OK. Just to take a moment of your time. Penguinisto has kindly offered me hosting on his server and in the spirit of happily cluttering up other peoples hard drives I've accepted the offer. Hopefully I'll be able to get some html together and get the site live for the weekend. I will post and let everyone know when it goes up. Thank you very much Penguinisto, your offer is extremely generous, though you may live to regret it. :) I want to thank everybody in this thread who has either sent me or Blaze messages of support. She will respond to the emails herself later but for now she's asked I thank you all here. Thank you also everyone who has offered webspace to store various amounts of my models. Those offers are greatly appreciated. For those people who have offered space, I would ask that you keep an eye out for other freestuff providers who may be struggling and help them out. The strength of the forums is their ability to help each other and for the members to pull together. It'd be nice to see that spirit continue and enforce itself. Let's face it, without free stuff most of us would have much smaller collections of models and textures to play with. Bandwidth is and always will be a problem, but perhaps by spreading the load around some of the sites and offers that have been made by people in this thread a new trend can start. One of support. In all honesty I can think of no better way to "pay back" the people who sent abuse to generous souls like Sams3D, Fyrespirit and so many other people who are less vocal about the situation. On that note, it's nice to see people feel so passionately about this issue as it increases my faith in the forums and their members, which I confess had been flagging somewhat. I have no idea what triggers the abusive mails. I really don't. Why I and Sams3D should get them yet other people who offer freebies do not is a mystery. When I first broached this subject at 3DCommune last year the amount of emails was relatively limited, yet I was still aware of several people who were offering good to fair quality files that were getting nasty-grams in their mail. These varied from "you suck" to some fairly graphic and vicious emails. That trend if anything has increased over the last 18 months and it's sad to see it happen. I'm not alone in receiving abuse and I fail to understand the trigger that causes it. Suffice to say that there are people haunting the forums who have a problem with their own self esteem, or just like to hurl abuse at people. Hell the galleries get trolled regularly enough for little or no reason so it's not a unique situation. Little people who need to feel important in their own minds and do so by being abusive online - or in real life - exist in all walks of life. You can't avoid them but not everybody suffers from their particular kind of unpleasant attention. What motivates them is a mystery to me though there are probably a multitude of psychological explanations. It's enough that these people exist and it's more than enough that a few of them infect the cgi forums. As we've seen in this thread, the abusive behaviour is not limited to a few people or to these forums. Gaming forums and freestuff providers there get the same thing. It's sickening and very sad. I doubt that the awareness founded in this thread by Ironbear will last for long, the forums are too fickle and too active for that to last long, same with the support. But at least people are now aware of the situation of randome abuse though I have no doubt some of the vendors have already suffered from this spiteful behaviour and were aware already that some strange pathetic individuals infest the forums. Perhaps that awareness will stay with a few people and a better showing of support for freestuff and vendors will result. Who knows? Anyway. I'll take a risk here on behalf of all freestuff providers both vocal and quiet and thank everyone in this thread for the surprising show of support that has been displayed. Especially those who have received abuse through IM and emails. Yeah, I know, speaking for the mythical "all" is generally a mistake, but I think it's safe to say that some people will feel a bit better from reading this thread where before they may have felt rather alone and unappreciated. Ta muchly everyone. The emails to myself and Blaze have been greatly appreciated, as have the offers of hosting space. I just hope that this thread isn't forgotten as easily as some are, and that the statements made here hold for a while in people's minds. There's a symbiotic relationship that runs across all forum sites, but more especially so in large sites like this one. Freestuff means visitors, visitors means customers, customers means sales. Without one, the other cannot exist. Without sales these sites could not exist. Something to consider perhaps.

Soulhuntre. In addition to the gunfighter poses from Don Albert in the Daz3D Store which are based around the western revolvers and rifles in the free archive, Don also has a set of trick shot poses for Stephanie in the Daz3D free archive that can be used on the other millenium couples with a little tweaking - those are designed around and include my LadySmith revolver. Schlabber has a couple sets of firearm poses on his site and cd for Posette/Dork. I have two pose sets for Mike and Vickie that can also be adapted for most of the sidearms. Blaze has been working on a series of rifleman poses for the sniper and hunting rifles that I've made (though these aren't ready yet). If you want the mike/vic poses send me an email and I'll post them out to you.

Questor, my apology if it wasn't you. I've seen posts go wide like this with imges Thanks EricofSD. I'd also like to apologise for the sarcasm in my response, my excuse is lack of sleep which reduces my tolerance level somewhat. It wasn't fair to jump on you when a more polite explanation would have sufficed. I've also seen posts go wide with large scale images posted into a thread and should have been a bit more tolerant of your comment. My screen res is 2048x1024 and I tend to object to having a full width browser on my desktop as I tend to run multiple screens when browsing. I guess I should have fallen into bed a bit earlier, that way I wouldn't have bitten anyone. :)

Darn my traitorous fingers, I meant 2048 wide, Well it ain't and it wasn't. wanders off to beat fingers into submission

With all due respect EricofSD. The only "flaming idiot" who posted an image in this thread is me, and it's 800 wide - default width for the larger majority of computer screens, not 1024x768 The thread width was determined by the first post in this thread and I have no idea why it's done this but I suspect it's a reaction to cut and paste from a text editor. So, from this "flaming idiot" thanks. Sorry to have caused you such terrible grief. And I'm sorry that the image was so deceptive that you thought it was so big.

OK, before this gets into a "let's bash the vendors" thread which I do not believe is the reason that Ironbear started this thread. Please, don't label all the vendors with the same tar brush. There's no proof at this time that the person(s) responsible for the collection of emails that Ironbear has are vendors. Just a suspicion. Anyone can make the statements presented in those mails. Even some dippy little troll who thinks it's clever to spam and lie. We don't KNOW that it's vendors, it's an assumption. OK, a fairly safe one but still an assumption. Most of you in this thread know some of the vendors. I certainly wouldn't label many of them with the selfish nature of those in Ironbear's initial post. So please, let's not turn this into a generalised attack against vendors, that would be grossly unfair on those who do honestly offer a good service and value for money and do not attack freestuff or the providers of freestuff. Let's remember that while it is freestuff that attracts people into the site, it is the store that funds the site. It's a symbiotic relationship that I like to think most understand.

Thank you for the heads up Daio. Nice to see your site back up and running again. :)

Sorry Penguinisto, I've had a long few days and decided to get an hour's snooze in. Consider conformation received, both here and email. And thank you. Now off to the drawing board to get something together that's half decent to look at. :)

As you say, he's one of the old timers and has been around Poser for a long time. Perhaps he's just tired of it all and doesn't feel the inspiration to stick around. Another aspect could well be that almost his entire inventory has been pirated and some items have been appearing in freestuff by other people claiming it's theirs. Who knows? If Dendras feels inclined to share why he will, otherwise it's all pure speculation. Your best bet is to email him and ask. It's not yet reached the date for mail cut-off so he may well answer you. But be careful about telling everyone else why, he may wish that to remain private.

Oops. sorry, one too many things on there. The Camping Kit (bottom right) is already available in 3D Arena freestuff. My bad.

And pretty good trash it is too ernyoka. I've personally enjoyed playing with a couple of your models. Good work, keep it up. :) It's nice to have your "trash" to make a scene look lived in. Which is a good point, I really must finish my 78lb weakling can crusher image. :)

Just to clear a couple misconceptions. I haven't pulled my freestuff. I am, do and will continue to make things free and as a result of some of the mails I've received I will attempt to make them even better than before. I've previously deliberately avoided competing directly with the stores. My models are static and don't contain morphs like some of the store items do. Also, I'm not great with texturing stuff so kept that to a basic as well - but that will change. What has happened is that over the last two years I've been getting progressively more nasty-grams from some rather pathetic individuals. At first it annoyed me, later I just treated them the same as spam and either deleted or rejected the mails. However, in this instance - as a result of my own site being closed - a close friend offered to host just the catalogue of my models, basically nothing more than a series of images grouped into common areas. She has had some of the most disgusting emails it's been my displeasure to read and quite frankly they're totally unwarranted. She hosted pictures for me. That's pretty much all, just pictures. Seems that even that is an excuse for abuse. So, all my files will be rotated through the freestuff forum at 3D-Arena, occassionaly Silvermage will pick one for hosting by the site itself. I'll find a new site for my catalogue and I'll re-enter negotiations with a provider in the UK regarding hosting. This hasn't driven me from the "community" (whatever the hell that is) but it has made me bloody angry. Not because I was sent hate mail, hell I could give a shit about it. But that a close lady friend was subjected to the same treatment for doing nothing. Trust me, Blaze is not an easy person to upset, she's pretty damned volatile but as with anything you weigh the pro's and cons against themselves and it just wasn't worth the hassle of tracking and retaliating against these people when it's far easier just to remove the target of their hate. I am NOT leaving. I have NO intention of stopping what I do, and every intention of making things better. Certain people don't want competition from freestuff providers, but rather that everyone sells through the stores and joins the "clan" of vendors. Sorry, in my case at least it's not going to happen. I will continue to produce free stuff, even more of it than before with a larger variety of items. The only problem will be hosting and providing people with a way to browse what's available - but I'm working on that and sooner or later I'll get things sorted out. It's unfortunate that I am not alone in this systematic abuse because I know that most vendors could care less what I do. The few I am friendly with and chat with regularly are great people with some great products, and that it is a very few small minded idiots responsible for bullshit emails to freebie providers. Perhaps one thing that annoys them the most is that the majority of my items have no commercial restrictions on them. Or perhaps it's just the fact that they're free. I don't honestly know. Whatever the case may be, their campaign hasn't worked, won't ever work and is doomed to ridicule from the start. This kind of bullshit just encourages me further. Hell, the weapon packs that Daz are kindly hosting were a direct result of some prat telling me to go away in short sharp jerky movements. So, in essence. I don't let this kind of crap get to me. Yes it's annoying sometimes, and as 'bear knows I've erupted once or twice over it. Yes, last year I did very much feel like calling it quits and leaving, but chose not to after talking to a few people. I'm not alone with this problem. Others get the nasty-grams too. Ironbear perhaps gets these things forwarded to him because people know him to be openly spoken and perhaps more approachable than some. Whatever the case, I understand his ire as I've felt the same way when a freestuff provider has pulled their files because of abuse, and if you check the forums you'll find a few who have done that. At this point I want to take a moment to thank the idiots who sent me emails, and for those freestuff providers who have sent me their hate mail in comparison. You might annoy some enough for them to leave but I'm made of different stuff, and all you're doing is pushing me to greater excesses. Check the Poserworld forum for a view of what's soon to be released from me and it'll give you some idea of how this campaign just isn't working. I will fully encourage and actively support any other freestuff providers who suffer from similar emails to those 'bear posted above. Carry on doing what you do, give away what you want and ignore the few fools who don't have the ability or the guts to stand and be counted. Freestuff is the life blood of the forums. Without it there's no real attraction to coming to these places and business will die slowly. Freestuff attracts people to the sites, and eventually they get curious enough to browse deeper and get dragged (kicking and screaming in some cases) to the store where they CAN pick up some fucking excellent products - and some garbage. We all offer a service. Whether it's just chatting, helping, offering tutorials and advice or freely downloadable files of beginner or higher quality, or store items. Wankers like those in Ironbear's post are NOT indicative of the forum mentality - well mostly not, and they are not representative of the "majority" of vendors (at least, I like to think so), just a few sick, sad little fools. Hosting freestuff is hard enough as it is and many like myself, have to pay to host free files - as contradictory as that may sound. Free sites have incredibly restrictive bandwidth allowances and many pay sites also have ludicrously low allowances. But that doesn't mean it's impossible, and the gratitude displayed by a few people makes it all well worth while. But for some people, especially the more sensitive or non-English speakers, this sort of thing is too much and they leave. Hell, why not? If people can be this nasty then why the hell bother? For me, it's the perverse pleasure of annoying people like this even more, and for those great emails I get where someone sends me a link to work they've done with my models - that makes it all worth while. Like most people I don't expect a constant flow of praise, or thanks, or even credit. I only provide a PART of the whole, but it IS nice to see what people do. Personally I get quite a thrill out of seeing something I made in an image, whether I'm credited or not. It doesn't matter, the thing was used and THAT matters. Thanks for the rant Ironbear. I guess it needed to be said.

The age of the 'always on' connection has, I believe, significantly contributed to the increase in software piracy. Finding a back door into someone's system is almost always possible, as long as that system is powered up and connected to the 'net. It's a problem that won't go away any time soon. An extremely valid point and in light of the SubSeven Trojan variants something that should be seriously considered by people. Firewalls and AntiVirus are not the be all and end all of security protection and it's perhaps surprising how easy it is to spoof these things. For those who have AV/FW on their system protection is increased considerably. The existence of so many (still) infected systems with email viruses is a good indication of how many people are STILL not taking security seriously. One thing that I've found that can be useful to combat trojans and spyware is Pest Patrol (http://www.pestpatrol.com) It's more efficient than AdAware and recognises embedded trojans and a large variety of spyware that can be missed by AV and Firewall software. Trojans are fun toys that open your computer to hostile persons without launching warnings. Some of them operate by adopting a name (explorer.exe, netscape.exe etc etc) in the knowledge that firewall permissions for those are already setup. Others have different techniques, some are unsubtle and scan the system for open ports lighting up firewall alerts every few seconds. I've run the software on systems for people when asked and it's quite surprising how many people are infected with a variety of spyware and trojan infected files - and not warez related files either.

"Speculation is the CL team is attempting to defeat recent 'cracks' made available on the internet." They would be better of not wasting their time. They put a serial number into Poser 4 and Pro Pack, that was cracked how quickly? Service packs 1, 2 and 3 for Pro Pack were all "fixed" to recognise the bogus serial numbers provided. They were cracked how fast? Poser 5 I seem to recall claimed to have encryption that a "team of scientists" worked on.... And it was cracked how fast? Please Curious Labs. I appreciate you have to protect your investment somehow, and I also appreciate that you have shareholders to re-assure. But DO NOT waste any more time, money and programmers in screwing around with something that barely lives longer than 24 hours. If wealthy companies like Microsoft, Adobe, Discreet and Alias can't beat the warez wankers, you don't have a snowflake's chance in hell of doing it on your budget. Rather spend your efforts concentrating on the existing program and it's issues and appreciating that for the first time since Poser 1, you now have serious and viable competition. You'd be better off looking to that than screwing around with something that's going to be cracked within days. And yes, no matter the reassurances, the patch WILL be cracked, regardless of what protection you try to put in it. Sorry, it's a simple fact that is undeniable. Rest assured that people who paid for Poser 5 ARE NOT going to tolerate warez, and WILL watch out for infractions and as before they WILL report them to you. But most likely NOT if you keep screwing them around with security that's worthless.