Colleges aren't dictatorships, they're just much more into profit than ever.  (More into profit than education)

The newest cgminer doesn't have gpu support.  Use 3.7.2

It's impossible to prove god isn't a spaghetti monster.

Being a scientist makes you less likely to believe in god.

Try reddit

Where's that shut up and take my money image?

It's not free or easy, they were lying.

If you encrypt it they can tell you're connecting to a VPN, but they can't tell what you're doing.  You're probably better off getting something like a 3G mobile internet USB card and bypassing your university's internet completely.  Then you're paying for the electricity and network, all it's doing is taking up space in your room and giving you Tinnitus.

You know what they say about people who say they break the laws of physics?  That they don't understand the laws of physics.

Don't oppose the fact that things shouldn't be opposed!

Buying a USB miner for $100 isn't really about the profit, it's about getting the same experience of buying a $10,000 miner.  You get to launch cgminer and see your hash rate and everything, just instead of losing $4000 you only lose $40.

That's why we use wallets.  Because they have info on all of our addresses (accounts) and all the corresponding keys, we just tell it to send our desired amount and it can send from multiple addresses that add up to our desired amount.

If you have $1000 in checking account abc and $0 in checking account xyz, try to write a check for $1000 from xyz and see how that goes.

Just go buy btc from localbitcoins, coinbase, etc.  Then you're done!  Not as fun or adventurous as mining, but better in the long run.  You could spend $100 on a USB miner just to get the experience if you like.

Hmm think of it like this.

Each address is a unique account.  It has a balance, say 5 BTC.  To spend that BTC you need the key to the address.

You will have more than one address.  Each has their own balances.  Each has their own key.  If you don't have the key corresponding to a certain address you can't spend the BTC stored in that address.

Because you will have many addresses, like 10-100, you group them together in a wallet.  A wallet is just a file (like wallet.dat) that has a list of your addresses and their keys.

Because it's annoying to have to keep track of 100 addresses and 100 keys, there are programs, like electrum, that allow you to only keep track of one long master key (the seed).  Using this seed and some math that I don't understand, the program can generate millions of addresses and corresponding keys.  Because it can generate them from the seed, this allows you to have multiple addresses and keys but only one master seed to have to backup.  Of course you should also backup the wallet file (they're not all called wallet.dat -- it depends on the program you're using).

If you don't use a program like electrum you need to backup each address and its corresponding key.  If you lose the key to the address you can't spend the coins located there.  There are lots of coins that are "lost" forever because people lost the key to them.

The thing about all mining contracts is they obviously have to sell it to you at a price that's more than it will return.  Otherwise why would they sell it to you?  If you hire me to go solo mine gold, I have to charge you more than the worth of that gold, or I would just keep it for myself.

Even easier:  Tell me what hash rate you want and I'll quote you a price.  After say 30 days I'll tell you how much you overpaid by and just send that amount to me.  No signups and only one transaction required.

Religious people also completely ignore the scientific method, which is also a non-starter.

It's a good reminder to only generate addresses using "reliable" methods.  EK could buy out the top google listing for bitcoin paper wallet and replace its RNG with his own fake RNG.

Wallet is just a collection of keys.  You need the keys to spend the coins.  Don't worry about the wallet, just worry about the keys for your vanity addresses.  Really though don't use vanity addresses.