Okay, I'm going to unload, and y'all are going to be my willing or unwilling audience. I have had it, totally had it, with shoddy, poorly-designed software. I am tired of Poser's crappy folder system (and lack thereof). I am tired of having to constantly reorganize my files because Joe Poserguy wants to see his stupid name plastered over file names, directory names, in his readme, all over his textures and anywhere else he can fit it in out of the belief that making people read his name thousands and thousands of times is dreadfully important. And most of all I am tired of spending three to five times as long as I should on each picture because of those GOD DAMN lock-ups. I swear to God, the people who made Poser must be sadists. I've lost track of the number of headphones I've mangled and had to replace out of sheer rage, staring at a frozen status bar, knowing that I'll have to control-alt-delete, shut down Poser, reload Poser, spend an hour or more fixing cross-talk problems and re-conforming clothes, and knowing that there's a two in three chance I'll have to do the SAME GOD DAMN THING all over again. I'm tired of an OS which crashes at least once a day, buggers my registry on a regular basis, and forces me to jump through hoops like a trained chihuahua to keep it functional. I'm tired of computer games designed by pimply twerps with pocket protectors who believe the basis of 'fun' is hairtwitch reflexes, memorizing thousands of keystroke combinations, or eyewatering, painstaking microdetail management. I'm tired of spyware and viruses and trojans and malware and bugware and bloatware and Bill "640k should be enough for anyone" Gates. I'm tired of opening my email every day and sorting through anywhere from 50 to 200 pieces of spam. I'm tired of hardware which breaks down the day after the warranty ends. I leave you with this thought: "The put-upon person may be very dangerous. Be careful as to how you misuse him; he may be a mask for thanatos: the antagonist of life; he may not secretly wish to rule; he may wish to /destroy/." -- Philip K. Dick Kick it down.

Hey lets go to the Tavern and I 'll buy beer or cup coffee... and we can talk about it. Have you thought about P Booost as an add on to Poser?

Well said!! Niles....yeah, let's buy more stuff to try and make Poser work...:>)

It was a just thought, as for the OS, spam, viruses, ect... some of that can be fixed also. :)

Wow man, I sympathize. You know you can fix all that with the right medication :)

Get a Mac. Period.

So do you feel better now?!

There is no spoon.

Well, having to deal with all that, I'd just go ahead and quit using Poser for sure...and throw that computer in the damn trash. There's absolutely no sense in putting yourself through all that agony. Oh...what version of Poser are you using...plus...what are your system specs, OS, and so forth. Perhaps after a beer or two, we could help you fix your mess. What's a Mac ???

Andrew, Everything you said is so true and I have to agree with you on all of it. Wish there was a was to correct all that. Would make life easier for sure.

Welcome to the computer age. Laurie

Where do you live? I'll take that computer off your hands and give you a nice bit of landscaping. Instead of staring blindly at the monitor and suffering arthritis from twitchy fingers, you can watch flowers open and birds twittering around. With the right selection of flowers, you can have either hummingbirds or the little seed-eating songbirds. A bit of sunshine each day will perk you right up! :)

Some solutions: If you're on a PC, upgrade to Windows 2000 or XP. If you're using Windows ME, 98, or 95, we have no sympathy and Poser had been known to not like those OS's. If you're on a Mac, mak esure you're on OS9 or X. As for spam: 2 solutions: 1) Forward all spam back to abuse@isp and places like abuse.net and spamcop. Maybe this will stop the spam, maybe not. But, you may feel better knowing that 200 spam e-mails are going back to the abuse department of the isp that let the spam get to you. You may even be able to set your mail program to do the forwarding automatically (such as if the e-mail comes from Hotmail or Bigfoot or has spam-sounding subject line). 2) Abandon your e-mail address to the spammers. If you're getting 200 spam e-mails a day, then it's time to let go it. Spammers have claimed it for their own. You should get 2 e-mail address at Yahoo, Hotmail, wherever: use one for your friends and family (a private one), use the other one for subscription sites, shopping, accounts, whatever (a public one). Then, as the public address gets added to everyone's mailing list, you abandon that one also and get a new one. In the meantime, your private one never gets added to any lists since no-one knows about it. Guard your personal e-mail address like your social security number. Nowadays, the biggest asset of any website is their list of real e-mail addresses. So, as they collect e-mails, they sell their list to other people... which further spreads your e-mail around the Internet. As usual, ome of the buying companies are fronts for porn sites. (Ever wonder how you get so much porn mail when you've never subscribed to any porn site? Just how did they get your e-mail?)

Ahhh Humming birds :) I spotted a Monarch Butterfly yesterday, ... just take a break from your Pc... if you can.

Must be Poser5, I had my poser5 on my brand new kick butt computer, from Tri Star. (not connected to internet) and I took it off and am back to Poser4 and have no problems. I had trouble with some damn thing called Orbit getting on my computer. I had Ad-Awear and it didn't get it all off, so I bought the Plus part and it took off all thoes nasty things. I set my mail at high, and nothing goes into my in box, unless your on my address list. Everything eles goes to junk. When I had Poser4 on this computer it cashed everyday, serveal times, just like clock work.Win 982ndE On the new one win 2000 never a crash with Poser4. Take a deep breath and get away from the computer for a few days. (Then you'll probably have 5,000 spam mails) But it does some good to take a break.

C'mon, in a world where we get Jerry Springer and The Bachelor as TV shows and multi-million dollar fiascos for movies, why should computers be any different? Everything mankind touches winds up getting mangled beyond recognition with even the slightest update. Maybe it's time to return to Ludditism.

Your Poser sounds like mine of just 2 weeks ago---even on a Mac, if you're running the wrong version of an OS, you're going to suffer the agonies of the damned ;) (And that was with P4...if you're in P5 Hell, all I can do is offer to pray for you) Actually, I've found The Solution to Poser Woes: Go into an untidy Spring garden and pull weeds for a couple of hours...and by 'pull' I mean wrench those suckers out with roots intact. It's immensely satisfying and the flowers will show their gratitude by blooming and scenting the air and you'll feel as if you've actually accomplished something, unlike working with Poser. And I would like to respectfully volunteer my own Poser-orphaned, large, very untidy garden ;)

"shut down Poser, reload Poser, spend an hour or more fixing cross-talk problems and re-conforming clothes, and knowing that there's a two in three chance I'll have to do the SAME GOD DAMN THING all over again." You are so right :) Instead why don't you spend $2000 or more on a new 3d app, spend a few months learning to model at a barely adequate level. spend a few weeks getting good at rigging a character barely adequately, thend spend hours on end rigging each and every character, and see how much you feel like doing any pictures much less animation. :p

I like Santa

There is also this....Get some paper, a pencil, maybe some paint or colored pencils and draw a picture...

HeWhoWatches: What kind of machine do you have? Reason I ask is cause on some AMD machines and P4 machines, Poser 5 can push the CPU to the point where it overheats. The BIOS on your machine has an auto shut down/ reboot threshold temp that reboots your machine if your CPU passes this threshold. You can try uping that value or lowering your cpu megahertz. But the crashes could be the cause of your system rebooting due to CPU overheats. This is another reason P5 should be using 3d accelleration. Software rendering pushes the CPU to overheat levels. When the rendering is passed onto the 3d card then that card does the processing and so splits the load and the heat load. Plus most 3d cards have their own fans and are designed for one thing; rendering polygons.

"Art requires a resistant medium." I don't remember who said it, but it's true. Redoing a task 100 times is tiresome, but it forces you to see the task from 100 slightly different moods and environments. (And if it goes on long enough, different ages!) Through this process, you refine the product and your methods, and perhaps even develop brand-new ways of working and thinking.

....if you took the time to read your spam,you would find the solution to all your woes..... ..you can get incredible great price savings by purchaseing Prozac and Xanax online... ....think I'll go render me a Monarch.... The ever peacful and tranquil SWAMP

Well now... only one solution. Kick your stupid computer out the window and get a real life. You know..... real people and stuff. Sunshine, sky, all that junk. Or live with it. It's gonna get worse, not better - HW and SW get more and more complex and the web gets wilder all the time. And the world is full of a**holes. :] Fish (connected to reality, lives with it)

Sit down, have a nice sweet tea and listen to the birdies.

I got a lot more spame the moment my isp helpfully put in their new spam blocker-- the only good point and it is very very good, most goes immediatly to the trash. JohnRender, I don't know how he got porn messages without signing up with porn sites-- probably the same way I get Penis enlargement messages without ever having that art of the anatomy.:) Dear HeWhoWatches-- ,my that's a good name to do Poser with as so much of the time is spent watching the interface try to think, sounds to me like you have Poser 4 or Pro Pack , not Poser 5. Not with library probs. I hear there are some 3D apps that are not slow-- I don't know, I can't afford them. I can afford Bryce-- slower than geology-- I can afford Vue, faster but about as stable as Poser. Iwork almost completely out of poser 5-- on a good day, one I can give over to trying to be patient, I render completely in it. Very few freezes now. I do have to rearrange my dang libraries because everything as you mention is named by who did it-- NOT what it IS-- sorry have to scream once in awhile. I can access all my libraries now, I just can't find anything in the morass of names. Oh, you might want to pass on the Prozac, when taken in an aggresive state, one can get a bit more so, up to the point of jest a teensy bit homicidal. Again, I speak as knows. I liked the way I drove on Prozac, but no one wanted to ride with me.;) Emily

There are two main drives in humans, eros and thanatos. As Freud said. If you see around there is a sadictic pattern in the human behaviour. They bother you, they laugh at you, they scam you and they lie to you. And also they sell you software and hardware! Ive got to say that sometimes humans also helps and love without expecting payment. They do good deeds many times. Sorry for my english, Its my second language. So there is no solution.

TalleyJC, Good answer!!

OK no reply from HeWhoWatches. Is it just that his PC crashed again or should we put out a sniper alert?

Yep, it's all part of the "Poser Experience"!

A baseball bat and a Yugo. Yep, that's what you need!

Just a warning, the next stage is SOBBING UNCONTROLLABLY.

Welcome to life in general and cyber-life in particular. ;) Come wit' me matey and I'll buy ya a brew. Ya looks a bit like needin' one. Take care, be well, keep flying. casamerica

Ach... I sympathize but I did something a while ago that reduced my spam angst to zero. I installed a program called "Choice Mail" with it, as much spam as ever is sent to me but... ... I NEVER see it 'cause it doesn't get to my Inbox. It's not rules based and it's a little different from the others but I am supremely happy with it. Nope, I'm not an employee or affiated with the company. Just a happy camper. Technology's still like this big 900 lb baby who has just learned to walk. Eek! -Nancy.

Like the guy said: buy a Macintosh!

texboy, then he'd be complaining about how poor he is!

Boy.....did that ever make me feel good!!! Thanks HeWhoWatches! You have summed up most of my feelings exactly :) Although I do have to admit a great love for XP Pro and Vue d'Esprit:) And now that I have a firewall and my ISP screens for spam, I can't bitch as much....but I do know the feelings!!!! Been there....done that!!! I found working in Poser 5 only on days when the sun shines helps :) Did anyone ever explain what a "MAC" is??? :) If all else fails, get a cat....they don't give a crap how ticked off you are and will run puurrrfectly with just a scratch of the chin or pet of the head! :) They also provide a great "therapuetic retreat".

" I am tired of having to constantly reorganize my files because Joe Poserguy wants to see his stupid name plastered over file names, directory names, in his readme, all over his textures and anywhere else he can fit it in out of the belief that making people read his name thousands and thousands of times is dreadfully important."

Thought I'd respond to this. If Joe Poserguy used generic file names, you'd instead be complaining about "blueeyes.jpg" having just overwritten a previous file. How many times have people complained about generic file names? So an artist puts their name or their product name in to make sure an over written file doesn't happen.
There's a reason for it.

No, I'm not up in the belltower with a rifle. Yet. I'm running Win98se on a 1.2 ghz Athlon, and yes, I know 98se is the problem. I'm working on upgrading to 2k, but that's going to cause problems with other software I'm using. It's like a tablecloth too small for the table: pull one edge to cover a problem spot and another one appears on the opposite side of the table. I tried P5 for about two hours, uninstalled it, and went back to P4PP. Better the devil you know when the one you don't is 800 feet tall and covered in spines. Maybe DAZ Studio will have fewer fangs. As for the spam, I run the net abuse desk at my ISP, which is why I get hammered so hard. I've spent five years getting them shut down, turned off, and thrown out of high windows. In return they plaster my email address all over their spamming lists and make sure I'm signed up for every bestiality listserv on Earth. (Oh, and yes, I do feel better now. Please excuse the flecks of saliva.)

With the proper tools, bestiality on Saddam would be a blast.

Compatability issues with 2k are just about non-existant today. Even XP is just about patched up. A few years ago I needed both 98 and 2k due to driver issues, but those days are over. As far as the beastiality? It is nice to have a warning of which people NOT to engage in a romantic relationship. Besides, it gives you something to send to someone who pissed you off!