Urgh, please stop giving media attention to Second Life, that's basically all it exists for, and it fails to represent games or gamers in any way beyond that. It feels like Second Life is to journalists in a hurry what Scientology is to addle-brained celebrities.

If people reporting on this stupid "game" spent a few minutes downloading it and attempting to play it, they'd recognize it as the gimmicky pile of bad ideas it is and move on to something more worthwhile.

For one thing, IBM execs don't care except to the extent that you can harm the IBM brand in 2nd Life which can only hurt you. Second, labor laws in Italy are insane. We had to build an office to house one worker for a lights out data backup facility because the law required us to have it staffed even though that persons' job would be to literally stare at the ceiling.

"But somewhere there is a budding labor economist who is going to make his or her career with a dissertation on this topic, and I can't wait to read it."

And bloggers filling their daily word quota with the same nonsense.

Hear Hear. SL is a big steaming pile of hype.

The public is being totally riped off once again. The credit card companies with their lobbyist in Washington have successfully gotten the UNIVERSAL DEFAULT CLAUSE triggered in almost every US citizen's home that does not pay off all their credit card balance each month!

The Universal Default Clause turns the credit card companies into their own police as to raising the interest rate they charge you on the credit card even if you have never been late on a payment to them. A credit card company can raise the interest rate to a high of 33%.

How did we allow this to happen to us?

Wasn't it the Italian presidential campaign where there was on-line vandalism between the political parties? I think in the US, folks who participate in Second Life (and I know some folks making money from it) are members of the creative class. Does Second Life appeal to a broader spectrum of classes in other countries?

This is also an interesting reflection on the power of the strike. I'd guess the majority of U.S. workers have never participated in or been affected by a strike. The sight of a bunch of people with signs over there doesn't affect either our willingness to go to our workplace (after all, my employer doesn't do that) or our willingness to spend money. So it sounds like the Second Life strike is just a publicity gag, instead of a call for every allied worker to stop what they're doing and tell IBM to change.