“Congress has given up on the actual world,” quipped Jon Stewart during his hilarious and now infamous The Daily Show report on the first-ever congressional hearing on virtual worlds—conducted in a virtual world.
The hearing took place on April 1st in Washington, D.C. But this was no April Fools’ joke. Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale testified, along with representatives of IBM, TechSoup, and the New Media Consortium. (A complete transcript of the hearing is available online.) Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on telecommunications, banged the gavel as his avatar in a virtual hearing room constructed on Second Life’s Rayburn Island.
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Once a year, a prestigious group of gaming elite meets to discuss techniques and strategy, and also to enjoy the good company of like-minded serious gamers. These are not the “hard-core gamers” described by Chris Melissinos, Chief Gaming Officer of Sun Microsystems. Rather, they are the original serious gamers—educators from the top business schools from around the more...
Legislative earmarks, the topic of much recent national debate, are congressional provisions directing approved funds to be spent on specific projects. Perhaps one of the most well-known earmarks is the Gravina Island Bridge, dubbed the “Bridge to Nowhere” by Ketchikan resident more...
Second Life software architecture consists of an open source client viewer and back-end server code. Security checks are often written into the client code. Now that there are several client viewers—the official SL client, Windlight, and OnRez, to name a few—these viewers may or may not share certain security constraints. This has resulted in serious security exploits.
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By now you’ve probably seen the jaw-dropping ads—the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ (PETA’s) anti-fur campaign, “I’d Rather Go Naked.” The content may be PG, but the impact of seeing Eva Mendes and Alicia Silverstone tastefully au naturale is quite stunning.more...
LJUBLJANA, SLOVENIA, EU-MMC, new media department of Slovenian public broadcaster RTV Slovenija is entering Second Life on March 29th. The island, called MMC, is an extension of its Multimedia Center. The purpose of their Second Life presence is to extend its web community into Second Life by allowing users to schedule and hold events. They have partnered with community more...
On April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day prompted millions of Americans to voice their concern for the degrading state of the environment and to demonstrate across the country for a sustainable planet. This powerful mobilization led to the creation of the US Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the federal Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species acts. According to Wikipedia more...
May you live long and prosper. I am sure you never thought you would hear these words from Captain QatanI’ sutai-DevnoH, the Elint Commander of the Klingon Assault Group (KAG). As the new Klingon Ambassador to Second Life, I raise a Vulcan salute in the manner of my cousin Spock. You see, like Spock, I am half-Vulcan.more...
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression... and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.
—Article 19
Universal Declaration
of Human Rights,
UN General Assembly, 1948
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