Comment Make your own (Score 5, Informative) 140
http://www.instructables.com/id/Making-A-Glove-Work-With-A-Touch-Screen/
The main problem is that I am not learning anything. I have several years' experience with Web design, yet I was not allowed to bypass Intro to Web Design 1. Similarly, there are other classes on my list that will teach me very little I don't already know, yet will cost me money all the same. Now, I do have a great desire to learn and to further myself academically, but I just don't see much value in continuing to take classes I could have aced in ninth grade. It is also difficult when fellow classmates clearly have very little intelligent input to offer
Hey, welcome to college! Going to an online school might have lowered the standards a bit, but it's all part of the same experience.
The truth is that academically most of college in just highschool part 2. For anyone who is getting a degree in a field that is already their passion & hobby (e.g. someone who has invested 10000+ hours of personal time into programming and then goes for a computer science degree), it's only in the final 1 or 2 years that the coursework is even worthwhile. The rest of the time is spent underachieving because the content is so rudimentary that you can't even stay focused. You think the colleges want you to just buy the quality courses at the end? Hell no, they want you for 2-4 years of tuition!... errr I mean "broadening experience!"
Furthermore there are always a few assholes in the class who think they know more than the professor, and take every opportunity to bicker with them about each point. You may know a lot about the current subject, but most of the professors are teaching way below their knowledge level anyways... So that's a check on "incompetent classmates" too (not even mentioning the ridiculous amounts of cheating that goes on to pass tests that have no practical value except testing your ability to remember things)
So yeah... welcome to college. If you want a real higher-learning environment, go for a masters and then a Ph.D with a quality advisor. First though, you need to get to that point... and a lot of us call it quits after a bachelors anyways ("it's good enough, and I can't bear another semester")
Academically and averaged out over the entire experience, college (bachelors level) is a waste of time. A lot of people don't even work in the field they got their degree in -- I learned hardly any practical knowledge in college courses that relates to my current job... Of course, it's not all bad -- you do learn how to learn (supposedly), and you learn rigor (lab reports, etc), and you do get a bit of exposure to other interesting fields. Furthermore, if you're not an hermit, you can have a great time with social life. Well maybe that last bit isn't quite applicable to you.
Summary: tough it out and get a degree, then forget the experience and get a well-paying job. You can be bitter all you want afterwards, but at least you'll have a good salary
They truly do believe you can get 10 mbps for 80 bucks a month. Guess what, there is no way you can actually get such a connection.
Actually you CAN get bandwidth that cheap in the datacenter, granted that all the infrastructure is easier to implement than running last-mile lines...
Here are some convenient wholesale numbers from a couple years ago:
http://gigaom.com/2008/10/07/wholesale-internet-bandwidth-prices-keep-falling/
And I personally buy bandwidth for even cheaper, though not as much of it... I buy for roughly $5.50 per Mbps (up to 10Mbps), and though the SLA is not as strong as if I purchased a wholesale connection like an ISP would, it is *effectively* 99.999% reliable and I effectively DO get all the bandwidth I pay for (e.g. if it's oversold, then someone else is subsidizing my bandwidth, because it doesn't seem oversold to me). Not to mention the fact that my cost covers maintenance of the datacenter (power, cooling, security, employees, etc) and their peering...
http://www.ixquick.com/ -- there ya go.
You can even google it
But.. then google would know that you're googling for a non-google google! *head explodes*
I still wouldn't use my banking info on my phone regardless, since a phone is so easily losable, and locking/unlocking the data everytime with a secure passphrase would probably be too inconvenient.
Factorials were someone's attempt to make math LOOK exciting.