This is old, but not crap. Equating "old" and "crap" just shows that you have no clue about competent engineering.

Indeed. "Simple and works" beats "shiny and new" every time in competently done engineering.

I think part of this "throw it away because it is old" mindset is from people that do not understand that many things are a mature and fine solution for a specific problem-set. This seems to be a mixture of incompetence and a misguided belief in perpetual advancement in all things electronic.

While that will not be well received here, I do agree that victims requiring the world to be tailored to their needs are a force of destruction.

That is why the weak have no business being out and about unprotected. The simple matter of the fact is that it is not possible to identify and contain even a majority of all predators. Not at all. Ignore reality and you get hurt. I do agree that morally things should be different, but they are not and cannot be made so.

Well said.

Good idea. Not perfect, but there are no perfect solutions in this space.

As a matter of fact, he was not. He has some perceived authority in a non-graded MMOC setting, but all he gets in real authority is what the students are willing to give him.

Indeed. Somehow this does not work for me though, as I do not harass women. I also have this strange conviction that some women finding my person unacceptable is them harassing me.

If these people are really like this (and I somehow doubt it for a majority of them), then they have absolutely no business using the Internet unsupervised. None at all.

Indeed, it is rather unlikely that this professor is such a master manipulator. These women made a decision they later regretted. It is not unheard of, but the adult thing to do is to admit that it was them making the decision and taking responsibility for their actions. You cannot retroactively retract consent for something you did in the past and still be considered an adult. Because doing so would mean that your word has no value and that you are not fit to make decisions. I am sure, most women would find the idea to be viewed as this type of creature pretty repulsive.

Sorry, but if you do not meet the expected standards of being able to fend for yourself in a foreign country, then you have no business being out and about by yourself there. It is as simple as that.

Does not apply here: The course in question does not award grades, costs nothing and is exceptionally easy to walk away from. The only thing you lose is the course itself.

Obviously you are a rapist now in actual fact, as you mind-controlled a helpless victim...

There are some requirements for qualifying as an adult. One is the ability to make your own decisions and fend for yourself. Treating everybody as a child is not a good alternative in any way.

Indeed. Clearly, he is morally at fault. But from a practical point of few, people that cannot or will not defend themselves will always be victims. In a pure causal sense (not a moral one), they set themselves up for it. If you get victimized time and again, all the "being in the moral right" will be small comfort. The only practical way to prevent things like these is to make sure women (and men) know how to fight back, how to escalate and how to get help. Everything else ignores reality.

Well, in that case, she would have to seek help early on. Really. If you have a personality disorder that prevents you from being able to control your own life, then you must seek help whenever a situation like this comes along. No, this is not victim-blaming. But the world is not so nice a place that people that cannot fend for themselves can be accommodated everywhere by default. This would just not work as it would kill open interaction completely. What does work is helping them individually, but for that to work, they must still be autonomous enough to be able to recognize danger and then ask for help.

There is of course a balance issue here: Freedom against protection. This can never be solved satisfactorily. Life has some risks and will continue to have them, even if remove any and all freedoms.