17852908
submission
KazW writes:
This is just an idea I was toying with, but then I started wondering about the deeper intricacies of it all... It started with a simple premise: Developing open source gives back to the masses, just like paying taxes, so should developing open source be tax exempt or be partially deductible? This question lead to the following questions:
- Should companies who invest in the development (not deployment) of open source software be given a tax break/credit?
- If a country was to offer this to corporations, how would it be best implemented? (tax break based on programmer income or lines of code?)
- If that government implemented this, and transitioned to using all or mostly open source systems, could this help fund the tax cut?
- How much of a break would be needed for a western country to make it's code shops be more competitive with eastern code shops?
- How much could this help the current economic situation faced by most western countries?
8859182
submission
KazW writes:
After being laid off from my IT job a couple months ago, due to the recession, I decided that I should upgrade my high school and go to university (I had gotten my GED so I could work when I was 18), since I'm still young (20 years old), I figured that this shouldn't be too hard. I'm not done my upgrading yet, but I will be in the fall, so I've decided that I should start looking into what universities I should apply to. Off the top of my head, 3 "techy" universities instantly came to mind: MIT, Berkley and Waterloo; I live in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, so University of Calgary and University of Alberta are my local options. What I'm looking for is for some student/industry/general opinions and information on what universities and programs I can look at, I won't be making my decision solely based on the responses to this article, but I hope to use it as an additional resource for my research.
My goal is to get a Ph.D in Computer Science. I'd like to focus on robotics, artificial intelligence and possibly bio-informatics, but any information about any tech related universities and their programs is welcomed and appreciated.
7237076
submission
KazW writes:
I was following the progress of my ThinkGeek order on Google Maps when I got bored and started to zoom in/out to other locations and other such musings. I've used the Wikipedia integration feature before, and found out some pretty interesting history and facts about my local transit system(we all get bored at times). This time however, some Wikipedia icons caught my eye because they were placed out in the pacific, they varied from North Korean villages to convention centers to court houses. One of the more interesting and entertaining Wikipedia articles "polluting" the Google Maps' North Pacific Ocean was for "Olympus Mons... the tallest known volcano and mountain in the Solar System. It is located on the planet Mars at approximately 18N 133W / 18, -133."
It actually makes for some interesting, random fact learning and can give you a chuckle or two... Just take a look at Google Maps and see for yourself.
5270341
submission
KazW writes:
According to an article posted at Port25 yesterday, Microsoft will apparently be submitting a Linux kernel device driver under full GPL v2 that will allow their Hyper-V virtualization solution to run Linux with high performance. I think hell might have froze over, just at the beginning of this year I used what Microsoft had published on their site and was unable to hack their provided code to work on CentOS as opposed to SUSE. I am no real kernel hacker, but I am proficient at maintaining a Linux system; but this announcement means that any distribution would be able to run on Hyper-V, without any real hassle. I was most shocked that they will be providing the code under full GPL v2 and not under the community shunned "Microsoft Public License", which is OSI approved, but it is still thought throughout the community that it's some sort of trap. With the submission of the code under the GPL, could this mean Microsoft will start to be more respected in the Open Source community? Probably not, because of the unnatural hate too much of the community has towards "M$", but this is still an interesting story and it's worth a look.
Small Excerpt:
"Microsoft just submitted source code for the Hyper-V Linux Integration Components to the Linux Kernel Community Under GPL v2.
...
Let me summarize:
* Yes, our device driver code was released directly to the Linux Kernel
* We released the code under GPL v2
* We are working with Greg Kroah-Hartman so it is ready for the next release of the Linux Kernel, version 2.6.32
* We will continue to update the driver code to enhance interoperability on an ongoing basis, but it's our hope that other developers in the community will find the code useful and worthy of collaboration.
...
We're not talking a few hundred lines of code here; we're talking about roughly 20,000 lines of code."
