At the school I'm currently attending, our upper level CS\IT classes are lock-step (you're with the same classmates in the same classes through the whole curriculum) and our teams carry over through the whole program. This has it's ups and downs.
For one, the fact that you're in the same team through the whole program brings a new level of accountability into play, because if you let your teammates down, you WILL hear about it (and yes, you CAN get kicked off the team, it's equivalent to failing). This also tends to model workplace teamwork fairly well because of the timescale.
Basically, every class has a team project, whether it's a programming class, networking, databases, etc. and your team gets a grade on the project that is then weighted based on a peer review at the end of each class.
This also has the side effect of forcing the quicker learners in each team to tutor the rest of their team.
The only problems with this system I've encountered so far (I'm about 9 months into the program) is that some people learn alot faster than others and tend to carry more of the workload simply because they catch on quicker.
After all it's a highly accelerated program and deadlines are deadlines.
I feel your pain. I have a linksys USB PNA 2 adapter for laptop. I've done a bit of research into getting a driver for it though, and check this out:
The chipset used by most of these is made by Broadcom (it's the 4400 series (or was it 4200?)), and after getting frustrated by Linksys and Diamond MM (I have a PNA device from them in my desktop) about the lack of Linux drivers, I contacted Broadcom about Linux support for this chipset. Believe it or not, Broadcom has a Linux driver for this chipset but will only release it to the OEMs, and only at their request! After getting back to Diamond MM about this, they were oddly silent. Linksys gave me a single sentence response: "We don't support Linux sir.".
Very very frustrating to know that a driver exists but will probably never be released. *sigh*
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At the school I'm currently attending, our upper level CS\IT classes are lock-step (you're with the same classmates in the same classes through the whole curriculum) and our teams carry over through the whole program. This has it's ups and downs.
For one, the fact that you're in the same team through the whole program brings a new level of accountability into play, because if you let your teammates down, you WILL hear about it (and yes, you CAN get kicked off the team, it's equivalent to failing). This also tends to model workplace teamwork fairly well because of the timescale.
Basically, every class has a team project, whether it's a programming class, networking, databases, etc. and your team gets a grade on the project that is then weighted based on a peer review at the end of each class.
This also has the side effect of forcing the quicker learners in each team to tutor the rest of their team.
The only problems with this system I've encountered so far (I'm about 9 months into the program) is that some people learn alot faster than others and tend to carry more of the workload simply because they catch on quicker.
After all it's a highly accelerated program and deadlines are deadlines.
There's a web site for this. It covers not only tech books but just about every other field too; fiction and nonfiction:
Canonical Tomes
It's also user submitted, so if you have a favorite that's not listed, you might want to recommend it there.
I feel your pain. I have a linksys USB PNA 2 adapter for laptop. I've done a bit of research into getting a driver for it though, and check this out:
The chipset used by most of these is made by Broadcom (it's the 4400 series (or was it 4200?)), and after getting frustrated by Linksys and Diamond MM (I have a PNA device from them in my desktop) about the lack of Linux drivers, I contacted Broadcom about Linux support for this chipset. Believe it or not, Broadcom has a Linux driver for this chipset but will only release it to the OEMs, and only at their request! After getting back to Diamond MM about this, they were oddly silent. Linksys gave me a single sentence response: "We don't support Linux sir.".
Very very frustrating to know that a driver exists but will probably never be released. *sigh*