IANAL, but I know a lot about copyright law, because I am an avid PC gamer. I'm no expert, but it's more than I want to know. Perhaps I'm too inquiring, but it seems to me that it's impossible to be a computer gamer these days, whilst remaining a thinking, independent American (I'm a citizen), without running up against this aspect of law every day.

The problem is, it isn't U.S. law that's reflected on my machine. It is virtual law, and the legislation comes in the form of whatever arbitrary certification and copy control software publishers and software makers choose to saddle me with. I don't have a choice, nor representation (unless I buy their stock), and it doesn't conform to consumer law in the real world in the slightest.

[this is a stub for an article I'm working on]

What does Torodung mean? Ostensibly, it means "bullshit." It was a joke god I had invented for Dungeons and Dragons, but I never sent it off to Dragon magazine.

Torodung was the god of bullshit, and his clerics could cast great boons like "Check shit out," "Pinch Loaves and Water," "Crap, 10' radius," "Brownstorm," "Hit the fan" or the ominous "Powerful shit." They were all Chaotic Neutral, and behaving like you were bonkers was a requirement of the Cult of Torodung. It was low brow humor to be sure, and more quirky than funny.

I took the name, because I was creating a sample account, but somehow wound up actually using it. The avatar I choose when I am Torodung is the nether half of a cow.

I am a technologist and an operator, a person who couldn't stand the idea of poring over pages of code just to find the semi-colon that was out of place. I decided to work on making computer software work , even though I was a promising coder. I just couldn't deal with debugging. Too much fine print.

I am an amateur linguist, and describe myself politically as a "liberal conservative." If you consider that an oxymoron, you should consider looking at a dictionary, because the two are not mutually exclusive. For most intents and purposes, the simpler description is that I am a libertarian, with no particular party affiliation, though I loathe the Republicans more than I loathe the Democrats. That is faint but damning praise. I don't think either party represents anything but their own interests any more.

Oh, and yes, I'm an arrogant American who didn't think of mentioning that until this point. I reside in the Chicagoland area (Illinois).

Greets.