Irrelevant. Answer me this, Scott: what does it matter if I "care" about the company, or any company, or not in business concerns? I don't have to care about a company to decide wether or not to spend my money with them. All that matters is wether the product does what I need it to do, wether it works as it's supposed to, and wether their business practices are designed to make it easier or less easy to do business with them of their products. If the answer to those questions is yes, they can make a sale. And repeated sales... If the answer to those is "no", then I may love the owner of the company like a brother, but that doesn't mean I'll spend money there. I don't particularly like or "care" about Microsoft, but Windows 2000 Pro WORKS, and I install it on systems I build for clients. Wether I like or "care" about MS or Bill G is irrelevant to wether the product suits the need of the client. I don't even know any one at Autodesk or Adobe enough to have an opinion on wether I care about the company, but if an architectrual or graphics client is looking for an architectural prog, or a image handling prog, I'll direct them to Studio VIZ or Photoshop if that prog will meet their needs. "Caring" about Adobe or Autodesk is a non existant factor. Same on computers... I'm friends with the sales manager at Tri-star and care about him as a friend, but if an out of state's client's needs are better met by Hypersonic, that's where I'll direct them for a system. Simple... a computer client is spending upwards of 5 grand on a workstation, what they need is paramount, and making sure they buy a system that meets those needs is what they pay me for. Selling them on a system that might not suit those needs because I "care" about the company that makes the other rig would be foolish and unethical of me. I'd go out of business in short order. Caring about Tri-star and my friend there means that I'll let them know why on occassion I'll reccomend a client elsewhere so they can make product changes to better suit my clients needs - not blindly overlooking a feature or lack of that might make it more suitable. I'm not going to let copyright protection schemes be my only criteria for wether a product will suit my needs - it won't ever be, there are too many other criteria - but do NOT expect me to buy into the fallacies and myths that people propogate about warez concerns, protection schemes, and program protection. They don't work, they will get cracked, as soon as it's cracked it becomes useless. Fact. People who believe there's any such thing as an uncrackable hardware or software lock are living in NeverNever Land. People who believe that any "protection scheme" is going to stop software piracy are living in the same place. People who believe that software locks are doing anything except making a company feel like it's doing something useful other than wasting money and aggravating customers are living in NeverNever Land. The biggest NeverNever Land is the accountants delusion that pirates will spend money on software, and that copies lost to warez will translate into dollars in a companies pocket - ain't a gonna happen, thieves steal, that's why they're theives. Money lost to the warez community is money that wouldn't have landed in a companies pocket to begin with. Counting it is counting unhatched chickens. Note, Scott: I have NOT said, ever, period: "Don't buy Poser 5". Or that I wouldn't buy it, or that someone else shouldn't. What I am saying is that I don't believe the rhetoric, and for people to make the decision on how to spend their money on very simple criteria: Will this do what I need it to? And can I personally live with the authorization? If the answer is "yes", buy away. Just don't make the choices based on warm fuzzies, and don't confuse bullshit about program protection with reality. Program protection is a sop to make programmers feel like they're doing something useful, and stockholders feel like the company is protecting their investments - it's bidness, as we say in Texas - pure and simple. It's not based on reality: I've spent way, way too much freaking time around software developement, computer security, programming, and anti-piracy endeavors - some of them you may recall while I worked for THIS company - to believe in warm fuzzy myths. You want to make an impression on me, prove my beleif that those are myths wrong with facts. "Care" and business have nothing to do with each other.

"I am a good person now and it feels... well, pretty much the same as I felt before (except that the headaches have gone away now that I'm not wearing control top pantyhose on my head anymore)"

• Monkeysmell