Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12359&Form.ShowMessage=576511

This long and annoyed thread in the Virtual Tavern is about a bad misfeature that turned up in some software including Avatar Lab. It is an anti-piracy feature that hides itself by hijacking the PC's internal link-with-hardware position called IRQ6 which the floppy drive uses. This means that if you load that software, your floppy drive goes dead. **There is no call for that sort of $%#@!!! People still use their floppy drives!!!**. Pariah found what was happening by a lot of expensive and time-consuming buying of stuff and reformatting his computer and reloading software. This is looking like getting like that silly idea of PPP needing to email its suppliers for a number before it would run, that was around a while ago and caused a firestorm on this forum. I am mentioning it here because I do **NOT** want it in the long-awaited Poser 5!!! It seems to be that I must choose between an application and being able to use my floppy drive!!!

I second that comment. I still have some old stuff, including the drivers for my old and trusty camera, still on floppy. Maybe we should back all this stuff up to cd just in case?

Glad my computer doesn't have a floppy!! I agree with you, this security stuff is getting out of hand.

This is weird. I have Avatar installed and have not had this problem. I can have Avatar running and use my floppy drive. I am getting tired of all the "protection" that doesn't work correctly and ends up punishing those of us who choose to pay for our programs. Marque

SMACK That's just ridiculous! First, that type of security protection is old, out-dated (isn't that a little retro 80ish style) and a little "big brother-ish" for me. If they expect their loyal customers to put up with that type of sh*t, they can think again. And that's a great way to go out of business... do something REALLY annoying to the legitimate customers because of illegitimate customers. So what happens is... the legit customers don't buy it... and the illegit customer hack it anyway... Second, it's lazy and poor programming on their end if their security silliness can't SHARE an interrrupt. HELLO?! Been available in most chipsets since early to mid 90s. The IRQ sharing is BUILT-IN to NT, 2000 and XP. Personally, I wish they would drop the security completely. Life is life. The people who will buy it, will. The people who won't... won't. They'll find a hacked copy somewhere and no matter how good your protection is... there is always a hacker who is better. So they end up wasting money, resources and time on "security" which takes the hackers all of about 24 hours to break anyway... when they could be spending that money, resources and time on IMRPOVING THE PRODUCT so that more people WANT to buy it. Sorry... rant mode off now.

All of thats very true... XP ticked off TONS of people with their "annoying as hell" security features (myself included) and yet there are copies of that all over! I hate annoying security protocals - it really does hurt the honest consumer the most. Anz

I refuse to install XP for exactly that reason. If Poser 5 contains anything of that nature, I won't buy it. End of story. I suspect I'm not alone. Curious labs, if you're listening, get into the real world, guys. You can't do that and still have happy customers.

Ookami, point well made. Besides, the cost they put into their so-called security is passed on to us in a more expensive product, which means fewer people can afford to buy it, hence, they lose money in the long run. They need to get past their paranoia. I'm offended by the lack of trust to us legit customers. If this is going to be a part of Poser 5, I'll live with version 4 indefinitely. Too bad DAZ couldn't develop a Poser-like program that does the same thing. Their characters are far more superior anyway. DAZ respects their customers. I've never had such wonderful customer service from anyone else. They have good old fashion business sense. Obviously Curious Labs doesn't. It'll be their loss. I think the world needs to start trusting instead of expending all their energies on witch hunts and get down to good business. They're slowly self-destructing with this attitude. They're going to be their own undoing. Melanie

...and, a comment on the floppy drive business, where I work, we don't have CD burners on our computers. If we have a reason to take work home with us, we have to put documents on floppy disks, so the file can be transferred. Some e-mail providers won't allow large files to be sent via e-mail attachment. So the floppy drive is still essential. Melanie

Wow - I'm guessing that they didn't really get the IRQ-sharing down cold before implementation. On my Linux box, I literally haven't used the floppy drive in years - it just plugs a hole right now. My Windows laptop OTOH is a different story. (I transfer between the two via FTP on my home network.) eirian is right - My Inspiron 8100 came from Dell w/ XP pre-installed (even though I had refused it and got the discount to boot), though it never ran on this machine. I fdisked the hard drive from floppy and installed Win2k on it. The reason why is simple: I've messed with XP on others' machines, and I don't like XP's paternalistic "here, don't touch that setting, moron - let Daddy do it for you" attitude. You can't tweak jack on it. I also hated the idea that it had to dial in and tell MS about my computer and then get permission to "activate" before it would boot. Bleah... ('k, end of XP rant, promise.) As for 'security features', this has been an ongoing struggle long before Windows existed... I mean does anyone else remember seeing Commodore 64 Nibbler disks? The best feature I had seen only worked half-arsed; Quake3 has CD-Keys, and there can only be one key active on the Internet at a time. Sure, folks found alternate keys, but casual copying dropped to pretty much nil because no one wanted to see their access denied online. 'course, Poser doesn't have an online component, nor should it. Their best bet would be to use something akin to what 3DS Max uses - a hardware key. Yes it can be hacked, but also, from what I've seen of students' hacked copies (more accurately, from what I've had to clean out of my lab machines), those hacks will eat at least 50% of your CPU cycles just to keep the print spooler fooled into thinking there's a hardwawre key present. They keys are small, they're discreet, and it'll keep casual copying to an absolute minimum... prolly won't add but a dollar or two to the total cost. Just don't lose the key :/ /P

In Babbage's name I don't want to have to use a hardware dongle!!!! They can get lost or stolen or damaged, or borrowed and not returned. I had my fill of dongles when I was in charge of a labful of computers for students to use, and two programs called Autocad and K-Space came with dongles (alias hardware keys, I suppose). And it was not long before someone came with what was presumably a hacked warez copy of Autocad on a floppy that didn't need the dongle. If the legit Avatar Lab sabotages the floppy drive, and the warez version does not, it would mean that the warez version would be better than the legit version.

Speaking of Poser and the internet, I just installed Norton Personal Firewall 2002 the day before yesterday. It works fine--as far as I know--with all programs and does what the dox say it should....except when I used Poser. Whenever I launched Poser, the firewall would pop up and tell me, "Poser.exe is trying to access the internet." I'd tell the program to block it and continue in Poser. After a minute or two, the message would come up again. This happened every time I was in Poser, so I told Norton to permanently block it and I don't get the message any more. Was this just a quirk or what?

It is likely an attempt to tell if more than one computer is running Poser installed from the same install disk or from a copy of the same.

I'd rather have a hardware dongal than a software dongal like Max 4 has. One advantage of the hardware one is if the company goes under (god forbid) you can still use the software. With a software one (which is getting to be the rage) it will stop working if you change your box or even hard drive, if you can't re-authorize it you are out of luck. This junk only handicaps honest people anyway, best is none!

well, that's it. when there's a lock, there will be a key. no matter what 'security' is there. Those company always do something that 'protect' their products. Well well well, if you really want to protect your protuct, lock up them in a safe, don't sell them in the market. there must have some people crack the protection some time, use so many 'protection' will only punishing those who pay money and brought the legit version. No matter what u do, people use warez version will still use warez version, too much protection is only make legal user hate the softwear.

I wonder what happens if IRQ 6 is assigned to something else? say the sound or video card? It would be a real drag if you installed Poser 5 and could not use it at all.

I remember the old days when you had to use jumpers to set those things. It was a puzzle to figgure out what could be set to what, and still work.

Jackson, Poser will only allow you to run one copy on a network, so it was probably checking to see if other copies are running. I hope for Poser 5 they will put network rendering in (like most 3d apps).

Thats exactly what it does... if you go to the curious lab website looking at one of the updates it says something about it. It's seeing, like someone said, for identical copies on the network. Made me a little... irritable at first too... I don't like ANYTHING contacting the net that I'm not aware of. Anz

Protection schemes now are meant to stop "casual copying" (I'm paraphrasing Microsoft right now since they are among the most pirated of companies, if not the most). Now, with that in mind, and that everyone dislikes some sort of dongle (which I agree with from bad past experiences), it leaves little alternative. I think they should be able to protect their software in some way, but they can't piss off the customers.

The only thing I think of right now that wouldn't drive people mad would be basic CD protection, like SafeDisc or something similar, but even those can be picky with certain CD drives. This is a fine line they're taking, and I think they need to be REALLY careful.

And melanie had an excellent point which I want to reiterate (with my own feelings intertwined in it): the cost involved in getting these infuriating protection schemes is passed on to the customer. A more expensive product means fewer people can afford it. I know I fall into that category since this is just a hobby for me.

Another thing re: my floppy drive: I have a FlashPath floppy adaptor for my digital camera memory card. I wouldn't be able to use it if the floppy drive is disabled. This really makes me angry. If Curious Labs does continue their paranoia about pirates, I simply won't be upgrading to version 5, plain and simple. Melanie

Ditto. I need my floppy drive. Sharing IRQ6 won't work, because some people likely are still using old computers running Windows 95, which can't share IRQ's.

The problem was that the proper device driver update was not installed for Windows XP. Once the proper driver is installed. Your Floppy drive will work just fine. This is an OS related issue. Not CL deciding what hardware you have is expendible. ScottA

But it is still a bug-prone misfeature, and there is need to pressure Curious Labs not to put it in any more products. That was necessary and worked when they tried that silly need for PPP etc to get authentication over the internet. People set up their IRQ's up in all sorts of special ways sometimes, and I see no excuse whatever in some program tampering about among the IRQ's merely to stop a few pirates until the hacked warez version comes out, which will likely be soon anyway.

Attached Link: http://freaky.staticusers.net/network.shtml

I beg to differ... This isn't an OS issue, the OS works fine without it. What this is, is a third party screw up, and an ongoing and well known one to boot, (if the MS pages are anything to go by) Why should I have to download a third party patch to reclaim the use of my floppy drive? Can anyone give me one good reason, *why* I should have to think about this at all? Hopefully I haven't got this gremlin, I haven't got Avatar Lab, nor am I ever likely to. I have the Adobe ebook reader archived somewhere along with the bit of software Skylarov got jailed for writing. But neither are installed currently, "nor are they ever likely to be..." But to be honest I was far to preoccupied with why my sims contracted autism over the weekend to look real close, (damndest thing you ever saw... :) What I will do is buy 5.0 when it comes out, then dissect the installer, to find out what it contains, and what it intends to do to my machine. If I find something I don't like, I'll wait a week or so, and download the inevitable crack and run that instead, unless somebody can point me to the law (binding in Germany) that says I can't. My reasons for this are simple enough. I'm living proof that if you tweak XP it breaks, I have a laptop, It's all I've got with me at present. It has a hot swap drive bay DVD/Floppy, they run of the same IRQ... I'm fighting daily battles just to keep XP running, The DVD blinks in and out of existance every so often anyway. I'm not introducing some bit of crap I don't need into an already unstable system. Ain't happening, period! Because while *P5* will be new, there is no guarantee the version of InterLok it's cloaked in wil be *any* different to the one that's screwing up today.... "hands up all those that want to install a program that stores thier details, (know and unknown) for possible future (mis)use, and introduces possible instability, depending on you have installed currently, and what else you may choses to install in the future?" Democracy in action... Mac users meanwhile may wish to investigate the link. later jb

As far as I'm concerned there is not real reason to bother with program protection built into the program or onto the CD. I go by the motto "If it can be made, it can be hacked." I have lots of products on CD (including MS stuff). First thing i do with them is make a back up of the CD so that the original doesn't get scratched. I have never had any problems using a backed up CD, EVER and I have a 5 or 6 year old 4x8 burner that is also my reader. The first chance I get I go out and download no-cd cracks so that it takes the strain off of my CD burner seeing as how that is also my only reader. I also build programs and I thought about making them secure, but then I thought, why bother. If someone wants it bad enough it will be cracked so why waste my time trying to protect it. I seen a report the other day that said had a supposed "warez user" talking about why people use warez software. He said because of the price. All I had to say is BULLSH*T!!! If you go out and look for the cheapest programs out there, ones that only cost 3 to 5 bucks each you will find cracks for them. Hell there are even some programs out there that the person only wants a postcard to register it. People will crack a program because it's there. That is the simple truth. If a program will not allow me to use a piece of my hardware or software due to security reasons, that program will get junked. So far I haven't had any problems.