Madelaine McMasters

bluelacroix wrote: Well, I'm pretty sure it's just me. I don't know what i'm doing, and everything in SL is so difficult for me. I see such promise, but I'm just clueless when i try to do the most basic of things. Thank you all for your patience. i'll just fly up there and do the edit/move thing to get inside it. :catsad: ~Bleue SL gets the best of all of us at one time or another. There's a solution to your problem, we'll get to it. ;-)

garey Solo wrote: could you tell me where the debug settings are please? On a Mac, hit Ctrl-Alt-D to bring up the viewer's "Advanced" menu, if you don't already see it. In that menu, you'll find "Show Debug Settings" near the bottom. Select that and a little window pops up, in which you type the name of the setting you wish to change. Start typing "allowmultipleviewers" until the auto-complete brings it up for you, then click "True". The SL and Firestorm viewers make this setting accessible in the Advance tab of the preference window, which you get from the "Me" or "Avatar" menu.

bluelacroix wrote: Hi Theresa Tennyson! I tried your first suggestion, and the land says it is group owned, so those options are greyed out. I am renting land. I thought there was no such thing as actually owning land in SL. I checked on your second suggestion and you're right, I already have "Teleport to clicked point" set in my Preferences. Since I couldn't get into the skybox I IM'd both of the creators of the skybox, but they're off-line. Although I don't know the proper way to get into it, I did manage to get in. This is how I did it - I fly right underneath it, then I right-click it and Edit, then I move it down so I am inside it, then I go out of edit mode, and stop flying, and I land on the floor. :matte-motes-smile: Then back t oyour suggesstion: I double-click the floor, created a new LM, added it to favs, but even standing right there and clicking TP; I end up back on ground level. :matte-motes-crying: ~Bleue Bleue, I think you need to contact your landlord, not the creator of the skybox. Whoever you are renting space from has apparently set their sim teleport restrictions incorrectly. They won't keep many tenants if you all have to put up with this! Good luck!

Theresa Tennyson wrote: If that DOESN'T work here's my favorite trick to get into seemingly inaccessible places. Go to the "Preferences" menu and then select "Move & View." There'll be a button with the tag "Double click on land:" next to it. Change that to "Teleport to clicked point." Then when you get up to skybox altitude you can just double click on the floor of the skybox and you'll end up where you clicked. ETA - I beileve Firestorm has double-click teleport already built into the "Bridge" so you may not have to go into Preferences to set it. Oooh, I use that trick to sneak into places most would never go, like the hidden spaces in structures. I'm as fond of nooks and crannies in SL as in RL.

oberon Zuta wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: I don't know of a way to manually set the focal distance, other than alt-click. I don't think this would be needed except for either machinima, or for personal enjoyment when camming around SL. For a static image, you can always move the camera after focusing it. Hi Madelaine - thank you for your input - but see - if u work with the maximum focal length the littlest move with the hud is like a worldtravel ... and if u set u r cam properly and u r frame set well - maybe u think .. hmmm lets drive with the focus layer a bit. I dont talk about scheimpflug - only the focus distance. The most shot i did are coincidently. I try as much as i have the focus on a good part, then i make the shoot. But in our world is all calculated - and i guess even the focus distance. I miss a little wheel for dirving with the focus forward and back - i talk only about static pics - photography - not machimia. thanks - oberon I think I get it. In RL, you compose your photo in the viewfinder, then manually turn the focus ring to get the most pleasing overall look for the image. I don't know how to do this directly in SL. You could script a HUD that uses llSetCameraParams to move the focus spot back and forth from your current view. I think I have a little script that puts up a two button HUD that remembers a camera position when one button is clicked, and can return to that camera position when the other button is clicked. That could probably be altered to move the camera focus back and forth. Unfortunately, the way camera focus is determined in SL is not as a distance from the camera, but as an absolute coordinate position on the sim. You'd have to work out the camera's position, then compute the coordinates of a point ahead of the camera by the focal distance you want. I've no idea how smoothly this would work, but it's worth a try. I won't be in-world for a few hours, but I will go looking for that camera thingie and forward it to you. Oh, and call me Maddy, I can't spell Madelaine!

Czari Zenovka wrote: ...EVGA nVidia GTX 660, 2GB, Superclocked by manufacturer Tigerdirect had a special until June 30 that took an immediate $30.00 off the regular price and offers a $10.00 rebate. After conferring with my mother, she said go for it. Thank you all again so very much for your input, suggestions, etc. I pulled ideas/suggestions from where to purchase to PC component specifics from this thread and the other two I began. Let the party begin!!! Just wait till you see me in-world, Czari. All the time effort and money will be... excuse me, Snugs is trying to drag me out of the room.

Here's another way to shoot yourself up into the sky. First, get yourself flying, then open up the map window. You'll see your sim name next to the "Find" button. Click "Find" and you'll see that the "Teleport" button near the bottom of the window has activated. Now, enter the altitude you want into the third coordinate box next to the "Location" label. Click "Teleport" and you'll find yourself flying at the altitude you specified. If your draw distance is sufficient, you can then cam around to find anything on the sim at that altitude. If you know the X/Y coordinates of the place you want to visit, you can enter those as well. Good luck!

In addition to Rolig's ideas for finding your way back to a home you've rented and forgot to landmark (I've done that!), you can try looking in your Teleport History. Click the "Places" tool and select the Teleport History tab. If a place name in the list doesn't jog your memory, start teleporting around until you find your house. If your viewer doesn't keep teleport history, you could log into your account on the web and look at your transaction history. Any rent payment you made will show there, along with the name of the landlord to whom you paid it. You can then IM the landlord and ask for a landmark. Good luck Shaydogz!

Sorry I'm so late today, Hippie, I was out playing football with the fellas...

6-28-2013 Strong Rock Christian School CEO Patrick Stuart was struck by lightning during a football practice session, after banning female student Madison Baxter from play on the team. Stuart, who earlier explained that his decision was the result of prayer and that he was concerned that boys on the team would have impure thoughts, was rushed to an area hospital with 2nd degree burns to what students described as his "groinal region".

oberon Zuta wrote: Hello and hi If i check depht of field then is important to bring the most important part of the image in the focus layer. It works automatically if i do alt+click on the subject i like to have sharp. But in same time if i cick on that subject it centers itself on the screen - if i drive around the focus keep itself even if is out of center. But if i like to refocus - afain is centered. I wist to drive softly the focus layer farward and backwards - does anybody have an idea how to make this? Thank u very much for each little help I'm not sure I understand what you want, Oberon. When I wish to compose a photo that has the focal point not in the center of the image, I first alt-click the thing I want in focus, then manually tilt/pan the camera with the hud or key equivalents. I use Firestorm, I don't know if my instructions will apply elsewhere. If you want a slow change in focal distance when you select a new focal point, you can change DOF Focus Transition Time in Preferences->Graphics->Depth of Field->DOF Focus Transition Time. I don't know of a way to manually set the focal distance, other than alt-click. I don't think this would be needed except for either machinima, or for personal enjoyment when camming around SL. For a static image, you can always move the camera after focusing it. Anybody out there know a way to manually focus the camera, other than by pointing at things?

Orca Flotta wrote: With Nvidia it's like that: the higher the number the better! Period! The first number shows the generation of cards. So right now the new cards are 7xx. The second number shows the performance of the card: x1x = crap, x8x = can't be much better, x9x = SLI. Cards with a 5 at the end are for laptops, the even numbers are for desktops. And while you can't compare the performance of a, say, 6x5 to a proper 6x0, it's still the same numbers game in their respective setups. Cards up to x50 used to be GT and above that they were GTX. In the latest editions nVidia starts the GTX series with their x50s cards already So without any reasearch and nitpicking the answer is an easy one: laptop 1 is the preferred buy over laptop 2. Simple as that! :smileyhappy: . Orca, by your description, nVIDIA would not be able to produce a new generation of chips until the lowest performance in that generation exceeded the highest performance of the previous generation. This benchmark page (which is not the be-all and end-all of measurements) shows plenty of examples where higher numbers are worse... http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php Examples (higher benchmark number is better)... GTX 285 = 1248 (Here, by your description, the 5 indicates "laptop") GT 730M = 1062 (Here, by my description, the M indicates "mobile') For currently available cards... GTX 680 = 5687 GTX 760 = 5198 and GTX 660 = 4104 GTX 680M = 3579 Here's how I think it works... Within a generation (most significant digit) and a kind (same prefix (GTX, GT, etc) and suffix (M, X, etc)) higher numbers are better. But there are usually at least two generations of chips in the marketplace at any time (currently 6xx and 7xx), and several variants of the family (mobile, X, etc) so the comparisons can be more difficult than you suggest. M indicates "mobile" which emphasizes low power over high performance. X seems to mean "eXtra" something, as all X versions of a thing are faster than non, as in... GTX 680M = 3579 GTX 680MX = 4394

UncommonTruth wrote: I just watched a video I need to share, I'm sending it to everyone I know in RL as well. I'm bawling my eyes out from it still. Grab tissues before you hit play :matte-motes-dont-cry: It's a moving story, Uncommon... but I wonder if the "reversal" helped to tell it. I am frustratingly analytical, and I feel the reversal loses traction because it ignores the fundamental biology that opponents of homosexuality use to pin their arguments. It is hard to wrap my mind around the conceit that breeding would be found universally necessary and generally objectionable. I am able to empathize (to some extent) with people who suffer discrimination for any number of reasons. Although I had a fairly sheltered childhood, I did see friends suffer for their differences (sexuality, color, affluence, intelligence...). I never had to turn the world upside down to understand what they felt. I'm in the choir here, so I'm really more interested in this message being preached to the others. I wonder if torturing the logic makes an impression on people who do it every day. As I'm writing this, Ceka has posted a single image with text that introduces an idea that may stick with me as long as the video. Thank you for bringing this story to me, and for enduring my critique of it.

Qwalyphi Korpov wrote: OMG... instead of getting closer to understanding it all I just get dizzier. The CC licenses don't address the source/object software issue directly. I suspect a key reason the CC people recommends a GNU license for software. Quote from the CC website follows. ---------- "Creative Commons recommends and uses free and open source software licenses for software. To use the Free Software Foundation’s GNU General Public License, see how to use GNU licenses for your own software." --------------- Regarding algorithms - the U.S. Copyright Office says an algorithm (, program logic, method or layout) cannot be copyrighted. Only the copyrightable expression embodied in the program will get protection. Of course this leaves me mystified as to what is being protected via the GNU license. Just kidding - it's all of the copyrightable expression - obviously. http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ61.pdf Really it's not clear at all. Here's some real world info: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=8&cad=rja&ved=0CFYQFjAH&url=http%3A%2F%2Feuro.ecom.cmu.edu%2Fprogram%2Flaw%2F08-732%2F2012Slides%2Fcopyright14.ppt&ei=5HrMUaKCMsepyAHf8oHYCQ&usg=AFQjCNHsaQojgiQmy2HsMMvlWkh5XX4nJA&sig2=CLVHRQWbsOH7LC4N99eP9Q&bvm=bv.48572450,d.aWc It was primarily the GNU (Stallman) licensing that drove us batty, I'm probably confusing that with CC stuff that also drove us batty. We had the algorithm/expression discussions as well, and found it sometimes difficult to sense the boundary and often easy to blur it. I remember reading of a novel way that Nintendo used to prevent third parties from producing unlicensed games for their Gameboy handheld system. At turn-on, the Gameboy would look into the game cartridge for a specific sequence of instructions that (If I recall correctly) spelled out "Nintendo" on the screen when executed. If the sequence was not there, the game would not run. Because the algorithm contained the trademarked name "Nintendo", wrote it to the screen, and had to be expressed in exactly the right way (because the toy matched the algorithm byte for byte with the copy it maintained), Nintendo covered every angle a third party might use to produce games for the toy without paying Nintendo the royalty on the little verification algorithm. As with patents, what's ultimately copyrightable is determined not by the copyright registration, but by the courts.

Dillon Levenque wrote: The default option on the Battalion is the GT 740, but there is an option to upgrade to the GT 750, if the link here is accurate: http://www.ibuypower.com/Store/Battalion_101_W650SR_Gaming_Laptop. The OP says 750. That card (once I finally found it) tests out at 1685, even better than the GT 765. That would make the Battalion 650 even more attractive, I'd think. ETA: Since that made no sense (I've been told more than once that Nvidia chips have performance directly related to their number sequence) I noticed that you checked the GT X 765—the OP's example used a GT 765. Possibly having an X in there indicates a lower level of performance, although I would have assumed the opposite. I think the OP's computer description for the first laptop is wrong. nVIDIA does not make a GT-765M, just the GTX-765M. http://www.geforce.com/hardware Here's another comparison of the GTX-765M and the GT-750M which doesn't quite agree with the first benchmark site I linked... http://gpuboss.com/gpus/GeForce-GTX-765M-vs-GeForce-GT-750M

Rolig Loon wrote: Well, in RL the pins wouldn't know the name of whatever knocked into them. If some rowdies got into the bowling alley and started lobbing softballs down the alley, the pins would still fall over if they got hit. Why should SL be any different? Just make the pins physical, roll the ball into them, and see what's standing when the fun stops. If someone cheats by throwing a softball, kick them out of the game. Hey! They were out of nine pound balls, Rolig. You try rolling a 16 in heels. I'm still waiting for you to return my bowling shoes.

Jesus1254789 wrote: Thank you so much for taking the time to answer guys! I really do appreciate it I chatted with my friend again and he told me that their (750 and 765) differences..isn't THAT huge. I mean sure it's better, but not by much and it's not worth paying another 100 bucks or so. So will the 750 2GB be enough for what I'm looking for in my SL since I think SL is the heaviest program I run. Thanks again in advance! From the benchmark page I linked elsewhere in this thread, it seems the 765 is about 50% faster than the 750. I believe SL is limited to using no more than 512MBytes of GPU RAM. If you will not be running other graphics intensive programs at the same time as SL, 2G of GPU RAM might be overkill. If you can configure your laptop with 1G of GPU memory, you'll save some money that you could apply towards the faster GPU, or pizza with friends.

Bree Giffen wrote: The only difference seems to be the video card and about $70. The cheaper one has a 740M and not a 750M. The 765m is apparently much better than the 740m from what I am reading. http://www.ibuypower.com/IbpPages/Laptop.aspx http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-765M.92907.0.html http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVIDIA-GeForce-GT-740M.89900.0.html From this benchmark page... http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php You can scroll through the page to see all GPUs, or enter a query at the top of the page. The scores for those two GPUs are... GTX-765M = 1546 GT-740M = 1038 Higher is better.

Whether overclocking is "bad" depends on the circumstances. While nVIDIA guarantees correct operation of its chips within some operating envelope of parameters (voltage, temperature, speed, etc), there are tradeoffs between the parameters. There is some safety margin in the specifications to allow nVIDIA to be certain all devices will meet the spec, without needing to push every device into all corners of the operating envelope during test (imagine how much it would cost if you had to heat and cool every chip on the production line during testing). It is generally the case that computer chips will operate at higher speeds if you lower their temperature and raise their operating voltage. A GPU card manufacturer might design an overclocked card with a cooling system that keeps the GPU much cooler than on a standard card. They may have negotiated with nVIDIA to do so, spending a bit more for the chips to cover additional testing or sorting or whatever it is that keeps the warranty burden with nVIDIA. They may take on the risk themselves, calculating that the added cooling will keep them out of trouble or that the added profit will more than cover increased warranty costs. You may also find that the card's maximum ambient operating temperature is lower than for a standard card. In that case, they've placed the added risk on your shoulders. I don't know how you determine the circumstances of the overclocking. I would probably avoid such things unless provided by a reputable manufacturer with good reviews. ETA: I was so busy sounding knowledgable, I forgot to answer your question! Overclocking results in the GPU working faster than at the standard frequency (whatever that is for the chip in question). So the advantage is higher frame rate. The disadvantage is higher price for the card and potential reliability problems if the card manufacturer didn't do their homework.

Qwalyphi Korpov wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: Welcome to the world of legal conundrums surrounding "software", the pinnacle of which appears to be software patents. All this licensing lingo could be seen as pointless posturing given the exceptional ease with which one can do whatever the hell one wants with code and go absolutely undetected. I think you're also witnessing that most people have far less understanding of the law than lawyers, if that's possible. ;-) Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this Madelaine. And I'm sharing them here again - by attribution. And I'm about to share some of mine in a similar manner. Which is pretty much what the Creative Commons By Attribution Share Alike license is all about. I must say though I'm a bit unsettled to not be speaking exclusively to myself. Like you said - it's so easy to do whatever you want with the code and go undetected. For example - suppose I was to get a script out of the WIKI. Easy to do. Per the WIKI TOU it's licensed under CC-BY-SA. Source is available. I can use it to create a derivative work (modified script.) Because the original script was licensed CC-BY-SA I'm required to license the derivative using the same or a similar license. Quick reminder in simple terms of what CC-BY-SA license provides You are free: to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work to Remix — to adapt the work to make commercial use of the work http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/ That's simple in a way. Now suppose I make a prim product and include in the contents my derivative script. Per the CC-BY-SA the script must be free to copy, modify & transfer, So any products sold in SL that use scripts from the SL WIKI Script Library (or derived from those scripts) must set the attributes to COPY/MOD/TRANSFER. LOL. Now I suppose some reading this are thinking that's all BS. No - it's CC-BY-SA. I hope I've provided a good example of the hopelessly unenforceable aspect of the whole software licensing situation. It's a bit difficult to chase down the language in the CC licenses that apply to scripts (software.) That's because the CC licenses are not designed to be used with software. The people at Creative Commons in fact say their licenses should not be used for software. Yes, and this has been a common complaint about the "free as in speech" interpretation of software licenses. It's as if producing an algorithm, then applying CC licensing to it, makes it impossible for anyone to ever again use that algorithm (in any form, as you could presumably claim it traces back to the original, even if it was derived independently), without being encumbered by the license. When I worked for a medical instrument manufacturer, there were internal discussions about using open-source software. Some licenses stated that inclusion of the code required us to publish ALL source code for the product it was used in, not just the licensed bits. When I moved out on my own, I had a client who did work for the Defense Department. They had a product that used algorithms produced by researchers working under an NSF grant. The algorithms were published under a license that required any modifications of the code to be made public. Making the source code of the product public would have been a violation of federal law. There are Creative Commons licensed implementations of virtually every popular algorithm, from "quicksort" to "Bresenham's line drawing algorithm" (which is Bresenham's!) to libraries of code to implement FAT32 on memory cards. Since the license allows "remix", how does anyone prove that their particular implementation of an algorithm was not a modification of something with a CC license? It's been more than ten years since I left that company, but at the time the recommended solution was to avoid any code snippet containing any licensing verbiage. Of course it was often easy to find versions of almost anything that had been modified and posted online with all licensing verbiage removed, so plausible deniability was generally within reach. It takes only moments to pass an algorithm through a scriptable text editor to render it unrecognizable as a copy of the original, and most products do not ship with source code. Catch me if you can? ETA: It's been years since I've thought about CC stuff, but I do recall conversations in which we wondered whether "distribution" of the code meant in source form. If so, taking a CC-BY-SA script and embedding into a prim set to no-mod might be allowed, as you have distributed only the compiled algorithm, not the source code. You'd only be confined by the source license if you distributed the source. This may have been wishful thinking. I do that.

Bone Ashbourne wrote: Firstly :cathappy: I'm not going to get a desktop just for SL I'm looking for a decent laptop that can run SL with shadows and advanced lighting. 1. What are the specs I should look for? 2. Core i5 or i7 ( heard i7 does not make a difference for gaming) 2. Is 4GB enough or is 8GB necessary? What's dfference does it make? 3. Which graphics card will support shadows and advanced lighting (How to know if which graphics card will support shadows and advance lighting?) Are these ok? NVIDIA Geforce GT 730M NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M 4. Suggestions on what laptops are good ( renders SL well and good price) I'm not familiar with Windows laptops, so can't really recommend a make or model, but... If all you are going to do is run SL, 4G is probably enough memory. If you want to run other applications at the same time, you may want more. SL is graphics intensive, so your money is probably better spend on the GPU than the CPU. For that reason, i5 is probably good enough. From this benchmark site... http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php At the top of that page, enter the model GPU you're interested in and you'll be taken to the line in the chart reflecting the performance specs. Or you can just scroll through the table. You'll find that the GT 650M scores 1283 and the GT730M scores 1062. So, all else being equal, the 650M is faster. You'll want a minimum GPU memory of 512Mbytes. Unfortunately, I don't know how those scores translate into SL playability. My iMac does quite well in SL with everything turned on, but also has the GTX 680Mx, which scores 4394. The nVIDIA website does sometimes list laptops that contain their GPU chips. Navigate there, select the GPU you are interested in, then see if that product's page lists any laptops using the chip. http://www.geforce.com/hardware Hopefully someone with recent laptop/SL experience will have more to say. Good luck with your purchase, Bone!

Hippie Bowman wrote: Good morning all! Happy Thursday! Peace! Good morning, Hippie. I thought I'd go flying today. I can't let you have all the fun...

Perrie Juran wrote: Madelaine McMasters wrote: I've now been here for more than five years. While I hear of people who've made a comfortable living in SL, and from some who supplement their RL income to some degree doing work they greatly enjoy, I'm still a good country mile from recommending to anyone that SL is where they should job-shop. Rodvik's claim that the last year saw SL residents exchange half a billion dollars is impressive. I wish I understood what that really means. If that includes money that people are spending renting or buying from private land owners (i.e., Estates), that could account for a large chunk of change. Madelaine McMasters wrote: The economy of Philip Rosedale's SL is still difficult for me to really understand and his follow-up effort, "Coffee and Power", leaves me just as skeptical. It now appears he's moved on from there to "High Fidelity". I listened to Philip's Burn Man 2013 interview. He still has a lot of vision for Virtual Worlds, not only what they are but what they can be. Yeah, how does that half billion break down? As you state, real estate might be a substantial portion of that half billion, and like RL, it requires investment to make money. It's easier to scale up and down (no inspections and remediations, no title and credit checks, no closing, etc), but the returns are smaller. Does real-estate stratify in the same way as creation? I imagine it does, with Ansche Chung and Stilletto Moody being examples of the highest levels in each economic domain. How many people make an RL living from SL, either via creation or real-estate? That six year old WSJ article made it sound like virtual worlds might be viable places for an average person to make a living in the future. I don't see articles like that anymore. I've not heard Rosedale's Burn interview (I'm listening as I type), but I've watched several others over the years where he's described "Love Machine", "Coffee and Power" and now "High Fidelity". He paints a pretty cool picture of both virtual reality, creativity and collaboration, but has yet to produce anything that brings economic benefit to the average participant. Love Machine was derided by some as nothing more than a reverse labor auction that drove down the value of intellectual endeavor. Oh, listen to Rosedale at 4:50 say "how many people are logged into SL right now? about 100K?". Is there another SL I'm not aware of, that has twice the residents of the one I visit? He then waxes rhapsodic about the incredible feeling he gets of "being there" while voice chatting with the interviewer (a two person chat) while logged into SL. He then says that nobody does anything that cool via phone conferences. Well, that's nonsence. I abhore voice in SL, yet I do two party phone calls every day, and I also do conference calls when necessary, using GoToMeeting to do things I could only dream of doing here. Rosedale does understand the squishy interpersonal stuff that makes us feel warm and fuzzy, but I think he oversells the power of virtual reality (or undersells the power alternatives) to make that happen.

I first heard of SL in the Wall Street Journal, which published a story of the real economies of virtual worlds. Shortly after that, there was a story of someone selling an island with a hotel on it for USD$1Million. I was both curious and skeptical. I'd also read that SL was an interesting place for virtual relationships. I found that easy to believe, after my experience watching relationships bloom (and bust) in chat venues like IRC. I've now been here for more than five years. While I hear of people who've made a comfortable living in SL, and from some who supplement their RL income to some degree doing work they greatly enjoy, I'm still a good country mile from recommending to anyone that SL is where they should job-shop. Rodvik's claim that the last year saw SL residents exchange half a billion dollars is impressive. I wish I understood what that really means. But you will find me right here with the rest of you who claim that SL can be a magical place. While I might have had that hope, I did not have that expectation. The economy of Philip Rosedale's SL is still difficult for me to really understand and his follow-up effort, "Coffee and Power", leaves me just as skeptical. It now appears he's moved on from there to "High Fidelity".

Welcome to the world of legal conundrums surrounding "software", the pinnacle of which appears to be software patents. All this licensing lingo could be seen as pointless posturing given the exceptional ease with which one can do whatever the hell one wants with code and go absolutely undetected. I think you're also witnessing that most people have far less understanding of the law than lawyers, if that's possible. ;-)