In my experience (as a professional developer), pricing is based on a single factor: pain threshold. You make a (more or less) educated guess about how much the customers are willing to pay, and then you use that price. If you sell a lot=huge profit. If you sell very little=loss, but minimized. Face it, the software industry is not nearly as mature as most other manufacturing industries. /Troberg

If I may be a bit hard, I would say that one should follow the first rule of conflict management: "Never, ever let an unwanted action get the desired result.". I know a lot of people in the hacker/pirate scene, and there is a code of honor among them. One of the things you can be sure of is that the more invasive the copy protection, the more they will try to crack it. Software that relies on trust and honor will be less copied (I once bought a prog that only required me to give my word of honor that I would not spread it. I never spread it.). The bottom line is that if you do not like invasive copy protection, make sure it is ineffective, but also make sure you pay for programs that behave. Companies has to learn that it is bad business to harass or snoop on customers. Show them that the pain threshold has been reached. It is a matter of positive and negative feedback. Someone mentioned firewalls. Don't make the mistake of thinking that they are a bullet proof protection. They block traffic based on port and protocol. They will not stop the sending of data if it is sent as HTTP on port 80, because they can't separate it from normal web traffic. /Troberg

I find call home, activation required etc copy protections despicable, even though I am a proffessional programmer. The bottom line is that once a program starts sending info back home, you have no guarantee about what it will send. Regarding activation, it is my own business if I install or not and I don't think anyone has the right to snoop into that. Another thing is that any copy protection can be easily hacked, leaving the only ones bothered by it the legitimate users. I have a laptop running XP, and even though I have a licence, I run a hacked version just to get around the annoying activation (and reactivation everytime I docked it...). It is a good example of backfiring copy protections. Another thing that annoys me whas when I bought Poser 3 full price, and when Poser 4 whas release less than a month later I had to pay full price for that also! No upgrade protection at all. There is a lot of software out there with lifetime registration. I don't say that you have to go that far, but I still think that it is better business to get more customers instead of bleeding a smaller number dry. For me it is a matter of principle, I do not want any program sending any info about my system. I will probably run a hacked version of poser 5 (which will appear within a week after the release), even if I buy it. Given their crappy upgrade policy, I might just let the magic of the internet provide for me this time. /troberg

Thanks! Really good information and an impressive knowledge. I'll try the progs you mentioned later, right now I have some difficulties using my computer since I got attacked last night and scratched up my hands pretty bad (can't rest my wrists on the table...). /Troberg

Sorry, Mac wont help me. I've invested too much money in PC hardware to change and anyway I'm a programmer so a toy like a Mac is not for me (I need a toy like a cluster of three dual processor PC's...). Of course I've tried searching, but I've yet to find one that produced good results. If you want to try it, the best prog I can recommend is an old prog called Lyaponovia for the Amiga. If you don't have an Amiga or (like me) hasn't used it in almost 10 years, there are some good emulators out there (UAE is my favourite). /Troberg

Sorry, I got those pictures on a disk that crashed on me a couple of years ago. If I make any good ones I'll post them. Try searching the web for lyaponov, there are some excellent images out there. /Troberg

Thanks, looks great. I'll check it when I get home. The only question is how I can do some sneak prints of huge images on the big inkjet plotter at work... /Troberg

Yes, I've seen several (although I must admit that it's been some months since I last looked), but none that produced the nice results I want. I also want a prog that can calculate large images (I'm talking about one or more square meters at the printer's resolution), not that I have the disk space and lots of spare CPU time (three fast dual processor machines that mostly idles...). I thought that someone could recommend a prog worth trying, sparing me the effort of sifting through dozens of progs that's not up to the task. /Troberg

Actually, a macro recorder wouldn't have been enough on its own, this is just a small snippet from a larger script. It would have made an easy start, though. It would definitely make it easier for non-progammers (those horrible people known as users) to use. /Troberg

Thanks fgeorge, it worked. I suggested that it was something like that, but I was in a big hurry and the documentation and samples really suck. You saved me a lot of hard work. I have more than 1000 renders to do, and without the script that would have taken me a week or two. No I ran it during one day, completely automatic. Lourdes, I probably can do it like that, but right now, it is not what I need. I'd also like to keep it as simple as possible, since this is my first try at python (in any form) and I don't have time to get bogged down on syntax details right now. It would be very helpful if it was possible to record macros which could then be edited and adapted, much like it works in Office or UltraEdit. It would reduce much of the hassle and lower the threshold for starters in python. If it were up to me, they would've used VBA instead. It is cheap and easy to include (I've done it in my software to make it user extensible) and it is widely known and easy to learn, while still being powerful and object oriented. Some documentation of the poser object model would be nice. Perhaps a project for someone with spare time and nothing to do? /Troberg

Thanks, I'll try. I'm also a professional programmer (been programming for 17 years), but this is my first try at python, so I'm still a bit unsure about the syntax. /Troberg

Or even easier, rotate the entire scen and use one of the orto-views. /Troberg

Sorry, didn't see that. I'll hit myself repeatedly with a blunt object. /Troberg

Sorry, but it doesn't work. I can move the menus around, but the main work area is still stuck between the screens, cut up right down the middle. Also, all dialog boxes are still stuck in the center. I forgot to mention that I use a Matrox G400 Dual Head card, which does not need OS support for multi monitor. To NT, it just looks lika a single big screen, and the driver intercepts certain window messages (like WM_CENTERWINDOW) to provide sensible behaviour (like maximizing to a single screen). This works fine with all programs written according to windows guidelines. For some strange reason, Metacreations seems to make it a point to write ill-behaved and strange looking software. Normally, I would dump a program that behaved this badly without a second thought, but since the programs are quite unparalelled in what can be accomplished, I'll just have to bite the bullet. It would be nice if the programs were written for windows and looking like a windows program though... /Anders Troberg anders@troberg.mine.nu