Second Life Shuts Down Gambling

Tech.Luver sends us to The Inquirer, which notes the banning of all gambling in Second Life. Here is the Linden Labs blog post about the change in policy, which is, to say the least, not popular. From the article: "[T]he large chunk of users that enjoyed using in-world casinos and betting Linden Dollars on events both inside and outside the game world will now have nothing left to do. Perhaps more to the point for Linden, the move will cut off the revenues earned from those owning Casino-style islands in the game, the owners of which are some of the top contributors to the Linden coffers through currency fees and land rental."

Re:1 down...

[SatanicPuppy]

In a nutshell: Yes. Your Avatar with a few mods can have "sex" with an Avatar that looks like a child, one that may even be controlled by a minor, though far more likely by a 55 year old guy who could win a "Jabba the Hut" lookalike contest.

Here is a link to a virtual worlds site that's been following Germany's ongoing hissy over virtual child porn. [virtualworldlets.net] It's funny how we're such a conservative country compared to pretty much every country in europe, but our conservative government is really trying to push us in the direction of their weird morality laws.

I still think all this stuff devolves on parents to monitor and supervise their kids; in the absence of a reliable way to make sure underage people aren't involved, that's the only workable solution.

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[Dragonslicer]

...since liberals want a gigantic central government that controls everything and tells everyone how to live.

As opposed to the "conservatives" (yes, the quotation marks are there intentionally) that want to monitor everything everyone does to make sure that nobody is smoking marijuana or having sex with anyone besides their spouse (of the opposite gender, of course)?

...liberalism is the first step to pure fascism.

Why do so many people misuse the term "fascism" these days?

From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:

...the following elements are usually seen as its integral parts: nationalism, authoritarianism, statism, militarism, corporatism, populism, totalitarianism, anti-communism, racism and opposition to economic and political liberalism

I've highlighted the aspects that are especially opposed to what is derisively called "liberal".