Working as a software engineer for a startup myself I can only sympathize with CL! Right now it is no fun at all to be in the tech business! Just about every software company that I know of is losing money, the best ones slowly the good ones barely hagning on and the bad ones are long gone (with one GIANT exception). Especially with the situation Poser is in supporting both Mac and the Microsoft base. You are quite correct that suing CL would do no good at all, if anyhting it would only trigger their demise! Remember though that CL whatever their present situation is essentially PEOPLE, and these PEOPLE have lived and breathed POSER for a very long time (as I liik fiondly at my Poser 2 CD). I doubt if they will just give up and go away if they are given any options at all. Maybe they will have some choices maybe not, no one really knows but I for one don't doubt that Steve Cooper and his crowd will be there trying their best to the very end! I guess what I am saying is lets cut these guys a little slack, they are going through a difficult time and really do need our support as much as we need theirs! Mike (Poser 2,3,4,PP and P 5 user) Hopefully to be a Poser 6 user one day!

A lot of us seem to have the same problem! To some extent this appears to be a Poser 5 problem, but it has been PARTLY fixed by the updated figures. I assume that you have downloaded and installed all of the updates, there are a bunch of fixes in them! You didn't mention if you are using P4. PP or P5 and which model. All of those make a lot of difference. Mike

OK this thread has gone on far too long anyway, but it is a real hot button of mine so I will add my two cents worth anyway. I work for a startup, Anadgim Inc. as a Sr. Software Engineer. You can see my work on our website www.anadigm.com, my project is AnadigmFilter. The first generation software was free, the second generation costs around $2500 depending on what options you enable. We now have two people full time managing just who is allowed what options. We do it through a registration and encryption scheme and it is a never ending hassle. All of our software staff have MSDN Universal licenses which INCLUDES Win XP, but we ALL use WIN 2000 for our development because we have had five lockouts due to software glitches. One was directly traced to loading adozen upgraded drivers at once. A Win XP lockout is no joke - you entire system is a paperweight until you reauthorize the code. Since the default logon doesn't know about your LAN setup you get to do it all by phhone! About a two hour process when you include repeats for screwups. Just what you don't need when you are trying to get a enw software release out! So, we show on MS' books as having Win-XP (about 60 copies) but actually use win 2K! I suspect there are a whole bunch of people doing the same thing. Oh yes, I saw the first "cracked" WIN-XP a week after I got my MSDN copy, that was before they hit the stores. I don't like piracy any more than anyone else, but when the so called solution causes more grief for your honest customer than it does for the thieves it is supposed to protect against then it truly is not working! I use Win-XP as a horrible example, but there are now almost a dozen formerly good software packages which I refuse to upgrade for similar reasons.

I think this thread is missing the mark a little. Protecting lids from "innapropriate" content is only ha;f the basttle. Th efact is that teenagers and pre-adolescents have always had a bunch of interests and issues to deal with that are partly sexual in nature. What they need is not a censored adult forum, but something that really addresses THEIR needs, concerns and issues! For example, a few years back I ran across a really neat site for teenage girls which addressed the concerns of that age group amd was being supplied to porn sites as the "click here if you are under 18" banner. Unfortunately there was no equivalent for young men. I don't know if it is still in business, but it seems to me to be the right flavour of thing to do. Perhaps an interested/concerned parent could start such a forum here? It would lilely need some guidance and policing, if only to keep the predators out, but it seems like this could be a positive way to address th eissue!

As near as I can find out it is a product of a company called Dynamic Graphics Systems of Toronto. Unfortunately their website is no longer "funct", so I haven't been able to get any more info than that. It DOES sound like a neat project though. BTW there are several plugins for 3DS Max that do cloth simulations. So far all I have seen is the demos, but they really look like exactly what you need. Take a look at www.digimation.com for more info.

Tim, You have avoided answering the questions about the missing posts. I too added a comment to the TOS announcement pointing out some potential legal problems for users. That was on 9/22. Where is it? Mike Waters

Steve Shanks of Poser World has specifically offered to host any files or images that anyone wants hosted there. Get in touch with him directly for details. Note that he is offerinf a service NOT soliciting people to move or not to move! Steve has made this abundantly clear in his posts! Mike W

Mike JM, I think we are dealing with artistic and creative people who are accustomed to expressing their feelings. Occasionaly thta happens before the brian takes over and we have fights and name calling. As bloodsong has pointed out here and elsewhere, it is ashame that it has happened, but it has lets amke the best of it. I DO take note of the fact that Edgenet and Tim Choate are at the very center of the storm this year just like last year. If I leave Renderosity, it will be because of what the new management do or fail to do, not becaus eof anything that anyone else has done. On the other hand I would think long and hard about donating time, effort or money to what is clearly a commercial operation just like General Moters or Microsoft. If Edgenet/Renderosity wants moderator to work for them then they should PAY for them just like any other commercial opertion does thier employees! Mike W

I can only comment on the software development view of this "work for hire" notion, but every company whohirea an engineer/programmer makes VERY sure to get an assignment of IP rights. There is a very heavy and long stading bias in the US courts which says that the actual creator/inventor is SOLE owner of any "work product". There are exceptions, but realyy not that many in the absense of a very clearly worded agreement. Depending on which state laws apply, there may also be a requirement for a "meeting of the minds", which apparently did not happen in this instance at least! The foregoing must be read as general comments based on my personal understanding of legal orinciples only since I am not qualified to give legal advice in this matter. Mike Waters

PJF, I partly agree with you here - it certainly is a business dispute! I jusy hope that any new moderators make sure that they are adequately paid for their efforts and pass any agreements by a good contracts lawyer BEFORE they sign up! JeffH, I sure hope YOU have done this, I for one won't have much sympathy if you haven't and end up turfed out in 6 months!

Tim, You are not quite answering the question that concerns everyone. There appears to be some dispute about the ownership of the email list abd that your positiom is that the list would be sold with the Renderosity site and URL (www.renderosity.com". Is this true, if not how do you respond? Mike W

Forwarded from the Poser list on Egroups: From: Charles Taylor Delivered-To: mailing list poser@egroups.com Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 00:28:10 -0700 Reply-To: poser@egroups.com Subject: Re: [poser] OT: Renderosity I've setup a new group for discussion of this issue. And once thing settle down, The Poser community in general http://www.egroups.com/group/TRenderForums Egroups just went down for maintanence and won't be back up until 5am PDT. Sigh. MW

Forwarded from the Poser list on egroups: From: Charles Taylor MIME-Version: 1.0 Mailing-List: list poser@egroups.com; contact poser-owner@egroups.com Delivered-To: mailing list poser@egroups.com Precedence: bulk List-Unsubscribe: Date: Sun, 17 Sep 2000 00:28:10 -0700 Reply-To: poser@egroups.com Subject: Re: [poser] OT: Renderosity Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I've setup a new group for discussion of this issue. And once thing settle down, The Poser community in general http://www.egroups.com/group/TRenderForums

Take a close look at the ELSA Synergy II and its brothers. It has both OpenGL and Direct3D, and also comes with special drivers for Autocad and MAX. It is one of the few 32Mb cards that doesn't cause power surge problems too so I am told. According to th eUsenet hardware groups the 32MB cards are a rich source of crashes because of that problem. Mike

I was a Beta Tester too. I am P****ed that I (and several other beta testers) were promised a copy of the production version for our work and never recieved one! This is the fault of "upper management" at MC, certainly not the people we delt with. BTW the only version that was tested for three months was the PC version, the Mac version appeared about a day before the December announcement which stopped all work! Mike Waters