If you are a talented coder who has an interested in graphics; simulation; animation; painting; video editing; digital compositing; game engines; AI; or just about anything else related to 3D animation; video editing and compositing; or games you might consider applying for Blender.

Here is a preliminary list of ideas, we are open to suggestions (in general only half of the proposals we recieve are items on the list) especially if it is something that you worked on for a school project.

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php?title=Dev:Ref/GoogleSummerOfCode/2011/Ideas

[quote]Contrary to popular science fiction, electronics and radiation don't mix well.
The robots they tried to use at Chernobyl stopped working almost immediately.[/quote]

Electronics can be hardened to 10,000 krad tolerance and you can use boron and lead shielding. Robotics have been sucessfully used to explore inside the Chernobyl sarcophagus. We have the technological capabilities to do the required hardware.

You mean this post?

http://mitnse.com/2011/03/13/modified-version-of-original-post/

Still seems to be there. (The original was posted at the blog mortagesatlarge since it was an email to freinds and family - it moved to the MIT blog since the original author found ou it had been publically posted, and asked them to check it for accuracy and if they would be willing to host it)

I've read it, the worst case scenario was with respect to the reactors. The problems we are seeing, which was not discussed in the original post (and at the time of the articles writing were not known to be an issue), are with the cooling beds for spent fuel, not the reactors.

Your comments are expressive, so would be copyrightable. The parts of a header file that are not copyrightable are the 'merely functional' parts - which likely would generally be held to be function prototypes and typical stuff in a header.

A comment that describes the function might or might not be copyrightable but I think it probably would be - depends on the comment.

I read your source - he doesn't really address the 'functional' clause which addresses what is excluded from possible copyright, which is rather critical to this discussion.

Not a lawyer, etc.

Having a copyright notice does not mean something is copyrighted, it just means a copyright claim is being asserted. In US law 'merely functional' elements are not copyrightable. It is argued that headers are 'merely functional' and hence not subject to copyright. (That doesn't mean that a header could not contain some copyrightable elements such as comments describing the function, but the core of header files - function definitions - are 'merely functional' and thus not copyrightable).

As pointed out above - header files are likely not copyrightable in the US.

Also something that violates the GPL does not mean that the remedy is to make any work that violates the copyright of a GPLed work also GPLed. If you violate the GPL, then it terminates your right to distribute and makes you a copyright violator - the remedy for which is typically economic damages.

IANAL - but I'm fairly sure that your post is mostly incorrect.

Well sometimes 'that's impossible' just means that they don't know how to do it or misunderstood the request or they track their mind went down when they tried to think of a solution was the wrong track. I've had three or four times where programmers I've been working with have told me something is 'impossible' then I give a few hours thought and provide them with an algorithm for it. (These are highly skilled programmers too, not html monkeys but top 1% C and python programmers).

Was the note about Geeknet really necessary? Anyone here that actually cares will already know.

Yes it is called 'full disclosure' - when reporting about a group you have financial ties to you are supposed to disclose that fact.

Maya? Not the open-source Blender?

The important part was Motionbuilder. Right now Blender doesn't have the tools for dealing with motion capture to give 'clean' results from mocap data. Thus until such time as our tools for mocap improve Blender won't be a suitable choice. Maya can import easily the files output by Maya.

True Grit was a remake.

Nope I'm not a 'screener' but most emails are via blenders web forms (it takes a bit more effort to find the email addresses than to fill out the webforms), of which I handle most of them, if you sent it directly to a blender.org address then it went to whoever you mailed it to.

Most of your emails probably went to me :) We are aware of the assorted scammers, some are scams others are misleading.

The biggest complaint I have is that he uses misleading advertising that violates our copyright.

Also he does spamming via facebook, twitter, and SEO spam farms.

No they did not ask permission. We specifically denied them to use of some of the images and of our videos (some are CC licensed and thus we have no control over, but many are not). However he has ignored most of the requests from the Blender Foundation.

He creates false testimonials (I reported him to one of the corporations he was using in a false testimonial - he had fabricated the individual and testimony.)

To leverage their monopoly in online book sales and delivery into the video streaming market. If they