I've done the same line of work in a larger-scale armv8 processor.
I think there is no answer that doesn't involve sign-offs on certain things.
In the situation you described, we resorted to fully randomizing everything, and then adding constraints to ensure it remained legal. This is a tedious process, one that leads to multiple false-positive failing tests.
However, the opposite situation, writing constrained stimulus from the beginning, leads to gaps where you didn't think of randomizing something, or you over-constrained it.
It's similar to a top-down vs down-up approach, only one is difficult and tedious and riddled with false positives, whereas the other one is easier and simpler, but can hide bugs.
In the face of issues like what you said, we implemented randomized interface behavior. Interrupts are always meant to be program-order invisible, so you can randomize those (imagine, 100 interrupts back to back, or 1 every N cycles where N is random but smaller than 5 or 500 etc). Pure random isn't interesting on its own. You need controlled randomness. From that point, you have to then start adding constraints for illegal/impossible situations, and you have to be extremely careful about these. We found a bug a week before tapeout when a senior architect forced a junior engineer(wonder who this is) to add a constraint. He used his seniority to sign it off, without going through a group review, and it was a mistake.
Hardware is a long and tedious process. CPU design is an extra level of difficult on top.
In my field, it is routine to hire people in late 40s/50s to make CPUs. I'm in my late 20s, and viewed as a weird specimen. In my career I've made a armv8 CPU and now work RV64.
It takes a couple of years to get a guy from uni into working shape. And that's just to teach him how to do 1-2 tasks in his field. If verification, this usually is coverage specification and test writing. Combine this with a cpu project duration average of 5ish years and it's quickly evident that you won't beat someone with a startup.
In my office today, in a team of 10, no one, other than me is under 40.
Something that always strikes me is how insanely complex it is to even experiment as an outsider to the university path. From my understanding a relatively simple 10+ year ago tech ASIC is still going to run like $10k USD for a shared die prototype from limited providers, compared to software, component level systems design, or even mechanical devices where you can get a local machine shop involved or at least do some parts of it yourself.
Yes, FPGA's exist but they are not even relevant when you are talking about the skillset/engineering discipline to make the FPGA itself and actually producing the physical thing.
Around 80-85% is the projected cost of Verification and Validation (pre/post - Silicon). This is what historical data shows for us (as a CPU design firm doing ARMV8)
Currently working in this company, I guarantee you Huawei is working on its own version of everything. Any tool we use is always considered as something we should aim to replace with a version of our own.
A custom OS does not suprise me in the slightest, considering there are custom ARMv8 CPU's in development as well
This just seems like a smart call. Some of the largest companies have made the mistake of making themselves dependent on another company for their business model, which can leave them in a bad place if the relationship sours or the platform changes. The old example of course, is Facebook games, where companies like Zynga pretty much exist or don't at the whims of Facebook's policies.
Samsung of course has Tizen as a fallback. I wonder how many other manufacturers may have fallback plans in this regard. Because if Android goes away, the only other slightly popular OS they can license for their own devices is Windows, which of course won't let them customize the platform as much.
But then someone like Huawei just puts themselves in the predicament of being subject to Samsung's whims. Android is allegedly open source too, but the reality is, the platform's creator decides it's development direction, and if you want the apps to work, you have to follow it.
Hopefully it's better than their own calendar app they install on their Android phones.
My sister was missing the "task" view in the calendar app. Found out that this is Huawei's abysmal own calender - it worked in the Google calendar.
A friend of mine (using a Huawei Android phone too) had problems to view multiple calendars at once. The solution was to install Google calendar on the phone.
I wish some good manufacturer stepped in and went the direction Nokia was going with Maemo, sans the stupid marketing decisions.
Also, with ChromeOS being able to run Android applications soon, it might be easier to get a new OS populated with decent software before native things get some traction.
It's a "we have no idea when these companies OR our own government might suddenly screw us out of the software we need to sell our hardware, due to changing geopolitical winds" thing. A bit like avoiding your whole startup being only a third-party Facebook or Twitter developer. :)
The US has no problem purchasing foreign telecom gear from foreign companies - Ericsson(Swedish) and Alcatel/Lucent(French), just Huawei. Selective economic protectionism. Free market what?
Pretty much every Android OEM has a plan B. It would kinda stupid not to. Samsung has proudly shown off Tizen and even releases products with it. Actually, its the fourth largest mobile in term of market share. Sailfish is reportedly used internally in several companies as well.
The more the merrier. I would love to see Android be a Nexus-only product where there's a high level of quality, fast updates, and years of security/platform updates opposed to the excessively skinned Android phones that maybe get one major update in their lifetime and then get tossed into the landfill.
edit: I should note Tizen isn't a Samsung product, they are just one of its biggest users and contributors. Its an open source OS managed by the Linux foundation.
>Pretty much every Android OEM has a plan B. It would kinda stupid not to.
I am genuinely not capable of understanding this logic.google is not a small company and they are not going to destroy Android with these kind of stupid decisions.
So why Samsung and etc does spend billions on new softwares when they can simply fork Android (in most extreme situations to respond to Google, just like what Amazon did).
Google might not kill Android outright, but there are huge parts of the API that depend on their proprietary software. So far they haven't abused that power much. If they decide to change the their terms, you want to have an alternative that's ready to ship in under a year.
That ship has sailed. Learn how to prosper in that role or do something else. If you think you can do an OS, go for it. I would like to see a third successful mobile OS.
It's not about competing with Android. It's about bargaining power. If you depend on Google, they can dictate any terms they like. Having an alternative to Android, even a crappy one, sets an upper limit to how hard Google can screw you over.
"The legal verdict on whether sex is non consensual still often rests on the perspective of the alleged perpetrator rather than the experience of the victim."
I'm not sure I entirely understand this quote to its fullest. It is being argued that it is the experience of the victim that matters if sex is consensual. Isn't this quote logically wrong? Consensual by definitions means both parties agreed. But is the author arguing that it is the victim's opinion that makes it consensual only?
How would that work in a situation where both parties start having sex, then it stops being consensual half way (from the victim changing their mind). The victim changes their minds but says nothing, and continues as before during the act. From the authors opinion, the victim experienced rape, hence the perpetrator should be convicted. But from the perpetrator's perspective they have no knowledge the partner's consent was revoked.
As far as I understand, an accusation should examine a perpetrator's perspective more, since that person is being charged with a crime. Why is the author arguing that the victim's experience is what the trial should hinge upon? If the victim raised an accusation, that is enough! It is the perpetrator that is being tried and attempted to be found guilty, hence the trial focuses on the perpetrator's actions and perspective.
Can someone better weigh in? This seems like one of those thoughts that sounds profound, but does not stand up to scrutiny.
Those situations are more edge cases and they are quite difficult because knowing what we know about the mind, it can play tricks. For example, we may feel very happy at one moment, but something could transpire to change the feeling and that may cause us to retroactively view the initial consent (maybe they thought the person was initially someone else) in a different light --but at the same time, most people give the benefit of the doubt internally (that is, even if they are truly aggrieved, they are likely to interpret the violation as their own fault, rather than blame the perp) It can become murky.
To make the point less gender political, view this as something which happens to a same-sex couple, so that the dynamics are less obvious about sexual politics and more about either force, misinterpretation, misrepresentation or confusion or a mixture of all the above.
> To make the point less gender political, view this as something which happens to a same-sex couple, so that the dynamics are less obvious about sexual politics and more about either force, misinterpretation, or confusion or a mixture of all the above.
I like your suggestion about viewing this as same-sex couple situation. I wrote my post specifically gender-neutral so as to prepare for the inevitable accusation of sexism, and then reveal that in my example the female was the perpetrator. But I think your opinion is much better
It is not that rare when using the current standard of consent. If you include any man who has sex while drunk (and is hence incapable of giving consent) then rape of men by women is very common.
Can you define drunk as you intend it in this sentence?
People seem to be very loose with this phrase recently and it's impossible to tell if they're doing so intentionally for political reasons, or if they're just not very good at communicating what they mean.
Drunk can mean someone has had 1 beer (e.g. drunk driving in many locations). It can also mean aggressively or flamboyantly out-of-character after several drinks, or it can mean basically incapacitated and in danger of choking on their own vomit.
Which part of this range were you ambigously referring to?
Thaumasiotes has already explained the situation on campus in regards what is considered drunk and consent, but even in the wider world you can only give consent when not intoxicated. The level of intoxication is not clear cut, but at least in Australia it needs to be “substantial” [1]. What exactly is substantial is up to the jury.
The US case law is much more murky as this article explains [2].
As made explicit in the sexual assault policies of various US universities, a female is unable to consent if she's had any alcohol (the "1 beer" model of being drunk). It is not a defense, or grounds for a counterclaim, that the male might have been equally or more drunk. (I say made explicit; the "any alcohol" threshold is what's made explicit. The wording of formal policies is generally scrupulously gender-neutral, but their application isn't.)
In an actual US criminal court, I believe drunken consent is no different from any other consent.
As much as I'd love to take your word on this, for me this still falls into the "they banned Christmas because of the Muslims" category of made up propaganda intended to enrage the more credulous (see the other reply for a demonstration of this).
I asked for evidence on this once before on HN, and they came up with two links. Both referred to the exact same case. And that case involved two people so drunk that neither could actually recall what happened.
That person at least provided links (admittedly they actually undermined his claims, but still). You've provided nothing but a bold assertion.
My suggestion to you and the original poster: if what you claim is true, is actually true, then a) stop using the word "drunk" as it is ambiguous, use the phrase "after one alcoholic drink", as this massively bolsters your case that the policy is ill-thought out b) have a link from a reputable source that actually backs up the reality of what you claim since on the face of it you'd expect a bigger fuss to have been made about this if it was true (much like I'd have heard about it via standard channels, not forwarded emails from racist uncles, if someone had actually banned Christmas because of the Muslims).
Edit: here's the first policy my Googling returned, it all seems very reasonable to me:
I was at grad school at Boston University in the very, very recent past and was lectured on the fact(?) that even a single alcoholic beverage precludes consent during their mandatory Title 9 intro. I can't find any thing regarding their sexual assault policies (other than "we do not allow or condone sexual assault") on their website, though.
I remember the announcement of a "mandatory meeting" for everyone in the dorm shortly after I moved in freshman year. I was intrigued by this concept and asked what would happen if I didn't go. The answer was, "nothing, but we'd like you to be there".
"Mandatory" appears to be experiencing some semantic slippage.
If a single alcoholic beverage precludes consent, then what if both parties have had at least one drink? How can that possibly be rape? If it is, then that's sexism, because it's a double standard: they're claiming the woman isn't responsible for her decisions while intoxicated, while the man is.
Under law, if neither party can give consent then each of them is guilty of rape of the other. The age of consent in New York State is 17, but the age of culpability for statutory rape is 16; if two 16-year-olds have sex, they raped each other under New York law.
But the way human social dynamics works is that in most cases, the male initiates sexual activity to which the female has right of refusal. So in cases of heterosexual liaisons where neither party is capable of consenting, the female -- who 90% of the time is the only one put in a position of consenting or refusing -- will not be prosecuted or disciplined, while the male will be.
>So in cases of heterosexual liaisons where neither party is capable of consenting, the female -- who 90% of the time is the only one put in a position of consenting or refusing -- will not be prosecuted or disciplined, while the male will be.
Right, and I'm pointing out that this is blatantly sexist and discriminatory.
You were advised badly then. Imagine, if you will, that the other party drank a Tourtell beer. That's hardly going to do anything, the beer has 0.4% ABV!
Relevant points include: (1) some schools' policies are worded so as to "lead to a young man being found responsible for a sexual offense simply if the complainant establishes that she had any degree of intoxication"; and (2) even where the policy would appear to be stricter than that, administrators frequently use the "she had 1 beer" standard when judging male students. An example in the article involves a college switching the basis for its adjudged punishment from nonconsent to presence-of-alcohol when the poor boy involved sought help from a lawyer to force the school to consider his abundant evidence of consent. (The punishment stood; only the official basis for it changed.)
I'll provide some other quotes from the article in a series of comments (since the unified comment was rejected for being too long):
> The Los Angeles Times summed up the events: “The college’s investigative report, performed by an outside firm, said both parties agreed on the following facts: Both had been drinking, she went to his room, took off her shirt while dancing, made out with him and returned to his room later for sex, asking if he had a condom. When friends stopped by the room to ask if she was OK, she told them yes.” Prior to their encounter, the two exchanged texts about their planned assignation, and Jane texted another friend to announce she was going to have sex. Later, when Jane came to see the incident as rape, she reported it to the Los Angeles Police Department. A female LAPD officer investigated, and a female deputy district attorney declined to pursue the case. She wrote, “Witnesses were interviewed and agreed that the victim and suspect were both drunk, however, that they were both willing participants exercising bad judgment.” Her report further found that Jane was capable of resisting and that John had reasonably concluded that her communications and actions conveyed consent.
> Jane lost her virginity that night, and when she sobered up and realized what happened, in distress she went to a faculty adviser who referred her to Dirks. An 82-page investigative report prepared for the school by the firm Public Interest Investigations shows it was Dirks, in her first phone conversation with Jane, who introduced Jane to the idea that she had been raped. Jane told the professor, “Oh, I am not calling it rape yet.” Over many hours of conversation, Dirks helped move Jane from what the professor described as Jane’s “strong state of denial” about what happened.
> Occidental hired an outside attorney to review the investigative report and make a recommendation about John. Here’s the conclusion of the attorney, as reported by the Los Angeles Times: “The attorney, Marilou F. Mirkovich, found that the young man did not know that his classmate was too drunk to consent because he, too, was inebriated. But, citing the college's policy that does not allow alcohol or drug consumption to excuse sexual misconduct, Mirkovich found that he should have known and was responsible for the assault.” After only a few months as a college student, John was expelled.
> Occidental pursued its own investigation by hiring the firm of Public Interest Investigations, which produced an 82-page report about the incident. Among other evidence, the report examined text messages between Doe and his accuser leading up to the sexual encounter. In the messages, the accuser asked Doe, “do you have a condom,” texted another friend “I’mgoingtohave sex now” [sic], and, in an exchange spanning 24 minutes, coordinated with Doe to sneak out of her dorm and proceed to Doe’s dorm to have sex with him.
This, despite the wording of the attorney finding above, is not someone who's incapable of consenting to sex.
> While women’s consumption is often considered a mitigating factor at campus tribunals, men’s consumption generally is not. This disparity is sex discrimination, says Brett Sokolow, president of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management. Sokolow has long fought for harsh penalties for accused men on campus. But in an open letter titled “Sex and Booze,” he writes: “If both are intoxicated they both did the same thing to each other. Why should only the male be charged if both students behave in ways defined as prohibited by the policy?” He has been called in to consult on cases in which schools have suspended or expelled the young man when both students were equally intoxicated. Schools that are doing so, he says, are creating male “Title IX plaintiffs.”
> Sokolow also says schools err when they adhere to an unrealistic standard that consumption of alcohol renders consent moot. Criminal statutes generally require that for sex to be nonconsensual due to alcohol or drugs, the accuser be not just intoxicated, but incapacitated. Having had a few drinks does not mean people, even young people, lack the capacity to make decisions about their actions, however poor those decisions may look in retrospect. Sokolow notes, however, that at some colleges “boards and panels can’t tell the difference between drunk sex and a policy violation.”
> KC Johnson, of the Manhattan Institute’s Minding the Campus blog, has compiled a list of top-ranked institutions, including Columbia, Duke, and Stanford, whose policies could lead to a young man being found responsible for a sexual offense simply if the complainant establishes that she had any degree of intoxication. Johnson notes that at Brown if two people were drinking and later an accusation is made, the disparate treatment is stark. The policy states: “A charged student’s use of any drug, including alcohol, judged to be related to an offense will be considered an exacerbating rather than a mitigating circumstance.”
> Broadening what constitutes sexual assault by redefining consent has been a principal goal of “activists”—who have worked with sympathetic faculty and (increasingly) the OCR. The McLeod case at Duke is a particular obvious example of how the new standards might function: two students were drinking and had sex, after which the university concluded that the male student, Lewis McLeod, had committed sexual assault because the accuser could not give consent. Why? Dean Sue Wasiolek explained: Even when both students consumed alcohol, “assuming it is a male and female, it is the responsibility in the case of the male to gain consent before proceeding with sex.”
As that standard is actually illegal, it's rare to see it admitted to so openly.
> Minding the Campus staff examined the alcohol-related policies of U.S. News & World Report’s 55 top-ranked universities. The schools fall into three categories: those that bypass the issue entirely; those that link sexual assault to the incapacitation of the victim; and those, troublingly, that have such a vague definition of consent to almost certainly be arbitrary.
> The majority of the top schools—32 of the 55—employ an incapacitation standard. [...] A few of these policies, such as Berkeley’s, Rochester’s, Yeshiva’s, and Penn State’s, have some vagueness, but reasonable people would construe them as not suggesting that having a drink in and of itself can prevent consent. Yale’s language—“consent cannot be obtained from someone who is asleep or otherwise mentally or physically incapacitated, whether due to alcohol, drugs, or some other condition”—typifies this group. This standard is similar to that in criminal sexual assault cases.
> That leaves 18 of the U.S. News top 55—roughly one-third of the total—that avoid this standard. Instead, at these schools, at least in some instances, a student can be branded a rapist if a college disciplinary panel, by a preponderance-of-evidence (50.01 percent) threshold, determines that the accuser was intoxicated.
I feel comfortable having characterized about 1/3 of schools as "various schools".
> Six of the schools have internally contradictory policies, referencing the incapacitation standard regarding alcohol consumption, but then modifying it elsewhere in the university’s own policies.
> Dartmouth also claims to punish only according to an incapacitation standard, but then suggests that the “use of alcohol or other drugs can cloud people’s understanding of whether consent has been given (or even sought). A ‘yes’ from an individual who is under the influence of alcohol or other drugs may not necessarily mean ‘consent.’” Obviously an incapacitated accuser could not (by definition of the word) say “yes.”
> At William and Mary, consent “can only be given by someone in an unimpaired state of mind who is able to understand what is happening; consent is not valid if the party from whom consent is sought is impaired by the use of alcohol or drugs
> Wisconsin is unique among the 55 schools, in that it explicitly recognizes claiming sexual assault as a way for a student to avoid facing campus charges for alcohol offenses
(Not directly relevant, but pretty amazing, no? Might this lead to any less-than-clear-cut charges of rape?)
> Readers who follow the issue doubtless will notice that many schools in this third category of broadening the way in which alcohol can be used to establish a student’s guilt (Brown, Stanford, Duke, Dartmouth, Columbia) all have checkered records regarding general due process in campus sexual assault cases.
> Two final thoughts. First, even at the third group of schools, obviously every time two intoxicated students have sex, the male student isn’t brought up on campus charges. But at many of these institutions, the role of alcohol in establishing consent is so vague as to at least, on paper, deem as rape acts that few outside of campus would consider sexual assault.
> Second: given the efforts of “activists” to broaden the definition of consent, it’s likely that three or four years from now, there will be many more schools in the third category, making it more likely that more innocent students will be brought up on charges.
I think we both know that's neither a mainstream, nor a neutral source, and it's not presenting it's argument fairly.
It puts scare quotes around "activitists" for goodness sake. That doesn't even make sense.
I don't see anything particularly shocking in your quotes, yet it's all written as if I should. For example, a "yes" from a sufficiently drunk person, may not count as consent, even if they're not literally unconcious. That doesn't sound particuarly extreme to me. In fact I'm more worried about the schools that apparently require incapacitated to mean unconscious since I've seen plenty of people unaware of what was going on due to alcohol, without being literally passed out.
So we've arrived at a solid definition of "drunk" at least, as this article makes clear that if you've not literally passed out, then they consider you capable of giving consent to sex. That's not the line I'd choose, but if you continue to argue for this, please just state that up front so overyone knows where they stand.
I'll provide the text original to me from my other comment here as well:
When you can be found to have committed sexual assault over the top of your "victim"'s vociferous assurance that nothing of the kind happened, you need to read the sexual assault policy as if it will only ever be used to justify finding you responsible for sexual assault, because that is the case. Where there is ambiguity in the policy, it is fair to read it as if any formal proceeding will interpret it as far as is possible in favor of the accuser (or farther). And in the Minding the Campus report, 18 of 55 schools were found to have policies involving no stated threshold at all, while using language that is deliberately weaker than the legal standard for rape. At those schools, you are vulnerable to a claim of rape if the girl has had any amount of alcohol, just as you're vulnerable to a claim of rape by campus administration if the girl had nothing to drink, maintains an ongoing relationship with you, and makes the formal statement that you never raped her at any point.
If you want to appeal to the idea that vague policies are benign as long as they're applied reasonably in practice, then (a) this is a deeply misguided approach to a justice system, specifically designed to allow persecution on flimsy grounds of anyone disfavored, and (b) the facts are clear that, as applied, college sexual assault policies are being used to convict boys who have done nothing wrong. As cited in Emily Yoffe's article, one higher education insurer found that of the sexual-assault-related claims it paid from 2006 to 2010, 72% went to men suing their school for railroading them.
I asked you to back up your 1 drink = drunk = rape claim, something you said was an explicit policy of many institutions, and you keep linking to stuff that clearly does not say that, and instead plays lawyer with the semantics of "intoxication" and "incapacitated" and interprets everything in the worst possible way. (Despite what your sources try to claim, "incapacitated" does not necessarily imply unconscious, either in standard speech or many of the legal definitions they quote. Why they are so keen for that to be the case geniunely worries me.)
The best evidence we have so far to support your case is an HN comment! From something someone said in an induction seminar, but of which there is no official public trace.
Maybe the person running that seminar googled for some info on the topic and found the BS that you and your sources keep repeating and didn't realise that it was political propaganda (and really, why would anyone assume that people would go around falsely claiming things about rape policies?).
If you wanted to have an honest conversation about how vague policies are a problem, then start with something like "phrases like intoxication should be clearly defined in campus policies" (though of course in the real world, there is no bright-line test for exactly when people move from sober to tipsy to drunk to intoxicated to incapacitated, but perhaps extra explanations may help those that are confused). I believe that the government's Title IX guidance actually says this is good practice, so you're in good company. Then you won't have to run around trying to justify your exaggerations. Claiming that policies explictly say 1 drink is the limit, is the opposite of vague, it's very precise, albiet fictional because none of the policies say that.
That's impressive. Twice on HN I've asked someone to back up the drunk sex = rape claim and in both occasions they've came back with the exact same incident.
It truly must be an epidemic.
As I pointed out the last time, and indeed in this very thread when I asked for some kind of proof this wasn't all just bunk, both these people were very, very drunk. Vomiting repeatedly drunk. No recollection of having sex drunk. If anyone sober had had sex with these people, they'd be considered by most people to have been taken advantage of. The only reason this is a gray area is that both people got themselves into such a state that they themselves have no idea whether they broke the law that night. Which isn't a great defence in any legal situation.
This incident is being given to you because it has facts which are overwhelmingly, lopsidedly in favor of the boy, and he was expelled anyway (also, it features a formal legal opinion from a DA). It shouldn't be surprising that with those features, it comes up more than other cases do when you ask for an example. Two other cases are discussed just in the links I've given you -- and mentioned in my comments. I just posted a series of four comments to evade HN's length restriction on comments; I don't think it's particularly weird that I only included a quoted description of one case in that series.
But hey, here's another case from the Slate article:
> A group of students had been hanging out in the dorm on a Friday evening—there was drinking, but no one was incapacitated—when CB told Sterrett that her roommate had family members staying in their room and she needed a place to spend the night. Sterrett loaned her a shirt to sleep in and assumed she’d crash on the mat he and his roommate kept for visitors. Instead, CB came and lay down next to him on his bed. The two had made out in the past but had no serious romantic interest in each other.
> They talked quietly, started kissing, and then things escalated, as they often do when two teenagers are in bed together. When it became clear they were going to have intercourse, CB asked Sterrett about a condom, and he retrieved one from a drawer. Their sex became so loud and went on for so long that Sterrett’s roommate, unable to sleep in the upper bunk, sent Sterrett a Facebook message around 3 a.m.: “Dude, you and [CB] are being abnoxtiously [sic] loud and inconsiderate, so expect to pay back in full tomorrow …”
> The events that prompted the university to take these actions against Sterrett are detailed in an affidavit sworn on Sterrett’s behalf by LC, a friend of CB’s and her sophomore year roommate. LC stated that in July she received a call from an “emotionally upset” CB who explained that her mother had found her diary. LC recalled that CB explained that the diary “contained descriptions of romantic and sexual experiences, drug use, and drinking.”
> At the beginning of his sophomore year, Drew Sterrett was in limbo. He did not know whether he would face further disciplinary action as a result of the accusation against him, and indeed no formal written charge was ever issued. The single, cryptic Skype interrogation—the one that blindsided Sterrett over his summer vacation—was to be his sole hearing with campus administrators. He never met them in person.
> On Nov. 9, 2012, Sterrett was given a one-page document titled “Summary of Witness Testimony and Review of Other Evidence.” It consisted primarily of summaries of statements from anonymous witnesses. For example, it stated: “Two witnesses stated the Complainant
reported to them that she tried to push the Respondent off her.” (CB didn’t know who these two witnesses were. She confirmed in her deposition that in her original statement to Cowan, she never said that she had tried to push Sterrett off her.) It also stated: “[A] witness reported
that the Respondent told them that he engaged in penetration with the Complainant and ‘she
was saying ‘no,’ and that it was just—it
was ‘just like a second,’ and then he stopped, and then the Complainant left.’ ” (In her deposition, CB acknowledged this was not how their sexual encounter transpired, although she maintained that at some point she said “no.”)
> The document made clear to Sterrett that CB was claiming that she had said “no” during their encounter. He put together a lengthy rebuttal. Of CB’s claim, he wrote, “I cannot state it more clearly that this is untrue. I asked her if she wanted to have sex; she said ‘yes.’ ” (CB’s assertion was also challenged later by an affidavit sworn on Sterrett’s behalf by his freshman year roommate, the one in the upper bunk. The roommate said that he saw CB get into Sterrett’s bed of her own volition and that his bed and Sterrett’s were so close that he would have heard if she had exclaimed, “no” or “stop.” He stated that he was annoyed that their sex was keeping him awake and that as a friend of both he would have intervened if he felt something untoward was happening.)
> CB’s roommate, LC, in an affidavit sworn on behalf of Sterrett, said that over the summer CB’s mother had called her repeatedly warning her not to talk to Sterrett and to take CB’s side in all proceedings. LC stated that she never saw any change in CB’s behavior from the time of the alleged assault until the end of freshman year. But, she said, CB’s personality changed dramatically after her mother found her diary and the fall semester began. In her affidavit, LC said it pained her to speak against her friend, but she stated: “It is my belief, based on my personal observations and conversations with CB, that it is possible CB manufactured a story about a sexual assault in response to the conflict CB described occurring between her and her mother in the summer of 2012.”
> n Nov. 30, Sterrett received Cowan’s final “Sexual Misconduct Investigation Report.” His lawsuit states that the final report failed to take note of anything he had written in his rebuttal. The final report was longer than Cowan’s previous one, and included further allegations that either CB herself did not corroborate or appeared unsupported by the available evidence. For example, it stated: “The Complainant framed the events in question as a sexual assault to
witnesses the day following the event.” In her deposition, CB acknowledged that she didn’t do that, that in fact she’d never used the words “sexual assault” to describe what happened. The report said that Sterrett’s roommate was asleep during the entire sexual encounter. This was contradicted by the time-stamped Facebook message complaining that he was being kept awake.
> With the help of a lawyer, Sterrett filed an appeal to the Office of Student Conflict Resolution. He included affidavits from classmates who said their words had been misconstrued and even falsified, and included the statement by Sterrett’s roommate that CB was a willing participant and that the roommate would have heard and intervened if CB had said no. The university’s response was to stand by its finding that Sterrett was responsible for sexual misconduct but to change the reason. Now Cowan issued an addendum stating that Sterrett had committed sexual misconduct because CB was too drunk to consent.
You want to argue that a university policy which prohibits sex while one party is "intoxicated" without specifying any method for assessing whether that standard is met, isn't a problem and can't be triggered by a minimal level of alcohol consumption. But this is not the case. If you'll permit a digression into some cases where alcohol did not figure in the judgment:
> The University of Southern California found a male student, "John Doe," responsible for sexual assault and suspended him for two years. But his alleged victim, a female student, "Jane," maintained that the sex between them was consensual.
> Doe was ultimately punished, not because he hurt Jane, but because he did nothing to prevent two other males from having rough sex with her—from slapping her on the buttocks—during an orgy.
> After dancing together, Jane, Doe, and Student 1 went off to a bedroom together to have sex. All agree that this encounter was consensual
> Later that evening, Jane and Doe returned to the bedroom to have sex again. Jane maintains that their sexual activity remained consensual, but other men—likely including Students 1 and 2—entered the room and also began performing sexual acts on Jane. These activities became rough, and culminated in one or two of the men—not Doe—slapping her butt.
> Jane later texted Doe that she had a good time with him, but "your friends suck though." She approached him again at a party some weeks later, but he declined to dance with her.
> Months later, in August of 2014—after discussing her "confidence issues" with a counsellor—Jane decided that the incident constituted sexual assault and filed a complaint. Still, she maintained that she had consented to sex with Doe: it was the other men who had violated her.
> USC disagreed, and accused Doe of violating 11 different sections of the student code of conduct, including "endangering the health of others," "engaging in obscene behavior at a university-sponsored event," and "engaging in non-consensual sexual touching."
> Consider that for a moment. Jane said her sexual activity with Doe was consensual. The university then made the paternalistic and indefensible decision to override her opinion on the matter and described their sex as rape anyway.
> Doe and his accuser, "Jane Roe," met during an impromptu gathering at a mutual friend's dorm on August 22, 2014. They first had sex that very night. They exchanged friendly text messages the next day, which were later provided as evidence in Doe's favor at his hearing, according to the judge's decision. They eventually had sex a second time.
> They had sex two more times after that—Roe was the initiator both times, according to the mutually agreed upon facts of the case.
> But on November 6, 2014, the university informed Doe that someone had accused him of sexual misconduct. He did not immediately learn that his accuser was Roe, though he was barred from having any further contact with her. The university also moved him to another dorm against his will.
> Roe's residential advisor and Title IX coordinator had submitted reports agreeing with her contention that their very first sexual encounter wasn't consensual. This logic seems to rest on the disputed fact that Roe was drunk at the time.
> At the actual hearing—which was attended by both Doe and Roe—Roe's roommate testified that she did not believe "Roe was drunk or otherwise incapacitated when she saw her shortly after her sexual encounter."
> A three-person panel sided with Doe and cleared him of sexual misconduct. But Roe appealed.
> At this point, the proceedings veered into Franz Kafka territory. Doe was barely able to review the new evidence against him, and was not allowed to even appear at the second hearing. The new evidence undermined Roe’s roommate’s testimony, but at no point was the roommate called upon to defend her original statements about Roe’s lack of incapacitation. JMU went to great lengths to accommodate Roe—even granting her several extensions on submitting new evidence—while making it all but impossible for Doe to defend himself. As a result, he was found responsible for sexual misconduct and suspended from the university for five and a half years.
> Given that this case appears to rest on whether or not Roe was drunk during the encounter, the accusation seems extremely dubious. Even if Roe had been drinking, mere intoxication does not render a person incapable of consenting to sex. It certainly looks like the university conflated intoxication with incapacitation, and that Roe ultimately failed to prove either state.
When you can be found to have committed sexual assault over the top of your "victim"'s vociferous assurance that nothing of the kind happened (oh wait, here's another case:
> Colorado State University-Pueblo suspended a male athlete for years after he was found responsible for sexually assaulting a female trainer. But the trainer never accused him of wrongdoing, and said repeatedly that their relationship was consensual. She even stated, unambiguously, "I'm fine and I wasn't raped."
> When confronted, Doe confessed to the Complainant that she and Dean had engaged in sex. According to the lawsuit, the Complainant "presumed" this sex was nonconsensual, and reported it to the director of the athletic training program.
> Later, when Doe found out, she gave Neal the bad news, and texted him the following messages:
>> "One of the other Athletic Training students screwed me over!...She went behind my back and told my AT advisor stuff that wasn’t true!!! I’m trying so hard to fix it all."
> Neal and Doe met in person to discuss the situation. Without Doe's knowledge, Neal recorded their conversation. This audio recording further establishes that their sex was consensual. While in Neal's presence, Doe fielded a phone call from a coordinator of the athletic training program and stated "I'm fine and I wasn't raped." She then called her mother and told her the same thing.
> Both Doe and her mother pressed the administrators of the athletic training program—a husband and wife team—to drop the matter, but it was too late: they had already informed the Title IX office.
> Doe told another administrator, "Our stories are the same and he’s a good guy. He’s not a rapist, he’s not a criminal, it’s not even worth any of this hoopla!"
> The predetermined outcome for Neal was a guilty verdict: he was suspended for the remainder of Doe's time at the university.
( https://reason.com/blog/2016/04/19/female-student-said-im-fi... )), you need to read the sexual assault policy as if it will only ever be used to justify finding you responsible for sexual assault, because that is the case. Where there is ambiguity in the policy, it is fair to read it as if any formal proceeding will interpret it as far as is possible in favor of the accuser (or farther). And in the Minding the Campus report, 18 of 55 schools were found to have policies involving no stated threshold at all, while using language that is deliberately weaker than the legal standard for rape. At those schools, you are vulnerable to a claim of rape if the girl has had any amount of alcohol, just as you're vulnerable to a claim of rape by campus administration if the girl had nothing to drink, maintains an ongoing relationship with you, and makes the formal statement that you never raped her at any point.
If you want to appeal to the idea that vague policies are benign as long as they're applied reasonably in practice, then (a) this is a deeply misguided approach to a justice system, specifically designed to allow persecution on flimsy grounds of anyone disfavored, and (b) the facts are clear that, as applied, college sexual assault policies are being used to convict boys who have done nothing wrong. As cited in Emily Yoffe's article, one higher education insurer found that of the sexual-assault-related claims it paid from 2006 to 2010, 72% went to men suing their school for railroading them.
Here is Stanford's policy [1]. There is nothing about drinking heavily or being highly intoxicated. The policy just says "if intoxicated by drugs and/or alcohol".
Before I even click, I notice that's not a Stanford link. But instead something hosted by a political organisation that takes a stand on this very issue. Should I be worried by this oddity?
And now I've read it, and we've gone from confusion about what "drunk" means to confusion about what "intoxication" means. Do you have anything that actually defines this term in this context? Does a memo from 2009 have some kind of special legal force, that allows the widest possible interpretation of this term? If they meant after the first alcoholic drink, why didn't they clearly state that? Instead they used "intoxicated" which generally, but ambigously, means "really drunk" (thesaurus suggestion: "helplessly inebriated"). That's also what I would assume, but then I'm interpreting this memo in good faith.
I am not sure you should be worried unless you beieve the document has been doctored.
I think the basic problem we are facing is that the definitions are rather open to interpretation. I think we can agree that someone who is unconscious is incapable of giving consent and that someone who is 100% sober is able to (assuming they are of a legal age and not mentally impaired) - the issue becomes where to draw the line. This gets gray very quickly.
The real argument here is this interpretation is being done by ad hoc and inexperienced "courts" using a balance of probability. The risk of making a mistake is very high no matter how well intentioned everyone involved is.
I'm not particularly worried about it being doctored, just cherry-picked and misrepresented.
Most people would agree that in common language "intoxicated" is a stronger term than "drunk", yet the best evidence people can find when challenged on repeating the "drunk sex = rape" meme (some going so far as to claim that many institutions have official policies that explicitly say that even 1 drink = drunk = rape) doesn't support what they initially said. Even when it's a cherry picked 8 year old document hosted externally by a third party as evidence for poltical purposes.
This suggests to me, that it's basically BS, as I said earlier. Clearly, from your latest comment, you understand that it's a complex area, with lots of gray. So why charge in and repeat BS you heard on the internet?
I actually said drunk, not slightly intoxicated. Drunk does have a legal meaning (it is illegal to be drunk in public in many jurisdictions), but even if we limit the discussion to "substantially" intoxicated then many, many men have had sex while substantially intoxicated. Consent here is very gray.
I once saw a poster that said something like "Bob is drunk. Allison is drunk. Allison can't consent."
While a poster is not a statement of policy, it nevertheless is intended to communicate the standard that should be applied: that sex with a woman who is "drunk" (not "incapacitated" or even "significantly intoxicated") is rape, but this standard does not apply to a drunk man.
If you are drunk that's your fault, not any defense.
I mean: drunk sex is like drunk driving, being drunk should be held against drunk person, not used in his/her favor.
If you are accused of raping a girl on the sole grounds that she was drunk when you had sex, then the fact that you were also drunk should be grounds for a counterclaim of rape against her.
Obviously, that would be ridiculous. But so far as I have read, only Brown's policy explicitly takes the position you advocate, that while the female being drunk casts blame on the male, the male being drunk casts even more blame on the male. ("A charged student’s use of any drug, including alcohol, judged to be related to an offense will be considered an exacerbating rather than a mitigating circumstance.")
Except the article itself says "Seizing this logic, advocates for gender equality have persuaded the federal government, under civil-rights authority, to force higher-education institutions to investigate and punish crimes of sexual violence. Dozens of colleges are under investigation for failing to comply.
Although not explicit in the rationale for this approach, the lower standard of proof required to bring campus disciplinary action—including expulsion—is surely attractive to antirape activists, as it is for other civil-rights advocates who pursue civil remedies."
lower standard of proof
disciplinary action including expulsion
This is outright despicable.
There already witch hunts going on in some unis (with NO actual filed complaints or charges)
Which is sort of the point I was trying to make, but evidently quite badly. Yes, I agree with the author - these cases should be dealt with through the court system.
Then each party is criminally liable for the rape of the other, under law. But, in practice, for heterosexual liaisons the male partner will be charged and prosecuted while the female goes free.
It actually occurs at a much higher rate than most think, but the strategy used by female perpetrators more often takes the form of emotional violence and coercion as opposed to physical violence.
Technically, under English law, I believe it isn't. The definition involves penetrative sex. It's normally something like sexual assault instead (arguably adding somewhat to gender politics).
It's still not entirely impossible for a person without a male reproductive organ to engage in active penetrative sex with the aid of well, sexual devices which mimic the shape or even cruder devices. That's to say, I don't believe, but could be wrong, they stipulate being naturally born or some such uneasy language.
"The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim." [1]
So the FBI does not consider female and male perpetrators who engage in non-consensual sex with a male victim only using the victims natural external genitalia?
This seems pretty stupid.
Can anyone corroborate this claim? As in do they not or actively refuse to prosecute these incidents? Or are they "sexual assault" but not "rape"?
Wouldn't the fact that this is a direct quote from someone high up in the FBI, and is being hosted on the website for the U.S. Department of Justice be enough corroboration?
This means the definition of rape depends on the country you are in. For the UK I think it's really arguing semantics though, because it is defined as "assault by penetration" and has the same penalties as rape. [1]
> Though it's much rarer, it is possible for a woman to rape a man.
Given that it is in response to a poster who clearly knew that (as indicated by the intention of revealing the female to be the perpetrator), in a thread in which (as far as I can see) no doubt about the possibility had been expressed, is this remark adding anything?
> n. I wrote my post specifically gender-neutral so as to prepare for the inevitable accusation of sexism, and then reveal that in my example the female was the perpetrator.
Not really interested in engaging with someone who merely wants to set traps for people.
No, sorry. You cannot retroactively retract consent. If you said a genuine yes at the time of the intercourse and at no point you signalled you were not okay with it, you cannot just say it's rape all of a sudden. It is not. Otherwise, any person (usually female, even if you want it 'less gender political', which I personally find insincere since it plays a big role in the discussion) can screw over the person they had sex with (usually male). This is just another form of authoritarian feminism, designed to shift control even more into the hands of women. False rape allegations are not the exception, they are common, and the punishment for such false allegations is either nonexistent or very minor despite the the fact that they can destroy the accused person's life.
Where are we headed? Do men need to have the women sign a contract before sex to avoid the lies? Because that's what it's looking like to me. Kinda unromantic ;)
In the UK, there have been several examples of a woman getting drunk, having apparently consensual sex and then deciding the next day that she was raped. The male now has to prove that sex was consensual. The woman gets lifetime anonymity and the male has to undergo a public trial, almost always with commensurate loss of reputation and employment, even if later proven to be innocent.
There is a very recent example where a female barrister (senior lawyer) was involved in a public sex act with a male. She accepted a police caution for public lewdness the next day. She then discovered that the press were about to publish the story and very cynically, to stop her name from becoming public, she reported that in fact she had been raped. She was immediately given lifelong anonymity and the male was exposed to public trial.
If no rape is found to have occurred, which seems likely given there were police witnesses, then that lady is going to be in a world of bother. Firstly, it will have meant that she has appealed against a sentence, which means if it didn't occur she has perjured herself. Secondly, it's pretty clear that a false accusation like this is slanderous and the offended party would be well within their rights to sue. And thirdly, if a criminal conviction for perjury is recorded against the barrister, then I'd say it's likely she won't he able to practice law again.
But damn, if I were a young male today, I would probably require proof of consent from prospective partners. Maybe a signed affidavit, blood sample and affidavits of competent witnesses. Or maybe just forget the whole premarital sex thing. Too dangerous anymore, in so many ways.
It's a great pity that some people falsely accuse others of rape, because all those who have been raped are automatically disbelieved by a significant portion of the population.
While I agree that it's shame that people falsely accuse other of rape, and that it makes the situation worse, I don't think that's the root cause of people disbelieving claims of rape.
I would be that most instances of disbelief stem from knowing the accused and thinking they'd never do it, or having some personal interest in the person not being found guilty of it. For others who aren't acquainted with the accused, I've seen a lot of it come from misogyny in general, and a general belief that men are superior, so the man must be the one telling the truth.
Obviously, that's a bunch of crap. But personal beliefs and feelings don't really require logic, so they continue.
On the other hand, I personally know someone who believes that no woman will ever falsely claim rape because it's such a horrifying thing (and causes such strong feelings in women who were raped), and so she believes every woman who claims it to the extreme, despite any evidence I've ever seen presented to her, and any court findings to the contrary. She appears to be completely able to understand that some people will lie about anything if it gets them what they want at that moment.
In practice, there are basically no repercussions for falsely reporting rape. The "victim" isn't charged with anything and retains their anonymity while the (innocent) "perpetrator" has their life ruined.
What do you think should be occurring though? Many women won't report being raped due to being shamed, mocked and threatened and their livelihoods ruined.
Perhaps those being convicted should also be given the same anonymity until after they are found guilty?
I think women who falsely reported rape should be charged with slander and pay substantial damages, at least.
> Perhaps those being convicted should also be given the same anonymity until after they are found guilty?
Yes, this would be a huge step forward (especially if both sides respected it). A big problem with rape cases is that both sides have social and professional repercussions regardless of the outcome. If rape cases were entirely sealed for both parties, that would be very helpful.
That would only occur in cases where it can be positively proven that rape did not occur. To avoid conviction the accused must demonstrate that there is reasonable doubt they raped the other party. That means that it is still possible it occurred, but in order to reduce the risk of convicting an innocent person they get to go free. I guess that's the lesser of two evils.
In terms of identifying the accused, Australia has sub judice rules that generally prohibit identifying the accused. I'm surprised that the UK doesn't either, given how closely our systems of law are related!
Essentially yes. Rape is not a "strict liability" crime, which means that intent is an element of the crime. By definition, "the perspective of the alleged perpetrator" is a key element of the crime, just as it is with murder, assault, robbery, and a host of other crimes. You can't just say "Alice killed Bob, Alice is a murderer!", you have to stop and ask what Alice was thinking or intending. It might not even be a crime, it might be negligence, manslaughter, etc.
(Well, sort of. Technically it's the perspective of "reasonable person" in the alleged perpetrator's position, which is a well-defined legal fiction. As Wikipedia notes correctly but unhelpfully, "the 'reasonable person' is not an average person or a typical person".)
The author is correct: Rape cases, by their nature, do tend to revolve around discussions of what the accused reasonably believed about the other parties consent. The mistake is in suggesting that there's anything we could (or should) do to change it.
In the case of sex, it is an action that is legal(or not) depending on consent.
In the example I gave earlier, the female has obtained consent from her partner. The male changes his mind half-way through but does not stop or act in any different way.
In cases such as these, my understanding(and gut feeling really) is that since knowledge of consent is what makes an action legal, the person had no knowledge consent was revoked, and cannot be charged for something that is impossible to avoid being guilty of?
In that case, consent was mutually given and if the other party then changes their mind and asks the other to stop, then consent ceases, right?
If the other party is not signalled that consent was withdrawn, then it is, in my mind, a bit tricky. It means that consent was no longer there, but the other party didn't have any way of knowing. I think it's fair to say that no assault occurred, but it's still damaging to the one no longer wanting to have sex. In that case it's really unfortunate for both parties :-(
How is this in any way tricky? Consent is something the giving of which involves clear communication, not just something that exists in the mind of one of the parties. Likewise, consent can't just 'cease', it has to be withdrawn, which involves communicating the withdrawal to all parties concerned.
It's like signing up for a phone contract, then deciding you don't want it any more and stopping using the phone. If you don't tell the provider then they're completely within their rights to keep billing you.
But it's also worth mentioning that consent does have to be renewed between each act. Just because he consented last night doesn't mean she can assume consent tonight without a fresh affirmative indication of consent. (Which doesn't have to be verbal, necessarily, but should be enthusiastic participation rather than simply submission to a partner's overtures.)
No other comments have directly addressed the quote you referenced. My interpretation is it is saying that rape cases are prosecuted about the intent of the perpetrator. Aka, they are convicted if it can be shown that they intended to commit rape, or knowingly committed rape, and acquited otherwise.
This puts the standard of conviction much higher than other crimes, because lots of crimes can be committed unknowingly (theft, embezzlement, even homicide), the intent of the criminal having no bearing on their guilt or not. In these cases the experience of the victim bears strongly on the case: the person who's car was stolen, the company who's funds were embezzled or the (deceased) victim of negligent homicide. The speaker is saying that courts do not weight victims' experiences appropriately, if at all, in rape cases.
You can't "unknowingly" commit theft (intent to dishonestly permanently deprive), emezzlement (intent to deceive) or murder (intent to unlawfully kill someone).
The language my top comment used was "homocide" and "negligent homocide" while the responder changed it to "murder". The point is that in the view of the justice system, sometimes it doesn't matter if you meant to kill someone or not--you still killed someone.
Even with negligent homicide the perpetrator's mindset is still taken into account. It is only negligent homicide if they should reasonably have known that their actions could cause the death.
The guilty mind (mens rea) does have bearing on sentencing and the types of charge. For instance if you intend to kill someone it's a different charge than if you accidentally killed someone, and if it couldn't have been foreseen that the actions would kill someone then there is generally no crime at all.
This is very true. Many activists actually want to open up less-harsh sentencing or charge options in sexual assault cases to give prosecutors and juries more ways to treat the specifics of each case.
It's perfectly possible for someone to be raped without their partner being the rapist.
For example, imagine two people enjoy rape roleplay, but don't decide on a safe-word. In the middle of the act, the receiving partner changes their mind and starts screaming "no" and "stop". The giving partner interprets this as part of the roleplay, which makes perfect sense, and continues.
Who's guilty/victim here? (Hint: it's a trick question - both are guilty of stupidity for not choosing a safe word.)
Nope, it's still the "giving partner's" (i.e. rapists) fault. If you're applying coercive force to someone, it's your responsibility to make sure that your actions are consensual. In this case, it's the dominant's responsibility to check in regularly.
I think the discrepancy comes from advocacy thought vs. legal thought [1]. When advocating for rape victims, who are severely disadvantaged in these situations, you might make a statement like "we need to listen to the woman's perspective". As has been pointed out, that statement is a heuristic on several levels: the woman is often, but not always, the victim; and from a legal standpoint, there are of course other things to consider. It's still a useful and generally true statement.
When you're listening to "megaphone speech", you have to understand the context to understand the message. That can be difficult, because in most cases if you already understood the context, you wouldn't need to listen to the message. Try.
The flip side is also true, when activists win, and are given real institutional power, they must stop relying on context and start being precise ("gavel speech") with their intentions.
> "When advocating for rape victims, who are severely disadvantaged in these situations"
Curious if you have a way to back up the claim the accusers are severely disadvantaged?
Based on how it is at Stanford and many universities in the US, the system is certainly stacked in the accuser's favor. See, for example: https://www.thefire.org/stanford-trains-student-jurors-that-.... This leads to terrible mistakes, Joe Lonsdale comes to mind (it was since reversed, but the damage is likely done by then).
The accusers (victims) are disadvantaged in court (i.e. where facts matter and where there is a very high standard of proof), whereas the accused are disadvantaged outside of courts (and in college "kangaroo" courts), where the standards of proof are much lower and and perceptions matter more than facts.
"Rape culture" advocates claim that courts should become more like kangaroo courts.
There are several well regarded sources that show that the crime -> conviction rate for rape is shockingly low, the main bottlenecks being: reporting (because the victims are heavily disincentivized from reporting for a variety of reasons), decision to bring charges or not by prosecutors, and conviction rates once in trial. I don't have them handy but I'll try to come back to this tomorrow.
Because no one should have to explain to you that universities and incredibly famous cases like this are the exception. I shouldn't have to back up climate change every time I down vote someone "just asking" about clean coal or some shit every time that conversation happens either.
These are horror stories - they hit home IMO because so many men would never dream of assaulting anyone so it's scary to feel lumped into that group, because of the shame that comes with the crime and because the idea of being stuck in a criminal system you don't belong in is infuriating. But much like terrorism, home invasion murders, car jackings and shark attacks the likelihood of being accused of a sexual crime you didn't commit is basically zero.
It's okay guys, we can admit there is a problem without having to get grouped in as a rapist. It's not like any of this changes the fact that 90.5% of the murders in the US are apparently committed by men[0] (which also does not make us all murderers)
We are talking about universities here, presumably, since the title is "college sex-assault trials belong in court". So, dismissing them as an "exception" is neither helpful nor relevant.
I have no idea about how fair the system is out of college. My point was about how unfair it is _in_ college.
Could you elaborate how 'we need to understand context' means reducing issues to 'you need to listen to one side' is acceptable? Saying we need to 'try and understand' seems like you're saying that unless we consider things from one side we don't have any empathy at all.
I don't think they literally mean experience as in "they secretly felt non-consensual after a while and kept it to themselves", but rather the emphasis that the system is unfair and weighs the perpetrator's opinion more heavily than the victim's
The justice system is unfair in that it requires "proof beyond reasonable doubt" or similar. Two wrongs don't make a right - if rape has occurred then it cannot be undone, but the potential miscarriage of justice has yet to occur so it is right that the system protects against that.
In the UK I've been on a jury for two sexual offence trials. The awesome (in the biblical sense) sense of responsibility we had was keenly felt and plenty of deliberation was had to double and triple check that we were, in the judge's words "sure" in finding a guilty verdict.
For its faults, and it has many, the Scottish system of three verdicts with "not proven" as another option makes some sense in these cases. In many instances there just isn't enough evidence and a plausible witness on each side of the case.
That's not the argument, I'm not sure how you got that from the article. In fact, all it is doing is criticising verdicts that clear perpetrators of rape if they think or say that they thought the other party was consenting.
In this regard, though the article doesn't actually say this, I think it's fairly logical that if the one making the claim they were raped wasn't consenting. Thus in all claims of rape there was one party who wasn't consenting to have sex, ergo there is no "two consenting adults"!
Let me put it this way: your own statement is that "Consensual by definitions (sic) means both parties agreed". If you agree this is the correct definition, then if the victim did not agree, even though the other party claims they did, then that isn't consensus.
Your idea is not about consensual sex - your idea is that consensus was percieved by one party, when in fact it wasn't. And again, that's not consensus because actual consensus to have sex needs to made by both parties in the act.
I feel I can talk about this! My master's thesis was computation of a neural network using FPGA + CPU. The original SNN code was in C++, my thesis implemented in in OpenCL. This was using the Altera OpenCL to FPGA implementation
Essencially taking the inner-most loop (that computed if a neuron would spike or not) and implementing it as a kernel in OpenCL.
Step 1 was showing increase from single-thread C++ to OpenCL kernel. Increase was 6-10x using a i7-2600k and running on all logical cores.
Step 2 was implementing in FPGA. This means pre-shipping data to the FPGA while CPU calculated other things, and beginning computation on the FPGA, and receiving responses back on CPU. Performance was 75x compared to single-thread C++ code.
Important notes that I didn't expect:
Bottleneck was memory transfer bandwidth across PCI-E.
Power consumption was less on FPGA compared to CPU.
Development time was significantly lessened. Altering the design is simple when going from OpenCL > FPGA, compared to Verilog > FPGA
In the late nineties I had the rare opportunity to work with a very exotic “FPGA hypercomputer” (yes, the marketing makes me cringe) that basically consisted of an array of FPGAs that instantiated logic at the hardware level and dynamically readjusted if required. It was a prototype built by now-defunct Starbridge Systems and designed, amongst others, by Fagin of Intel microprocessor fame.
Interesting to see this here. I did my masters thesis on this sdk the past September. We compared a neural network in native C to a CPU opencl implementation, and a FPGA implementation. The FPGA had about 8-10 times the kernel performance of a i7-2600k for the task. Interesting enough, what caused the jump in performance was the capability to have memory close to the kernel, with enough capacity to handle the kernel demands. The CPU was capped on what the ram-cpu bandwidth was, around 21gigs, however, the slower pci-e FPGA did not suffer, because of FPGA implemented memory could hold the necessary data at hand. Hence I sent the data to the kernel asynchronously, then a kernel with around 120 parallel implementations would operate and feed back the data through pci-e.
Having OpenCl certainly reduced dev time by around 85% id say. And that's from someone fluent with verilog, who didn't know openCL before doing this.
And BTW, i remember reading some paper that compared CPU/GPU/FPGA. The conclusion was - GPU's win on compute/$, FPGA's win on compute/watt. Hard to find the paper now, though.
There will always be some inefficiencies introduced when comparing OpenCL to Verilog. Hopefully, this will decrease in the future versions of OpenCL. Notice that the development time decreased by over 80%...
Interesting. Is there any reference, or tutorial, for a fellow FPGA developer who are interested in studying OpenCL for FPGA?
Also, is there a link for your thesis? What kind of data processing was needed? I mostly work with signal processing for RF signals, pipelining data from ADCs.
So I'd say just pickup OpenCL in general, and then follow altera's best practices until you feel comftable.
No link for my thesis, can send you a pdf if you want. In terms of what was needed, my kernel was the simulation inner-most loop that would take in 4 values(2 floats, a const int and a double) per neuron and use them to update the neurons state. The simulation ran at a resolution of 1ms, with values between 1k and 100k neurons.
In essense it was high repetition, low complexity, high memory calculations.
Infact, what I experienced was that a) the biggest overhead is actually setting up the kernel and b) you have to take into account the memory requirements.
Biggest upgrades in performance came from transitioning the data transfers from synchronous to asynchronous, (to alleviate memory bottlenecks as much as possible), and from increasing the number of neurons.
Most interesting bit was that due to the simulation characteristics (Izhikevich model of a SNN), the firing rate dropped aroud 20-30k neurons. With a low firing rate, I could simulate in real-time (ie 1ms of simulation in 1ms of real time) 18k neurons, and 80k neurons due to disparities in firing rates
Heya, did my undegrads as EE, changed it halfway from a 4 year MENG course to a 3 year bachelors because I was bored of the power distribution related stuff. Went on to do a masters in Advanced Microelectronics Design. I had contact with FPGA's in both my undergrad and my masters. I selected my BENG thesis on an ARM M0 soft implementation on an FPGA that implemented an expanded instruction set with increased performance on the SHA-1 algorithm.
I don't get it. They used a metric of looking at different screens as a lack of focus tool, and yet I've just had a nice 2 hour long session of developing a script, where I kept glancing between the script and the output on 2 monitors to see if I had fixed it. By their metric I was not focused, and yet I was just telling my colleague I had a great 2 hour long focused session
They probably meant 'window', i.e. what application had their focus. That's probably also not a very good metric though, given that developers will often flip between editors, terminals and browsers rapidly. It compares with 2004, although it doesn't specify in what area; I'm sure that single-application focus is also highly dependent on the area of work and the software used. Some people can do all their work in one application, others need half a dozen or more.
They probably mean task-specific application window, not actual computer screen as many people even today just have a single monitor. Also I doubt they used software developers for test subjects.
I think there is no answer that doesn't involve sign-offs on certain things.
In the situation you described, we resorted to fully randomizing everything, and then adding constraints to ensure it remained legal. This is a tedious process, one that leads to multiple false-positive failing tests.
However, the opposite situation, writing constrained stimulus from the beginning, leads to gaps where you didn't think of randomizing something, or you over-constrained it.
It's similar to a top-down vs down-up approach, only one is difficult and tedious and riddled with false positives, whereas the other one is easier and simpler, but can hide bugs.
In the face of issues like what you said, we implemented randomized interface behavior. Interrupts are always meant to be program-order invisible, so you can randomize those (imagine, 100 interrupts back to back, or 1 every N cycles where N is random but smaller than 5 or 500 etc). Pure random isn't interesting on its own. You need controlled randomness. From that point, you have to then start adding constraints for illegal/impossible situations, and you have to be extremely careful about these. We found a bug a week before tapeout when a senior architect forced a junior engineer(wonder who this is) to add a constraint. He used his seniority to sign it off, without going through a group review, and it was a mistake.