c0w

It's basic economics. Here are a few terms to start with that will help you see the bigger picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per_capita_income. The simple matter of fact is that the value of a dollar varies greatly by location. Asserting that a wage of less than $75/hr for programming is exploitative is absurd and offensive towards anyone who's ever off-shored work. I code. I offshore. I do not exploit my employees and resent the accusation that I do. I pay them very well compared to their peers, treat them with the same consideration and respect that I treat any other human being, and do not think it reflects well on this community to have such an ignorant and offensive statement as the highest ranked comment on this thread.

You vastly underestimate the number of highly qualified developers in the world looking for work, and my opinion you vastly overestimate the value of your work. I would never pay your rate. Programming is a commodity. I hire PhD's from Asia and Eastern Europe for less than what would be considered minimum wage in the United States. An order of magnitude cheaper than what I assume your asking rate is. They produce great code and deliver in a reasonable timeframe. Calling this outsourcing exploitative is incredibly ignorant.

> I have no willpower to do anything in any of my non-major courses.

If you're not motivated enough to buy textbooks and work through them on your own I'd suggest looking around for a trade school that will allow you to specialize in programming. Your coursework will be pure programming.

> I want to just work on something for someone.

As a sophomore it is unlikely that you have the necessary skills to do much of anything for anyone, software-wise. Why not start a few projects of your own and learn as you go?

> Living at home is the last option I want to explore.

It's probably your best option, in my opinion. With your lack of coding skills its very unlikely that you'll be able to find a programming job, leaving low-paid, low-skilled jobs as your only other option. Working a 9-to-5 is tiring and it will be very hard to find the motivation to come home from work, study, and code. Why not live with the parents for a few years while you teach yourself how to program? Free room and board is a pretty sweet deal.

> Is there some sort of person I can talk to about how to go about getting a job

There are always mid-clients/recruiters and monster.com, dice.com, etc. With the little amount of programming skills that you have, no real resume, and no portfolio it will be difficult.

His YouTube channel is here: http://www.youtube.com/user/digitalraja. Some of his music without all the talking can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8UsRkWhNa4

> There currently is no marketplace for ideas that I know of.

Have you heard of Venture Capital?

What does this show? Just prices from btc-e and bitstamp? The lowest available price across a selection of exchanges? The highest? This isn't very useful to me in it's current form.

Harvard, Yale, and Columbia are my favorite stations so far.

"Seeking to answer the public-access quandary at Martin’s Beach once and for all, state Sen. Jerry Hill plans to introduce legislation next week that could use the government’s powers of eminent domain to claim a private road to the secluded coastal spot.

The proposed legislation would order the State Lands Commission next year to seek negotiations to purchase the private road from billionaire owner Vinod Khosla. If no deal can be reached by the start of 2016, Hill’s legislation would order the state commission to seize the road from Khosla using its eminent domain privileges."

Good question. I'm pretty much the same way. Tons of ideas, tons of awesome projects, limited resources and ability for execution. I think the biggest factors you have to consider when trying to answer this question are viability, difficulty, and ROI.

When evaluating viability you want to ask yourself questions like "Is there really a market for this?", "Would this substantially improve the process of doing X?", "Am I creating a new market here?", "Is this an incremental improvement to an existing product or process or am I adding exponential value?", "Are there companies currently in a position to compete?", "Could an established player in this space do this easily and push me out of the market?", and ultimately: "Would I use this? Regularly?".

Difficulty is fairly obvious and deals with the question of energy in, and whether it's truly feasible for you to pull something like this off in a reasonable timeframe, given your resources at hand.

ROI is the ultimate question that asks "What's the upside?", "Is it really going to be worth my time to solve this problem?", "For the time (money) I invest in building this, is it going to pay out more than the other projects I could have been working on?" (opportunity costs).

Good luck!