guy was a f-cking murderer and yet you guys are arguing about whether he got a fair trial, even after he led the cops to the strangled, decomposing corpse. And then complaining about the sheer brass neck of a journo who fails to show appropriate respect to this f-cking murderer. What, just because he hacked on Linux once upon a time? Jeez, you really couldn't make this stuff up.

jonathankoren 3y ago
Nah man. The best is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=241000 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=241000 Hans Reiser gives a jailhouse interview to Salon, and when he comes off as unremosrseful murderer, the peanut gallery says: > I find it to be just another case of math envy, the imbecile KNOWS that he could never in a million years achieve 1% of what Reiser has achieved, however Reiser is now a convicted murderer, thus the idiot can now feel better about himself, and hurl contempt and scorn on Reiser. Like anyone gives a shit about some computer filesystem.
- mindslight 3y ago
  Bruh, it was a filesystem with online resizing.

caeril 3y ago

It wasn't fanboism, it was something else entirely: solidarity of the ingroup. Hard to believe for the younger folks around here, who grew up in a culture that praised and valued technical skills, but Slashdot was a place for the prior generation, for whom technical skills were mocked and ridiculed. Hans was "one of us", and it's a very human thing to believe that a member of your specific outcast group would ever be one of the baddies.

etc-hosts 3y ago

Here's a 16 year old Hackernews thread from the day after the conviction, you'll see lots of even to this day prolific HN commenters writing that well we don't know if he REALLY did it, and even if he did, he has definitely down a net good for humanity with his contributions to software (and then tptacek reliably shoots them down) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=176098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=176098