I chose Debian because it is technically awesome, and also because it is politically awesome. Be it the Debian manifesto, Debian's social contract, Debian Free Software Guidelines, the way the Debian project is organized (e.g., the use of the Schulze/Condorcet method for electing the project leader), etc. All of this is the result of the work of the many people in the project/community that Murdock created with his ideals.
I thought that would count for something for everyone, especially among HN folks.
Ian reminded me a bit of Steve; he had a similar ability to look a few steps ahead, anticipate technology trends, and he was quite charismatic.
Orthogonal to the above: I remember when Ian first got an iPod and started downloading music from iTunes. He was astonished at the convenience. "How has no one done this before?" is nearly an exact quote.
And while many Mac users attribute their OS to Steve Jobs, I bet most Ubuntu users never heard about Ian (or Mark Shuttleworth for that matter).
Seriously, comparing two deaths like this is not a good idea, not when it's so fresh. Both Ian and Steve impacted the computing world in a huge, if different way, and both deaths are tragic. We've honored Steve Jobs then, this is the hour of honoring Ian Murdock. Black bar be damned.
We can sort out who did more for the world later.
I can understand what he means though, because most people that downvote me are "JS hipsters." Since these people comment the most, they have the ability to control the conversation, and thus leave a larger visible proportion of representation.
Everyone has this policing tone, too, and it's obnoxious.
Case in point: only yesterday 'miguelrochefort had the guts to post advocating a completely contrarian view on privacy[0]. That particular comment, predictably, got downvoted, but it didn't stop a thoughtful discussion from spawning. As long as this happens, HN serves its purpose.
--
Also, how do you know that people who downvote you are "JS hipsters" and not someone else? :).
I personally think part of it is political. I don't think HN will display a black banner when Stallman dies, for instance.
>Ian took his own life as some sort of retaliation against perceived police brutality in the middle of an alcohol/drug fueled rage.
We don't know any of this yet. Speculate all you want but don't state it as if it were a fact.
I disagree. For example if someone takes all their money and lights it on fire, you shouldn't feel bad for them that they just lost their money.
This is a golden example of stigmatizing mental illness. If he had cancer, it would have been a "real" tragedy, but because he (likely) had some kind of mental illness/breakdown that led to the same result, it's "different".
You know, personally I think what Steve Jobs did - aside from gaming the system to get first dibs on his new liver - was tantamount to murder. He got a new liver, and then didn't follow standard treatment for his cancer, resulting in his own death.
The liver he (effectively) stole could have gone to someone else who could still be alive today. Doesn't that make you sick ? It's tantamount to killing an innocent life.
Edit: The more I think about it, Steve did take his own life. I'm sure at some point, his doctors told him "if you dont do this [follow treatment regimen], you'll die". So he committed suicide too.
Steve on the other hand was in full control of his facilities when he willfully refused treatment that might have saved, or at least extended his life. When he finally realized his mistake it was too late.
(BTW, much has been said about Jobs refusing standard cancer treatment and choosing a potentially less effective one.)
Steve Jobs very well may be alive today had he chosen to undergo typical cancer treatments since his was discovered moderately early.
He ate carrots and drank herbal tea, at protest of doctors and medical professionals, right up until even he realized his course of action was foolish. He panicked and tried to undergo dramatic procedures, but it was too late.
> You are essentially claiming that mental illness is less respectable than physical illness.
Not at all. But this case with Ian doesn't appear to have been caused by mental illness, rather it appears to have been the result of heavy binge drinking ("black out drunk") (and possibly drugs, due to his erratic and abnormal behavior and statements), and people do very stupid things in that state (including commit suicide even though their sober selves wouldn't permit it).
This isn't an Aaron Swartz case where Ian was pushed to the very edge over a period of time, and systematically had his life and everything to look forward to ripped away by a system built purely to destroy him. Ian's death was the direct result of his actions over the period of a weekend, heavily influenced by alcohol (and possibly drugs). That's a different case entirely.
It's a little more difficult to feel the same sort of pain for someone who was upset at the consequences from their own actions (try to break into someone's home, police are going to arrest/ticket you... do it a second time on the same night, and you definitely will be arrested).
It's apparent, in Ian's drunken stupor, he fundamentally believed he did nothing wrong and everyone was out to "get him". This is indicative of a drunk and/or someone on drugs (inability to see cause and effect, and rationalize about one's own actions).
Seems a little harsh given the few details we have to blame it all on Ian being drunk. Most drunk people don't kill themselves, it's obvious something else happened we don't know about. All I know is that for now, I trust Ian more than I do cops specially after events such as these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Andy_Lopez
Have you read the twitter feed? Because I don't see any "randomness".
At worse it could be an over-reaction to a traumatic incident. No randomness at all though, very specific and focused.
1) Lament how people don't care.
2) Say nothing.
Don't speak ill of the dead may not be an unbreakable rule, but your post is a great example of why we have it.
Please, don't "venture a bit" and "go a bit further" - if you have nothing to say, keep mum.
Unfortunately that does not appear to be true.
The cause of death is not known at this stage, but it is not
believed to be suspicious. A spokesperson for Docker said
it was a "private matter."
According to the San Francisco police, officers were called
to Steiner and Union St in the city at 11.30pm on Saturday, December 26,
following reports of a man trying to break into a home – that man was
identified as Ian Murdock. He reportedly fought with the cops, and was
given a ticket for two counts of assault and one for obstruction of
an officer. The techie had been drinking, according to the police logs.
A medic arrived to treat an abrasion to Murdock's forehead, and he was
released so he could be taken to hospital.
A few hours later, on Sunday, December 27 at 2.40am, police were
called again to reports of Murdock banging on the door of a neighbor
at the very same block. A medic arrived to treat him for any injuries.
Officers then took Murdock to the county jail where he was held in a cell.
Murdock was bailed later that day, on Sunday, after a bond,
said to be $25,000, was paid. He died the next day.
It's clear something may have been wrong prior to any incidents occurring (why was Ian out in the streets alone, very drunk, trying to break into a home?).
Have we really reached this level of paranoia?
There are multiple police reports from each of the calls to him. Conspiricy theorists will just claim the reports have been doctored or whatever, but in reality the police wouldn't of known who it was before responding to the call, and probably still didn't know who it was after responding to the call. What is clear is Ian, very dunk at the time, did resist arrest and assaulted the officers (per the report).
Each time he was treated by a medical professional and deemed OK to be released. He didn't go to the hospital like advised, instead seemingly opting to continue drinking and running about in public at 2:40 AM banging on people's front doors.
There are many cases of real police brutality - this is not one.
Not sure why this would require them to have any idea who Murdock was. This isn't necessarily related to him being the inventor of Debian. Maybe he was just talking back to the cops and they exaggerated it to "resisting arrest" in the report.
I mean, the reports may well be true and Murdock may well have been suffering from some mental issues (the Twitter posts seem to bear this out). But it's nuts to think we can just trust the police and that if they say something wasn't police brutality then that's the end of the story.
Watching the news in the US from the UK, it's pretty clear that you (in the states) long ago reached the point where it's not even paranoia any more. The police there killed more civilians in a few weeks of the year than the UK police have killed here in hundreds of years. They murder and lie about it; it's going to be interesting to see what happens now that it's routinely caught on camera, but to suggest that there's anything tin-foil-hat crazy about suggesting that the police might have done something wrong here which has resulted in someone's death betrays a naive (at best) comprehension of the situation there today.
To put this in perspective there are more deaths per year in the NYPD than all of UK, Iceland, Japan and other countries that are used to make non equivalent comparisons.
The police do indeed do wrong things sometimes, but to imply that the higher rate of citizen killings here is due to some police malfeasance or conspiracy is indeed tinfoil hat.
I don't think it's naive not to be a conspiracy theorist. Sure, there are some cases of police murders and other misconduct but it's hardly the norm and it is rather spurious to think every run-in with the police lurks the head of a grand conspiracy or a cover-up.
When you watch the news in the US from the UK, keep in mind that many have a vested interest in telling a certain narrative.
The various news sources in the UK have no reason to attack the US police; i'm not sure where you get that from; perhaps it's something you say when someone receives information you don't agree with or find damaging to your beliefs. Statistics; simply the number of dead; don't really lend themselves to much to "narratives".
What paranoia? The police pulls shit like that all the time and calls it "assaulting an officer" is you dare say anything back. Including to 12 and 15 year old unarmed kids.
While we might have reasons to think otherwise for this particular case, the paranoia is very much guaranteed in the general case.
Just a lot of "the police say he did this", which is justification for why they arrested him (assuming they can be trusted, which we all know is not the case) but even if true doesn't explain what went down during the fight/arrest or how serious an injury resulted in the forehead "abrasion".
To what extent does this paranoia carry?
> How does that in any way suggest the police didn't give him head trauma?
How does this in any way suggest the police gave him head trauma? That's a straw man if I ever saw one.
The head trauma was a theory floated before the police reports where looked into (party because Ian was ranting about being "beaten" and "raped" by the police during his drunken rage). It's pretty clear that is not the case now. The most likely cause of death, was suicide (as announced by Ian himself just a few hours prior).
The man was out in the streets, alone, heavily drunk, and attempting to break into someone's home. This is a situation where we should want the police to intervene.
Just a few hours later, Ian was out in the streets, even more heavily intoxicated, this time pounding on random people's front door at 2:40 AM. This is a situation where we should want the police to intervene.
It's clear something was going on with Ian before all this started. What sequence of events led up to him being this drunk and disorderly in public at that wee hour of the morning?
Yet, because Ian, in his drunken rage, perceived the police as being out to just beat and rape him, people will cling to that theory and claim police brutality, without a single minute piece of evidence.
How many times has a drunken person mistakenly become violent against someone else who's trying to make them do something they don't want to do (send Ian home in this case)? All the time. The police reports read as just another drunk dude in the streets... it's a common story. Nothing unusual here.
It's curious times when we take the word of a drunk over official reports from multiple agencies and parties involved (police, paramedics, neighbors calls, etc...)
I was arrested at a protest once, and my police report said I was menacingly carrying a sharpened stick, amongst other things. This was meant to indicate a protest sign, which in fact I wasn't actually carrying... the police write whatever they want in the reports, and if there's a question of police misconduct, they should be taken with a huge grain of salt.
Sometimes things are what they are. Don't go looking for examples to fuel your anti-police paranoia just because it makes you feel good. It's tragic Ian passed, but there's no evidence he was somehow murdered by police.
Quite the opposite. I'm demonstrating there is nothing to be of controversy here. It's pretty clear what occurred here (we do have many of the facts now), yet many want to go off on some wild conspiracy theory. That's fueling controversy purely for the sake of controversy.
With that said - I do believe all the cases have been made, and people will see what they want to see, regardless of the truth.
Some people have good reason not to trust police reports, as abuse of authority is rife within many districts in the US and UK.
This does not mean that we would disagree with what an official independent report would state because "It has to be a conspiracy", or any other garbage reason -- it just means that we disagree that the outcome of the official police report is necessarily correct, because of the bias police reports can hold.
As with all medical professionals, they are not to be trusted to be omniscient. Clearing him for release is not the same thing as guaranteeing that he had no dangerous injuries.
Isn't that almost exactly what clearing him for release means? What else are the medics "clearing him" for if not the absence of major/dangerous injuries? I suppose they cannot "guarantee" the lack of injury, but they certainly would have checked for evidence of traumatic brain injury.
It's possible that they missed something, but this is currently unjustified paranoia with nothing behind it except distrust toward the police.
As someone with a chronic medical condition that was misdiagnosed for ~20 years, I admit to having biases about this sort of thing, but I can assure you that my doubts are not limited to police-involved situations or EMTs.
The police just randomly assaulted him twice at two different times, then called the medics both times and filed false reports about what happened? Not only does this make absolutely no sense, but seems pretty easy to dismantle if false. Murdock claims that the police attacked him in his home twice. The police claim that he was attempting to break into two different homes. Which of these is more likely? Someone supposedly reported him both times. At least one medic saw him. Are these people in on the conspiracy or made up (seems easy to confirm that these are real people)?
This is tragic, and it is entirely possible that Ian Murdock was a victim of abuse by the police during his arrest/while in custody, but it also seems like Ian Murdock had some sort of mental break before all this happened (I seriously doubt this was all the result of just alcohol use). Given the (presumed) suicide, I wonder if he had some long term mental illness. He very well might have been delusional or psychotic during all this.
I actually didn't state that police killed Ian Murdock, just that his (presumed) suicide could have been the result of the emotional trauma from the beatings. I can not speak for anyone else.
Who said the medics cleared him? They may have cleared him to go home, but that does not imply he didn't have a concussion, for example.
I do not know if the medics in the US have a different policy, in the UK you can be sent home as long as you have someone to look after you, check you're ok, and make sure you don't fall asleep before 24 (or 48) hours have passed.
This is not your understanding. This is your conjecture.
un·der·stand·ing (ŭn′dər-stăn′dĭng)
n.
1. a) The ability by which one understands;
intelligence: concepts that are beyond the understanding of a child.
...
2. Individual or specified judgment or outlook;
opinion: In my understanding, this is a good plan.
...
This isn't pedantry. You are basically lying. What you've done is present one of many possible explanations as if it is the correct one, despite having no data to back your claim. This is like claiming that a rogue Chipotle employee intentionally introduced e. coli into their food supply. This is a possible explanation, but it's just wild conjecture. Presenting it as "your understanding" would be to present it as if it were a factual claim.