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michael_dorfmanon People paid us $10,000 last week to learn how to program. Lessons learned...

but a professor can’t just teach a few calculus courses without being affiliated with a university?

There's nothing stopping a professor from doing just that; there's no legal requirement that all calculus courses be affiliated with a university.

However, there seem to be some very good reasons (some market-based, in fact) why this is not the business model most professors choose.

michael_dorfmanon The Demon Machine

Henry Kissinger has famously said that power is better than sex. Well, clearly he isn't a programmer!

Actually, what Kissinger famously said was that power was the ultimate aphrodisiac, which is something somewhat different. I imagine he is describing it as a one-way function...

michael_dorfmanon Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

Sure; but if you are presenting in public, it isn't your own 'offended' threshold that should be operative, it is that of your audience. And, even there, you probably don't want to shoot for the middle of the pack there-- offending, say, half of your audience wouldn't be much of a success in most contexts. So, while you might not want to scrub down your presentation to a point where no one is offended, you still probably want to stay away from sexual images involving farm animals. Just sayin'.

michael_dorfmanon Ask HN: How to initiate telling your competition to buy your startup?

There's no magic here; either will do.

If it were me, I'd pick up the phone, but I'm old-school.

Something like "Hello, my name is temp9900-- I'm the guy who created XYZ. Do you know it? I've been thinking about the future of the site, and I wonder if you'd have any interest in buying it outright. I have NN subscribers, and generate $XX revenue each month on expenses of $YY, and I currently sink about ZZ hours a month into it. Interested?"

michael_dorfmanon Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

There's a lot of things besides nudity that can render an image inappropriate for use in a conference presentation, and judging from the description in the linked article (There was one image of a pig indulging in sexual activity with a goose...), I don't think it's unreasonable to expect people to be offended.

michael_dorfmanon Royal Society journal archive made permanently free to access

Seriously? Did you even look at the pages in question?

They are reproductions of the originals, and maintain the original fonts and orthography. This includes the long s, as well as certain ligatures (like ct), and has absolutely nothing to do with their choice of OCR software. In fact, there's no indication that OCR software was used at all.

michael_dorfmanon The World's First Bitcoin Conference

Which is why currencies are customarily tied to entities that can do things like fight wars and build roads and enforce taxation, and not pseudonymous cryptography researchers on the internet.

michael_dorfmanon Hacked

It's you. James Fallows has been writing tech stuff for the Atlantic for decades.

michael_dorfmanon Shuttleworth reaffirms Canonical's lead design role in Ubuntu

Meaning changes, but that doesn't mean that it is impossible for a native speaker to make an error. In this case, the phrase has a well-documented meaning (and a long history), and the usage here is clearly a misuse.

michael_dorfmanon "Embarrassing" open problems in maths

Used for?

Many problems in math have no intended practical uses (although uses, funnily enough, tend to turn up in time.)

Knowing what it might be used for really doesn't usually offer any special insight into the nature of the problem, nor how to solve it.

michael_dorfmanon Shuttleworth reaffirms Canonical's lead design role in Ubuntu

I know it is a trivial point, but it's annoying to see somebody as bright as Shuttleworth misuse the phrase "begs the question."

michael_dorfmanon Ada Lovelace Day

I was just about to ask if this was one of your projects.

michael_dorfmanon Why there's no Nobel Prize in Computing

Next up: why Shakespeare never wrote a play about the Internet.

Now, if you want to discuss why there is no Nobel Prize in Mathematics...

michael_dorfmanon Realtime web analytics service UserLook

Please don't astroturf questions and answers like this. It's completely transparent, and leaves a negative impression.

michael_dorfmanon Ask HN; How do you get people to do stuff?

You've got two different problems here.

In the first situation (i.e., trying to find a partner) the problem isn't "getting people to do stuff", it's "finding the right partner." If the people you are talking to aren't sharing your enthusiasm (and willingness to work), there's not a good fit. Either change the idea, or change the people you approach.

In the second case, at work: here it depends on what your role is. If you are not a manager, it's not your job to get people to do stuff-- just do what you are assigned, and if it seems appropriate, take initiative and do more. Don't worry about what the others are doing. If, on the other hand, you are a manager: well, then you have bigger problems than a simple post to HN is likely to fix.

michael_dorfmanon IEEE Refuses to Accept Public-Domain Papers?

Quality comes from the authors and the volunteers who peer review submissions, not from copyright

This is true. But that does not mean that the publisher provides minimal value; it's worth remembering that Knuth lobbied hard to get the Journal of Algorithms moved from Elsevier to the ACM (where it became TALG) due to issues of copyright and pricing.

The ACM (and IEEE) are miles above the commercial publishers in this regard.

Plagiarism, or detection of (academic) plagiarism has very little to do with copyright.

The ACM says otherwise, and they are the ones who are actually pursuing cases. I tend to take their word for it.

michael_dorfmanon IEEE Refuses to Accept Public-Domain Papers?

When I look at the quality and quantity of journals in the archives that I get access to for a couple hundred bucks a year, I'm flabbergasted. I only wish there was something similar for the Humanities-- I'd pay in a heartbeat for that.

Elsevier and Springer's pricing, in contrast, is extortionate.

michael_dorfmanon IEEE Refuses to Accept Public-Domain Papers?

The ACM recently published an editorial in the CACM explaining the reasons behind this policy.

Here is a brief excerpt:

By owning exclusive publication rights to articles, ACM is able to develop salable publication products that sustain its top-quality publishing programs and services; ensure access to organized collections by current and future generations of readers; and invest continuously in new titles and in services like referrer-linking, profiling, and metrics, which serve the community. Furthermore, it allows ACM to efficiently clear rights for the creation, dissemination, and translation of collections of articles that benefit the computing community that would be impossible if individual authors or their heirs had to be contacted for permission. Ownership of copyright allows ACM to pursue cases of plagiarism. The number of these handled has been steadily growing; some 20 cases were handled by ACM in the last year. Having ACM investigate and take action removes this burden from our authors, and ACM is more likely to obtain a satisfactory outcome (for example, having the offending material removed from a repository) than an individual.

Personally, I gladly pay money every year to the ACM and the IEEE, as I feel I get excellent value for it. I don't begrudge them their business model, and I don't think there is anything particularly nefarious about their copyright policy (which explicitly allows authors to post freely available copies of their articles for non-commercial purposes.)

michael_dorfmanon λ-virus

That is clever and sinister, and immediately brings to mind "Reflections on Trusting Trust" (http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html)

michael_dorfmanon Spotify now requires a Facebook account to sign up.

You appear to be assuming that getting those licenses is difficult. It really isn't. If Spotify managed it, any competent competitor can also do it -- after all, the labels have no particular loyalty to a small Swedish online radio network.

Spotify is far from a small Swedish online radio network; here in Europe they are far and away the market leader. They have over a million accounts in Norway alone, which is phenomenal penetration in a country of 5 million.

Second, getting those licenses was incredibly difficult for them; the negotiations to enter the US market took several years. There is absolutely no indication that the record labels are prepared to give similar terms, or even any terms at all, to other competitors. Again, here in Europe, I know of several firms attempting to compete with Spotify, and they are getting hung up on precisely this point.

michael_dorfmanon Spotify now requires a Facebook account to sign up.

Desperation? How do you figure? They have a sweet partnership with Facebook. That doesn't sound desperate to me.

Their product is far from unique, and only really interesting because it has better PR, more apps, a better library, and a slightly more legit licensing setup than the competition.

Slightly more legit? I think the phrase you are looking for is "completely legit, as opposed to some of the others who are lawsuit-bait-on-a-stick."

After all, it would be a lot easier for Facebook to replace Spotify with another provider than it would be for Spotify to replace Facebook.

Only if that other provider had the same kind of licenses with the record labels. At this point, Spotify is far ahead of the pack at that game.

michael_dorfmanon Spotify now requires a Facebook account to sign up.

Or that they realize that a tiny but vocal minority is going to gripe about the decision, and that for these folks a work-around might be the best solution.

michael_dorfmanon Why Facebook's 'Frictionless Sharing' violates HTTP

The important distinction here is that the user did not request the side-effects, so therefore cannot be held accountable for them.

But the user did request the side-effects, when he installed the app, and approved the TOS which specifically said that there would be "frictionless sharing".

Personally, I'm not interested in oversharing, so I'll avoid these apps; but, hypothetically speaking, if I were the kind of person who wanted his friends to know what he was listening to on Spotify, it would be a major pain in the ass to have to manually post a separate update to share the title of each song every three minutes. For this use case, it makes much more sense to install an app that will auto-post the songs, giving prior approval up front, and skipping the friction of asking again with each song.

To suggest that this violates HTTP seems more than a bit hyperbolic.

michael_dorfmanon Facebook is scaring me

Bizarre? I can't imagine any other response.

There's no way Facebook (or anybody else) can completely prevent people from making mistakes.

So, the best they can do in that situation is give people an easy way to clean up the mess, and make sure they don't do it again.

michael_dorfmanon This is what happens when one guy practices art every day for nine years

That's the number for deliberate practice.

In other words, every hour of deliberate practice brings the number down exactly one hour.

michael_dorfmanon Why Silverlight was rigged to fail and my time leading it

I read it yesterday, and decided not to post it here for that very reason. I can live with a typo or two, but the error rate on this was so high as to make it difficult to recommend.

michael_dorfmanon Plan 28: Babbage's Analytical Engine project gets underway

Wonderful work, jgc. I remain, as always, impressed by your efforts to bring proper attention and respect to our intellectual forefathers.

A tip of the hat to you, sir.

michael_dorfmanon AnalyticsRock - insightful reports for Google Analytics users (alpha)

Nope, I'm afraid not. If I knew what reports would be useful, I'd probably make them myself.

I'd love to know how I rank for the keywords that bring me traffic, but I'm not sure if there is an easy way to get that from Google.

michael_dorfmanon Dawkins' Stupid People

I'd add Knuth to the list of "very smart, and yet religious" people.

michael_dorfmanon AnalyticsRock - insightful reports for Google Analytics users (alpha)

Very nice. I tried it out, and liked it.

I'd pay for it, if you added other useful reports.

One small thing: on the Search Term Analysis, keywords that did not appear last month show a blank instead of a zero, which makes the "Diff" field show up as NaN. Not a problem, exactly, but I think it would be more useful to show 0, and the difference from zero.