Confirm4Crit

I was bouncing around my old bookmarks, and saw 3Dbuzz. A lot of their membership videos seem intriguing, and I much prefer videos to text. It seems like a lot of content for my buck, but does anyone have any bad thoughts (or positive things) to mention of the service? 

 

3DBuzz.com 

 

Edit: *Any negative comments about 3DBuzz. I'm tired, my bad .-.

I took a Intro to C++ class at my community college last term.
I personally really enjoy C++, I can't quite place why, but I feel the most comfortable.

Before the class, I went though Head Start C#, some beginning console based Python, and XNA tuts. Small things, kept myself busy.
I want to realign my self a little bit. I'm going to a university (either FAU or UF) next fall, and while both schools only require my intro class for transferring, I wanna be ahead of the curve.
The issue? I can't find a solid "Intermediate C++" site or book. I've found a bunch of console based ones, but they don't go past basic arrays. Anything I find ahead of that is TOO far ahead, and I simply don't under stand.
I've made a bunch of C# Windows Form stuff, I get the idea of classes and what not on a simple level, but I haven't encountered that at all in C++.

Syntax wise, I'm not sure at all how to go about it, so any suggestions would be great! Even old text books they remember using in school, I have no problem throwing some clams if it's a usefull resource.

This might sound like a super silly question, but hear me out.

I'm going to a local community college and will be getting my AA (Gen Ed Degree) at the end of the following summer (2013).

I live in southern Florida, and I have a large amount of amazing schools to choose from. FAU, UF, FSU, UCF, UM, etc, etc.

All of these universities offer computer science, all of them have some "game" or "AI" classes, and some even have a CS track dedicated to game development (UM).
UCF has an epic graduate program (I know I could go there after my undergrad, it also just seems like a nice school), FAU has a neat masters program for entertainment and computer science, etc, etc.

The main thing that's distracting me is this, all of the student reviews seem to be positive about the school's CS program, school itself, etc.

So excluding money, time, location, etc, just pure educational value, given that reviews seem positive, is there a way to tell that one school's CS program is...."better" than another for game development?

Obvious fact is obvious, "Confirm, UM has a track, and you just said excluding money an-".

Yes, I did. If people tend to lean towards that idea of a track to be superior, than I'll look more into it.
If people tend to agree that it doesn't matter, and what matters is a solid understanding of computer science, and the tools and tricks of game development will grow in that environment though brute force, determination, and passion, then woo.

and also, most of you won't know these schools first hand, so I'm not excepting a 100% answer from anyone.
I guess I'm mainly asking if a computer science education, assuming they're all up to snuff with some form of standard or another, is "enough" of a base for game development?

I know I'll need a portfolio, experience, and a school won't teach me everything, and I'll constantly be learning though out my career, etc, etc.
It's some strange thought process, and maybe someone'll slap it out of me.

"Confirm, links plz?!"

Sure, below is a link of the school's resources, if anyone wants to see.

FAU: http://www.fau.edu/academic/registrar/FAUcatalog/engineeringDES.php#cse

UM : ( Note the graphics and games track, plz ) http://www6.miami.edu/umbulletin/und/artsci/comp.htm

UF: Fall, 2012, http://www.cise.ufl.edu/academics/courses/fa12.shtml

I included the three schools I'm mainly looking at. I'll gladly provide more information if anyone asks.
Note: If anyone wants to talk cash into this argument, Um will cost me about 20k a year out of pocket, FAU/UF 5-8k a year. I am currently receiving state and federal grants that provide a large amount of aids. (Doing well in high school matters, children!)

I always have an issue off of most downloaded projects where whenever I build it, VS2010 just crashes.
I had this issue a while before, and it was widespread, I reinstalled, and it worked fine afterwards.

If I create my own XNA project, and copy all of classes and assets over (which I admit, is super fun anyway)
things build fine.

But if I just download the project from here http://create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/sample/roleplaying_game (RolePlayingGame_4_0_Win_Xbox.zip) and try to build, it automatically stops working, restarts, and reopens the project.
If I Debug/Deploy to my Xbox, I do get a sucessful version to the Xbox, but VS2010 still stops and restarts.

I've already repaired, and reinstalled again, still having the issue.

Can anything think of plausible solutions?

I'm currently in an Intro C++ class, and I'm learning about Strings and Member Functions of them.
I have questions that are like this:

Assume that name is a variable of type string that has been assigned a value. Write an expression whose value is a string containing the first character of the value of name . So if the value of name were "Smith" the expression's value would be "S".

or

Assume that name is a variable of type string that has been assigned a value. Write an expression whose value is a string containing the last character of the value of name . So if the value of name were "Smith" the expression's value would be "h".

or

Assume that word is a variable of type string that has been assigned a value. Write an expression whose value is a string consisting of the last three characters of the value of word . So if the value of word were "biggest" the expression's value would be "est".

I know things like name[0] and name[name.length() - 1], but I don't know how to turn those into a string in one expression. I've been looking for a table or list of member functions that can help me do this, but I'm stuck. Any directions or aid would be great.

(Apologies if this should go into general programming)