Replying to Investing

alright. now, i'm perfectly aware that newschoolers is not the place to base any huge decisions off of, but i know a few people on here do invest and i was looking at investing myself.

i was looking at a few places like ameritrade, and e-trade, but are there any advantages to working with a broker vs doing online trading yourself? (especially since i'm not really sure what i'm doing yet). also, are there some websites where i could go to read about it, before just buying stock? if you could just give me some info or ideas that would be great.

thanks.