On the other hand, by dint of being so loud, they've given even the quiet hackers some well-deserved recognition. Intellectualism has too long been shunned in the main stream. It's finally become sort of (dare I say it?) cool to be a hacker.
Thus, their volume has contributed some social capital to us.
This isn't a big date technologically speaking, but as far as the social history of the internet goes, it was huge. I suspect it's one of the big reasons AOL was so demonized. (There are obviously many others.)
I found the link memorable, anyway. I've been sharing it with my "liberal arts friends" when they talk about hacking as if the sum of its parts resulted in the OP's third paragraph.
This seems like a great idea to me, as it could get you a job, and make your service much faster, in that you could build your notification system into the class scheduling system, which would mean you wouldn't need to poll their system every 3-7 minutes - it could be event-driven instead. (Dropping a class could trigger a check of who's watching the class and notify recipients that way.)
Writing in that line or two of code would also take care of the school's strange DoS concerns.
Of course, if profit is the goal, this isn't an option (though it doesn't look like you're trying to monetize this... kudos for that).
Also, this removes the exclusivity from classhunt (as any student would see this while browsing the schedule online). I'm sure you can make more inferences about this option. (Less social capital in the business world as you have nothing to point at and say "I did that," etc.)
The article in the comment you replied on has a solid theory: it's hard to patent bacteriophages in their natural state, and tailoring bacteriophages to a specific person presents difficulties with the FDA. Therefore, obtaining profit through these methods is difficult.
I've heard good things about coffee shops, but I haven't tried them yet. According to a recent article on YC, this is a "third place." (The article was about MMOs.) Pubs and bars are also "third places."
Essentially, though, yes, there is no solution that rivals college. Often people say that their college years were the best years of their life - I wonder if this is a leading factor in that decision.
