What about the poor people with TOO MUCH talent?

Perhaps I'm just missing something basic here.

It is true that you cannot use another person's work without their permission. And, despite any deep belief you have over the sanctity or inevitability of the Economy above the Individual, there is absolutely no reason a person can't invent something and then turn right around and stuff it up his butt - far away from your efforts to resell, adapt, or distribute his work. Or, he may just stand right near you and give it away to everyone he thinks you may be selling your OWN similar device to. That's called competition - even if his price is WAY below yours (or even Free). That's just the way it is - in RL, SL, or Heaven, I'll assume.

The fact that he has found some other way to cover his costs, or even decided to eat the costs, doesn't change the fact that he has simply out-competed you. His product is cheaper, better, and even comes with the added patina of Fetedness.

You'll have to compete directly. You can't make it cheaper - unless you pack dollar bills with it - so you'll have to make a better one, or gain a better reputation (that's called Marketing). Period. Even here, it's still just a marketplace, and you still have to compete in ways people can respond to.

Unfortunately, I think I understand you to say that you CAN'T compete, because the feted (what a stupid word) won't LET you compete. They say "I have the only doomaflatchy script in the world and you aren't allowed to engineer your own doomaflatchy script!"

Bull.

If you want to make a doomaflatchy script, go right ahead. No one has the right - legal or moral - to claim an idea or concept as his own.

If you make one that's just like his, don't expect to compete successfully. He has a better reputation than you. besides, his is free. If you make one that's BETTER, then I'd put a price tag on it, put a couple of ads in the classifieds, and advertise it as the "Best Doomaflatchy in Second Life!"

If you can't make a better one, or out market the originator (unless this campaign is a weird attempt to do that?), then I would just give it up and invest your time and money into research on a DIFFERENT product.

"Free" is just another price point. It's a low one, sure, but - like all other price points - it is just one of the features of a product. Sony doesn't whine and moan because the Chinese are flooding the electronics marketplace with cheap (practically FREE) devices. Price isn't their only feature. I buy Sony (except computers) because Sony makes things BETTER than the Chinese. They also have a good portion of "fetedness" as far as I'm concerned.

So, what am I missing? How is free stuff breaking the SL economy? Why can't you compete? I admit it's a bit harder, but that's actually GOOD. That means that anything I actually pay money for is going to be that much better.

And THAT is what the free market is all about for the consumer.

There are 2 states of being:

1. You put out stuff to help out new players, in which case you are a F.I.C. and are 'lording it over the newbs'... you do this until everyone rips people off with what you made and you give up on making free stuff... this advances you to the second stage of being.

2. You quit making things for free at which point you are 'Fuck you Hedonist' making things exclusively for your own enjoyment.

You can only truely gain knowledge from 2 consecutive Prof posts if you apply 'Mom Logic' -- do as I say, but not as I do... You gotta look at them in the same way you have to squint really hard at an orchid in order to say it looks like a vagina.

Anyway my Com..... panions... alley alley oxen free! Back to Mother Russia we go!

Yup, I think there's some knock going on.. cock knocking

Siggy.

Thank you.

Okay, maybe you can clear something up for me, Prokofy. Is the reason you're opposed to GPLed or source-restricted "free-as-in-money" content because you're against the idea of freely available content, yet it still not being in the public domain and thereby inaccessible to people who might wish to appropriate that content and present it as their own work, or resell it?

Or is it like Kathy suggests, that you're oppsed to free content because of the simple fact that it's difficult to compete with free, and this limits others' ability to do business? Or have I misunderstood totally?

It seems as though you're confusing patents, trademarks and copyrights here. Do you understand the distinction? It can be a fine line in some cases. As Kathy says, you can't own the idea of something. If I create a talking toaster, and someone else creates a talking toaster of their own, the only way I'd have any grounds to challenge their ownership and right to sell would be if it violated my copyright, --made use of my own content, be it scripts, or other materials-- or my trademarks, --was marketed as "Catherine Omega Toaster Plus", for example, in an effort to win customers by appearing to be a product I created.

However, you CAN patent a method of doing something. You can't patent the idea of getting water out of a well, but you can patent a certain kind of motor or screw to do it. Software and biotech patents are still being hammered out, depending on jurisdiction, but aside from places where people have gotten away with patenting things like clicking on links, you have to actually demonstrate the mechanism by which your design operates in order to patent it.

Ingrid,

Could you find one example where I am telling people what to do, instead of merely commenting on a pattern of behaviour in arrogant people who post on the forums? There is a difference. Find one please, and defend your arguments.

Siggy, you have summed it up perfectly. Even though you are trying to be uber arch (yeah uber uber uber get sick of it some more), you hit upon it:



Some -- not all, Ingrid! -- people who put out free stuff are doing it so that the world can say "aren't they wonderful, they are so super talented in real life and don't need this game to show that they are super talented so they are gracing us with their free stuff.' Well, I always have a glimmer of a question when I see someone natter on so much about their wonderful real life where they make boatloads of money doing creative things because here they are in game, see, with all its dysfunctions. But seriously, like other situations where human vanity proclaims itself, people often help others so that they can be seen as helping others and feted for it. Then they gripe that people rip them off. Of course, they've clicked off "no mod" so you wonder how that happens, but there it is. They do it...until their vanity isn't fed enough and they see people rip them off -- now why should THAT matter if they are being Lady Bountiful, eh? -- then they get angry.

Yes, then they move to the next stage of being, where they make things and do things for themselves, after they tell you on the forums or in game that they are tiering down or putting out less things in malls or whatever, then they flaunt something they made vigorously, to make sure to get that vanity fix they failed to get from giving away the free thing or even that overpriced thing in their special boutique on some kewl colour sim LOL. I see this pattern repeatedly.

But what they could do instead of doing these two babyish things is to market their wares, charge a price for it, collect it, and have real money.

Catherine:

I *question* free content I don't *oppose it* in some hysterical zealous way. I *question* what it is doing to the economy *for the sake of debate*. Some things are good to have for free or "in the public domain" in a game like this, say, hovertext script, which is like lead graphite in a pencil in real life. Other things are stupid to continue to offer for free because they are ugly and just waste server space, like the June 2003 Linden party hat. If they sold those things instead of putting them for free at every telehub, they might get some important feedback from the market, which is that we don't need them or want them, so get rid of them.

What is absent from the SL economy, like the Soviet economy, is democratic feedback, dynamism, vitality, innovation, and the meeting of demand. Demand can not even express itself properly half the time because of the static, statist nature of the game, with its violent allergy to commerce, such that commercial events cannot be advertised, and there is really no in-game, Linden-made substrate of classified advertising capacity. The self-selected feted fear and hate commerce and advertising so much (except of the "Bozos in Paradise" variety) that they cripple that capacity by howling every time the Lindens do anything to facilitate it (like the ebay links).

I think if someone makes something for free if they are genuinely good-willed, they should put it in the public domain, as eltee said. Then people can "appropriate" it or not. That wouldn't be stealing, see? Or plagiarizing? You put an undertow of jealousy on this which need not be here. As was said elsewhere, if someone makes a better package or finds a better way to distribute something (as in the yard sale thread discussion), then more power to them. It's work, and they get paid. So what? That's how normal free economies work. And that *is* putting the individual and his rights and demands above an economic system -- it is not placing the economy as an abstraction over the individual as has been claimed.



Absolutely. Free content has its place, but it also is crippling the ability for others to come along and innovate and energize. And I don't think this is evil, as you imply, and that's where our philosophies different. I believe the only solution to continue the game long-term and make it available for millions is that if it functions like RL, where things cost money to reflect labour and materials, and are not given away for free, which indeed stops competition.

Let me give you a real, live example, Catherine, and look out, here will come a million snipers and sneerers because I am telling this real, live example, but I don't care because I think open depate is the oxygen of democracy and I'm willing to throw myself on the mine for this one because I passionately believe that this statist, static, oligarchic break on progress in the game simply must be questioned for their to be freedom, freedom required for it to grow.

Let's take the PRIM COUNTER made and distributed by Catherine Omega. I believe I first copied it off the script library months ago where it was buried deep in that forum. I've never seen it in-world. I've never seen you online (not that I can check every day of course). I took this script, put it in a prim with Blake's Geometrician graphic, and distribute it as a little object for free to people buying or renting so that they can count prims or figure out how much land can be required to support their prim constructions.
Does this help my rental and sales business? Geez, I sincerely doubt it, but I have no way of really knowing because I can't sell it, even for $1, because you put it out for free, but not in the public domain (as was also said elsewhere, it would be silly to take a thing like this for free on the forums and sell it for more than $1 and screw newbies, for example, because that would only harm your reputation long-term, and ppl would only figure out they could go get it for free, not for $100 somewhere, i.e. like the multi-channel radios some give away, and some sell for $1500).

I have put a lot of effort into making that item available everywhere because I believe it is very important. You didn't bother to put it out for free everywhere, you just tossed it off and forgot about it no doubt. If you do have it for free and do distribute it, well, it's a big game, and as I just said, the mechanisms for commerce and market feedback and advertising are extremely limited and primitive due to the allergy against commerce and "commercialization" and just the general chaos. Get angry that I distribute your item, if you like, but so what? It's for free. It is marked "Script by Catherine Omega" on it, probably something that others who pass it around don't bother with. It would be nice to charge a $1 for it just so that I could get market feedback, vital to any democracy, to see if people really want or need or understand this object. But I don't dare do that, do I? Because then you might come on the forums and sneer that I am "stealing" your hard work, although of course, I might make a grand total of 87 cents on it. I'm just drilling on this little example in all its details for the sake of discussion, it's not that I really care about this little item.

You with me so far? Of course you are, because it is YOUR script and now the discussion isn't so abstract anymore, see the problem? Now, let's take it farther. I then get an idea to make something else like your prim counter, let's say. Maybe it was already made, but who knows? How can one tell? There is no patents office and no list of all the stuff (unless people put this up at various public commons and freeware websites outside the game, but it would be better to have it inside the game to strength the immersion world). I hire a scripter and I ask him to make something that might or might not work on the same principle as the Catherine Omega tier counter -- but how am I to know, I'm not a scripter. Now, what happens if he uses something about your script as an example or as a key to understanding what I want him to do, which is a land and tier counter? What if he incorporates part of your script or that function into his version? First of all, I can't know that, not really understanding much about scripts. Secondly, what can I do? You don't offer licensing of your script, or commissioning of your script, because it was put out for free, forgotten, but not really free, because if God forbid, something of your "free" item was taken, then you could be screaming endlessly on the forums about how Prokofy is a cut-throat rapacious businessman bent on scooping up inner feted free product and reselling it as his own. So what do I do? I look at the scripts, and they look completely different to the naked eye, but of course, that's nothing if you aren't a script expert, but I'm not, so I have to move on. I shrug, and I sell my thing, or try to sell it, most people ignore it, laugh at it, don't get it, and don't buy it LOL. Such is life.

It seems as though you're confusing patents, trademarks and copyrights here. Do you understand the distinction? It can be a fine line in some cases. 

Now why would you make a condescending remark like that? I have a college education and then some, just as you do. I have worked with copyrights and patents as part of my job on some occasion. Of course I understand the distinction. What I am doing in asking questions about this is probing what it means in SL. These things can be a fine line in the game. Prim-counting isn't an idea you invented, everyone counts prims and tries to think how to count them better. And if counting anything is a standard script function that everyone has used a zillion times, it might be hard to prove that precisely your content was robbed, if you decided that someone who counts something else in the game is stealing your counting mechanism, which might in fact have been invented by an Arab scholar a zillion years ago, in fact, and shouldn't we being paying his descendants residuals lol?

Yes, you can patent methods, and this is hotly contested, and patents come and go and get improved upon and there are constant lawsuits around them everwhere. SL would only be more so in this regard.

So you can see the question more precisely now on your own personal example. Why not just sell your script? Then someone buys it. They resell it in whole or in part. Or you license it, and people pay you the licensing fee. Or you put it in the public domain, and you are happy if someone improves, modifies, distributes it. If they put credit to you as you would in writing a term paper and doing a foot note, great.

Now let me put a disclaimer here to avoid the usual idiocy that follows my every post. I am not trying to make some fortune on my idea for tier counters inspired on Catherine's prim counter. Indeed, all I have done is lost money on it, and it is just a kind of hobby, to see if it is possible to help customers who constantly ask about tier and prims and square meters. *I am just using this as an example*.

It's my contention that often the creative elite who make items like this are completely out of touch with market demand because they never wait on customers and hear what they want -- customer service is something they definitely don't want to touch with a barge pole, because it would ruin their whole vaunted sense of themselves taking part as a chosen, brilliant few, in a very feted virtual world testing wiki. I'm not saying you are like this Catherine, I'm saying I see this culture displayed in the game, and I wonder why these prima donas don't put a price tag on their items and get some real democratic feedback on their creations from the real marketplace, which is customers (not their friends and close circle).

Spare me your rant. This isn't what I'm talking about.

Of course, anybody can undersell me, stand near me and sell the same thing, eat his costs, or what have you, and that can and does happen all the time in SL, and more power to it, it's fine, I don't have a problem with it, and if you do, maybe the secret is contained in your "leftists, lunatics" etc. game tag.

Here's what I mean by the feted not "letting me" compete. Of course I compete and I don't give a tinker's damn about the feted. But here's what happens -- and I raise this as a generic question, not fearing it for myself because I'm impervious to attacks?

someone, let's say an newbie or a midbie, gets and idea, puts something out, using a free script, the oldbie then screams on the forums that they are a rapcious cut-throat businessman bent on scooping others' free inventions and reselling them for profit in the game, especially to other, unsuspecting more innocent newbies. That's what happens. There is a huge culture against selling free items. Every mall -- including my own -- tells you not to re-sell free or Linden items. That is the 13th commandment in this game, violate it upon pain of death.

Of course, I see builders selling $200 or even $1500 houses using a Linden-made door-closing or window-tinting script inside it all the time. Are those Lindens screaming? No. I bet they would if they were players, though. Is it right to take a Linden free pre-fab and take the window tinter thingie out of it and pop it in your own window or entire home and resell it? I think it is, because I perceive those Linden things as in the public domain. But what if it was an early version of an Owen Khan animation that everyone started distributing for free? You'd think they couldn't get far with that because his newer innovations are better, so people buy those and ignore what some ignoramus is distributing for free in a black cube in a black club box.

I am getting this impression about the jealously-guarded free status of items like scripts and clothes because I see the screaming that has gone on for months against the Lindens about fixing this or that bug that makes it possible to copy creations unlawfully. There is legitimacy to this -- people should be able to copyright, sell, and protect their inventions -- for sure! No one questions that! But the fierceness people display in this legitimate activity spreads over to their freeware, which they want to keep free, and which they display the same violence and hatred over when it is used by someone else to make money, that they do over their sold creations. They should either just charge for them, make money themselves and shut up, or be truly generous and public-minded and put it in the public domain for free and forget about it, except to be mildly amused when they see how it is put to use in ways they didn't imagine. This is the precise situation I am talking about -- ending the jealously-guarded of the "free" which is merely a mechanism for redistributing vanity, not public-spiritedness.

Yes, but unless code is GPLed, it isn't truly Free (as in speech!)

Of course this is a debate all its own .. but it boils down to whether or not one wants their work & its derivitives to always be free or not. If you *do* want it to remain free, use the GPL. On the other hand, if you dont mind someone taking a bit of your code, writing a derivitive work and then calling it a proprietary system, put it in the public domain.

As for me, what little free stuff I do release will defintiely be GPLed.

The people who complain about the GPL being too restrictive or "viral" are exactly the people who I DONT want using my stuff in the first place. So they don't, and that suits me just fine.

-AP

Yes, and he's forgetting that most of the really old free items were created by Lindens and are now, sadly, attractive relics due to the insane number of prims they contain. I use textures that I was given freely nearly every day, so free stuff isn't always stiffling new creation.

Oh gosh, where to start!


Hmmm. Arrogant people who post on the forums? Who might they be. Let's take a poll.


Translation: ME ME ME ME ME.


People helping other people for the wrong reasons? This has to be stopped!


That's accurate. uh, so what? You want artists and cybergeeks to be normal? How boring would that be.


But they don't want real money. They want the vanity fix. Who wants to live in a world where the only motivation for ever doing anything is profit?

Be careful what you wish for.


You get what you pay for. Everybody knows that already. I suggest you delete your party hat, but let me keep mine. I like it.


Ha ha ha ha! That's really funny! (slaps knee) (doubles over and can't catch breath from laughing so hard). No that is absolutley the most absurd thing I have ever heard.


I'm searching for the good will in your posts here, which you offer up for free to all. Where's the good will?


So absolutely nothing is free in RL? There's no public domain software in RL? There's no GPL in RL? There are no artists who paint murals on buildings just for fun? There are no free concerts in public parks? No web sites that don't charge per click?

In RL, people have to earn money so that they don't starve, freeze and die. It's hard to give something away for free when you're dead. (Except maybe your body for the good of science.) This is not the case in SL, and never will be. Therefore I would expect the ratio of free stuff to expensive stuff to be a bit skewed in SL.

There are limits to how truly SL can mirror RL. And even RL doesn't work the way you wish it did.


Ha ha, didn't work.

(follows your every post??????)



The creative elite are out of touch with market demand? Earth to Prok: They're creative. That means they are out of touch with EVERYTHING. Yes, lets all go down to the "Great works of art created by economists and accontants" exhibit. It will only take a few minutes to go through. Admission is $100, though, so maybe I'll go for a walk in the park instead.

Um, what are you babbling on about, Buster? I don't think you've said a single relevant thing here to my post. So there are a lot of free and creative ppl in SL who dump all kinds of free and creative stuff for $0 or for pennies to people who are subsidized with welfare every week? Well, so? I guess Phil Linden doesn't mind keeping his socialist theme park running like that ad infinitum. I guess I just don't want my personal game to run like that though LOL. BTW, how come you aren't renting my boardwalk stall any more Buster? No sales on that light-sensitive thingie? But we bought some LOL. JUST KIDDING> MADE YA LOOK.

Pro I do that. Only time I spend L$ is when I'm paying out for events our group sponsors, funds for which are obtained through donations.

Lately I've been using my personal funds since donations are way off...But I haven't bought anything in Sl for a couple of months.



_/_/

I have been buying land here and there and playing with building houses in different kinds of terrain and different neighborhoods. I have been having a lot more fun building big things, like houses, the sky-lift at Buster's Ranch, rickety old Lover's Leap, etc.

I have only been in this world a month, so I don't have very many little vendor-stall appropriate things to sell. Besides, that boardwalk does not get much traffic, and the only other vendors there seem to be Cub residents, who I think get a stall for free don't they? I really like the sound track there.

Some day I will make some more small stuff and rent vendor space again. I like having people buy things from me because it feeds my ego. (Yes, Prok, I'm one of THOSE PEOPLE.) The fact that somebody is willing to PAY for something means they want it, or they like it. If its free, then a lot of people just pick it up whether they want it or not. Call this "economic feedback" if you want, but for me it isn't about the money. (L$50 ~ US$0.20 - I'm movin' on up!) Its about reconciling my creative energy with the tastes and opinions of other people. If I am going to feed my ego by making things people like, I've got to have some way of finding out what that is.

A lot of projects are just puzzles for me. For example I wanted to see what the fewest number of prims I could get away with to make a realistic gazebo, using only library textures. I came up with a nice one that uses only 8. I've been playing with 50-prim houses that don't look stripped down.

I can't believe someone actually read that post. That was a long one, even for Prok. I'm willing to bet though that it contained the following things:

1. you're all arrogant
2. feted inner core
3. me me me me me me me me me me me
4. it's all about me and how i want the game to be
5. SL will die because you're all morons.

hello? Kettle, this is pot, you're black.

Yes, the ppl who rent get a free stall, but at 250 m from the telehub actually it gets a lot more traffic now especially as other stores are springing up and ppl come to gawk at the Sutherland dam, which seems like something new the Lindens didn't build before? I dunno.

I've seen your builds around on different terrain and it's a lot of fun, they are good and I can't wait to see what kind of house you get stripped of prims, I might buy it. I appreciate the spirit that you bring to the game, and your friendly and intelligent posts. I like a good debate with an intelligent person who doesn't get all cranky just because I challenge received wisdom and doesn't get all porky and take everything personally -- it's just a game and it's a debate about issues, it's not personal. So I thank you for that, God bless you.

I totally agree that making some little thingie that someone might like or even big niftay talented thing is a great ego boost and it's what can drive the economy and give feedback in the community and is vital for life. I would rather have that drive for sales, even $1 sales, then the drive to feed vanity by appearing as if one is operating in the public interest when that is fake.



What Ingrid said. Except it's just my expression of my own inner sense of rightness which obviously you don't share LOL, it's not mmmmmeeeee anymore than anything else anybody says is meeememememe

Ingrid, are you obsessed with me? Why do you come and answer all these posts? Why do you even look at them? Surely anyone who has known me since TSO would know better than to bother with my posts? Could you get back to tinting the windows in your prefab puleeeeze!

meh.. slow day.. what can I say?

70% of websites on the net run on Apache (FREE SOFTWARE). You want to see some crap software? Second Life!

The Second Life asset server uses HTTP requests to send asset details to sims, and that is handled by the APACHE web server (FREE) and the Squid HTTP Proxy (FREE). This forum is built in PHP (FREE). The emails that come from SL are almost certainly from Sendmail (FREE), Qmail (FREE) or Postfix (FREE).

More crap stuff? Yahoo! Email uses Qmail (FREE). The vast majority of internet email travels round on one of those three SMTP servers I mentioned above. The code to implement TCP and IP protocls is (FREE). So if you think open source software is crap, you think the net and nearly everything on it is crap too.

***

I'm just saying, if we're going for this whole putting down open source software thing, let's be accurate about it.

Oh, don't be ridiculous. Go back and read what I wrote. I said that one example of a very effective and useful code, CUTE FTP, seemed crappy in its PRESENTATION and was inaccessible and hard to find and not easy to use until someone PACKAGED IT and made it have BETTER USER INTERFACE. The point isn't that shareware itself is a bad thing, it's that people improve on it, and then sell it, and in this case, apparently with a license from the original maker.

Surely all those softwares you are describing are NOT used *exactly* as they first appeared in nature, with the same geeky labeling or UI. Come on. Yahoo has tarted it up considerably, just to name one.

Was the point that for-money software is usually better than free software, so we're all better off with less free software around?

Here is another similar (irrelavant, but using similar logic) thought:

Kill all the old people and the average age of the population would be lower.

For somebody who rails against Stalinsim in SL, I'd think you would be more in tune with the idea that competition lubricates innovation. This is a great truth regardless of the form the competition takes - free, expensive, whatever.

Buster

For someone that loves typing you sure don't like reading much -- it was Ingrid who commented on the word 'uber'.....

As for me, I kinda look at your posts like a forum version of Gilbert and Sullivan really...

To clarify:

*singing*

You are the very model of a feted inner core-ian
With techie-wicki-bolshevistic-dollar-store-emporiums
And I'll explain in detail in these forum posts as-nausium
You are the very model of a feted inner core-ian


Siggy.

Yeah, Buster, that's what I just said. Competition lubricates innovation. Um, I didn't say anything about Stalin or killing old people, so please spare me your histrionics.

There cannot be competition when a) feted creators subsidized by the Lindens for years make free creations that they insist can't ever be resold, and refuse even to take commissions or licenses b) feted long-time players who corner a market and forever after make sure that everyone is forced to buy their expensive objects or pay their expensive commissions because they have a hammerlock on the scripts or designs because they have a hammerlock on mall distribution (as me some time to explain this to you and demonstrate in-game if you don't see my point).

THAT is what the Stalinist situation is -- a combination of free but not really-free stuff and overpriced stuff forced on the market without competition. This is exactly the situation you and other intelligent people who aren't suffering from socialist mind-memes should care about.

That means that other players are not free to create competition for these players -- they cannot improve on their so-called "free" stuff because it isn't really in the public domain, as eltee noted, and they can't compete against high-priced stuff because of poor advertising capacity in the game and the monopolization of distribution channels.

I gave an example of freeware that wasn't generally accessible and which became more accessible, more useable, better packaged, and better distributed when finally it was licensed, some company bought it, and distributed it.

I don't ascribe some absolute value to free stuff, especially when it isn't really free, because the creator ensures their vanity remains intact in perpetuity and you go on praising them for providing something free because they want it to stay free (or for $1) and never be bought or resold, thereby hampering ONE FORM of progress.

That doesn't mean that nothing should ever be made for free and distributed freely. Where did I say that? Sure, make freeware, distribute it freely, I am all for freedom, especially freedom that really stays freedom, and doesn't work like this: "I make this free cool thing but it isn't really free because you can never modify it or transfer it and you can never even pay me or license me if you DO want to modify it or transfer it."

That doesn't mean that someone should take a free thing and not pay for it if they decide to resell it -- I believe they SHOULD be paying some kind of royalties, license, commission -- something.

That doesn't mean that some people shouldn't put things in the public domain -- let them, and then let them not squawk if someone modifies, improves, distributes in ways they don't "approve of".

Yeah, I'll cut and paste that Siggy and use that instead of writing long essays.

"ad-nauseum" is the term I think you were groping for there, dude, it's Latin for "I've had enough of Siggy to the point of retching". Oh, did I translate that right? I may not have translated that right.

So Prok, how come you never post here

***Claps***

BRAVO!

***Claps***