I have to second this comment. Brown is a great school that will allow you to take whatever courses you want (outside those required for your major). No general education requirements.

I think Oberlin might also allow complete freedom of course choices outside your major.

The problem as I see it is that this service will probably have the same crummy collection of old and/or b-movies and tv series that Netflix has...

Gotta disagree with this. Netflix prices have only been going up, and it seems to be due to the cost of streaming content. I've never found the streaming selection useful and the video quality is generally just not up to par. I subscribe for access to Blu-ray and DVDs and wish they would offer a disk only plan without the streaming costs. I've actually just put my plan on hold and am thinking about canceling due to the price levels...

True, but from a user's point of view they just want to get the functionality they need. If IT can not provide it, or an alternative, in a timely manner (no matter reason) then the user will go and figure out a workaround. Most people have more important things to do with their time then argue with IT about their need for some feature / go up the ladder to request a feature... Plus your suggested approach will often take a significant amount of time to accomplish anything. (I'm not saying though that this is relevant for the poster's situation.)

Equally likely is that the poster has suffered through delays in getting IT to process even the simplest of requests in the past and didn't feel like waiting months to get a basic calendaring system setup... I've been at some places where minor requests take weeks and multiple email reminders to get processed, while at other places the IT department is great with quick turnaround. It all depends on the people in the IT department...

With that said, the poster certainly should have first asked IT about implementing such a system (assuming he didn't).

The problem here is that in some work places IT is completely unresponsive to these types of requests. He needs a calendar system setup in a timely manner, not after contacting IT multiple times, speaking with different people up the ladder, and repeatedly having to babysit IT to make sure they are actually doing anything with his request. I'm not saying this is how it is at your work place (or even most), but I would guess his reluctance is due to slow IT response at his work place... I know that I've had good IT admins in the past at some work places, where requests are processed in a day or two, and slow IT admins where the simplest of requests can take weeks and repeated emails on my part for anything to be done. When one gets in the later situation eventually the "just get it done" mentality takes over and one does it themselves...

A certain subset of people, myself included, would drop Netflix if they eliminated dvds / blu-ray. They may not see a revenue increase in response to such a move (at least, not in the short term).

Great way to kill time (and annoy other people) back in the cs lab...

I shouldn't have to get dosed with xrays to fly. Do you really trust TSA workers to properly calibrate the machines? Medical physicists routinely mess up their calibrations (see recent NYTimes articles)... More than that, why do you trust the manufacturer claims that the amount of radiation one receives is so small as to be completely safe. We've seen on Slashdot how poorly the computer based voting machines the government buys work. It seems perfectly possible these devices could be just as poorly made...

Keep in mind the reference is not just function definitions. The main content is actually approximations to functions (asymptotic, series, and polynomial) and various formulas involving relationships between functions.