Quote - There aren't any ways to win against it. {Software Piracy}

Ah, but there is: www.redhat.com www.ubuntu.com www.opensuse.com And, well - D|S doesn't get pirated much... :) Re: China and copyright laws. I suspect that will change rather soon... China is becoming much more prosperous now, and as they begin shifting to intellectual property as a main means of economic drive, they'll get a whole hell of a lot tighter with copyright laws. -- > Quote - Is Poser's SDK available to programers?

Probably, but you really don't want to know how much it would cost you. -- > Quote - P2P is all but shut down.

A quick peek using a common P2P ed2k-based software package shows "renderosity" to return quite a couple thousand results showing a rather huge but recognizeable chunk of the RMP's inventory in there. You still sure about saying that? /P

Quote - [Ah, but there is: www.redhat.com www.ubuntu.com www.opensuse.com And, well - D|S doesn't get pirated much... :)

Well, you get all of them to support all of these great apps or make a flawless Windows emulator. ;)

Quote - > Quote - Is Poser's SDK available to programers?

Probably, but you really don't want to know how much it would cost you. --

Exactly.  But every time that I requested information on it (e-frontier and Curious Labs), I was stonewalled.  Maybe they only recognize companies that appear to be able to afford it (?).  Next time I'll say that I'm from Microsoft and see if there is a response. :D

Quote - A quick peek using a common P2P ed2k-based software package shows "renderosity" to return quite a couple thousand results showing a rather huge but recognizeable chunk of the RMP's inventory in there. You still sure about saying that? /P

I don't use P2P or track it, but I'd trust your assessment of other's.  To say that software piracy isn't flourishing is running around with blinders on.

Quote - What impact does piracy really have on the software business? Adobe, Microsoft and Autodesk, to name just a few well known companies, prove that you can make a lot of money in spite of piracy. Microsoft has the easiest job.

I agree - more often than not, Microsoft Windows usually came from one of two sources throughout the 1990's - either it came pre-installed, or it was copied from a "friend of a friend."

Quote - The WGA is quite efficient and if you have a computer that is connected to the internet you will sooner or later get into trouble if you have a pirated copy.

Umm, no. Take it from someone who messes with operating systems for a living - it is drop-easy to get and use a valid working copy of Windows (even Vista) without bothering with activation or anysuch. It is a simple matter of getting a copy of a corporate VLK (Volume-License Key) install disk or DVD. Most P2P-borne copies are exactly this variety. The VLK works w/o WGA because most corporations don't install Windows one-at-a-time, nor do they rely on OEM pre-loads. They instead build an 'image' which can be packed with whatever software and security controls a company needs, then pushed onto every new machine that comes in the door. Part of this imaging involves using a rigged version of Windows that doesn't carry that nasty little activation jazz (since it would otherwise blow up by about the third computer or so during any mass deployment).

Quote - Moreover MS software is cheap enough to be affordable for everyone and the operating system is bundled with most new computers.

The latter is true - Vista adds about $150 to the price of a typical OEM machine (often less). The former is certainly not. Any version of Vista that isn't crippled will cost you as much as, if not more than, Poser 7 @ retail pricing.

Now Mac OSX Leopard OTOH is only $120 bucks or so. But - it (was built to) only runs on Macs.

Quote - Autodesk and Adobe have a different strategy. They have mostly given up the hobbyist market and concentrate on the professionals to whom they sell their software at prices that cannot be afforded by most hobbyists.

I wouldn't be so sure there, either. You can still (IIRC) get LE versions of 3DS Max, as well as VIZ... and Maya PLE still comes with every copy of Unreal Tournament. Autodesk also has to keep up with folks like Modo, Silo, and such. Adobe still sells LE versions of P-Shop as well, last I checked (not to mention the freebie crippled editions).

Quote - The copy protection they implement is more or less an alibi.

While C-DILLA is fairly easy to crack nowadays, the PITA it becomes for legit users shows that it's more than a simple pro-forma effort on Autodesk's part.

Quote - I think they can live with hobbyists using pirated copies since the more people know their software the better it is for them.

How do you think Microsoft Windows got so popular in the 1980's and 1990's? :)

Quote - The same strategy worked well for MS and now, having a quasi monopoly, they are more serious about fighting piracy.

That's the bitch about being on top - there's nowhere to go but down. MSFT wants to keep that from happening for as long as they can.

Quote - Lets get back to Poser. Poser did not fell victim to the software pirates but to bad marketing and poor software design decisions like the music industry was not eroded by P2P but by the quality of the music they tried to sell.

Poser is a bit more complex - enough to not pin it to any one single reason. P2P is very commonplace for it, but so is bad marketing, and sometimes troubled design (they have improved greatly from P5, I'll grant 'em that).

Music is a bad analogy, IMHO, and here's why:

Most folks believe that music is free for the most part - you can legally tape it off the radio, you hear it coming into your TV for free (both from broadcast TV, and from the huge pile of free music channels that come with even the most basic cable/satellite packages), you hear it for free in bars and clubs... things like that. It's a whole different attitude than you would find regarding applications, or basically things that you know intuitively are salable goods in almost every aspect (F/OSS and freeware excepted, naturally).

/P

Quote - > Quote - [Ah, but there is: www.redhat.com www.ubuntu.com www.opensuse.com And, well - D|S doesn't get pirated much... :)

Well, you get all of them to support all of these great apps or make a flawless Windows emulator. ;)

working on it... :)

[ > Quote - But every time that I requested information on it (e-frontier and Curious Labs), I was stonewalled.  Maybe they only recognize companies that appear to be able to afford it (?).  Next time I'll say that I'm from Microsoft and see if there is a response. :D

Hah! :D

I remember the old P5 deal about DAZ getting a fat quote of $20k just to get Face-Room compatibility for Vicky. You want the whole SDK now? For less than six figures? Pfft - I think you'd have an easier time paying up for Microsoft's "Shared Source" program.

Quote - To say that software piracy isn't flourishing is running around with blinders on.

Pretty much - or they still rely on Kazaa or some other defunct and by-now little-used app to go looking. shrug.

/P

Quote - Re: China and copyright laws. I suspect that will change rather soon... China is becoming much more prosperous now, and as they begin shifting to intellectual property as a main means of economic drive, they'll get a whole hell of a lot tighter with copyright laws. --

There's an interesting article on the topic at the link below.  If piracy is ever going to be reduced in China -- then it looks to be a very long-term affair.  Frankly, I don't think that the Chinese will ever view piracy as anything other than their just due.

http://enterpriseserver.techweb.com/windows/showBlog.jhtml?articleID=187001862

*The bad news is that the rate of piracy in China is still alarmingly high; according to IDC, some 90 percent of PCs in that country are running unauthorized copies of Windows. And here's where it gets interesting: Microsoft bashers are attacking Redmond over what they say is a double standard, in terms of what Microsoft is willing to tolerate in China compared to anywhere in the west.

Yes -- Microsoft is coming in for some heavy criticism for looking the other way in China -- when they'd never dream of tolerating the same type of behavior in the West.  Not that MS could do much about China's inclinations towards wholesale theft even if they wanted to (and they do want to) -- but it's still an interesting posture for MS to be taking, considering what they'd do to anyone in the West who engaged in the same sort of shenanigans.

90% of all PC's in China running pirated copies of Windows?  Just imagine how rich Microsoft would be if all of those copies of Windows had been paid for.

So there's your "90% piracy rate" -- only it's not Poser users at Rendo.  It's Windows users in China.  And I......doubt that the situation will change any time soon: if it ever does.  90% is an awfully steep mountain to climb -- especially when Chinese users in such numbers have come to regard Microsoft's OS as simple freeware.  That's an attitude that would be immensely diffcult to ever have a hope of reversing.  Why should the Chinese start paying for something that they've always gotten for free?

What is it with DAZ and who-ever-owns Poser and these SDKs?  Cinema 4D's SDK costs $0 (it even comes with the demo version!).  Maya's SDK (not MEL, C++) costs $0.  Lightwave3D's SDK costs $0.  Poser's must be priceless! :)  At least with DAZ the reason is understandable - Qt.  And it's not $100k (or whatever Poser's might be).

More on topic, yes, there is a lot of speculation. I'm still not convinced of a cheery future here for Poser.  Some people are saying - why all of the pessimism.  I'm not a pessimist - I'm a realist.  Yeah, we haven't seen anything yet - but there's just something about this deal and the company taking over Poser that rubs me the wrong way.  And just before Christmas (buy season)?  And just before the release (supposedly) of Poser 7 Pro (the first Pro version for how many years)?

With my 'crystal ball' and some hokey gypsy getup, I see Victoria 4 mouthing that damned 'frog tone' for cell phones. :) Time will tell one supposes.

Yep -- we'll see.

Quote - What is it with DAZ and who-ever-owns Poser and these SDKs?  Cinema 4D's SDK costs $0 (it even comes with the demo version!).  Maya's SDK (not MEL, C++) costs $0.  Lightwave3D's SDK costs $0.  Poser's must be priceless! :)  At least with DAZ the reason is understandable - Qt.  And it's not $100k (or whatever Poser's might be).

Was about to mention the reason why DAZ' costs as much as it does, but nm - you nailed it :)

Took a ton of wrangling with Trolltech to get it down to what it is, too - a full seat for Qt commercial runs about $6k.

Quote - More on topic, yes, there is a lot of speculation. I'm still not convinced of a cheery future here for Poser.

I dunno, but I refuse to worry in either direction. Sure, Poser dying in short order would damage folks like CP, RDNA, and even Rendo (which are heavily Poser dependent), and even DAZ would take somewhat of an initial hit.

OTOH, it certainly wouldn't kill off what's going on now - too many users, too many buywers, and too many folks who enjoy using the stuff. shrug

/P

Quote -

Sortakinda. Corel ...see also Canoma) until they make no more dough off ot it.... then maybe they'll sell it off to somebody.

I think it was Adobe that bought and buried Canoma (I've been trying to buy it for years).

Quote -

Corel's orphan graveyard is freakin' HUGE

After MS destroyed WordPerfect (by a bit of "accidental" sabotage during the Windows port), Corel managed to turn the best word processor on the market into a Word clone. I haven't bought a Corel product since. Most recenly, they have mucked up PSP to the point that I'm locked onto 8.0 until neither WINE nor a version of Windows will load it.

Quote -
As per Linux versions?

By way of voting: I will dump Poser for D|S the day the Linux version arrives.

My guess, by the way: For $6M, Smith Micro wanted Aquazone and got stuck with Poser. Sorry, you have to marry BOTH sisters. Poser Prop is being picketed by anti-abortion crowds. Look for Poser 8 the day Cheney helps an old lady across the street, and if you have any plans for the G2 Olivia you already paid for (as if that train warn't done gone), get yourself some brown shoe polish.

One thought on why the Poser SDK has a big price tag, is that it probably contains most of the non-GUI code, other than the renderers and 3rd party libraries, in order to be able to read and interpret files.
This is different to the SDKs for other applications which are for building plugins for those applications.
In other words the Poser SDK is the implementation not just a set of interfaces you implement.

I doubt very much that SM will add copy protection to Poser. Much more characteristic to just drop the price to a point where stealing is a waste of time and resources.

I've seen copy protection on everything from 12,000 DTP to $30 games, and I'm at the "If it has ANY CP, I'm not buying it" point. I bought the Oxford English Dictionary ten years ago for $300. It's my second favorite proof that rape can be educational. It was copy protected by C-Dilla, and the pinheads in Oxford marketing don't support CP upgrades. C-Dilla is OS-specific, so I can't use the dictionary any more because the copy protection only works with pre-W2K Windows (and only a few of those). It was to protect them from all those unscrupulous English professors.... Sad. A bit like learning that William Shakespeare liked to bite the heads off puppies.

I play Zoo Tycoon a few times a month, and it has a "benign" version of the vicious CP on Sierra Games. That means that rather than wrecking my CD drivers and various other dubious computer parts (the USB ports, drives or not) and ultimately crashing the computer to the point that I had to do a wipe and reinstall (twice; I'm a slow study, and the last game was a Japanese horror movie RPG that I adored), ZT just hoses my CD drive until I reboot a few times.

Thieves expect thieves. Hence the marketing fixation on copy protection. And frankly, they are welcome to each other.

Thank you for answering my question about Poser's SDK.  I have a another question.  Did Anthony Hernandez help develope DAZ Studio?

While we are reviewing Poser 7's lagging sales;    as we discuss piracy,  and contemplate pricing,  let's ask ourselves what was the biggest selling feature of Poser 5.  Was it firefly renderer,  the hair room,  the material room,  the set up room,  the dynamic cloth simulator,  python scripts?  Or was it the support of multiple runtimes?

IMO, it was the multiple runtimes and the material room. Those were the thing that made the biggest difference, based on what I rememebr of people posting about it here. They were more excited about those two features than anything else.

Quote - Did Anthony Hernandez help develope DAZ Studio?'

He wrote the technical documents for Poser 4, and possibly P5 too, and may have been involved in the dev work Not sure on that one. I'm pretty sure he did some work for DAZ after that, but I don't know what exactly.

Quote - let's ask ourselves what was the biggest selling feature of Poser 5

I'd say the Material Room. None of the other rooms have ever worked well enough to be considered a huge success. Multiple runtimes was a good feature too. So was Firefly (at least, compared with the previous renderer), and Python is IMO, one of the few really flexible things in the entire application.

mac

Thank you for answering my questions.  As for me,  I believe the material room is the key to any future success of Poser. 

Maybe its just me but 7million for a company with as many products (not counting content) that E-Frontier had..thats a friggin steal...Having worked for companies during corporate acquisitions in the present and a few times in the past... I am leary of it. I honestly wish Daz had gotten it. At least then we know it would be by people who have a vested interest in its success.

The jury is out in my mind. I will hope for the best but am not holding my breath on it.

*Quote - I honestly wish Daz had gotten it. At least then we know it would be by people who have a vested interest in its success.

I agree. Smith Micro may possibly give Poser some previously lacking financial resources but Daz would have given Poser some love and it needs that too :)

• Rick

Quote - I have a another question.  Did Anthony Hernandez help develope DAZ Studio?

No. He did a rough outline of the User's Manual and some content - then he bailed. (I know, because I got stuck with cleaning that mess up after him). Taylor Wilson did the foundations for DAZ|Studio. /P

Considering Daz already has a platform(D/S and Carrara)that they are presently continueing to develope and it's language is newer it could be they didn't want Poser. Poser is on the edge of needing a complete rewrite anyways if it doesn't already it's a dino'. I agree with Rick that Poser needs a lot of love, but that depends on the new owner. Rather than fight each other we could see Daz play a more active role in particapating with Poser again depending on how well the two get along. We could actually see a face room module for V4 in Poser. All that is speculation, but the Poser verse isn't going anyplace if Poser folds up disappears forever which is unlikely in the imediate future. There is still going to be "Poser" content and at least two no three programs that will run it D/S ,Carrara and Bryce. With Poser out of the way D/S or Carrara likely would be imediately further developed to fill the void without any pain whatsoever. Daz covered their backside in case this happens. They sell content why keep depending on someone else's software?

Poser 5,6,7,  has run it's course,  the proof is in the selling price.  Smith Micro and the Poser dev team should consider two things:  1)  Refine the material room and add support for 1 point polys,  2)  Release an SDK.

As to my concerns about Poser's future,  2 reasons:  64 bit,  and lack of rigging in DAZ studio.

I agree about DAZ and Poser.  DAZ has a pretty good record of reworking others creations,  from Zygote's meshes to Metacreations Bryce and Ray Dream Studio. 

Thank you for answering my question.  Next questions,  what is the price of Poser 7 and what is the price of Daz's Cararra6

Poser has been needing an overhaul since P5. (P4/PPP I actually liked - light, fast, and damned useable for what it did).

DAZ began building D|S back when Poser 5 was still in development, because EGISys (Curious Labs' parent company at the time) was coming up against some hard times, and there was some bad signs showing behind the scenes. DAZ built it for the same reason that any sane company would - to insure their own future.

Dunno about the featureset Poser should or shouldn't have offhand, but building an SDK is a bit more complex than simply releasing one.

The reason Poser's SDK costs so much is because you're getting a monster chunk of code with it. A normal SDK is a set of "Exposed" functions and classes, to allow you, the outside developer, to add functionality to the program. It will also include code that helps facilitate your plugging in to the app. In English, an SDK gives you stuff to make your program work with the program the SDK was written for - either as a plugin or an external application.

So... the Poser team would have to write an SDK first. Their likely response will be to point the typical small developer to their Python compatibility, and tell you to write for that (it would be like DAZ telling you that unless you had a lot of money, you're stuck with using the DAZ|Script for D|S).

/P

$249 for Poser 7 off their website: http://store.e-frontier.com/us/user/poser_7_english_full_version_product_25757 $249 for Carrara 6: http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/shop/itemdetails/-/?item=5651&cat=331 Heh. /P

Thank you for answering my question.  Next question,  does Cararra6 have a readily available SDK?

Not yet; I suspect however that one is probably being worked on - DAZ is pretty good about that. If an app doesn't already have one, it takes about 6 months to a year to make a workable SDK (it also takes about 6 months of a really good codemonkey's time to get comfy and familiar with a new codebase, but I digress...) You're wanting to get to a point - why not share it? /P

Quote- "As to my concerns about Poser's future,  2 reasons:  64 bit,  and lack of rigging in DAZ studio."

Those aren't moutians. More like mole hills. I would guess it's just around the corner.

Carrara6 has an SDK. It was released on Sept. 11
$0.00
http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/support/downloads/-/?product=car_sdk

Quote - Thank you for answering my questions.  As for me,  I believe the material room is the key to any future success of Poser. 

You know, that's a good point. After playing with Genetica, and demoing filter forge right now, I really found myself wishing to see a more user friendy version of Poser's material room.
As baggindbill demonstrated, it has the power comarable to either one of the two texture making software I just mentioned, but it's suffering from lack of user friendliness and lack of ability to have more immediate visual resulta (intermediate, and final)
I think this is especially usefut to us artsy types whom often arrive to slick effects by experimenting and trial and error or other seredipituous ways, rather then deliberate numerical input.

Heck, with me being an engineer, and having the math background to sit down and figure out the numerics, when I'm doing artsy things, dealing with the nuts and bolts of numerics is the last thing I want to do.

Anyway, a short way of saying it would be, I agree with patorak, the material room could really use a facelift!!

As an interesting note on piracy -- one of the main reasons why Vista does not allow enterprise licenses is that the majority of the bootleg copies were cloned off of enterprise editions. (You can still buy Vista for enterprise-wide use, but each individual copy has to be separately licensed.)

Thanks again for answering my question.   Yes,  I'll get to the point and hopefully the dev team is lurking.  

My Point is Poser Dev team this is the last hurrah!   Poser 7 has made that perfectly clear.   

Why is this the last hurrah!  Because,  while you've remained in antiquated isolation and held tight to your SDK,  the 3d world passed you by.  How did it pass you by?  Simple,  integration.  You know the price of high end apps have dropped,  from Cararra to 3dMax,  hobbyist are purchasing them and seeing exactly what they can do.  DAZ knows this and added Collada to Studio  and integrated Cararra with Studio.  What did Poser do?

Now the choice is yours,  remain in isolation or truly integrate with the rest of the 3d world.  I hope you choose wisely this time,  because 64 bit is knocking on the door. 

I too would like to see a better integration between Poser and other 3d apps - with 3ds max in particular. In any event, I don't think that Poser would fade from the 3d scene anytime soon - even if it were completely dropped by Smith Micro.

The large community of Poser users would continue to keep Poser alive until someone else would eventually pick it up again. I know I will continue to develop content for Poser until the end and I think many others will do the same.

So in the final analysis maybe it doesn't really matter what Smith Micro will do with Poser because the 3rd party aftermarket has always been Poser's life blood and is the reason Poser is still here and kicking this long after it's first release :)

• Rick

Attached Link: Smith Micro shares

As to how well Smith Micro is doing as a company, their stock fell over 30% just a couple of weeks ago. You can read about it at the attached link, and has dropped almost another 20% since then. Three weeks ago Smith Micro's stock was $15.42 a share, as of today, it's down to $8.77, (click on the SMSI link on the page I linked to).  What that bodes for the future, who knows, but it doesn't look good to me.

Coldrake

Back to Amiga.  Sounds familiar.  This was something that reeeaaalllly p.o.d stock holders.  The board didn't want them to be in on the meeting (held in the Bahamas iirc).  Let's just say that the board members filled their coffers and ran while the stock holders ate the diving share cost.  I hate ''business' - corporate types who give themselves $10 million dollar 'bonuses' should be federally mandated to give the same to each and every employee or be criminally charged and have all of their property and finances taken.  That'll stop that cold dead in its tracks... :0  They want big bucks, pass it around equally or go away.

Financial inequality in this world is eventually going to start the next 'revolucion'.  The have-nots are going to be using Gillette this time though.

I have now doubt Poser would live on.  I've seen it with Avalonhill board games,  dungeons and dragons,  and steel panthers.

*As to how well Smith Micro is doing as a company, their stock fell over 30% just a couple of weeks ago. You can read about it at the attached link, and has dropped almost another 20% since then. Three weeks ago Smith Micro's stock was $15.42 a share, as of today, it's down to $8.77, (click on the SMSI link on the page I linked to).  What that bodes for the future, who knows, but it doesn't look good to me.

*Almost $7.00 in 3 weeks,  if the trend continues they'll be in Junk status middle of Dec.

Back to Amiga.  Sounds familiar.  This was something that reeeaaalllly p.o.d stock holders.  The board didn't want them to be in on the meeting (held in the Bahamas iirc).  Let's just say that the board members filled their coffers and ran while the stock holders ate the diving share cost. 

I hope the Poser Dev Team realize that they will be left twisting in the wind if the acquisition goes bad. 

Quote - As to how well Smith Micro is doing as a company, their stock fell over 30% just a couple of weeks ago. You can read about it at the attached link, and has dropped almost another 20% since then. Three weeks ago Smith Micro's stock was $15.42 a share, as of today, it's down to $8.77, (click on the SMSI link on the page I linked to).  What that bodes for the future, who knows, but it doesn't look good to me.
Coldrake

Stock figures go up and down just like real estate, so that needs to be considered when evaulating these figures. That being said though, these figures are telling you something. Buisness's are not like real estate (so I know that was a poor analogy), and though real estate can take a beating for a while...buisness's (imo) have a much shorter endurance tolerance of market swings.
It's okay to drop but not this much so fast.

*It's okay to drop but not this much so fast.
 
*I wonder what verizon is thinking right now.

The entire Stock Market has been swinging up and down lately.  So it's not surprising if Smith Micro has gone along for the ride.

They've had it on the news that the retial stores are pricing things to sell this year because they don't expect people to spend as much money. Morgage defaults are at an all time high and the dollar is lossing it's value; so it's no surprise. After the news I go fire up my computer and click that Poser icon. There is something about manipulating figures that look like people that makes me forget. This is no different. :)

In a very large measure, the government is to blame for the current mortgage/credit 'crisis'.  For the last 20 years or so, banks and other financial institutions have been hauled up before Congress and threatened, investigated and harassed -- accused of being unwilling to extend home-buying credit, etc. to areas like the inner cities.  So.....in order to go along to get along (and to be left alone by harassing government do-gooders), the financial institutions gave credit to high-risk cases in large numbers.

Guess which loans are now in default in large numbers?  And guess who the government (and their propagandists in the MSM) are blaming for the problem?  Hint: it certainly isn't themselves and their own politically-correct lending policies: policies which they've forced down the throats of the lending institutions -- against their own better judgement --  for a couple of decades now.

So we see the results.  This isn't the only factor here, but it's a mighty big one.

And people want this same bunch to run our health care........?  Sure.

Where I live I saw property go from 2000 an acre to 10,000 in just ten years. The property wasn't worth that but the apraisers and the realistate folks and the banks let it happen, but most of all was the fools that were willing to over extend themselves and pay that much. The banks don't break peoples arms to sign the papers. I have to say though writing a 30-40 year morgage to a sixty year old dude is a little fishy and they will or at least would. 

Oh, there's plenty of blame to go around.  But government policy has been one of the major driving factors.

Kind of like how the "high tech" Nasdaq bubble which burst several years ago had largely been driven by overwhelming media hype at the time in regards to the internet.  The media saw the web as something new & exciting for them to talk about (which it was) -- but they wa-y-y-y-y-y overplayed the propaganda about the "dot com" angle.  Of course, a large number of fools with money listened to the media and rushed out to do the media's bidding -- to their own destruction.

Likewise, the government has pushed and encouraged (and demanded under threat) certain lending policies from financial institutions........it's been a major factor leading up to the current mess.  Unfortunately, the "fools with money" part has followed along behind.

It's probably not unfixable.  It's just another item to add to the butcher's bill for the taxpayer to shell out for.

Our taxes stand to get tripled a couple of years from now.  I hope not -- but it's a danger that we're under at the moment.  Raising taxes to the sky is an absolutely wonderful idea under the current circumstances.  But then again: rasing taxes to the sky is always a wonderful idea.  It benefits everybody.

snort

Uh......I think that we're getting a little OT here ().  But that's not unusual when threads begin to stretch out............

If we've gotten too far off topic then I guess credit card percentage rates shouldn't even be brought up. Another reel them in and hang 'em out to dry until they literally are making people default on their payments and what does being late on a vehicle payment have do with a credit card percentage rate if you were on time with those payments? Bankers are dirty. Must rate right along with thiefs and lawyers. Everyone's tired of things being set up so you can never pay them off.  

"The entire Stock Market has been swinging up and down lately.  So it's not surprising if Smith Micro has gone along for the ride."

Absolutely true, but  stock losing almost half it's value in three weeks time is not good. That's a big swing.

Coldrake

Quote - Now the choice is yours,  remain in isolation or truly integrate with the rest of the 3d world.  I hope you choose wisely this time,  because 64 bit is knocking on the door. 

The choice is Smith Micro's, the developers have to do what they are told and/or have the money to do.

Actually, SMSI dropping sharply after a major purchase is par for the course for -any- business. The seller's shares spike, the buyers dips. Particularly on NASDAQ, where the actual $$ amounts are closer to parseable for normal humans. Then speculators move in and snatch up shares, sit and see if they start to climb again, and round and round we go in the great roulette game of the cash crazed.... And considering that the party of fiscal responsibility is responsible for a multi-trillion dollar debt to a major communist government that already owns 90% of our manufacturing in the name of the almighty quarterly profit..... No politics, thenkyewveddymuch.... So..... Think we have a chance with weightmapping in P7Pro, or P8?

Attached Link: http://quote.fool.com/summary.aspx?s=SMSI

Waitaminute - were there any stock splits involved here? It's common for the price to slice in nearly half during a stock split (which is BTW a good thing, folks). ouch - that wasn't a split... Okay, I'd go by the WSJ summary, but since not everyone has a sub to it, I'll have to scrounge a bit. The stock dropped at around the time they had to basically 'fess up to not doing their financials right. Let me see if I can find it online... Ah. Here it is: http://biz.yahoo.com/e/071114/smsi8-k.html Seems that something went 'splat' in the accounting department, and Smith Micro was forced to tell the SEC that they screwed up (err, overstated) their earnings statements. The relevant bit is this: "On November 8, 2007, the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors of Smith Micro Software, Inc. (the "Company") determined that it was necessary to restate the Company's financial statements as of and for the year ended December 31, 2006 and as of and for three and six months ended June 30, 2007. The restatement is necessary to correct an error in the presentation of tax benefit related to the exercise of stock options in the Company's consolidated statement of cash flows in accordance with Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 123(R), Share-Based Payment." This would've gone mostly unnoticed however due to SMSI's size, until you see this: " Smith Micro (SMSI) reported an 81 percent fall in quarterly profit, hurt by mounting operating expenses. Revenue of the wireless communication software products developer rose 38 percent to $20.4 million from a year ago." - from http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/story.aspx?guid=%7B451F6479-9712-4351-8913-FBEC0FE385CC%7D&link=http://www.247wallst.com/2007/11/smith-micro-sms.html BUT - nowhere does it mention the 8-K correction statement (which came later and explained why the earnings were so pitiful). In fact, a quick peek shows that Analysts, who expected 21 cents per share earnings, didn't get them - hence the price punishment. Long, ugly story short? The stock price was due to bad timing in their audits and their earning reports, IMHO. SMSI will likely survive just fine. You don't go buying other companies if you're dying... that's just stupid. /P BTW - this is what Smith Micro told the SEC about purchasing Poser and the rest of the pile: http://biz.yahoo.com/e/071115/smsi8-k.html

And it's actually quite normal for a drastic drop in a stock to occur if the Analysts are off by so much as a penny on their profit projections.  That's what happended to Intel a few years ago. They had a really good quarter and posted  a great profit, but were 1 cent under the predicted amount. So the price dived. (I have a friend who loves Intel stock and she snapped up some real bargins that day). 

Wow, I just got the e-Frontier announcement about this.  Has Poser 7 even been fully de-bugged yet?  Where do I have to go now to buy a copy of P7?

Just call me optimistically paranoid....  :unsure:

Dan Farr, President of DAZ, just posted to the SM thread at DAZ. Link here.

http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?p=1033813#1033813

Among other things, he says,

Quote - P.S. Rigging tools for content are not a fictitious development project. We currently have two engineers working on them right now

mac