SamTherapy posted at 3:40PM Fri, 31 March 2017 - #4301055

119 is still above average. Even with a drop it's above average. If you're feeling ill or tired, that can also take its toll. My father narrowly missed genius level on Mensa's testing because he was recovering from heart surgery at the time. Sadly, he never got to retake it.

Ain't gonna mention mine.

I think it's well-established in Doctor Who fandom that serious Doctor Who fans are obviously among the smartest of the smart. So you've got that happening, whatever you're concealing.

Me, I just began a sentence with "so", so we know I'm not as bright as I could be. I could waffle and say, based on what you wrote, that I was in the middle of a nervous breakdown and barely slept the night before I was tested -- so mebbe, just mebbe I scored lower than I might have. But I think I actually got extra points just for knowing Goethe wrote Faust, and I pronounced the name correctly. 119 sounds about right. Feels like it's been slipping, though, since 2014 or so.

We're way off topic. Is Poser dying? I think the Poser Community has fragmented, which is not, in itself, good for Poser. It's seemed like one of the selling points for Poser, with its various corporate owners over the years, has been the size and strength of the community. Lately it's hard to be sure there even is a solid Poser Community any more. Is it still there, in strength? Do we have the numbers? A couple of years ago, Nerd said we did, and Poser was healthy. But recently the entire Poser Team, barring Larry, was fired. The signs are worrisome.

Things like the design flaw I've been griping about and trying hard to explain clearly might hint at a change of philosophy behind the development and maintenance of Poser. In the past, utility and functionality for the user has always seemed very important to the developers. Since about the time the "phone home" validation and shutdown routine was added to the Game Dev release, it's seemed like maybe the emphasis is now more on what's good for Poser's corporate owners, rather than the program itself or the end user. That seems to be a switch in philosophy all across the software field, from where I sit, but it's troubling to see that happening to Poser.

I don't think Poser is as healthy as it was ten years ago. The trends aren't in its favor. It has more competition. Blender is stronger than it used to be, iClone and others have come along. Daz has stolen away plenty of users, as well as RDNA. Long term, it looks like home computing is moving away from the desktop paradigm of which Poser is a part, and more toward portable, cloud-based approaches. I've begun to wonder if Poser still has another ten years, or even five.

But I'm slowly devolving from Cynicalman into Stupidboy, so what do I know? Umm.

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Cage can be an opinionated jerk who posts without thinking.  He apologizes for this.  He's honestly not trying to be a turkeyhead.

Cage had some freebies, compatible with Poser 11 and below.  His Python scripts were saved at archive.org, along with the rest of the Morphography site, where they were hosted.