What does System property http.nonProxyHosts has been set to local|*.local… mean? And what are the implications?

I am a designer who has strayed into coding, and frequently my lack of knowledge snaggles me. Like this example: Working on Mac OS 10.5.8 in fdt 4 to build an osmf (open source media framework) media player, I suddenly started seeing this in the error log.

System property http.nonProxyHosts has been set to local|*.local|169.254/16|*.169.254/16 by an external source. This value will be overwritten using the values from the preferences.

Please, what does it mean - and how can I reset it - and to what, if I need to?