Ugh.. where to start?

"...created by Linden Research"
-Linden Lab, not research, or labs.

"whose virtual store was bombed and invaded by armed avatars who shot and injured several virtual customers."

- In Second Life, you can only be harmed in zones that allow it, neither land did. When you 'die', all it does is teleport you back to where you first rezed or have set a home location.

-No architecture or people were hurt. I don't mean to make this look like anything less than griefing, but objects in SL CAN NOT be modified without the owner's approval.

"With many known online discussion forums and websites now infiltrated by government snoops, the terrorists may look to virtual worlds as a place to meet up and share information. And maybe swap funds, too."

-In the end, said terrorists would probably find SL's vision too extropian for their own good. Logs are kept, sometimes both locally and server-side, there's often no guessing who is within hearing range (you can use scripts to act as sensors, but they're not foolproof), there are objects that monitor activity that can follow an avatar and send it back to the owner, and while these can be detected with another script, it's still a bit too OPEN. Nowhere is really, REALLY private. You can lock avatars out of your parcel by name or group, but they can still sit outside, and if you're on a 512m plot of land, they can hear everything.

"see the game as a possible forum for moving money around the globe to fund terrorist operations. "

-This wouldn't work out that well, as the Linden exchange metrics are monitored, and any major changes would be noticed, and looked into. Also, new accounts can only buy so many linden per week, on a sliding scale. So, yes, theoretically bad men could move $ to L and back as a 'white washing' maneuver, but it would have to be done in a slow trickle to not make the Linden go crazy.

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It seems this article was mostly canibalized from 6 month to year old sources of other news. Instead of reporting crap that's been recycled so much through the media, why don't you go in and experience Second Life yourself? Find something newsworthy to report, and report it.

SL is a bee-hive of activity, with major companies constantly rising from the ether within it (www.metanetworkmedia.com), and major companies making entry into it, constantly. It's a place where a 50 year old school teacher from China can become a land baron on the scope of a Dictatorship (anshechung.com), where financial institutions are born overnight (www.slcapex.com), and die in that same ammount of hours (www.ginkofinancial.com)

..No time to explore this new world? Stop reporting on it, please.

-Micheru Mathys,
www.micheru.com /

Click to read the article this is in response to.