I've watched this course online, and it's a great one.

A few random comments:

* It is a good idea to download the course materials from http://ocw.mit.edu/ans15436/ZipForEndUsers/6/6-046JFall-2005...

* The video lectures can be downloaded if you hack the URLs a bit. Full instructions at: http://amazingstuffs.blogspot.com/2007/10/download-data-stru..., but it doesn't bode well if you can't figure it out for yourself

* The math gets significantly less heavy after the first few lectures. If you get lost, plow ahead and revisit the first few lectures after you've gotten further.

* Erik Demaine rocks. He went straight to the top of my list of "computer scientists I'd like to have a beer with sometime..."

* I found the discussions of Red-Black Trees and the graph theory "trilogy" to be especially enjoyable, but that could just be me.

For anyone else interested in downloading MIT lectures, I wrote a way to do it without using realplayer.

http://www.pchristensen.com/blog/articles/ripping-and-encodi...

Just download the files direct:

http://mit-ocw-thai.eng.chula.ac.th/OcwWeb/Global/OCWHelp/he...

That still leaves you with a .rm file. Also, my method works on .rm streams that don't offer you a download option like MIT does.

However, Charles Leiserson is a pedantic douche.

Very nice, especially the idea to share your lecture notes. The best way to really learn a subject is to teach others...

there is lots of content (mit open courseware, lectures from many universities in iTunes, free books being released online) available for self-learners.

is there a "virtual university/classroom" website that helps different people to study together?

something simple & free -- like craigslist.

if it doesn't exist already, its a good idea for a startup.

I'd like to hear more about the projects this guy works on. I recall he wrote a command line tool for navigating HN.

Great quote from his blog: "There are only two industries in which customers are called 'users' ".

I watched these for one of my classes but I sould of just bought the book instead.