Attached Link: http://www.amishrakefight.org/gfy

What about the Ahmish? Why this open discrimination against them?

Very professional, WiNC. So much for being taken seriously...

I don't think the majority of Poser users have a problem with registration, just a really vocal minority. It's really not a difficult process, and anyone reading this discussion can do it. I think I read that you can fax the code if you have to, and almost every town has a Staples or Office Depot, etc, where you can fax. Kupa wrote a great piece a while back on how Pro Pack was released, and within hours turned up on the net for download. They went without the copy protection and got burned for it. I've seen a few top notch content providers on Renderosity and Daz quit offering items because they were being passed around like cigarettes in prison. I'm sure a crack will turn up somewhere, but at least it's something that people will have to search for, and deal with the possibility of getting virus from a downloaded "crack", so it does serve as a deterent. Burning a CD and jotting down a serial number are just too easy. If you are a legit user, you can re-install it as many times as you need to. Past a normal point, it may be a little inconvienent, but it's not the living hell some people are making it out to be. My Poser runtime folder is almost 6 gigs, so I want to do as few installs as possible. If you have a hard drive that needs to be re-done that often, then Poser should be the least of your worries. You should at least be happy that the folks from CL are listening to you and interacting. You think Microsoft would give you this kind of attention? Schemes for the protection of digital copyright are still in the infancy stage, and will continue to evlove, but it's not going to go away...

WW, the major difference is that you can't make reproductions of a book as easily as you can burn a CD. I believe they discussed a while back either adding a dongle key to the product, which would have increased the price, or this method, which was cheaper. Either way would have been fine with me. I've got Lightwave on my desktop at work, and on my laptop, and I have to move the little USB key to whichever one I want to use. Yes, a lot of people were happy with the P4 method, but too many of them had a pirated version. If they go with no protection, and accept the losses from piracy, the price of the package would likely have a huge increase, which would cause even more unhappiness. And as far as I know, there are no other products that do what Poser does, so there's no competition to support (unless you count Character Studio in 3DS Max, and if you don't like CL's protection, you'd better count them out as well.) Aside from no protection at all, what would you be happy with?

I belive you can use the same authorization code on the same hard drive if you need to re-install without having to log onto the website. I might be mistaken, though. They could always go the route Lightwave has, and use a dongle key. An added expense, but then you wouldn't have to worry about them going away. The key could be moved around from machine to machine as needed...

Yes, I believe you are allowed to use it on up to 4 machines, as long as you don't run the copies simultaniously. It was spelled out by someone from CL in a previous thread.

Certainly you are more than welcome to point out what you don't like, and to make a stand against it. Nobody ever said you didn't have the right to speak your mind or voice your opinion. The bottom line, though, is money. For everyone who buys the program, there are a handful of people who want a copy, who are at the very least, detered for a bit. I myself know several people who have no intention of buying it, but are waiting for a copy they can steal. If we're not willing to put up with a little bit of inconvienence, than it's Curious Labs that's going to get screwed without protection, and screwed big time. P4 and Pro Pack have been stolen from them more times then they can count, but that point of view isn't represented with the same zeal that the registration issue is. Absolutely everyone has the right to choose if they will buy the product or not based on the facts. I'm just voicing my opinion as well, which is what the forum is for, isn't it?

Even if Curious Labs goes under (which I hope they don't), I think the Poser program is strong enough that someone else would buy the rights to it, and continue the support/ un-lock issues. It survived the transition from MetaCreations. I've bought every version since Poser 1, and I don't feel the activation made me suffer any. CL isn't Adobe or Corel with multiple strong programs to fall back on. This is thier main baby, and if they don't protect it, then they WON'T be around for a Poser 6. It's not a perfect solution, but it's something that has to be done, and you're probably going to be seeing a lot more instances of un-lock codes from other software developers. Like Wdupre said, if you don't like protection scheme, don't buy it. If you forsee having to re-install Poser 5 100 times, as previously mentioned, then you might want to stick to P4.

Haven't even gotten to the CD yet! No sleep in sight...

TociAngel, Voodoo, Hobbit,etc have all done some great work, in my opinion. Pixelated images are a new breed of art, and certainly not for everyone, but isn't art in the eye of the beholder? We're all trying to explore this program and learn how to make art that will be stirring. Tisa, people will get defensive when you make inflammatory comments and belittle what they do. Maybe a little less time with art and a little more attention to social skills would benefit you. I've heard of people in forums being referred to as "trolls". Is this an example?

This has been a concern for me, as my current P4 directory is almost 6 gigs. From what it sounds like, I can install P5 as a seperate program, and link to my P4 content, without having to make a duplicate runtime folder? I'd like to have both running for a while side by side until I get up to speed with P5 - got a few projects going that I want to stay consistant looking. Thanks! Tempus

Very nice!