The BRL-CAD project defines two levels of tasks geared towards new contributors. "Deuces" are small tasks expected to take less than 2 hours. "Quickies" take around 2 days:

http://brlcad.org/wiki/Deuces
http://brlcad.org/wiki/Quickies

The project even provides a virtual machine disk image that has everything set up and ready to go.

You perhaps don't realize this, but a lot of people do not go by their first name.

Where I work, addresses were converted to firstname.m.lastname## and it has been a royal clusterfuck. There are hundreds of thousands of users, so there were even a ton of firstname.m.lastname conflicts (so they added numbers). It resulted in complete ambiguity with e-mails going to the wrong people all over the place and was made even worse by the assumption that their first name is always what people call themselves. Was Jim's address william.j.smith12 or william.j.smith13?

I think you'd be criminally liable to knowingly set up a new system that *automatically* creates ambiguity and confusion where there was none.

I believe the decision last year was that a student from any nation may apply, but they must be attending a university within the European Union.

Not really any less open than limiting the participation to full-time accredited university students. Unlike Google, their funding source isn't commercial, so it makes sense to try and keep it within their tax base. Moreover, I think explanation last year was something along the lines of there being an ESA mandate stating that more than 50% of their spending must stay within the EU.

As I see it, their money their rules. Nobody has to participate. It's great to see a large governmental organization stepping up to directly support open source regardless.

Search and ye shall find, lazy troll: http://sophia.estec.esa.int/socis2011/?q=node/16

I used to love Palm until they became the company that acquired, sat on, and ultimately squandered BeOS. Good riddance and hopefully the door smacks your ass on your way out.

At least now there's open source darling Haiku.

Didn't you know? Pretty people don't lie. Believe it. Because they're pretty.

Apparently, other geeks/nerds find this article worthwhile. They're idiots or ignorant at best. :)

As you note, posters feeling otherwise is completely subjective (as is my view) and serves no basis of demonstrating right or wrong. It's purely anecdotal. As for why I respond, this is just an entertaining discussion on a topic I live, work, and breathe. Of course, I'll keep engaging in the discussion I started as long as I find it interesting to do so. I do not, however, see it as an argument or debate where we're going to come to some glorious agreement.

Like I said, we don't have to agree. We clearly do not. If you're not interested in discussing other notable CAD news (or even the PTC article), then leaving it at this end would be fitting. Have a great day!

That is a little cool actually, at least from a technical perspective. Z-sorting in code sucks big time. But yeah, it also sucks requiring specific hardware, the absolute latest drivers just to run, and without any backwards or hardware compatibility support. For the cost, they should be giving out free back rubs.

How's that being an ass? It was huge news. It wouldn't be if it were a headline posted today. We'd be asking what took so long, what were they waiting for. Adopting it after all your competitors doesn't make for news. It makes for shaking a little "me too" rattle. Good for PTC, but good grief. I expect more from billion dollar companies, which is what makes open source development all that more interesting a topic.

I would think that goes without saying; of course I only speak for myself. Defensive much? Shill? Trolling? I'll bite. I was commenting on how I perceive it (frankly as a paid-for posting) given the article's lack of content. Everyone's entitled to an opinion and fortunately we don't even have to agree on that point.

Great, more power to you. I'm not trying to convince you of anything, contrary to your claim, but just replying to a thread I started. If it bothers you that much, you're just as welcome to disagree with someone else's thread too (or post your own). ;)

As far as interesting and relevant CAD news goes, I still contend that there are plenty of better things to be discussing. Even the choice of "Creo" for a new product name is more newsworthy (and absurd ditching their Pro/E mark) or the fact that their stock has crashed nearly 25% this past quarter. Or GrabCAD's competition: http://www.zwsoft.com/en/about/press_center/press_releases/20120406/ZW3D-and-GrabCAD-Present-a-3D-CAD-Model-Challenge.html

Less defensiveness, more objectivity. It's a good thing.

Cheers!
Sean

Actually, I prefer big endian. Thanks.

Geek nerd topics, sure. Just not newsworthy. No more newsworthy than it would be to announce that Linux runs on AMD64. It's expectedbecause it's the smart thing to do. Pro/E is just behind the curve on this one. Most of the other CAD companies are already in bed with hardware optimizations. Still doesn't make it newsworthy though (did I miss a free Linux port or something? conversion to open source? those would be news!).

I never purported to speak for anyone else. My point was as stated -- that this isn't really geek nerd news. It's very much par for the course within the CAD industry. Hell, it's par for most big-industry fields these days, especially graphics-related ones.

The fact that Pro/E is jumping on a bandwagon says more about the wagon than the band. Understandably will be interesting to some people, but then so is the kid-got-shot-in-florida topic and it misses the target just as much.

Wow, talk about a blatant slashvertisement. As the summary states, it's not at all unusual for CAD/CAM software to ally with hardware so what exactly is the news for nerds here??

With more contributors working on improving BRL-CAD's usability and features, we'd have an open source alternative without the huge recurring price tag. Lots of ways to get involved are listed here: http://brlcad.org/wiki/Contributor_Quickies

You see what I did there.