You've got an aggregate function MAX, and a HAVING giving a condition for your groups, and you haven't got a group by??!
Maybe you want to try:
SELECT max(money) FROM ms.customers WHERE ms.customers.cant_read_EULAs = 'T' AND ms.customers.really_wants_to_lose_market = 'T' AND ms.customers.Slammer = 'T';
OR if you want to know for each customer:
SELECT customer, max(money) FROM ms.customers WHERE ms.customers.cant_read_EULAs = 'T' AND ms.customers.really_wants_to_lose_market = 'T' GROUP BY ms.customers.customer HAVING ms.customers.Slammer = 'T';
A slashdot post with syntatically incorrect SQL makes my hair stand on end...
WHY do even the newest PDA's on the market still come with 16mb of memory?
This just isn't true luckily! Hell, every other type of PDA has been storming ahead of Palms.
For example, the Toshiba e570 has been out FOR A YEAR and has 64MB. As well as a full colour 320x240 screen. And an SD card slot. And a compactflash slot.
The problem with this is that if they see revenue go down, they will blame piracy regardless of the actual cause. We've seen this before with piracy being blamed for lack of growth despite an awful economy, the 'war on terrorism', etc.
So if a large group is successful in reducing their revenue through withholding purchases, instead, piracy could well be blamed, making the life of their customers even more difficult, and disregarding even more fair use rights than now.
I have actually looked into this for the purpose of personalization.
There are some steps which are harder than others.
The relatively easy thing to do is build up a representative map of the different emotions and how they relate (sadness negative of happiness for a simple example). It's then fairly easy to get your logical computer to reason about the emotions of someone (the user, say), and react accordingly in the way the program author sees fit.
The hardest thing to do is accurately elicit the emotions of the user. If a website is trying to elicit your emotions, what can it do? It can look at the links you click on - well, that won't get accurate results (unless your links say something like 'click here if you genuinely feel angry at the moment'), and you can measure the length of times between clicks (i.e. they are anxious if they aren't really giving a specific page the time it needs to be read). This, like with the links, is inaccurate because the reason they do something (clicking fast, clicking on specific links) could be completely orthogonal to their emotions. There would be some mileage in having extremely detailed metadata about content viewed, and examining the reactions, but the more subtle emotions would be nigh on impossible to accurately elicit and respond to properly.
The problem is the HCI. If you are manually eliciting emotions from people, that could affect the emotions themselves if it wasn't second nature for them to be open about them to some system. How do we reliably capture emotions, even with some spangly new devices? My guess is that the only way to do this is by analysis of pictures obtained from video feeds trained on someone's face. Though this too has problems - different people show emotions in different ways. Some can shut themselves off emotionally, or don't betray their emotions as much, rendering the situation problematic.
This isn't a flame, it's a standard old fashioned rebuttal.
Your point about pair programming is completely groundless.
Scenario 1 - no pair programming Two bad programmers, bad code One good programmer, one bad programmer, some bad code, some good code.
Scenario 2 - pair programming Two bad programmers, bad code but any mistake either of them see will be removed, improving the quality of the code. One good programmer, one bad programmer, code up to the standard of the good programmer, and the bad programmer learns, hopefully becoming better.
XP does not say 'don't design the overall system' - you are misrepresenting it. A look at this talks about the plan for each release. Sure, bad developers = bad unit tests, but bad developers = bad product, nothing will guard you against that. Nobody said 'Extreme Programming will mean you have no bad developers.'
XP is for hackers who want to improvise, and upon whom nobody relies for their survival. If people built houses, bridges and planes this way we'd all be up in arms about the lack of quality.
This isn't true - XP is no more for hackers than any other type of programmer. At the core of XP is building quality in from the first stages. For example, one of the XP techniques, pair programming, though very intensive, increases quality through a continual peer-review - you have two coders going at the same code on one machine - any line of code that doesn't cut the mustard is more likely to be found.
Additionally, XP tends away from 'big-bang' integration scenarios by having early releases, regardless of size - this means the system is all working together from the beginning, and that bugs residing in different definitions of what an interface 'really' means are found early before they cause problems. If that wasn't enough, there is also a large concentration on testing - before writing the code, XP users are thinking 'how are we going to test this? Exactly? What are the exact criteria for success of this unit?'.
It isn't a tenet of XP that you 'continually change each piece'.
XP isn't a tool for hackers, it's got nothing to do with it. Nobody is saying 'don't design the architecture of your system', nor is anyone saying 'change things around until they work'.
It isn't just you - I find it absolutely incredible that we are now so used to this sort of thing that it doesn't even ring alarm bells.
*THIS IS CORRUPTION*.
When you can change the law to your advantage with money, you are dealing with a corrupt system. A lobbyist isn't supposed to be able to translate money into laws. Laws are supposed to be guided by higher principles than a pocket full of franklin faces.
They are trying to restrict my right to know of a second-hand book for sale, they are trying to restrict the rights of the owner of said book to advertise their sale.
Is it really a human right to 'know of a second-hand book for sale'? Fair enough it's handy, but there's millions of people who probably don't have a way of finding out about second hand books. I don't see them picketing the streets, crying out for their rights to do this! Likewise, if the owner has a book they want to sell, of course they can advertise their sale. It's just if the guild has their way, they can't advertise it right next to the new books in Amazon. I certainly don't believe I have a 'right' to have a book I'm selling placed there.
Now, you are correct about the rights of amazon.com, they can surely advertise anything wherever they want on their site, as long as it doesn't break the law, or go against the conditions dictated to them as a consequence of accepting a contract from publishers, etc.
is that our country was founded on liberalism, a belief in a transcendetal natural law. Liberal notions of rights mean that you cannot use your rights in a way that is detrimental to another's rights.
Though the way I read your definition, it supports the arguments of the poster, and not yours.
Presumably you cannot use your right to redistribute it without her consent, because it would be detrimental to her right to distribute her software licensed in the way she saw fit.
The liberal notions of rights both grant her the ability to do what the hell she wants with her program (her right), and to say 'If you want this program, I will only give it to you, if you abide by this set of conditions' (her right). You are welcome to either accept or reject the proposal (your right).
Rep. Tauzin: Rather be in Pasadena than Russia any day. First, our bill will not kill the competition nor make Bell companies monopolies. If you believe that I have some great waterfront property in Russia to sell you. The truth is our bill will create the first FCC authority to hammer the Bells for any violation of their obligations to open up their local markets to competitors. The FCC currently does not have such authority except when a Bell company seeks access into the long distance market. Secondly, our bill will preserve for the competitive carriers full line sharing rights to the legacy copper networks and will additionally give local competitors rights to use the Bell companies new fiber and hybrid fiber systems for broadband competition purposes at terms and rates set not by the Bell company but by the FCC. That is as fair as it gets.
It's quite interesting reading this. This guy is supposed to represent a group of people, and look at what he says.
He insults a group of people ('If you believe that...'). Why would he insult them? He wants them to lose credibility. What is behind that? They could damage his plans. But unfortunately he doesn't explain why they should believe otherwise, and why his plan is good. If it *was* good, it would be self-evident, and he wouldn't need to discredit people. He doesn't say why they are so gullible to believe their own instincts about the bill, merely that they are.
He uses language that is classically trying to hide something. He talks in terms of results 'First, our bill will...', 'Secondly, our bill will...', 'The truth is our bill will...' Nowhere does he explain how the results will be achieved. Why not? Everybody would believe the results if he explained it, but it is the one thing he doesn't do. He's full of it 'Rather be in Pasadena than Russia any day.'!? Come on, that's just pointless.
Hi there, I've just read your post and take issue both with the content and your tone. I checked out your past history to see whether you were trolling, but it appears not. If you were, excuse me.
1. Several quotes from "www.fuckedcompany.com"
Yeah, there's a good reputable news source.
However, since Eve worked at ArsDigita, she would be well placed to confirm whether they were true or false.
2. I't all the VC's fault.
If ArsDigita was as sucessful and profitable as claimed, why did they need VC's? Why? Because like all the other dot-commers who went bust, they wanted to get richer faster. All her talk about ethics and honesty is just so much hot air. Yes, VC's are evil crooks. But so are you if you get in bed with them.
Wanting to get rich doesn't mean you are a crook. Neither does being a VC. In this case, the VC's didn't look like they were competent and made some catastrophic decisions, but they weren't crooks. Bit it does seem you are a bit too busy with generalizations.
3. "By the end of March 2000, we had 110 employees, 7 offices..."
Why does a company whose business is done solely over the Internet need 7 offices? Typical dot-com mentality. Too many people, too many offices. Appearance is more important than good business practices. It's much more pretigious and gratifying to the ego to be CEO of a 110 person/7 office company rather than a 10 person/1 office compnay. Even if the VC's hadn't killed ArsDigital, when the economy slowed down they would have collapsed under their own bloated weight, just like all the other failed dot-coms.
There aren't many companies that do business solely over the internet. Amazon would probably be a good example of one. ArsDigita isn't a good example of one. In order to work with other companies, they would have to give presentations and provide support to companies on their sites. You seem to place more emphasis on scoring cheap points than actually being correct. If a company like ArsDigita can open an office in the other country, then they can satisfy demands in other countries. They can employ people from these countries, giving them money. (Or is that another example of the dot-com greed you seem so obsessed about?)
4. "Philip was quite happy to let a 'professional manager' step in and take over"
Sure, why not. Why not let somebody else run the compnay. As long as a big fat paycheck is still rolling in, who cares. If Richard Greenspun really cared about ArsDigita as much as he claims, he never would have done this. Just another example of the greedy "I want to get paid to do nothing" attitude that kills many businesses.
'Richard' Greenspun has always been called Philip, because that was his name. The idea actually was that day-to-day administration of the company was to be given to the VC's, enabling Philip to do different sorts of work. Philip, while founding this company, probably worked harder than many of us ever have. There is no evidence for saying what you have done.
In conclusion, it's quite obvious that the founders of AD screwed up and are now trying to pin the blame on someone else.
It may be obvious to you, who has only just now found out about the company, but to those of us who have known about the company since just after it was started, we don't have the same blissful ignorance that you exhibit. The people who started the company have done many worthwhile things, and your rabid accusations sound exceedingly stupid when put against their measured responses.
The nadir of his managerial prowess came in a company-wide letter where he compared the act of writing good software to be similar to the killing of jews in hitler's germany
I agree doing that is absolutely poor form (and kind of shows Godwin's law to be true yet again), but Philip Greenspun is Jewish, so I guess he figured he wasn't going to be accused of being anti-semitic, given his stance on Israel, et al.
...is how much of arsdigita was skill, and how much was dotcom bubble.
Greenspun is right, he and some friends built the company up to be quite formidable. It could be argued that they did this at just the correct time. He personally had a lot of technical insight (as evidenced by his book Philip and Alex's guide to Web Publishing) but was perhaps lacking in business acumen.My own suspicion is if they were still in charge and had *not* gone for funding, the company would still be around. It has been unfortunate watching the company stagnate, and the layman would certainly see the progression of success, funding, stagnation, winding up.
The VC's certainly didn't seem to understand the culture when they took on the company, which led to quite a few people leaving, and disquiet from the people who had previously supported the culture and ethos of the firm. Whether it was this that caused the problems, or the simple fact that the company, once obtaining approximately 30 million, would have to earn that back to be even back to 0, it is difficult to tell.
When Greenspun took on the VC's, which was a gutsy move which ended up in court as fully described here, he failed to take the company back, but it is conjectured that he got a nice settlement in the article.
What do people think? Was his culture a winner? He comes in for quite a bit of stick about his methods to get the best out of software engineers (work them extremely hard, don't give them a family life, but give them fishbowls, toys, and the hope of a ferrari). I personally don't think they should have gone to the VC's but I don't blame him. The idea of cashing out with millions personally would probably make me do the same thing. However, that's the one thing you've got to realise. If you go to VC's, you have got to read the contract, and try to imagine that the impossible could happen.
ArsDigita university was wound up, although you can still access all the lectures on downloadable video (rm format I think), and the reading lists, etc. They will even send you a hard drive with all the lectures on, if you want to give yourself a CS degree =).
Slashdot Mirror
I've got a pocket PC and when I get some money will move my laptop over to being a mac. I found this out, which looks like it might fit the bill:
http://www.pocketmac.net/
Man, I don't know where to start!
You've got an aggregate function MAX, and a HAVING giving a condition for your groups, and you haven't got a group by??!
Maybe you want to try:
SELECT max(money)
FROM ms.customers
WHERE ms.customers.cant_read_EULAs = 'T'
AND ms.customers.really_wants_to_lose_market = 'T'
AND ms.customers.Slammer = 'T';
OR if you want to know for each customer:
SELECT customer, max(money)
FROM ms.customers
WHERE ms.customers.cant_read_EULAs = 'T'
AND ms.customers.really_wants_to_lose_market = 'T'
GROUP BY ms.customers.customer
HAVING ms.customers.Slammer = 'T';
A slashdot post with syntatically incorrect SQL makes my hair stand on end...
thenerd
Or 2+2 exceptionally equalling four.
Either that or his drunk driving conviction in 1976...
This has been moderated as a troll? Passionate maybe, troll no.
But then, guns don't defend people, people defend people.
WHY do even the newest PDA's on the market still come with 16mb of memory?
This just isn't true luckily! Hell, every other type of PDA has been storming ahead of Palms.
For example, the Toshiba e570 has been out FOR A YEAR and has 64MB. As well as a full colour 320x240 screen. And an SD card slot. And a compactflash slot.
What phone is this? Sounds pretty good.
The problem with this is that if they see revenue go down, they will blame piracy regardless of the actual cause. We've seen this before with piracy being blamed for lack of growth despite an awful economy, the 'war on terrorism', etc.
So if a large group is successful in reducing their revenue through withholding purchases, instead, piracy could well be blamed, making the life of their customers even more difficult, and disregarding even more fair use rights than now.
thenerd.
Audiogalaxy?
Why, we used archie!
Kids nowadays!
thenerd.
You are right, this has been the only Jon Katz story I have actually really liked.
Weird!
thenerd.
I have actually looked into this for the purpose of personalization.
There are some steps which are harder than others.
The relatively easy thing to do is build up a representative map of the different emotions and how they relate (sadness negative of happiness for a simple example). It's then fairly easy to get your logical computer to reason about the emotions of someone (the user, say), and react accordingly in the way the program author sees fit.
The hardest thing to do is accurately elicit the emotions of the user. If a website is trying to elicit your emotions, what can it do? It can look at the links you click on - well, that won't get accurate results (unless your links say something like 'click here if you genuinely feel angry at the moment'), and you can measure the length of times between clicks (i.e. they are anxious if they aren't really giving a specific page the time it needs to be read). This, like with the links, is inaccurate because the reason they do something (clicking fast, clicking on specific links) could be completely orthogonal to their emotions. There would be some mileage in having extremely detailed metadata about content viewed, and examining the reactions, but the more subtle emotions would be nigh on impossible to accurately elicit and respond to properly.
The problem is the HCI. If you are manually eliciting emotions from people, that could affect the emotions themselves if it wasn't second nature for them to be open about them to some system. How do we reliably capture emotions, even with some spangly new devices? My guess is that the only way to do this is by analysis of pictures obtained from video feeds trained on someone's face. Though this too has problems - different people show emotions in different ways. Some can shut themselves off emotionally, or don't betray their emotions as much, rendering the situation problematic.
thenerd.
This isn't a flame, it's a standard old fashioned rebuttal.
Your point about pair programming is completely groundless.
Scenario 1 - no pair programming
Two bad programmers, bad code
One good programmer, one bad programmer, some bad code, some good code.
Scenario 2 - pair programming
Two bad programmers, bad code but any mistake either of them see will be removed, improving the quality of the code.
One good programmer, one bad programmer, code up to the standard of the good programmer, and the bad programmer learns, hopefully becoming better.
XP does not say 'don't design the overall system' - you are misrepresenting it. A look at this talks about the plan for each release. Sure, bad developers = bad unit tests, but bad developers = bad product, nothing will guard you against that. Nobody said 'Extreme Programming will mean you have no bad developers.'
thenerd.
XP is for hackers who want to improvise, and upon whom nobody relies for their survival. If people built houses, bridges and planes this way we'd all be up in arms about the lack of quality.
This isn't true - XP is no more for hackers than any other type of programmer. At the core of XP is building quality in from the first stages. For example, one of the XP techniques, pair programming, though very intensive, increases quality through a continual peer-review - you have two coders going at the same code on one machine - any line of code that doesn't cut the mustard is more likely to be found.
Additionally, XP tends away from 'big-bang' integration scenarios by having early releases, regardless of size - this means the system is all working together from the beginning, and that bugs residing in different definitions of what an interface 'really' means are found early before they cause problems. If that wasn't enough, there is also a large concentration on testing - before writing the code, XP users are thinking 'how are we going to test this? Exactly? What are the exact criteria for success of this unit?'.
It isn't a tenet of XP that you 'continually change each piece'.
XP isn't a tool for hackers, it's got nothing to do with it. Nobody is saying 'don't design the architecture of your system', nor is anyone saying 'change things around until they work'.
thenerd.
It isn't just you - I find it absolutely incredible that we are now so used to this sort of thing that it doesn't even ring alarm bells.
*THIS IS CORRUPTION*.
When you can change the law to your advantage with money, you are dealing with a corrupt system. A lobbyist isn't supposed to be able to translate money into laws. Laws are supposed to be guided by higher principles than a pocket full of franklin faces.
thenerd.
They are trying to restrict my right to know of a second-hand book for sale, they are trying to restrict the rights of the owner of said book to advertise their sale.
Is it really a human right to 'know of a second-hand book for sale'? Fair enough it's handy, but there's millions of people who probably don't have a way of finding out about second hand books. I don't see them picketing the streets, crying out for their rights to do this! Likewise, if the owner has a book they want to sell, of course they can advertise their sale. It's just if the guild has their way, they can't advertise it right next to the new books in Amazon. I certainly don't believe I have a 'right' to have a book I'm selling placed there.
Now, you are correct about the rights of amazon.com, they can surely advertise anything wherever they want on their site, as long as it doesn't break the law, or go against the conditions dictated to them as a consequence of accepting a contract from publishers, etc.
thenerd.
I think too many environmentalists ignore the fact that human activity is nothing compared to what Nature can do
I think all environmentalists are very worried about what Nature can do.
They don't want to fuck up nature through our own actions, so it does even worse stuff.
thenerd.
is that our country was founded on liberalism, a belief in a transcendetal natural law. Liberal notions of rights mean that you cannot use your rights in a way that is detrimental to another's rights.
Though the way I read your definition, it supports the arguments of the poster, and not yours.
Presumably you cannot use your right to redistribute it without her consent, because it would be detrimental to her right to distribute her software licensed in the way she saw fit.
The liberal notions of rights both grant her the ability to do what the hell she wants with her program (her right), and to say 'If you want this program, I will only give it to you, if you abide by this set of conditions' (her right). You are welcome to either accept or reject the proposal (your right).
thenerd.
Because the client can send arbitrary multi-part MIME data in POST requests. 'Nuff said.
I doubt my browser would deal well with any GET or POST requests, never mind anything else.
thenerd.
Rep. Tauzin: Rather be in Pasadena than Russia any day. First, our bill will not kill the competition nor make Bell companies monopolies. If you believe that I have some great waterfront property in Russia to sell you. The truth is our bill will create the first FCC authority to hammer the Bells for any violation of their obligations to open up their local markets to competitors. The FCC currently does not have such authority except when a Bell company seeks access into the long distance market. Secondly, our bill will preserve for the competitive carriers full line sharing rights to the legacy copper networks and will additionally give local competitors rights to use the Bell companies new fiber and hybrid fiber systems for broadband competition purposes at terms and rates set not by the Bell company but by the FCC. That is as fair as it gets.
It's quite interesting reading this. This guy is supposed to represent a group of people, and look at what he says.
He insults a group of people ('If you believe that...'). Why would he insult them? He wants them to lose credibility. What is behind that? They could damage his plans. But unfortunately he doesn't explain why they should believe otherwise, and why his plan is good. If it *was* good, it would be self-evident, and he wouldn't need to discredit people. He doesn't say why they are so gullible to believe their own instincts about the bill, merely that they are.
He uses language that is classically trying to hide something. He talks in terms of results 'First, our bill will...', 'Secondly, our bill will...', 'The truth is our bill will...' Nowhere does he explain how the results will be achieved. Why not? Everybody would believe the results if he explained it, but it is the one thing he doesn't do. He's full of it 'Rather be in Pasadena than Russia any day.'!? Come on, that's just pointless.
The whole thing is a bit weird.
thenerd.
drug requirements out of marketing
I've seen far too many of these sort of requirements in my time.
thenerd.
Hi there, I've just read your post and take issue both with the content and your tone. I checked out your past history to see whether you were trolling, but it appears not. If you were, excuse me.
..."
1. Several quotes from "www.fuckedcompany.com"
Yeah, there's a good reputable news source.
However, since Eve worked at ArsDigita, she would be well placed to confirm whether they were true or false.
2. I't all the VC's fault.
If ArsDigita was as sucessful and profitable as claimed, why did they need VC's? Why? Because like all the other dot-commers who went bust, they wanted to get richer faster. All her talk about ethics and honesty is just so much hot air. Yes, VC's are evil crooks. But so are you if you get in bed with them.
Wanting to get rich doesn't mean you are a crook. Neither does being a VC. In this case, the VC's didn't look like they were competent and made some catastrophic decisions, but they weren't crooks. Bit it does seem you are a bit too busy with generalizations.
3. "By the end of March 2000, we had 110 employees, 7 offices
Why does a company whose business is done solely over the Internet need 7 offices? Typical dot-com mentality. Too many people, too many offices. Appearance is more important than good business practices. It's much more pretigious and gratifying to the ego to be CEO of a 110 person/7 office company rather than a 10 person/1 office compnay. Even if the VC's hadn't killed ArsDigital, when the economy slowed down they would have collapsed under their own bloated weight, just like all the other failed dot-coms.
There aren't many companies that do business solely over the internet. Amazon would probably be a good example of one. ArsDigita isn't a good example of one. In order to work with other companies, they would have to give presentations and provide support to companies on their sites. You seem to place more emphasis on scoring cheap points than actually being correct. If a company like ArsDigita can open an office in the other country, then they can satisfy demands in other countries. They can employ people from these countries, giving them money. (Or is that another example of the dot-com greed you seem so obsessed about?)
4. "Philip was quite happy to let a 'professional manager' step in and take over"
Sure, why not. Why not let somebody else run the compnay. As long as a big fat paycheck is still rolling in, who cares. If Richard Greenspun really cared about ArsDigita as much as he claims, he never would have done this. Just another example of the greedy "I want to get paid to do nothing" attitude that kills many businesses.
'Richard' Greenspun has always been called Philip, because that was his name. The idea actually was that day-to-day administration of the company was to be given to the VC's, enabling Philip to do different sorts of work. Philip, while founding this company, probably worked harder than many of us ever have. There is no evidence for saying what you have done.
In conclusion, it's quite obvious that the founders of AD screwed up and are now trying to pin the blame on someone else.
It may be obvious to you, who has only just now found out about the company, but to those of us who have known about the company since just after it was started, we don't have the same blissful ignorance that you exhibit. The people who started the company have done many worthwhile things, and your rabid accusations sound exceedingly stupid when put against their measured responses.
thenerd.
The nadir of his managerial prowess came in a company-wide letter where he compared the act of writing good software to be similar to the killing of jews in hitler's germany
I agree doing that is absolutely poor form (and kind of shows Godwin's law to be true yet again), but Philip Greenspun is Jewish, so I guess he figured he wasn't going to be accused of being anti-semitic, given his stance on Israel, et al.
thenerd.
...is how much of arsdigita was skill, and how much was dotcom bubble.
Greenspun is right, he and some friends built the company up to be quite formidable. It could be argued that they did this at just the correct time. He personally had a lot of technical insight (as evidenced by his book Philip and Alex's guide to Web Publishing) but was perhaps lacking in business acumen.My own suspicion is if they were still in charge and had *not* gone for funding, the company would still be around. It has been unfortunate watching the company stagnate, and the layman would certainly see the progression of success, funding, stagnation, winding up.
The VC's certainly didn't seem to understand the culture when they took on the company, which led to quite a few people leaving, and disquiet from the people who had previously supported the culture and ethos of the firm. Whether it was this that caused the problems, or the simple fact that the company, once obtaining approximately 30 million, would have to earn that back to be even back to 0, it is difficult to tell.
When Greenspun took on the VC's, which was a gutsy move which ended up in court as fully described here, he failed to take the company back, but it is conjectured that he got a nice settlement in the article.
What do people think? Was his culture a winner? He comes in for quite a bit of stick about his methods to get the best out of software engineers (work them extremely hard, don't give them a family life, but give them fishbowls, toys, and the hope of a ferrari). I personally don't think they should have gone to the VC's but I don't blame him. The idea of cashing out with millions personally would probably make me do the same thing. However, that's the one thing you've got to realise. If you go to VC's, you have got to read the contract, and try to imagine that the impossible could happen.
thenerd.
ArsDigita university was wound up, although you can still access all the lectures on downloadable video (rm format I think), and the reading lists, etc. They will even send you a hard drive with all the lectures on, if you want to give yourself a CS degree =).
Their web site is still up at aduni.org.
thenerd