Oh I agree with pdxjims too. Just to clarify...my previous AMEN was directed entirely at Windows. Nothing to do with P5 at all. I am camping on my porch waiting on my copy. LOL! ;o)

It's a hundred times easier to smash a lock than to build a lock. The Warez kiddies will crack whatever copy protection made, and spread the cracked version of it around. It was probably cracked the day went gold, and on every Warez site the day after. I don't think Warez is as big a concern as these are people that wouldn't have bought it anyways. The only real concern are people that legally buy a product and then burn a copy for all their friends the low tech way. I know a CD can be made so that it cannot be copied correctly. My dad went to burn me a copy of a game, and the copy didn't work, so I went out and bought it. Something like that is perfect because it stops us non hackers and forces us to buy it if we want it.

LOL@ Nikita! Worry not, ma'am... as soon as enough people bug Kupa to port it to Linux, it may happen. There's already a Linux-based compositor now called Shake that works a lot like Poser. Only difference is, Shake costs a zillion bucks and is used in the high-end market; it's also more heavily geared towards animation than stills. And yeah, it has a protection scheme too, if the article in Linux Journal is any indication.

pdxjims is right - doesn't matter what OS they port it to, warez is warez, and proprietary stuff will always need some sort of protection scheme to keep the casual warez kittens at bay.

Incidentally, for those who are wondering, the one and only reason you don't see Linux warez all that much is because you can already go get the source code to damned near every Linux product out there and compile the thing yourself. The GNU General Public License is the absolute best anti-warezing tool I've ever seen.

FyreSpiryt: I read tyour whole post... and the point still remains - CL wants to protect their copyright, which is the "why" of it all... They know that it won't stop it all, but it will make things harder to warez out.

Case in point would be Adobe Illustrator... there has only been one warezed version I've seen, and the readme for it states that the only way you can make it work is to turn your CMOS clock back to 2001 or some noise.

Also, like I've said before, protection schemes are common in 3D software in the mid-to-high end. I'm suprised CL hasn't done this earlier.

/P

What if the first "cracked" version of Poser 5 sends kiddy porn to the FBI?

Try to explain that.

Just food for thought.

I pre ordered the real thing, and it's been shipped.

What if the first "reverse engineered" version of a digital camera sent kiddy porn to the FBI? Hmmmmmmmmmm???????????????????????????????????????????? Cameras and (Poser) software don't create pornography, ............ people do! It's kinda like: guns fire cameras "art" etc. They can either be used for ... good ... or for evil, n'est pas? Just some additional food for thought. I, also, pre ordered the real thing, and it's been shipped. HOO-RAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! cheers, dr geep ;=]

I think he was trying to say something to the lurking warez kittens something along the lines of "what if the warez version of P5 is trojaned?" Then again, it is legal to take your own products, and release semi-trojaned and crippled versions of it on P2P services (within reason), yes? /P

Geep, I'm sure yours is in the mail. grin So is mine! I'm not wild about this protection system. I have two computers and a laptop. Only one computer is on the Net. There others aren't set up yet for Net access. I'd like to have Poser5 on all my machines. I'll find a way, I guess somehow (calling for Codes for the machines not on the Net) to have Poser on all my machines. Liz Pope Dreamspinner

Hi Liz, I am sure everything in this department will get sorted out in due time. cheers, dr geep ;=]

Geep, I hope so because the more powerful machine I have is not on the Net. I'm waiting until I can afford a second phone line and DSL for that one. Not even sure this machine that is on the Net can handle Poser5, but I'm gonna try. wink Liz Pope Dreamspinner

Thanks Penguinisto, That's what I was trying to say. Software that has been hacked is nothing to play around with.

RoyG, didn't you see meska's posts some time ago about censorship and the comments about Aschroft v. Free Speech? The old federal code was that all kiddie porn was criminal. The Sup Ct said the law was overreaching and required a carving out of exceptions for virtual images, no matter how graphic or abused they were. The new code trashed the Sup. Ct. and merely allowed a defense to criminal prosecution if you could convince a judge or jury that your kiddie porn was all virtual. Give it time, the Sup Ct will overturn the new code. Bottom line, people will abuse things, be it a gun, an automobile, a camera, or a computer program. The makers of the guns, cars, cameras, and computers are not to be blamed for the abuse of the folks who really ought to be in jail.

"We did respond, in a thread that was open and not heated. " What thread, Coop? Btw... your FAQ link is coming up php errors.

::sighs:: Pen, I'll try again. I'll even use small words this time. There are lots of ways for CL to protect what they made. I would like to know why they chose the one that they knew makes people mad over all of the rest. There. Only two multi-syllable words. :P

Yup, Ditto on the errors... I've pre-ordered in Germany, so I guess I'll be getting mine a week or so later than the rest of you :( Do I like M$, no, I'm a UNIX admin, (even when it was the last clean T-shirt I had, I couldn't bring myself to wear my "free" pre-order Xbox T-shirt) do I run XP, yes, on both my laptop and desktop, do I have licences for both, yes, did I register either, no. My desktop is running a "select" install from work, comes pre-registered, because companies rolling out 200-2000 seats aren't going to get on the phone for each one. My laptop is runing a hack, it permanantly thinks it's day one of my 30 day "trial" period. I may at some point convert the laptop to QNX, (which I also have a license for, though I have the "free" version too :) I needed XP for Poser, when my laptop was my main machine, now it's my 'net access box, virus checking everything, and burning to CD for transport is a good discipline. So my desktop will remain unwired. When I get home and retieve my QNX license from the '486 it's on (it's "node locked", you can only install it once.) then I'll make the choice, last time I tried to install Mandrake on my laptop, it all installed OK but refused to boot... Personally I don't think Linux will ever take over the desktop, it's just too hard to master, has too many options and asumes too much knowledge on the part of the user. In the server space it's killing UNIX, and colonising some space that M$ would like to own. But desktop? Nah, unless it looks like Redmond, feels like Redmond, and (most crucially) offers simple data interoperablity, (ever tried to edit a recent Word doc? Access database? Excell spreadsheet?)like Redmond, It simply isn't going to cut it with most "ordinary" people, Journalists and IT Pro's possibly, but "Joe Pleb?" Hardly. It's got a great browser in Mozilla 1.1 but does it work with bulk of sites designed to work with IE5/6? The web is client/server, so if you can't view a page, it's a client side, not a server side issue. I don't think CL are M$ (though they'd be dumb not to want to be) I also don't think that no matter how much we scream and shout, they'll change thier minds and give us unfettered access to the software we've just bought the right to use. I can't read the article kupa posts at the top of this page, but I read elswhere in this forum an analogy to cars, would you leave yours unlocked? Why not? etc. I think that's a bad analogy and here's why: the prevalence and availability of global P2P sharing networks. In essence, it's far easier and quicker to distribute a hack to defeat the protection system, (especially if the hack will fit on a floppy) than it is to hack & package the entire CD. It's far easier to get a legit CD, or a copy of a legit CD, install it, then apply the hack. Anyone who has grown up with computers, as I have, over the last 15 years, will be able to locate a hack for any given program in a matter of hours, if not minutes. Most teenagers I know of don't have DSL, but if you're only downloading <1.44Mb then dialup will do fine... I say teenagers, because that's the euphamish most often used, copy protection cuts down on "playground copying" which may have been true in my day, but we had to copy tapes, not CD's and we had no access to the internet. If you applied the reality of P2P to the car analogy you might come up with the following question: "knowing that anyone who wants to, can make a key to your car, why do you continue to leave it out in the street?" The flaw in the analogy is of course that of a finite resource, there is only one car. So how about this: "knowing that anyone who wants to can make a copy of your car without your knowledge, why do you continue to leave it out on the street?" CL have thier reasons for adding protection software, they may or may not be transparent to us. Most software companies don't speak to thier customers at all, certainly not in the informal way they do here. I find it hard to believe that if Adobe added a dongle to Photoshop tomorrow, that anything would change. It would still be widely pirated, dongle or no. I'll register my first install, after that I'll rely on the inevitable crack, of course "content paradise" may check and block you as M$ are thinking of doing to chipped Xbox's on Xbox Live! (as the supplemental EULA shows) but I imagine it will be available from the web too, and if that becomes an issue, I'll just use it from work... This is a non-issue, don't like it? Don't buy it, don't bitch about it. later jb

FyreSpiryt said: "There are lots of ways for CL to protect what they made. I would like to know why they chose the one that they knew makes people mad over all of the rest." If you think that would make folks mad, perhaps you should see what happens when folks realize they have to keep track of a hardware dongle (Ford Motor company was notorious for that on their dealership network PC's), or realize that the 'copy-protected' CD won't work in their off-generic brand of CD-ROM (which is a useless scheme anyhow). If there's a method they could've used that was at least as effective, without pissing as many people off, I'd like to know what it is. As it is, I doubt that no more than a handful of folks, most of whom have already posted, will even care about 'activation'... after all, Windows XP sales haven't slowed down by much. Praxis 22 said: "My desktop is running a "select" install from work, comes pre-registered, because companies rolling out 200-2000 seats aren't going to get on the phone for each one. My laptop is runing a hack, it permanantly thinks it's day one of my 30 day "trial" period." You realize you've violated the Microsoft Windows XP EULA in the latter instance, yes? Reverse engineering and hacks to the protection scheme are no different from 'cracks' that disable CD Keys, whether you own a legit copy or not. Also, I am aware of the Select versions, but I am also aware that unless you have signed permission from your employer to take a copy home and install it, you're technically pirating that home (not the laptop) copy of XP. But if that machine is at work and is part of your job, then I misunderstood, and I apologize for that misunderstanding. "Nah, unless it looks like Redmond, feels like Redmond, and (most crucially) offers simple data interoperablity, (ever tried to edit a recent Word doc? Access database? Excell spreadsheet?)" Actually, yes - I do so every workday, and in my Linux partition. I use Open Office mostly, but Star Office does the job too. OO is free for the download: http://www.openoffice.org For those who still want to use MS Office, you can pop in Codeweavers' WINE plugin and use the original MS Office prducts in Linux, including MS Viru^H^H^H^HOutlook. ;) It'll fall within Joe Sixpack's reach soon enough, I can promise you that. "I find it hard to believe that if Adobe added a dongle to Photoshop tomorrow, that anything would change. " I agree perfectly - after all, 3DS Max has a warez version. OTOH, I've recently had to fix a computer that had that warezed version on it - the problem was that his 2.2 GHz / 1GB RAM machine was running slower than a 486 even after he shut 3DS Max off... turns out that the print spool in Windows sucked down nearly all his CPU power in fooling the hardware protection scheme in 3DS, and continued to run as a seperate proggie after 3DS was shut off (3DS Max' dongle plugs into the parport.) So yeah, the dongle can be foiled, but look at what you have to give up to run a dongle-cracked copy. Nothing's perfect, but then again, using cracks to get around stuff is not much better than just going to Morpheus and downloading the thing IMHO. It does you nor the company any good.

From what I have seen so far I cant say that Poser 5 makes better models, presumed you have Vicki. When Im wrong Ill get it without caring about protection and all.

as a famous ad campagn goes poser5 doesn't make better models Poser5 makes models better. firefly render engine with subdivision of surface polygons will do that. strand based hair will do that. node based material shaders will do that. displacement mapping will definately do that. as you said you'll believe it when you see it. I'm betting it wont be so long before you see it. :)

I have no idea what all this means, but I cant wait to know.

many of these things do not presently translate to other programs so if you render exclusively in bryce say, then no the p5 upgrades won't make your present figures better. but if you render in Poser there's no doubt they'll even make your High rez figures look better. for example displacement mapping is a much more realistic version of bump mapping where the map actualy does deform the skin causing lighting to model textures much more accurately. subdivision of surface poygons will make any curved surface smoother, in effect creating more polygons. the firefly renderer will put reflections on objects rather then using a texture map to simulate them. Node based shaders will allow a flexability of textures, layers, translucency, previously unavailable in a consumer level product (by consumer level I mean a program that costs less then the computer it's run on)

Thanks wdupre! Now I can imagine a bit what will happen. Actually my message was meant as '...cant wait to see', because Im an eye-consumer and it were the pics here in the gallery which made me buy Poser 4. Sounds good since I only have Poser and in the past it was not always obvious what was rendered in Bryce and what in Poser. Are there any pics to judge already? Those which I saw were at Runtime DNA and I could not see much difference.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=834875

I see; the spheres look great, but her...its a matter of taste. For me will be important how much the new render styles improve the model. Im not an artist, I have Poser for doing pin-up-style pics. Cherchez la femme!

Ah yes, nekid women :) Infinate variety, etc. :P Peng, Don't get me wrong, I hate M$ and I use thier software grudgingly for the most part, I also decry much of it as crap. Like the new XP service pack, wont install on my machine, it's my work box, so appart from a batch of M$ patches, and the fact that it's hooked into the file servers for secure logon, it's as standard as they come. But the new patch gets around 3 seconds into the install proper: "do you wish to backup the old files?" then it closes the installer window and pops up a helpfull little box saying "the install has been canceled" [OK] So I closed everything down, even Norton and it does the same thing. Drop into safe mode, where the secure logon wont let me logon as me as it can't fine the domain server, and it won't let me logon as administrator because it says the password is wrong, which is bullshit, since it the same pasword I use everywhere... Reset password, try again, same response. Argh!!! But even after that, I still don't think that Linux will "break" the desktop as it doesn't come as one install, you have to add wine, add openoffice, etc. But you're expecting people who buy from Wal*Mart to be savy enough to use this. They don't care if a file is OGG or MP3, they want thier MTV. They want to play PC games, they want a browser that works with everything, an OS that does it all for them. Linux doesn't do that, it's UNIX, the antithesis of "point & click" I've worked in computer shops, people buy what their mates tell them to, even against your advice, then bring it back and complain that it doesn't work... Linux is good, it's a geek's OS, but that's the point. XP is a users OS, it makes all your choices for you, looks cool, has whizzy little features that people like regardless of how much privacy they have to give up, knowingly or not. Now I've never connected a printer to Linux, but if it's anything like Solaris, then it's going to be no picnic for Joe Sixpack. Then of course there is the problem of internet access, last time I looked you had to configure PPP into the kernel, then hope it works, whereas on XP, you simply type your username and password into the box and press "connect" and it does it all for you. When Linux can do this, it won't be Linux anymore. Meanwhile X-box hackers are jumpstarting SUSE onto the drives of unsuspecting games consoles, up to thier elbows in cables and solder, and loving every minute of it. It's a different world, and never the twain shall meet. I'd love Linux to take the desktop, put "the Man" out of business, "in a world without fences, who needs Gates?" :) But with the best will in the world it isn't going to happen, because there will never be "just one distro" and our world would be a lot poorer for it if there were. What I'm doing at home may be bending the rules a little, but if they come knocking I can show them the licences, show them the CD's, It may not strictly match the EULA, but then neither does running one copy of poser on 2 PC's, and a fair number of users here do that. I'm of the opinion that once they have your money thay stop being interested in you, except when it comes time to upgrade. A smart company will make sure you're happy with your product, because reviews and word of mouth sell far more than advertising. But business is business. later jb

[[Also, you missed a great big point - If people get disgusted with paying rent on their computer, they'll vote with their wallets and go get something better. Instead of whining about "oh, when will Linux do this/that", perhaps you ought to get off yer duff and help out a little? After all, Linux is about community, not about carping on some corporation to get things done for you. ]] HOW will they "vote with their wallets" if there is NO other operating system available for PC's that will run all the programs they want to use???? M$ is certainly working very hard to keep everyone out of the market so they can use their monopoly status to FORCE people to play it their way. It's been pretty obvious that their strategy is to 'slowly' shift to the pay-by-month approach, bit by bit by bit, so once it's fully in place, the 'general run' of users will be 'used to it' and won't realize what they've signed away until some month comes when they forget to pay on time and get cut off from all their own files, by which time it will be way too late to do anything about it except pay up - and once they've got everyone trapped into the system, you can absolutely COUNT on those monthly fees increasing quite regularly. As far as "getting off my duff" - I am NOT a programmer in ANY form. Since it is totally unrealistic to try to ditch all my other interests and work, and spend the next several years doing nothing but learning how to program - there's not a damn thing I CAN do to help except be ready to buy Linux-ported software IF and when it becomes available, and IF and when Linux comes in a form that laymen/non-programmers can use, be ready to instantly convert to it.

I am NOT a programmer in ANY form You don't need to be. The community at large badly need folks who can: * Write documentation and man pages for specific programs * Write HOWTOs to explain it all in Layman's terms * Translate documents from their original language (usually English, but sometimes French or German or...? ) into other languages you may know. * Test software for functionality - send in bug reports. * If you know how to use it, teach others who are interested in using it. " if there is NO other operating system available for PC's that will run all the programs they want to use????" Huh? Like what? New programs and ports appear daily allowing more and more MS proggies to run in Linux, or programs that can replace/eclipse other MS programs (example: GIMP replaces Photoshop and uses P-shop brushes)... I can already run the entire MS Office Suite in Linux right now. Mojoworld has a Linux version. Maya has a Linux version, and is their best selling port among the industrial 'render-farm' animators like Dreamworks and ILM.

Well, scratch one hack :) I got paranoid, (and a little over zealous :) while trying to remove the GUID from Mediaplay, I reomved what I thought was the mediaplayer # no from the registry only to find out that it was the windows # no, so the bloody thing wouldn't boot any more without requesting I re-register, then falling over... :) Bugger! :) So now the laptop is running the select copy as well, though the good thing is that it will now run the 131Mb SP1, which once I'd got past the "you have 200Mb of a 2Gb disk left" problem that I always have upon re-install of XP... actually gave me more space back than it used, wierd! :P Now if only this bloody sparcstation would play ball I could go home... Oh yeah, check /. they have a link to "Amiga/C=64 radio" V. cool I'm getting all misty eyed with the pitch bends :) later jb