Thank you, Leland!
Though I do enjoy poking fun at my current academic institution, there are some really great things about Stanford. For example, right now I'm attending a seminar course about European Entrepreneurship, which is pretty damn awesome if you ask me.

I just came back from a panel of Finnish Entrepreneurs who shared their take on Business culture in Europe and how it compares with the Valley. Among them was Mårten Mickos, the former CEO of MySQL before it was sold to SUN Microsystems in a billion-dollar aquisition and now a senior Vice-President at SUN (whatever that means ...).

For me the most intriguing topic from the Biz Finns was on the hurdles that entrepreneurs and innovators face in the Old-World European culture. Mårten summed it up as the following:

"In Europe you can't make money. You can win it and you can inherit it. To make money is almost criminal. It is met with envy and suspicion."

Also pretty awesome is the Stanford Engineering Everywhere program. The program offers all the materials of genunine Stanford Engineering courses - taped lectures, homework assignments, exams and solutions - to anyone in the world free of charge. For example, my Machine Learning course from last quarter is right up there with the same Professor who taught it.

Now that I think about it, this means I could have done all the self-education I wanted from the comfort of my home without the continuous work and numerous nights lost to deadlines and due-dates. Well, crap.