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Does it make sense to pursue two master's degrees?
Quick background: I am currently pursuing two master's degrees, "Data Engineering and Analytics" from TU Munich and "Computer Linguistics" from LMU Munich. I am in my second semester and plan to finish both in 2 1/2 years. The time frame and work load seems reasonable as of now, I am having fun with it and don't work crazy times. Both degrees deal with quite different topics, though they might seem similar. My master's at TUM is very mathy and proof-based. The other master's is rather practical. For the first Master's I'm expecting a 1.7+- and for the second a 1.3+-.
My motivation to do this is mainly based on my wish to pursue a PhD: 1. LMU is very good in (deep) NLP (<- broad description of my research interest) and one of the Prof's work is very interesting, hence I am currently looking for touch points. 2. I personally don't think the Computer Linguistics programm is super sophisticated, the stuff we do is rather shallow so I think knowledge-wise it's not such a huge gain (I consider my TUM master's my "main" work). Here is my question: 3. I want to distinguish myself. I am looking for an internationally renowned Uni for my next step so I am assuming I have high competition. Under these circumstances could you confirm / give your view if pursuing two degrees is a good idea? Should I channel my resources to do something different (e.g. look for actual research experience, publications, etc.), I don't know many people in these fields yet, the Bachelor's programmes in Germany are quite anonymous.

Only a specific university evaluating all of your qualifications can give an answer to this. There are too many variables for a general answer. One issue I might raise is whether you are (just) a professional student or are dedicated to some particular academic/scientific goals.

I understand that a specific university / faculty / Prof might have a different weighting when it comes to requirements for a PhD admission. But is it not possible to estimate the utility of doing this? And I don't have a particular scientific goal right now, as of now I am thinking about this rather generically (PhD -> Post doc -> Industry research / further academic research).

You seem unfocused. That isn't a good place to be when applying for a PhD. I want to do research in "something". I'm finding "something" compelling and it drives me.

Spend some time imagining yourself being happy and fulfilled in 20 years.

You can call it unfocused, I would call it open for lots of stuff and inexperienced in general. I just finished my Bachelor's. I found that NLP and languages are fun for me. I found that for me it doesn't matter much what EXACTLY I am doing, as soon as it's going in depth I am enjoying it. But of course I don't know what research area exactly I am aiming for, how would I?

You are correct that I can't judge. All I have to go on is what you wrote. I didn't realize how early you are in your MS studies. So, you are probably fine for now, especially if you make an impression on professors. But you will need to focus much more closely as it comes time to be applying to doctoral programs. (My regards to Munich -- great place.)

You don't know what research area you aim for. Theoretically, you can try 1000s research areas at the same time and find the correct one. Due to practical considerations (unicity of your body and mind, etcetc) you found out you can try 2 research areas at the same time, spending 2 bananatimes.
If you have 2 master degrees, they are useful as long as you employ them in your daily working life.
Even best, you can limit yourself to 1 research area, spending 1 bananatime, after having spent 1 bananatime looking through all the 1000s possible research area what is the best fit.

@Buffy: Your first intuition is not incorrect though. I tend to want to all and everything and have a hard time comitting to one thing. Thanks for your view!

There is no infinite space in a CV for a reason. Don't fill it with more of the same (Masters), try to add some variety (Master and internship at NASA, or at the statistical office of the health ministry of Bavaria, it may be even more interesting)

@EarlGrey: It's a factor indeed. I want to go broad for now to later decide where to go deep. And yes, I see. My focus right now is purely academic.

Early in an MS program is a good time to "go broad". In the US, in doctoral studies after a BS, you are pretty much forced to go broad taking courses in order to pass the comprehensive exams which are advanced but still broadly cover the field.

I'm surprised that these universities allowed you to enrol at both simultaneously. Often there are rules prohibiting this. Are either of them aware of your situation? Be very careful you are not breaking a rule which could lead to one or both degrees being revoked later down the line.

Yes, I checked the legal frame. "Doppelstudium" (= double studies) is a fair thing to do in Germany. There are a few constraints to pay attention to, but these don't apply in my case.

I'd say, having two masters degrees could definitely help you if you consider the 2nd one as a back-up plan (in terms of research fields/directions) if you cannot find a good PhD position in the field relevant for your 1st (main) one. It should, of course, depend on the availability, so ideally, there should be higher competition in the field of the "main" one, and not vice versa.
If you already know that you only want to continue in the field of your "main" one, and see the 2nd as an additional line on your cv, I doubt it is going to help you much, maybe unless your 2nd one is more math-heavy than the 1st one (which is not the case, as I assume from your question). In that regard, considering your 2nd masters direction a back-up plan could be quite smart.
Yet, if your 1st one is more fundamental and your 2nd is more applied, one way I can think of how your 2nd masters could help you obtain a PhD position in the field of the 1st one is: if during your 2nd masters, you learned a specific technique, or software etc, which is highly relevant for the PhD project you are aiming at. There is always a bit of luck involved though, unless you make a thorough analysis of the PhD positions market a few years ahead.

I am considering my "main" studies my main studies because they are much more mathematically fundamental, thorough and thus more challenging than my 2nd studies. I am considering my 2nd studies more like the application area of my 1st studies. In a way I see them kind of complementing each other. I like math (though I am not a mathematician) and TUM (my 1st Uni) gives me a strong math toolkit at hand, whereas LMU (my 2nd Uni) gives me stuff to apply my knowledge to. Thanks for you view!

If you want to work in industry:
A HR person is mostly tasked with sorting out applicants.  They assign them to job candidacies and within the candidacies they assign them for follow up or no follow up.
The assignment to candidacies is already so streamlined to save the HR person's time that basically the candidate must tell the HR person exactly what job they are applying for.  A dual master's doesn't provide leeway on "I'm applying for jobs A or B" as this creates the potential for unhealthy competition within the company over a single candidate.  So, you'll only apply for a specific job, and if you apply for a different job with the same organization, you'll have to wait a grace period (to overcome their anti-application spam handling, where one applicant applies for dozens of jobs).
Assuming you have a job role that requires both of the disciplines, it could be of great benefit to you; but, most job roles will only have one discipline in mind, so you would likely be a "better" candidate only after all other factors were considered equal.
In academia:
The next step in academia is to obtain a PhD diploma, the effective minimum requirement for obtaining an Assistant Professorship, but in all honesty there will likely be one or more post-Doc research positions before you build a sufficient resume to gain such a position.  After you obtain the PhD, your Master's degree details will be a curiosity at best.
There are teaching positions where you only teach, which don't require a PhD.  A Master's degree will give you an advantage here, but an additional Master's will not give you much of an additional advantage, unless they want you to teach in both subjects.  These kinds of positions pay extremely poorly and have little to no job advancement, but they are favored by those in industry who look to bolster their careers with "university credentials".  Some consultants take this route to great success; but, you'll never gain the benefits of being a tenured professor.
In short, if the fields overlap a lot, it could be immediately beneficial in industry.  It the fields don't overlap, probably much less so.  In Academia, if the fields overlap a lot, the benefits will probably only impact your PhD Application and be long lost by the time you hit the wall of getting the Assistant Professorship (no tenure).
I'd only do it if it involved less than a semester's additional courses, or if the two programs combine with synergy to obtain an additional benefit not present in each one individually.

Pursuing a dual Master degree to distinguish yourself is likely to be  detrimental.
You are doing good in learning the analytical foundations (i.e. the TUM master) then you want to apply these foundations somewhere (i.e. not the LMU master).
Have a look at https://www.s-a.uni-muenchen.de/praktikum/index.html and then propose yourself for an internship at companies or at the LMU department/professor of your interest. It will be much more effective in providing you additional insight and experience (well, it is an internship, it is designed exactly for that reason).

I am looking for an internationally renowned Uni for my next step so I
am assuming I have high competition

You have only one competitor: yourself.
PhD candidates applying to a certain position usually are not really compared one against the other, they are quite often evaluated in an absolute way, something along the lines "30 applicants, 4 are a good fit? ok, is there the perfect fit? no? keep on searching"
If, on the other hand, you are aiming at a PhD in the US, it can be slightly different, but PhD in the US is often a Master+PhD thing ... do you want to have 3 Master?

"detrimental seems a bit strong.

Normally you need to do "something" to add an MS to a PhD in the US. It isn't just a freebie, generally. I have a masters from one place and a PhD (only) from another, both in US.

@Buff y yes, I agree the MS is not for free, not at all, you have to obtain it ... exactly for these reasons I am asking if the OP want to put so much effort: the combined effort to get "only" 3 MS looks to me the premise to a very frustrating experience...

I wouldn't mind doing a PhD in the US, that would be a great experience and I've lived in the US for a year before. But besides the pros I heard of lots of disadvantages that come with it (possibly having to do another MS as you said, possibly heavy non-research duties to make up for fees, etc.) so right now Europe/Germany would be my first choice.

"You have only one competitor: yourself. PhD candidates applying to a certain position usually are not really compared one against the other" - thanks! This is a new view on these things for me.

I disagree on "PhD candidates applying to a certain position usually are not really compared one against the other" - on the contrary, a direct comparison is often the case, based mostly not on the degrees but specific skills (obtained during their e.g. masters thesis). Of course, it also depends on supply/demand ratio, as usual.

I think I agree more with @sleepy on this. There can be a lot of competition. Doctoral programs are limited and expensive to provide.

@sleepy Competition: a situation in which people or organizations try to be more successful than other people or organizations (according to the Longman Dictionary)
Setting one own minds in a competitive way, being better than imaginary others instead of improving oneself has no benefit and only harm.
This exact reason is what makes the academia a terrible place where abuses are daily and diffuse, the reasons why young students have to look for the few good advisors, instead of trying to avoid the few bad apples.
ok, I admit I am a bit rough and philosophical.


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Gaining research experience after undergrad
I have a 7.7CGPA (uncurved) from undergrad, 2 internships and therefore my chances of getting into a good CS Phd program are pretty slim. I can get a recommendation letter from the CTO of the startup - he is an academic from a top-institution(Duke PHD, Harvard Medical School researcher, MIT research scientist) but I don't think that would help much.
I am wondering what would be a viable way to get research experience after undergrad. I am also wondering if I'd be credited if I only help around with the code on some research project?
Additionally, if yes, how do I go about doing that? Is it just emailing some professors and asking them if they need help on some programming related to some research?
Thanks in advance.
Addendum: I am currently based in Europe.

Can't you ask the CTO to refer you to his connections in academia?

Cold emails are almost certainly going to be ineffective. The recipient doesn't know you or know anything about you other than what you say.
If you really want to do something, then get into a graduate program.
Failing that option, talk to one or more of your undergraduate professors about your needs. Perhaps they have something that you could work on with them.
But your previous professors hopefully also have contacts in academia elsewhere and they can recommend you to a colleague and it will be more likely to be acknowledged. If I get an email from you, I will probably ignore it. If I get an email from a previous contact/colleague who is recommending you to me then I will certainly follow up on it, even possibly by setting up a chain of recommenders.
As far as "credit" goes, I think that depends mostly on what impression you give in any project you attach to and what the PI of the project is willing to say about you. A line in the CV is fine, but a recommendation from an academic may carry much more weight.
You don't say what your long term goals are in the question. I suggest that you think about that. Where would you like to see yourself in five years? Ten?

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Do we have any software to check plagiarism in SOPs and LORs?
Softwares like Turnitin and IThenticate serve the purpose for the plagiarism check of the documents, but they have their own databases to check from and compare with the provided document.
According to the https://uwaterloo.ca/academic-integrity/integrity-instructors-and-tas/turnitin-and-ithenticate,

Turnitin can be used as both a plagiarism tool and an educational tool. Turnitin generates ‘similarity reports’ on student submissions which can provide instructors with information about plagiarized sources. The reports can also be used as part of a formative or low-stakes assessment to help students understand the proper use of quotation marks, how to cite sources properly, and how to paraphrase.

iThenticate is plagiarism detection software that is designed to be used by researchers to ensure the originality of written work before publication. For example, graduate students and researchers can check their articles and book chapters to be submitted for publication, grant proposals, theses and dissertations.

These softwares are usually not available to the working professionals outside academia.
Are there any good softwares which can be used to check plagiarism in LORs and SOPs?

Authors should never need to use software to check for plagiarism.

@ Anonymous Physicist, why so?

@DeepakTatyajiAhire Because if you wrote a paper, you wrote it yourself, and then it will not contain parts which have been plagiarized from somewhere else. You shouldn't take someone else's paper - regardless how well it is written - and start to change it until it no longer looks like plagiarized.  Same solds for SOPs and so forth.

@DanielHatton Song tunes are rather different from several page long scientific papers. No-one is talking about having one sentence or so identical to a sentence found somewhere else.  Differently speaking: Any kind of "unintentional plagiarism" as you describe is not plagiarism.  It's the kind of thing which you know when you see it.

@DanielHatton Yes, but here we are not talking about copying, but about accidentally writing the very same sentence.  This can happen for a reasonably short sentence, but not for a longer part of the text consisting of several sentences.  So I think one can credibly distinguish if one accidentally wrote the same text, or if one actually copied the text, even if unintentionally.

@DanielHatton I'd say this only applies if you have a photographis memory. Otherwise, if you made very detailed excerpts and then "paraphrased" them literally, this is somewhat intentional.

In my field, SOP = standard operating procedure!? Is that what you mean?

@cbeleites Statement of purpose? (i.e. research statement)

If a statement of purpose or a letter of recommendation is so generic that it could legitimately have been written about two different applicants, it's a pretty bad one to start with. I honestly don't see the point. And to answer the question, no, to my knowledge, there is no such database.

Note that since statements of purpose contain personal information, building such a database would likely be illegal in various jurisdictions including most of the EU.

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Do postdoctoral positions come with unemployment insurance once contracts end?
I am wondering if postdoctoral positions come with unemployment insurance. I specifically want to know about this in UK and Canada. I know research positions in Germany for instance benefit from public service rules. Therefore, one can claim insurance in Germany after postdoc contracts end.
More specifically,

does EPSRC-funded projects in the UK include unemployment insurance?
does Mitacs-funded projects in Canada include unemployment insurance?

UK and Canada are probably not the same.

@Buffy How are they different. For example, does EPSRC-funded projects include unemployment insurance?

As, typically, a limited-term employment position, that seems unlikely to be the case. When your contract ends, well, it ends. Also understand that being terminated for cause does not trigger unemployment benefits.

The unemployment benefits in Germany have nothing to do with whether your employed by the government or not (there are some exceptions for Beamte, but that should not affect post-docs). In short, if you worked the required 12 months in the last two years and did not cause the end of employment yourself, you are eligible for benefits. The end of a limited contract simply does not count as your fault in Germany.

@mlk Yes, that's right. Therefore, after your postdoc ends you can get unemployment benefits from German government. But, in the UK and Canada, I could not find any information; and there seems to be no benefit.

@JonCuster, that looks like a US answer. I doubt that it travels very far. The social safety net here is one of the worst in the developed world.

I can't say how they are different, but the educational system and the social benefits system of UK and Canada are likely very different. And different from the US as well. I just suggest that an answer for one might not be valid for the other.

@mlk: Just for the sake of completeness, I'd add the following remark to your  comment (though your comment reflects the situation in Germany quite well, of course): It does indeed happen sometimes - though quite rarely in my experience - that postdocs in Germany are employed as "Beamte auf Zeit" (and in this case, they don't actually get unemployment insurance - which is arguably quite bizarre). I know one such case myself, and I've heard of other cases. too.

@Buffy wrt to the US, unemployment insurance is a total scam.  The school bus drivers in my city filed for unemployment b/c during the pandemic they were laid off.  The state has ordered most of them to pay back their benefits b/c "they had a limited-term employment position".  Now everyone is wondering why the school district can not hire enough drivers.  I would just assume that US post-docs do not get unemployment.

@mlk: if you cancel the employment contract in Germany, there's a 3 months "ban" on unemployment benefits (like for not notifying the unemployment office 3 months before the end of your contract), but after that they kick in as usual. Note though, that canceling a fixed term contract from employee side can be difficult (unless the employee can show a better contract which gives them a right to get the old contract canceled - but that's obviously irrelevant for unemployment benefit considerations)

For the UK, your visa is connected to your contract. Once the contract ends, you must leave the country (unless you have found another contract and obtained another visa). If you legally stay in the UK long enough through a series of contracts to get residency/citizenship then you would be eligible for benefits like anyone else. There is no real concept of 'unemployment insurance' because your unemployment benefits are not associated with your employer in the first place.

Aha, that explains a lot.

Strictly there is a general concept of 'unemployment insurance', https://www.money.co.uk/income-protection-insurance/unemployment-insurance.htm but only as a private plan bought from an insurer paying out if you unexpectedly become unemployed through no fault of your own (effectively a bet that you're going to lose your job). It's not something people would generally pay for, and a short term Post Doc would be unlikely to find someone to cover them.

A UK postdoc does not come with any dedicated 'unemployment insurance'. However, a postdoc who has reached the end of their contract would (unless otherwise ineligible) be able to claim government unemployment benefits.

Does that apply to visa holders as well as residents? IIRC, the notion of "citizen" is different in UK than elsewhere.

@Buffy It's complicated. I think it basically applies while you have a right to live and work in the UK. If your presence is tied to a visa that is tied to a specific job, maybe not. On the other hand it is available to non-citizens if they are otherwise entitled to work. Anyone with non-standard circumstances would be well advised to investigate the details well before they come to rely on this.

Perhaps you should update your answer with the caveats.


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Plagarsim check
Could your own preprints of the same paper on arXiv and other sites be considered as plagiarism when the journal checks this paper using, for example, Turnitin plagiarism program?

I suppose that an automated system might flag it, but a person would certainly recognize what happened.
However, note that some journals won't accept a paper that has appeared on arXiv or elsewhere prior to submission. Some will place a copy there after acceptance, but they want to control access themselves.
But in any case, it isn't plagiarism.

Thanks for the great help


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I was invited to give a conference talk: What should I ask beforehand?
I recently gave a talk at one international (virtual) conference, a couple days later I was invited to give a talk to another (virtual) conference. The scope of the second conference is more localized both geographically and on the topic and it is in 4 months.
I would like to learn and interact with members of the organization behind the second conference, so I have accepted their invitation. We are now discussing the topic of my talk.
Maybe they are being polite, but they insist on me asking any question I might have. Is there anything I should be aware before the conference? What is important to know before the conference starts?

How much time I have?
Who's my audience?
Who are the other speakers? (To avoid topic overlapping)
Will the talk be recorded? (It is not important I guess but a possible question to ask)
Is there a backup solution in case of Internet disconnection? (for example pre-recorded videos)

@Younes Your comment could well make an answer ;-)

Possible questions I could think of:

How much time do I have for the presentation and how much time remains for discussion?
Who's my audience? It is good to know what would be interesting for your audience.
Who are the other speakers? (To avoid topic overlapping; if you know that Prof. X who is an expert in Y will give a talk, you would choose a different topic because it is highly likely that X will give a talk in that area)
Will the talk be recorded? (If you want to publish it on your own blog/channel)
Is there a backup solution in case of internet disconnection? (for example pre-recorded videos). I attended a conference a few weeks ago where the invited speaker -voluntarily- pre-recorded his presentation in case he cannot make it live.
When and at what time my talk will take place? (In case it is not decided yet and you want to plan other things)

EDIT (relevant for offline events)

What will I be expected to pay for/what are the organisers willing to cover/waive? (Meeting registration? Abstract fees? Travel + accommodation?)

Less relevant to virtual conferences, but: What will I be expected to pay for/what are the organisers willing to cover/waive? (Meeting registration? Abstract fees? Travel + accommodation?)

@avid If you don't mind, I would add it to the answer!

Many thanks for the quick comment and answer, on their first message they already provide an audience description. I found the duration time looking at their past conference schedule and they confirmed already the time. I asked for the other speakers but they are still checking which other keynotes can present. I'm not specially bothered on the time of the talk, but good points about the technical side. Would it be impolite to ask if I can participate of the whole conference?

@llrs "Would it be impolite to ask if I can participate in the whole conference?" I would say the opposite because it shows interest in the conference.

Ask about copyright and the implications of it if you want to use this in future.


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Will online certificates help me switch majors in grad admissions?
I am a physics bsc 2nd year in a decent(not top) Indian Uni. I now have realised that I like math more than physics and want to do a masters in math abroad. I cannot switch majors and I can only take introductory group theory and real anaysis from the math dept. (Also intro probability, diff.eq, multivar calc etc mandatory for physics. Also 2 'math methods for physics' courses.)
There is this ONLINE portal called NPTEL which offers courses with assignments, proctored exams and a certification with percentage score. The courses are offered by top public Universities in India. Will obtaining these online certificates with good score (in the needed pure math courses) help me attain admission in a good math masters program abroad?
I don't want to waste time and money for this if it is useless.
If not, what must I do? Is there no way?

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3312/how-do-the-completion-of-online-courses-impact-a-masters-application Does this answer your question?

@Allure  No,the OP in that post talked about a proctored exam course.Also the the post is very old. I would like some advice.

I agree with Allure, old as it may be, I encourage you to read the answers to the question. In particularly, anonymous mathematician's answer also addresses the point about examination and grading.

Knowledge is rarely useless so I do not want to discourage you in any way, shape, or form from learning things that are useful to your career as a Mathematician.
For graduate admissions in the United States, you need to have demonstrated capabilities. For most Mathematics departments, a strong undergraduate Physics degree is perfectly acceptable, as the mathematical skills required for the Physics degree are very comparable to the ones in Mathematics. In the US, undergraduate Mathematics classes start with Calculus and only move towards proofs towards the end. At my university, the first course with proofs is the Discrete Mathematics class, where induction proofs are taught (among other things), which is taken at the end of the second year.
Unlike the Indian system, the Western systems allow more flexibility in switching careers. Of course, a pre-law student wanting to get into a graduate program in Mathematics might face some difficulties. You can look at the GRE subject topics to see what is expected from Mathematics graduate students. You should also look at some target universities in the US and see what they require, so that would probably involve writing to the director of graduate admissions.
In my (not often very humble) opinion, you would do best to select one of these additional classes per year or semester and do well in them. This gives you an opportunity to try out your new-found interest in Mathematics, show that you are a serious student, and might allow you to get a good letter of recommendation from outside your university. But make sure that you do not drop your grades in your Physics program.
Here is what I found from UC San Diego, which is quite good:

A Bachelor's degree in Mathematics is recommended or a strong background in mathematics with a minimum GPA of 3.0 required.
A year's sequence in both upper-division algebra and real analysis is strongly encouraged.

Thank you very much. But I have some questions: 1) Will NPTEL make any considerable difference? Of course knowledge is good, but I'd much rather learn from a book than a course. Also the exam costs good fee. | 2)Are not the grad courses really competitive?Will I stand a chance against actual math majors?|3)Do you know about european, especially German public schools?

Look, you need to do your homework. Check out a few schools and see what they want.

For UCSD, Algebra and Real Analysis would be very helpful.

At least in this year, in math, in the U.S., certificates about on-line learning do not carry much weight at all, because there's not even a hint of quality control... and grad admissions people do not want to have to do research about the substance of these things.
Also, currently, these on-line certification thingies seem to be dominantly profit-driven, and, thus, have motivation to give sufficient certificates to keep people signing up. One might argue that the same is true of universities... but the admissions filter at universities' grad programs is highly non-trivial. E.g., offering to pay the tuition does not guarantee admission.

Will having a good undergrad research  profile be better than doing these courses?

Yes, undergrad research is better than certificates, at least for now... :)


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Should a graduating doctoral student "care" about his or her advisor's tenure considerations?
I am a doctoral student in a large state university in the eastern US. I'm in my final year of work and will likely defend my dissertation shortly. I already have a job in "industry" (i.e. non-academia) lined up.
My advisor would prefer that I stay for another semester to finish up another publication with him. My contributions to the publication are relatively minimal now, but I am the last remaining person on the project that knows any of the details about it. My advisor, while topically knowledgeable about the subject, would need to put in significantly more time to produce the paper.
Because I anticipated this, I wrote a document to allow for a transfer of knowledge to anyone who joins the project when I leave. It assumes the person is familiar with Python, R, or MatLab. My advisor knows none of those languages, so he cannot immediately pick up the work himself.
Long story short, my advisor wants me to stay and finish up one last project with him so he can include it in his portfolio for tenure. If I leave before the project is complete, he will likely be unable to complete the project in time to have it considered for his tenure evaluation. This would weaken his tenure application and could also lead to the loss of a grant.
As such, he offered me a small stipend of $5000 or so to stay on and complete the paper with him. I would need to turn down a job offer that would likely pay four times that, plus an offer that would place me in a long term job in a field I want to be in. I would also have to go without dental and vision insurance for another semester.
Is there a tactful way to tell my advisor I really couldn't care less if he doesn't obtain tenure because of this? It's not that I hate my advisor, but I'm not exactly thrilled at the prospect of still having to work under him. (Especially for a quarter of the salary.) It's nothing personal, it's just that I don't want to write a paper for the advisor just so that he can obtain tenure.
In all, how much I care about my advisor obtaining tenure?

Added While it may be feasible for me to contribute to the project while also working in a full time position, this is not a desirable outcome. To be blunt, my advisor should have figured this situation out before now. He has had several opportunities to become involved in this project more fully. He has resisted learning the necessary theory and technology relevant to the project. As can be inferred by his current pursuit of tenure, we are not talking about someone who technology has passed by. If you got a PhD after 2010, yet cannot deign to learn new technology....it's hard for me to feel very inclined to continue to help you write a paper that you should be able to oversee on your own. Ultimately, I am wondering how I should go about telling my advisor that I am not going to become more involved in a project at the very end of my work with him, when I in fact want to distance myself from working with him in the future.

Do not say anything along the lines of 'I couldn't care less about your tenure', regardless of how it's worded. That's horrifically rude and disregards the years your adviser as worked to get you to the point of completing your doctoral studies. You simply have to say to them that you cannot reject this offer and that you will be taking it. Why do you have to remain in the group to complete the paper, if your contribution is so small?

Not knowing any of Python, R, or Matlab would put a person in a very vulnerable situation, in any case! Some "prior error"...

I would take the job and work on the side to help finish the paper.

I"d say help your adviser as much as you reasonably can, but what he's asking of you isn't reasonable. How long would it take to do the work he wants if you did it in your spare time? (And I really mean "spare" --- not giving up sleeping, eating, and everything else.) If it could reasonably be done in time for his tenure and grant applications, then go ahead and help. But don't give up your new job for this.

$20,000 is not a lot of money.  You are worth a lot more than that.  I would not sacrifice yourself for your adviser, but I would not make a firm commitment to that $20,000 position either.  Keep shopping.

Why do you have to "stay"?  Can't you finish up the paper while employed?

Why don't you want to finish the paper parrallel to work? It might turn out useful for your own resume. If it's a promising paper even for his tenure, it should be great for you.

@TheDoctor The job may not allow that if the work is related to what might go into the paper.

@user30031 I don't believe that there is a 'tactful' way to say that, which is why I said to avoid saying anything of the kind.

I don't know your advisor, obviously, but this sounds a bit fishy, to me. It's hard to believe that one more paper will have a significant impact on his tenure prospects. Do you think he would use the tenure issue as ploy to get you to stay (so that he doesn't have to get his hands dirty learning how to write code). Is he that kind of guy?

Can you clarify what the terms of the $5000 stipend would be? Is it $5000 for some fixed term, $5000 to stay until the paper is finished (however long that might take), or something else?

@bubba, given our relatively low publication counts compared to the other sciences, it is definitely true that one paper more or less can make a difference to tenure chances.  (I don't know the quality of the large state university, but it can be a dramatic difference in second- or third-tier places.)

@tilper the problem as already stated is that the new employer may want to own the rights of what is produced during employment.

@tilper : It is usually a quite big workload on a professor to find someone suitable for a spot. How is someone with much smaller network of connections gonna be able to do that better?

I think your approach to this situation is a bit misguided. Yes, you should absolutely care about your advisor’s success (and he should care about yours). But “caring” doesn’t mean that you should sacrifice your own career and self-interest to the cause of helping your advisor, just as, by the same token, I wouldn’t expect your advisor to sacrifice himself for you either. Thus, the way you frame the question as a dichotomy between the extremes of “couldn’t care less” and “will do anything to help my advisor get tenure” is a false dichotomy.
The truth lies somewhere in between those extremes, but broadly speaking I tend to agree with your assessment that the advisor is unreasonable to have an expectation that you will defer the launch of your career for a semester and give up money, health insurance and professional opportunities to stick around and help him finish a project that is no longer a priority for you, for whatever reason. You need to stand up for yourself and explain what your priorities are. But do it in a civil and polite way that shows that you are grateful for the mentoring and other help he has given you (and may yet give in the future through letters of reference etc). Don’t say you don’t care (and better yet, don’t even think it). Do say that you would be willing to make reasonable efforts to ensure a smooth handoff of the project, as you seem to have been doing already. And finally, as @aeismaeil said in his answer, don’t mention the tenure or the grant, since they are simply irrelevant to the discussion. Good luck!

And if the professor seems still concerned about their own tenure, maybe it's worth it to suggest that having a successful student with a good career track (right out of the gate, too) is a good mark on their record.

You should have some concern for your advisor's tenure considerations—inasmuch as having a successful advisor helps your reputation as well (helpful if you're a young researcher)! However, that does not give your advisor the right to treat you as a "wage slave" or under substandard conditions claiming "it's for tenure."
I would address this by saying that you'd like to help him complete the paper but you've already made plans to move on that can't be postponed. Don't mention the tenure issue unless your advisor brings it up. It's an extraneous detail—you wouldn't really stick around to work if the paper weren't for tenure, so it's not a germane issue here.
But one other question remains: is there a way you could help out without staying on? Could you help "advise" the replacement, whoever that may be, to get up to speed faster?

Your advisor put himself into this situation. There are a number of very serious mistakes on his part here:

He's down to one person that knows anything about the paper, and that person didn't do any of the work. This was highly foreseeable; he should have made arrangements to hire someone else and ensure a smooth tradeoff (as you yourself made arrangements to do).
He doesn't know enough about the paper to take over himself. How it's possible that he doesn't know any of those languages is beyond me.
He didn't communicate his desire for that student to stick around until they had already made other plans.
Having realized that he is in this position, he offers you only $5,000. In my (STEM) experience, students in this position are generally offered a post-doc with a salary that, while less than industry, does reflect your professional status (i.e., several times what he is offering you)

There are only two options here:

If this one paper is so significant that he loses tenure over it, then it's ridiculous that he let it come to this. Frankly, he deserves to lose tenure.
If this paper is not so significant that he loses tenure over this, then you shouldn't waste time either.

So, my view is that you should care (in the sense of being willing to change your own plans) very little. My answer might be different if you wanted to stay in academia, just because you might need to preserve a good relationship with him at all cost.
If you are willing to take a post-doc equivalent (if such a thing even exists where you are), or if you'd be willing to work on this in your spare time once you start your new job, then you can offer as much. Otherwise, you can just say something like "I understand this puts you in a tight position, but I've been very clear with you about my plans to take a job starting on [date], and I'm afraid it wouldn't be practical for me to stay here for another semester." If he is at all reasonable, he will understand that turning down a good job in your field making good money for a $5K stipend would be crazy.

It may be $5000/month, which in my experience is the right ballpark for postdoc salaries in some fields but still substantially less than industry salaries.

@PeterShor Considering that the other job offer apparently only pays four times that, I should hope it's per month.  I have a hard time imagining a PhD industry position that only pays $20k per year.

I assume the $5,000 covers the extra semester in question, which would be about $15K per year, assuming the university uses fall, spring, and summer semesters. That sucks! Though I had said this was low by a factor of 10, which was a bit too strong, updated my answer.

@cag51 Yes. the $5,000 is for May through August. RAships usually pay around that much at my university. Thank goodness that I was mostly privately funded.

Is there a tactful way to tell the advisor you really could care less if he does not obtain tenure because of this?

No, of course not.  There's no tactful way to ever tell someone you don't care about them or their success.
However, you should consider mitigating the blow.  There are many people who continue to work on research after their defense, and there's nothing (that you've told us, anyway) that would prevent you from continuing to support your advisor once you leave.
As such I'd suggest the following:

You've asked me to stay on and help you complete this paper.  Unfortunately I'm not able to do so.  I've provided enough information to hand it off to another student, and I hope you can find a replacement for me.  However, if you cannot I'm available to continue working on this remotely for the paper as a paid research consultant. I do want to see this paper published, but it's not ready yet and I cannot place my career on hold for one paper.

This should provide the necessary support he's requesting without you putting yourself on hold, and should supplement your income during the time he's asking for your continued assistance. It makes it clear that while the ball is in his court regarding finding a replacement or using you remotely, there is no option for you to stay.
You should discuss this with the company you're joining, but unless they've hired you specifically for the exact topic of that research paper, they shouldn't have any objections to allowing you to finish it outside working hours.  As long as your time spent is minimal you should be able to do both.

@user30031 I suppose I interpret his statement as 1) not respecting his advisor's needs and 2) requiring that he tell his advisor he doesn't care. Your solution is not to mention whether he cares or not, and to suggest that he does respect his advisor's needs.  However, it's not a bad way to go if his goals are adjusted slightly.  Consider adding your own answer, or upvoting the one closest to your suggestion.

@user30031 That said, you're right, "never say never" and your suggestion does come close to a tactful solution. If the question were, "Is there a tactful way to tell them I'm prioritizing my needs above theirs?" then I would upvote your suggestion.

Is there a tactful way to tell my advisor I really couldn't care less
  if he doesn't obtain tenure because of this? It's not that I hate my
  advisor, but I'm not exactly thrilled at the prospect of still having
  to work under him. (Especially for a quarter of the salary.) It's
  nothing personal, it's just that I don't want to write a paper for the
  advisor just so that he can obtain tenure.

Setting aside the substance of your question (which is pretty trivial in any case) I think this kind of talk betrays a really repugnant attitude.  It is perfectly reasonable to want to accept a desirable job offer over a substantially less desirable offer, and it is a trivial task for a mature person to figure out an appropriate way to communicate that.  But to say that you "couldn't care less" about the success of a person who has spent 3-4 years of his time advising and teaching you on a one-on-one basis is really quite vile.
Supervising a PhD student is a lot of work and often that work does not contribute substantially to your own academic career.  Your supervisor certainly has no right to your future employment, but I would expect there would be some degree of appreciation shown in the way you talk about him.  You say you're not thrilled about the prospect of still having to work under him, like this is some kind of prison sentence he imposed on you during your candidature.  No, you "worked under him" because he was kind enough to act as your supervisor in a degree program you chose to enrol in.
Care or don't care about your advisor obtaining tenure.  But take a good hard look in the mirror.

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Shortlisting criteria for an oversubscribed course: first-come-first-served vs grade point and classroom diversity
I teach an advanced Engineering elective course which has a mixed audience of Junior (3rd year) and Seinor (4th year) undergrads and some Grad students.   Since it is a interactive course with a lot of project based work etc. we are typically constrained to accepting not more than about 30 students (for reasons of grading time, vivas etc).
Somehow the course has gotten popular and we get many more students wanting to take the course. I wanted feedback on how other instructors handle this sort of situation.
The default at our University's online registration system is a first-come-first-served which I don't like so much. I am tending towards a grade point based shortlisting criteria (which is a lot of work since the registration system is not geared to handle this so I must do the shortlisting manually) but I also like to have a fairly even split between 3rd years / 4th years and Grad students since it makes for a better discussion and project groups. Maybe think of it as a classroom diversity of perspective.
Just curious to hear thought from others about shortlisting criteria and how much of "instructor discretion" vs a hard constraint / criterion is good.  Sometimes I get students who seem really interested (or have some past background which makes for a demonstrable interest in this course area) but may not get in according to a grade point shortlisting criterion. Is it ok to make such exemptions and allow them to register?
I guess, what's the tradeoff between some sort of objective "fairness" and a subjective evaluation by instructor.

What is CPI? ..

If you have actual authority to set your own criteria, don't neglect that some students may actually need the course to avoid a delay in their graduation. But, your chair and/or dean may need to be consulted before you implement anything. They can give you valid answers, whereas we cannot.

Does your university have regulations on this?  In the US context individual instructors typically have little or no control over these situations.

The main problems with doing something unusual are that it is unfamiliar to your students, which could cause consternation if they feel they didn't receive enough info about how to get into your class, especially if it caused problems with their graduation plans.
At universities I'm familiar with, registration is allowed for grad students first, followed by seniors, then juniors, down the line. It would be really unfortunate to choose a third-year for the last spot and force a senior to take another year or semester because they couldn't get into your class because they had incomplete information.
"Instructor discretion" sounds like a recipe for mishandling individual qualifications, whether you want to talk about inherent bias or lack of information (GPA seems far too coarse for this).
A couple of simple ways to address your problem:

Split grad students into a separate grad student class that meets at the same time with the undergrads.
If you can in your registration system, reserve spots for non-seniors (common at universities I'm familiar with). While within-year, it would still be first-come-first-served, you would achieve your goal of having both third- and fourth-years.

Finally, I think having an application system would be OK, but it needs to be handled transparently and early so students can plan their schedule; i.e. your application is due early enough so that you can select your students before the earliest registration date. Ideally, you should have a second person help you evaluate. This also lets you ask for cover letters and CVs. You should be clear you are reserving, say, 10 spots for third-years. Then, you just lock registration and give codes to the students whom you selected.

"Default" may not mean "required".

@Buffy I agree, but I'm not sure what your bigger point is.

You used the word "subverting" which may be too strong. While I agree that your suggested policy is probably a good one, the professor may or may not have the authority to implement it. Work it out with the chair.

@Buffy Ok - edited. Probably can't get too much more specific without knowing exactly what their uni's registration system allows.

My main point was not to tell students to sign up/waitlist and then pick; that's really unfair and could be a headache for the students involved if they aren't picked.

I'm a bit bemused that you think instruction discretion is a recipe for disaster. I mean won't post their degree hiring be mostly based upon interviewer discretion? Why do we not trust instructors to make these choices?

@curious I don't think very many people think interviews are inherently fair or unbiased or even good. And besides, I only said that because you only proposed looking at GPA

Sure. I appreciate your inputs! No offense intended!

This is something individual instructors should not be deciding.
There are university-wide course requirements that students must meet to get their degrees.  There must be university-wide policies to ensure that students can register for courses that meet those requirements.  That policy should be enforced by the registration software, not instructors.  The details of the policy should vary by institution.


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May a PhD be more practical than theoretical?
I'm thinking about pursue my studies and doing a PhD in information technology.
My problem is that I would like to create something new (== write code), and focus my thesis on how this new technology works (each component and global interactions), what it can do, and how it can evolves / be improved.
I'm not against doing research, reading books and work on theory - but I want to be more practical than theoretical.
I'm starting to think that a PhD is not a valid option if my goal is to develop something new instead of conducting pure research. Am I wrong ?
About my cursus: I will receive my master degree soon (~= 3 months). I come from a highly technical background, with 5 years of programming and project management.

Edit & more information
My university doesn't offers PhD courses, thus my supervisor don't care about   my choices. Another consequence is that I have no other choices than to go to another university.

@EnergyNumbers My university doesn't offers PhD courses, thus my supervisor don't really care about my choices...
About the why I want a PhD: I like to learn and to stay awake the whole night trying to understand why things doesn't work and how to improve them. I also like to teach. Working in the industry is not exciting.

To be awarded a Phd, you can't just build something: there has to be some sort of novel research component. PhD's are all about asking (and answering!) questions, not just engineering solutions to a problem.
However, there is absolutely nothing wrong with creating something new as a part of your PhD, so long as it helps you answer a research question. For example:

Does this algorithm improve the speed/reliability/accuracy with which this data can be proccessed compared to existing techniques?
Does this new collaborative learning tool improve a student's ability to learn a language compared to working individually?
Does this new system for visualising a data structure affect the way in which users perceive/engage with it?

Note that these are far too broad to be used in practice, but they might give you an idea of the types of questions that can be asked.

Yes, a PhD can in principle be based upon practical work. For example, some people study laboratory-based chemistry. However, it's all stuff that no one has tried before, and there is usually some significant work to do in order to model and understand what we see. That is the crux of a PhD: do new stuff. Whether your PhD is just crunching equations, or throwing stuff into a vacuum and then figuring out what on earth just happened, it doesn't really matter.
Your idea sounds (at least to a complete non-expert) to be far too broad, and I'm not sure it's very novel. This is what a PhD is like. If you think you can do that, start by talking to a few professors in your department. You may not end up working for them -- and it's often a good idea to do your PhD at a different university -- but you know them, they know you, and you should get some solid advice.

I understand the problem about how I explained my idea in my question, and it has been edited ( I didn't want to go out of subject by describing my thesis project here).

"My supervisors don't care" – does that mean they don't even want to give you advice!? Unless they actually feel unqualified (i.e. what you want to do is too far outside their field of expertise), that seems rather unprofessional.

What you've described doesn't sound like what my institution would consider a PhD. Or even research. And a PhD is a research degree. As is an EngD, so it's not that either. There are some doctorates that are given for a portfolio of original work, such as the DSci : a decade or two or world-class work in your portfolio might get you that.
If you're deadly serious about developing the theoretical grounding of how it works, what it can do, how it can be extended, then that make up a doctorate.
But it's probably worth stepping back and asking why you want a further degree at all. From what you've written, it sounds more like you just want to write code and document it.

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text:
How to highlight a novel dataset creation in a research paper?
I'm currently working on a minor problem in information extraction. The idea behind the system is relatively simple and contains small modifications of existing algorithms. However in the process, I ended up creating a whole new dataset of a different kind - which did not exist before. This dataset would foster new novel research in my subdomain (call it problem X).
How can I stress the quality of my data and upcoming innovations it can drive and inspire rather than worrying about the simplicity of my algorithms (and reiteration and experimentation of other non-novel ideas)? There has been lot of significant research in problem X recently and my method doesn't stand anywhere in comparison with state of the art.
However I expect some great upcoming works (from the whole research community) in Problem X in upcoming couple of years. If I don't publish this dataset, someone else would definitely produce something similar within a year (think of it as need of the hour) along with some hi-fi "mathy" solutions to Problem X though I just experimented with existing data mining tools and libraries.
I have one more week to go. What should I do that would improve my chances of getting this simple work on Problem X but with an awesome new dataset published?
EDIT:

Raw data of this kind is available publicly in massive amount but considered as noise, though it's easy for human perception and conveys a lot of sense.
My contribution in creating dataset is annotations and analysis (basic statistical distributions etc)
My approach to solve Problem X is not mathematically complex - but at par with regular Tier-II papers being published in this area.
There IS a need of this kind of systems in the industry. (any citations would disclose my solution)

"This dataset would foster new novel research in my subdomain". How do you know that? Data (in CS) is not created out of thin air. If you used well known public data to produce something extraordinary then the data-creation process is worth publishing. If you have access to data that nobody else has, then there is nothing to publish. What is your case?

Thanks @Alexandros . This comment gave me tips on how to present myself...

Meanwhile, (1) The data is accessible to public, in seriously huge volume (2) Data of this kind is usually regarded as noise, though humans understand it very well. (3) Required manual annotations

Make your paper a data paper, and add in the bit about the simple algorithm into the introduction. That way, you put your data front and centre.
And then see the answers to Data publication basics - where, why, how, and when should I publish my unpublished data? for how to release the data for the whole community to access: doing this is almost always a requirement for getting a data-paper published.

If I understand your approach correctly, you want to write a (weak) research paper basically as an excuse to publish a data set. Your hope is that people will review the paper and get persuaded by the valuable data to accept it despite relatively uninspiring technical content. Further, you hope that your data set will actually lead to substantial impact, even if the paper ideas themselves won't.
I have to say, I tried similar things in the past. It never worked. There are a number of issues:

People don't typically think like that. A reviewer tasked with reviewing your paper will foremost review the paper. (S)he may or may not even notice that your paper, if accepted, would also release an important data set to the wild. Even if (s)he does, it is unlikely that this will change the review outcome much.
Even if your paper passes through peer review, there is a high chance that your data set won't be noticed by the community if it is "hidden" in a weak paper. Nowaydays, most fields have way too many papers published to read, or even be aware of, all of them. Weak papers tend to be published, glanced over, and forgotten. Most researchers won't look for the data set published along a paper that they consider not very useful.
You say that "expect some great upcoming works" from the research community related to your data set. There is a good chance that, even if true, this is not very obvious to other researchers yet. Basically, for many researchers, it will not be enough to just give them a data set that has data for A, B, C, and (now new!) X. You also need to inspire them with a great new algorithm, technique, analysis, whatever that makes use of X in combination of A, B, and C that this new data actually opens up new avenues for research. If everybody already knows that X will be the next hot thing, and X is also not extremely hard or expensive to get, then I am wondering why you happen to be sitting on this elusive data set and other research groups are not.

What you really should do is think about this last item yourself, and then work on a great paper using your data. If you think you can't do parts of the paper project yourself, try to get collaborators on board. If you can't convince collaborators that this is valuable data / research, then ... well, then you need to revisit whether you are not overestimating the value of your data in the first place.
Alternatively, there are some venues that publish artefact-only papers, where the "paper" is basically just a description of the data set and the real value comes from an indexed and archived listing of data. One example in my field is the PESOS workshop, which used to run a "Quest for Case Studies". However, in practice, the impact of data sets published like this was generally extremely low, in part because of the problem I mentioned in my third item above. Publishing cool new data is often not enough - you also want to convince people that new, interesting research can be done with the data, and this works best by starting to do such research yourself.

"However, in practice, the impact of data sets published like this was generally extremely low" - possibly, this is community-specific, but my impression is that dataset papers in the Semantic Web community are quite well-received. Possibly, that is because all datasets published there generally share one of a few common data formats (or are already set up as ready-to-use public endpoints).

@xLeitix That's what I explained. Other research groups have also just started working in this area - though I've been working on this for six months now - they are larger groups, have greater knowledge and expertise. My system is not as complex as they might get - but I have the benefit of starting early. Think of it as a race to novelty.

@O.R.Mapper can you please explain a little more on "ready-to-use public endpoints"? I think you got what I'm trying to explain.

@Aditya: In the Semantic Web field, SPARQL is the de-facto standard query language. With such a uniform standard in place, arbitrary datasets can be made accessible on public URLs that anyone can send SPARQL queries to and retrieve results from, which in turn means that datasets published like that can directly be used via standardized interfaces without any import or conversion.


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Lab colleague uses cracked software. Should I report it?
I've just (accidentally) found that one of our colleagues in the lab (who is a graduate student) uses a cracked piece of software on his personal laptop (We were talking near his station and a pop up went up and warned about the fake license of the software).
The software is an expensive one whose student version is freely available on our shared server; however, the student version's features are often not sufficient for our tasks. So I realize that he might have to do this to handle his job. I don't know if the supervisor is aware of this.
All in all, as it's not acceptable to ignore the copyright, should I report this issue to any responsible sector?

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. Further comments will just be deleted, as they can't be moved to chat more than once.

I don't feel that general academic ethics obliges you to report this, unless you have reason to believe that it might be endangering the research of the lab (giving inaccurate results, introducing viruses to lab computers, etc).
You will have to make your own judgment as to whether you are obliged to report by any of the following: your own personal code of ethics, your institution's policies, your lab's internal policies, your PI's expectations, threat of lawsuit from the software vendor, your local law, or likely consequences from any of the above for failing to report.  You could also consider whether to warn your colleague and give them a chance to remove the cracked software before reporting them.  But all of that is beyond the scope of this site.

cracked software has hard-to-detect anti-features bug (example cracked version of a engineering software may use in computations slight less material resitance, so that buildings created with it have a greater cost, or just more material resistance so that buildings you create with it just implodes because computations are wrong

@DarioOO I doubt that. If someone built a building using said software and someone died to the incorrect calculations I'm pretty sure the software house would risk a lot, even if the software was pirated. In any case,fun fact: I know a software house released a pirated version of their own game about software houses, and in the pirated version they changed a few parameters so that it was impossible to proceed further than a certain point in the game because all the games you tried to produce in-game were pirated and you couldn't sell the copies of the game to anyone.

@Bakuriu oh yeah, I remember hearing about that! Wasn't that one of those facebook type games where you make and sell things to customers?

@Bakuriu to sue someone over their product you must have a contract with them. Pirated software is not a contract.

@NajibIdrissi Ethical or not, be aware that such measures are not unheard of.

@NajibIdrissi booby-trapping is an intentional action. How do you prove a software bug is intentional? Anyway, engineers design buildings, not software packages, and if a court discovers that engineers designed a house that collapsed using cracked software, those guys do risk prison sentences for negligence.

@NajibIdrissi Also, have you ever read a software license? Did you ever come across the lines "THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES ARE DISCLAIMED"? They are there exactly for this reason: to protect the authors against such kinds of prosecution. If you find this psychopathic, don't click on "I Agree".

@NajibIdrissi Again: software doesn't design buildings, engineers do (and are paid for it). It's their responsibility to make sure they use the right tools, and they will get sued if they don't. Try starting your car without the key by shorting some wires, making an accident and then complaining against the car manufacturer that your brakes didn't work.

@NajibIdrissi My car actually locks the steering wheel if it detects the key is not there, which certainly that can lead to a crash if happens while driving. This is an intentional "booby trap" to prevent car theft. But I'm pretty sure I'll be screwed if my insurance finds out I was driving without the key. Same as you, I'm wondering if we're from the same planet.

@DmitryGrigoryev The steering wheel lock is designed to lock the wheel while the car is parked. It should prevent theft, it should not "punish" the thief. If the device would have been designed intentionally to engage while driving, that would lead to the car designer/company being prosecuted for homicide (if the thief died). Almost no jurisdiction I know of allows taking the justice in one own hands. The software could legally "call back home" and alert the company, so it could sue the "hacker" or the user, but only a court is allowed to dispense a penalty.

@DmitryGrigoryev BTW, there was not so long ago the FTDI scandal, where a software driver intentionally damaged products containing a counterfeit chip, instead of simply refusing to work with that product. It has brought shame on FTDI.

@DarioOO - "cracked software has hard-to-detect anti-features bug..." If the software can detect that it has been cracked, then it will (should) be able to make the software non operational, or force it to operate in a time-limited "trial" mode, or something similar. If, instead, the software creators intentionally cause the software to silently fail in a way that is destructive to life or property, then they bear some responsibility for the outcome. Of course, the software user who used the unlicensed software will likely have some responsibility as well.

nope, if the software stop working istantaneously, crakers will just investigate to find why it don't work. If the bug is hard to detect crakers will just release it as "OK". Also there's no one preventing crakers to introduce new bugs (willingly or unwillingly). We had a teacher showing how the craked version messed up mechanical resistance of a gear.

I would stay away from his "personal laptop" in the future and avoid peeking at other people's "very personal" screens. It is not your job to report this. And you should not be looking at other people's screens. He decided to use the software on his personal station, not on the resources of the university, so it is none of your concern. It is a typical "none of your business" case.

Not quite, since the laptop is used in university premises. What if the software reports its cracked status from the university's IP address, and their IT department gets contacted by the software manufacturer?

@DmitryGrigoryev Still not the OP's problem. The IT department may decide to track down the infringer, not the OP. And I fail to see why a piece of software would decide to report its cracked status home with IP and all, instead of simply refusing to start on the user's computer.

@T.Verron What about illegal downloads? Alcohol? Recreational drugs? Where do you draw the line? Concerning the second point, you report cracked status so you can take legal action, isn't that obvious?

@DmitryGrigoryev To each his own, but I draw the line where it starts to impact me or the overall quality of the work directly, aka where it becomes my problem. E.g. alcohol while working, or downloads slowing down the network for everyone. Also, it may depend on your country: maybe some countries require by law that illegal behavior be reported.

Because it is not a grievious offence. You can download pirated software, if you buy a license it is no longer a problem, if the origin is problematic(download site) you can make a checksum check (md5, sha256). Why would it be a crime to have a license that is expired? oh i get around to it at the end o the month or the next. As a software publisher you often do not want the customer to uninstall the software, because then you risk is much higher that the user will find an alternative. So yeah it is counterproductive to think of it as a huge deal and a larger crime.

Clarification: i do not think there is a law that states specifically after how long the license expires, that it becomes illegal to have the software installed.

@cognacc So, you draw the line at grievous offences, and apparently this opinion is shared by many people in academia. I must say I'm surprised, but oh well.

Alternate scenario: "I noticed my colleague uses the word password for his password.  Should I report this security issue?"  Personal computers are the responsibility of the person using it, not nosy people around it.

"you should not be looking at other people's screens" -- I've had a colleague literally standing behind me staring at my screen (uninvited) while I was working. I so much hate it when people do that.

Are you sure it is cracked software ? A 'warning' popup could just be phishing malware and you might expect that a feature to detect piracy would just shut the application down rather than just issue a warning. Equally it could be a prompt to upgrade to a different version or just an expired demo version which is no longer usable.
Perhaps a more immediate issue is if you aren't legitimately being given the right tools for that research you are doing.
Equally you are not really under any obligation to report possible civil crimes on the basis of fairly slim evidence (what you have said here probably wouldn't stand up in court) and if it is a student using a commercial version of software which has a free student version we are talking about quite a fine ethical line in the sense that it may be just illegal but it is unlikely that anybody really cares.
While I would certainly not advocate using pirated software this is still at the stage of an suspicion and any formal accusation is either going to result in nothing happening or a lot of trouble for your colleagues to no real constructive purpose.
It is also worth considering that the software distributor may not really care about personal use of unauthorised copies by students as they are really in the business of providing bulk licenses and technical support to commercial users but would be compelled to prosecute if it was bought to their attention.
As an aside we can also speculate that providers of software who want to make it the industry standard are fairly keen for students an academic researchers to use it and get to know it, which is why they provide free academic versions. We could even speculate further that this is why this is why they are not quite as rigorous as they perhaps could be in embedding anti-piracy features. while they can't be seen to give away the full version they may not care too much (an may not want to find out) if the odd junior researcher sneaks a cracked copy even though this is clearly wrong and not to be recommended.

would be compelled to prosecute if it was brought to their attention -- that's not how law works, at least where I live. It's always the choice of the damaged part to sue or not.

They might be compelled in the sense that not prosecuting known infringements of IP rights can be seen as tacit permission which opens up a whole can of worms for them

"they can't be seen to give away the full version" Some do, if you ask nicely. :)

+1 For pointing out that a pop up means nothing. Sometimes you get them with the proper license too.

"you might expect that a feature to detect piracy would just shut the application down rather than just issue a warning" Actually, any software developer worth their salt who wishes to engage in licensing knows that they're better off doing it this way.

Before telling anyone, consider what would happen if he, or other grad students, found out you were the snitch.  You'll have to work with these people for years to come, and there is no such thing as "anonymous reporting."  You'll have to make a judgement call as to if you want to get involved.
If you choose to get involved, do not mention anything in email, go directly to YOUR supervisor.  Explain what YOU have seen, and do not mention hear-say.  After this, it's in your supervisors hands, don't mention it again.

+1, exactly. Such a person would not be feeling very welcome in many organizations afterwards. They may also easily lose some reputation with the supervisor – if nothing else, because they are putting extra unpleasant and nonacademic work / responsibility on them.

The key here is 'personal laptop' which I assume means 'purchased with personal, not university funds'.  Here's the reason:
The penalty levied on any institution for evidence of pirated software can be huge, including fees and/or restricted access to said software. (Imagine Microsoft decided to revoke all license for Word. They likely wouldn't, but they can according to their license agreement).
If it were an institutional computer, as a representative of your institution you'd be doing them a favor by alerting someone (anyone) above you. But this seems not the case. If it is a personal laptop, the onus is no longer on you. That person could still pay a penalty, though unlikely, but that would be outside the bounds of your duty to protect the interests of your institution.

Piracy cases are often tracked by IP address, which in this case will be identified with the university, so you can still get the institution in trouble even if the computer is your own.

@DmitryGrigoryev When you write that "[p]iracy cases are often tracked by IP address", do you mean downloading pirate software or using pirate software? If the first, there is nothing in what the OP writes that suggest his colleague downloaded it using the university's network, and if the second could you please provide a source for a case in which someone is tracked via their IP by simply using pirate software?

@gilberto.agostinho.f Ever heard of windows genuine advantage? Here's a court case: Microsoft is tackling a Windows 7 pirate (with help from logged IPs)

Still, the student may (probably?) have signed "I won't use cracked software" with their paperwork connecting them to the lab - which will influence how much responsibility is assigned to the university.

@DmitryGrigoryev But that case involve an operating system, not a software. If I understand the OP correctly, he is talking about a specific software (e.g. Autocad, MS Word, Photoshop etc.) and I have never heard of a single case in which someone got tracked using pirate version of those via their IP addresses, which is what you seem to have stated above.

@gilberto.agostinho.f: No one will take you seriously when you say things like "an operating system, not a software".  Operating system software is software.

@Ben Voigt You are complete right about an OS being a software, my mistake. What I mean to say was that the OP speaks of application programs as opposed to OSes. I don't know if "no one will take me seriously" as you say, but what I argue is that besides the odd case of a pirate OS copy being tracked down via the IP address during the activation (and more specifically, Windows OS) I have never heard of a similar case involving an application program, at least as of 2016. I would be happy to change my view if a case disproving it is provided, by right now I think this is only scaremongering.

@gilberto.agostinho.f So the mechanisms for tracking crackers by IP address do exist. I'm not sure if it will be any consolation to the OP's colleague if they are the first to be brought to court over application software piracy.

@gilberto.agostinho.f: "To deter piracy, Adobe makes its installation disks "phone home" via the Internet to verify themselves."

Have you considered simply talking to your colleague about the issue?
I don't agree that this is "none of your business" case, since the computer is used in university lab, most probably connected to university network. So the university is affected by whatever risks cracked software may bear (viruses and such), and any piracy tracking will probably identify the offender as having university IP address. This may result in trouble for both your colleague and the university.
However, without solid proof you should not assume anything. Ask your colleague about the software. Chances are, they have a reasonable explanation for the error message you've seen: they may have a legit free trial version which expired, connection issues preventing license validation, missing license token etc. If they admit using cracked software, tell them it's against university policies (it almost certainly is), and give them a chance to fix the situation.
Escalating the issue right away and without warning will not win you any friends (not even your supervisor). Additionally, discovering cracked software on someone's personal laptop may lead to question about your own ethics. Depending on how you present the situation, you may be seen as either accusing someone without sufficient proof, or accessing someone's computer without permission.

This is the obvious and only correct answer, from my viewpoint.  It's not that hard to talk to your colleague.  Moreover, it doesn't get them in trouble, it doesn't remove your option of reporting them, and it could, all by itself, have the desired effect that they will decide that it's really not okay to use cracked software (since they feel the peer pressure), and stop using it.  Without getting any legal action or disciplinary action involved.  +1, wish I could upvote this multiple times.

There are certainly scenarios where a warning message may appear when in fact the software has been legitimately purchased. Assuming that cracked software is being used is wrong and could have unpleasant repercussions.

It is not your job to enforce or report copyright law so you should not report it. Contrary to what others say here you are not complicit in a crime because it is a matter of civil law and not criminal law, so you have no obligation to do so. Legal matters aside, reporting a colleague will make it hard for you to find support in your future academic life, which is critical for all but the most trivial assignments.

I know there are a lot of answers here, and most of them are the same.  I'm going to go a different direction.
It is entirely possible that the software is
a) demo
b) just expired
c) actually legally purchased and the warning is an error
d) legally purchased, however the person cracks it to avoid a dongle, CD check   or something else archaic and disruptive.
e) something that they purchased from a non-reputable vendor and they didn't know
f) some other plausible deniability.
Thus the result is a recommendation the same as above.  "Not my circus, not my monkeys."

Ask yourself:
Is it my business?
If no, it's a sign that you might be procrastinating. Strictly forbid yourself to do anything in this case.
If yes, ask yourself why? Would this fact affect you in a positive or in a negative way? Answering this question will provide you with a hint on what to do next, if at all. Just for the sake of an example, if it is the case that using the cracked software might really become visible over the net such that the police might come and seize the equipment including the one you need for your research, then you should probably talk to the colleague and then to his/her boss.  But things might be different if software cracking is a part of research activity; then your colleague publishes on that and gets grant proposals accepted; you should support that to the extent permitted by the law!

I wouldn't care much if an individual has been using the software for the personal needs. Even software vendors themselves are not interested in punishing a single person. There is no real value for them in making a precedent: upon receiving a miserable surcharge they loose time, resources and often gain negative reputation (vendor vs institution is a different story though).
Sooner or later this person is going to present the results of his/her work in a form of annual report, presentation, paper, etc. If a paid version of program has been used for conducting a research, it always shows, and people from the same field will always be aware of what piece of software has been utilized.
Assuming you care about this person and you want to help, I'd suggest to show him/her some free open-source alternatives. Show the benefits of reproducible research. Sometimes people use the cracked version not because they are evil, but because they are lazy and don't want to check out for the optimal tools, downloading the first program Google spoonfed them with.
If you want to make it public, on the next group meeting congratulate the person on the achievements and ask politely how this, that or the other has been achieved (which algorightm, how it's been plotted etc.), forcing the person either to lie, or to evade the questions entirely. If the people around are literate, invested and pay attention, they will get your message. If they aren't, your accusation-driven report won't change anything anyway.
I see only one reason you need to report to your supervisor explicitly: if you have to collaborate with that individual and you cannot perform your part because you also need to use that pirated program to process the data. Otherwise I'd say it's none of my business. I get my own life and I'd better think for myself.

You should immediately contact the responsible authorities, and report what you have seen, otherwise you will definitely be complicit in a crime, and could yourself be prosecuted for failing to act. This is called 'accessory after the fact'. You should not put yourself at risk by remaining quiet. Remember Edmund Burke's adage "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing".
Nobody should be doing research with pirated or cracked software; it is unethical, and the results will be compromised. No cure for cancer was ever developed by criminal software thieves.
Erich Mielke

Accessory after the fact for using pirated software?! Show me one case law precedent on this.

You sound like the OP just witnessed a school shooting.

obligatory reading material https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

Downvoted for factual incorrectness. This is a matter of civil law, not criminal law.

While (as?) this sounds perfectly in line with what "the original" Erich Mielke would have liked (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Mielke) - is this a troll post?

@cbeleites yes, it's obviously meant ironically.

Seriously?! "Complicit in a crime"?! You made my day buddy :)) Really funny guy...

Report it to the vendor. They are the victim. If this is MATLAB, then it can be reported on the following web page:
https://www.mathworks.com/company/aboutus/policies_statements/report_piracy.html

It is supremely ironic that the scale of votes on these answers is inversely proportional to the correct action. So, the most unethical answer gets the most votes, the wishy washy kind-of-anonymously-report-it-to-vague-authorities gets a few votes, and the recommendation to report to the correct entity which will take positive action gets downvoted.


text:
Changing PhD topic and effect on career
I'm a PhD student in my third year (4-6 is common in my country) and seriously consider abandoning my current topic.
The new topic is in the same general field (CS related), yet in a vastly different domain and would need a quite different methods. My advisor suggested this switch, he could keep me funded in both cases, yet probably better with the new topic.
Arguments for switching are both personal interest in the new topic (it's recently trending, I was interested from the beginning, yet few positions were available) and lack of progress in the current area:

I could produce some publications, yet not up to my advisors expectations (should be easier with the new topic, given the impact factors of the journals my advisor suggested)
For the last 6-8 month I made barely any progress (lots of failed experiments)
I would probably have to abandon my current methods anyway due to 1./2., so half a year or so will be lost learning new methods no matter how I decide

Yet I shy away from switching, mainly due to already being quite old (combination of personal problems and a switch of my major as an undergraduate) and fearing how my C.V. would look if I did take about a year longer and had this second switch...
Thanks for any input.

Beware of the «the grass is always greener» fallacy when switching subjects. What is your precise question?

It's more about the long term effect of making such a switch. I should probably add my field (CS related) for further context. I think/hope I'm aware of the fallacy, yet I'm rather confident about the new topic being easier to publish in (remarks from advisor about desired venues and their impact factors).

"the new topic being easier to publish in" The notion that there are high-impact journals that are rather easy to publish in seems somewhat contradictory. In my experience, literally every venue that is well-respected is also hard to get into.

The new topic is not as competitive/established, so its top venues are easier to get in.

For the last 6-8 month I made barely any progress (lots of failed
  experiments)

This sounds like you have not treated your prelims as a contract negotiation.
The best advice I've received is that when you pitch your thesis topic to the committee, make sure that everyone agrees on the structure and methodologies involved. That way, if your work falters or your experiments fail, but you followed the guidance outlined by your committee, then you have still earned a pass.
Another piece of great advice is this: nobody is going to read your thesis.
Do not switch your program and do not start over, just complete the tasks you were given and move on. If you decide to switch fields later on, fine... that's normal, reasonable, and expected.
And just because you're studying one thing in school doesn't mean that's what you have to do for the rest of your life. There have been plenty of PhDs that completely jumped fields of study, out of CS and into sociology for example... or vice versa. Besides, the latest rage these days is adding "multi-disciplinary" to your grant proposals.

This is frankly horrible advice, particularly if there is a publication requirement for graduation. If the experiments fail or the work falters, there are no publications, and you can't "earn a pass." Moreover, sometimes there isn't a "pitch to the thesis committee" until close to graduation. So there might be plenty of time for things to go south before the thesis committee gets involved.

@aeismail Like it or not, the fact is that a publication requirement for program completion is more of the exception than the norm. And if you're pitching your thesis right before graduation, that's in poor taste.

@Alexandros there are multiple ways to get a PhD in CS, and CS isn't a unique or magical program in academia. I've seen all engineering programs - not just  CS - require either a dissertation bundled from multiple publications or a single body of work. It usually boils down to whats easiest for the student and the committee agrees on.

@Alexandros My program didn't require it. I just looked at Stanford's and didn't see a requirement. Are you talking about a conference paper? I haven't read of a requirement for a conference paper, but I know that conference papers are more common in CS programs. Regardless, conference paper != a peer reviewed journal publication.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

I've added links to support my advice and will also include another Academia discussion about the value of conference papers as publications. You can make up your own mind, but my understanding from looking at several top ranked program requirements is that (1) publications are not a universal requirement and (2) conference papers do not carry the same weight or prestige as a journal article. http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18349/difference-between-conference-paper-and-journal-paper

I think this may be valid advice if the OP has no interest to stay in academia. If (s)he wants to, then finishing a bad thesis is career suicide while nobody cares if you spent more time on your thesis.

@xLeitix Since I'm not interested in a faculty position, that's the perspective I tend to hold, but more than once and by academics on all levels, when I've asked the question (I was quite nervous about this my first year), they've all said nobody cares about the dissertation beyond that it was completed. That advice is echoed in the link I provided above for "nobody is going to read your thesis". Since I haven't been on the faculty hiring side... I can't say this is a universal truth, but I've also never been told "your thesis will affect your ability to be hired".

@Twitch I think that's true in the most literal sense (most people don't care about the thesis text per se), but very wrong in a practical sense (the papers you wrote as part of your thesis are by and far the most important part of any postdoc or faculty application).

@xLeitix Is there any other source of information that you could provide that says the thesis is critical? Aside from that link, here's advice from a UCSB CS faculty member that says it isn't important: http://bit.ly/1FsbHSr ... and this one from a USC faculty member: http://bit.ly/1ALOOfM

@Twitch I only checked the first link, but it says exactly what I said. The thesis is not important per se, but publications done as part of your thesis work are. However, if you "barely make any progress" with "lots of failed experiments", where would these great publications come from?

@xLeitix OP stated s/he could produce publications. There is no reason they have to be great, just enough to get the PhD and move on. I think the OP can always look for a post-doc fellowship and pursue better publications if seeking a faculty position.

Sadly the process in my country does not necessarily involve a formal proposal (the one for the new topic would involve something similar) and no committee – my PhD is pretty much given at my advisors whim.

Most people won't care.
The time to PhD isn't really considered all that important unless it's highly anomalous (much shorter or longer than standard), and if you get good publications out of it, nobody is going to make a big deal about switching topics. It happens for all kinds of reasons—funding changes, or because the original project doesn't pan out for whatever reason (technical or logistical).
It will also not impact your career much, unless you're planning to continue studying one of those areas as your post-graduation career. Again, the overall quality tends to matter much more than the actual topic in most cases (particularly if you're moving into a different area from your graduate work).

Thank you very much for your feedback. Any idea if this is also true for industry careers?

Again, I think it's not important, unless you're being trained in a topic the particular business you're applying to is interested in.


text:
Does presenting results in conference and publishing in unreviewed proceedings prevent better publications?
Recently I have been attending a couple of conferences/workshops, presenting my latest results in oral and poster sessions. I really enjoyed doing that and the following live discussions.
However the proceedings of these conferences are not reviewed and for many people they do not count as "real" publications. I wouldn't like to stop going to conferences, discussing with people and collecting the visibility that arises from this, but on the other hand I also wouldn't like to waste my precious results in publications that are not seen as serious enough.
What is the best practice in this case?
I spoke with people saying that they do not even bother about writing workshop proceedings, but I don't feel quite comfortable with this approach.
My field is accelerator physics, especially machine design and beam dynamics simulations.

What field are you in?

If only journal publications actually count (for getting a PHD, tenure or promotion) in your discipline, stick with those. Traveling and conferences are fun but you must first do the work you are paid to do and helps your career and then do the fun part. You can always present your already published results in conferences, since from what you said, it sounds that most conferences in your discipline do not have formal proceeding and do allow that.

The main method of dissemination in physics is through arXiv and comparable initiatives, so I am fairly sure most physics journals don't make problems out of unreviewed prior 'publications' these days.

While I do not know accelerator physics in particular, for most fields and most journals, a non-reviewed publication does not count as prior publication.  If this is the case for accelerator physics as well, then putting an extended abstract in a non-reviewed conference will not block you from publishing an improved full paper in a journal later.  The prior version should be explicitly acknowledged in the journal submission.
The other reason that you might end up with less publications is internal rather than external: once you've put it out and gotten your feedback, you might not feel as strong an urge to do a formal peer-reviewed publication.  If this is the case, then you need to ask yourself whether this is actually a problem for you or not.  I, for example, have a number of publications that have never gone beyond technical reports or white-papers, but am comfortable with that because I think most of them did not need to have a full publication, and I've got enough others.  If you are a person who has difficulty motivating yourself to writing up results for peer review, however, you may want to consider the spur to publication as valuable and therefore avoid the non-peer-reviewed pre-publications.

Being in my early career I actually need and want to publish as much as the good results I can produce! Knowing that non-reviewed publication does not count as prior publication and do not prevent them is encouraging.

@DarioP it's not that simple. Non-reviewed publication can count as prior publication, and can prevent further publication. It depends on a bunch of factors.

@EnergyNumbers How could I understand that before investing a lot of time in preparing the journal paper based on previous non-reviewed publication(s)?

@DarioP Every journal should give guidance on what is allowed, in terms of duplication of a previously presented work. Dependent on the norms in their particular field, they generally allow it, as long as some percentage of the journal paper is new material.

On a bit of a tangent: going to conferences can allow you to build up relationships with other researchers, perhaps more senior (in the sense of having more publications). If there is good feeling between you, perhaps a co-authored journal publication can come out of that. The coffee break is a good opportunity to liaison.

@DarioP talk to your editor. They're almost always human.