but anthony, Larry IS management, along with Steve. Weinburger is the CEO at Curious Lab.

Then he should protest to himself, dammit! :) I wonder how much of this is a corporate culture infusion from egi.sys? If they're providing the capitalization for Curious Labs, they may be dictating "strategy." I hope we'll get a more comprehensive answer on this tomorrow (or soon at least). Regards- Lemurtek

LOL quite true. Though as everyone knows, they are in New Orleans at the Siggraph and upon return, hopefully we will all get the REAL deal regarding this. Thing is, financial backing DOES NOT necessarily dictate strategy or influence regarding direction. A financial backer puts forth a cash sum and "invests". In most instances, and i'm sure it is the case with Steve and Larry, (considering past experiences with Metacreation) they retained Artistic Control. A viable and very agreeable option that many backers agree to when the company they invest to has proven themselves to be capable and competent. And Artistic Control negates dictation of policy or strategy. The Backer may only suggest with the understanding that it could be ignored completely. ed

In another thread a message just appeared which was a message from Curious Labs forwarded, which says that this feature or whatever is entirely and only to stop people from buying a copy of Poser licenced for ordinary single use and then installing it on a LAN (= Local Area Network) so several people use it at once.

Another thought which may be in accord with the LAN serial checkng thing. If larry and co intend to put forth Poser as a more professional application, then this may be an opening shot to test the waters and see what kind of protection their professional Poser should have. Most professional 3D graphics programs tend to have rather intrusive protection schemes, dongles, primarily, but many 3D apps ship with a temporary sierial, and require the user to register either online or via phone before they get a 'real' serial. Just speculating here. Regards- Lemurtek

And that option of when to dialup should be the USER's. As it is, the 4.03 patch wants to dialup on its own. In my book, that is a definite no-no. And in my book that shoots the LAN serial check down also. Why would a LAN serial check call out via the Internet? And that is exactly what ZoneAlarm, Conseal, At-Guard and Norton is telling us 4.03 is trying to do. With 4.03 wanting to dial out on its own, it makes me wonder what else it wants to do on its own. Nope, CL appears to have stepped in the cow pudding on this one. And, at least for this Poser customer, its going to take quite an explanation to clean up the mess. I do not like it when a company starts thinking it can just take control of my system without letting me know BEFORE I install their product and without seeking approval BEFORE I install their product. Nope, I don't like it one bit.

Easy solution.If all this is true,we don't Buy ANYTHING ELSE from CURIOUS LABS.No buyers,no money!Then they can say OUT OF BUSINESS.Like I said Only if this is TRUE!

Well, I don't know if Curious Labs is being straight up or not, but it could be true, dial up networking is a part of Windows Networking, and it's possible that Poser is checking for network ports, and just runs down through any you have installed. Lightwave 6 (when used with it's Hub system) requires TCP/IP to funtion, and also triggers an internet connection alert. I don't know what Curious Labs put in their 4.0.3 patch (apparently not anything of any value to those who've already installed 4.0.2) and I was hoping for a more forth right reponse (and I could have lived without the "if you weren't such a**holes, we wouldn't have to do this" inference) but, I think it's a little early for a lynch mob. On the other hand, this really should have been brought into the open before hand, so people would know what was going on. On the gripping hand, I'm tired, and fiddle de dee, I'll think about it tomorrow. Regards- Lemurtek

I've done some searches for this IP address on google.com of all places and it's listed as a router broadcast IP. You use it to try and broadcast something to the entire network. Key usage is in things like denial of service attacks I would imagine. Though anything that has to be sent out to the entire network is a valid useage. So this may very well be what they claim it is. So that just leaves us at the question of why was it written so sloppily? I get no such attampts from other apps like Photoshop which do have Lan protection. And why not notify us about it ahead of time? My guess there is they hid it so that they could get us all on 4.0.3. Since that update offers no other features they had nothing to use to 'sell' it on us. Only a detraction. So they just went about it quietly. Note however that a real live Trojan virus would show up with the exact same warning and IP#. As would a corporate privacy invasion. So we have to trust them that it's just checking serial numbers.

I have been battling "Spyware" since I first learned about it a few months back. Curious Labs has clearly placed spyware in the new patch, but are lying about it by saying it doesn't access the Internet, when all evidence says it does. I have firewall software installed, and so I will install the patch for all the stuff it fixes, while keeping Poser from accessing the Internet. But I resent the fact that Curious would sneak trojan spyware into Poser. I can't express how mad this makes me, and how little I will ever trust Curious Labs from here forward! As far as I'm concerned, this action by Curious is totally unethical, and if not technically illegal, should be.

Jack and I have just finished speaking with Steve Cooper from CL who was kind enough to call and fill us in regarding their end and what is going on. So, please everyone, stay tuned.... ed