Jeesh dennis why do you refer to everything as being 'spanked' it almost seems like you a fetish for it. Really there must be better words you can use.

I should imagine the nakedness of the avatar would be a lag issue, different for all parties involved- it would make sense that the clothes would not appear as quickly on a slower connection/computer than faster ones, and it was just so that the Journal-Constitution's connection wasn't up to snuff that day.

/b

Yeah, I agree Austin..

You ever notice something though - that those in power start to get immensely paranoid as they gain more power?

It's pretty much a 'proven' fact, although I've never seen a study on it. But I'd ask people to name just one 'person of power' who's not ultra paranoid.

Is it possibly a mental illness? Meaning - if that's the case, they are no longer fit to serve, correct?

To quote a Judge dismissing a case of breaching a 'Free Speech Zone'...

'Last time I checked, this entire country was a Free Speech Zone.'

"Austin Lewis Says:

October 10th, 2007 at 9:04 am
Virtual Bouncers?

What the fuck is wrong with these people? ITS A GAME! Its not like Newt Gingrich’s avatar is gonna get assassinated. "

No, but I can certainly see why he would not want to be assaulted by flying penises.

http://gamepolitics.com/2006/12/21/second-life-event-interrupted-by-flyi...

This is lame as hell.

Crazy. Virtual Bouncers... Online avatar protests... That is quite a bit of interactivity. I wonder if that 'tax online goods' bill will pass... I sure hope not, but money, after all is the carrot for the powerful horses.

Off topic, but I was just thinking...

Kudos to GP for making a public retraction as a new blog entry, rather than burying it as a response to the original thread. Good show.

I have to wonder - what, exactly, does a "virtual bouncer" do? If they're not employees of the game company, they have very limited (IE, close to none) ability to prevent disruptions. What power or authority do they have to be able to call themselves bouncers? How do they prevent disruptions?

@Davian

Actually, you're pretty much right. A land owner can decide what a person can do where on their land.

Also,while it may not be a game per say, there are battle areas where people design their own games. Life bars, guns that fire projectiles, funs tuff.

Addressing these things:
1. Thanks for printing the correction. Even mainstream media get caught up in passing off more lurid versions of the truth, which everyone picks up and runs with. There was enough time between when the avatar in the bikini put on her new outfit and the speaker showed up that I don't think lag was at play. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution probably picked up the mistake from CNN's report that used black bars over the bikini to imply that the avatar was nude, cutting it in with pictures of Gingrich at the podium (when in fact, the shot of the avatar clearly shows that Gingrich wasn't there yet).
2. People didn't show up to play a game, they showed up to participate in a workshop styled after and concurrent with a real world event. There were attendees from multiple political parties, and it was interactive in that Gingrich took a long set of questions from the attendees and answered every one of them. This could have been easily disrupted in an environment like Second Life without some sort of monitoring and assistance such as that provided by the Metaverse Mod Squad.
3. The protesters were in a large area directly behind the seating for the workshop. They were going to be holding signs, and we felt that having an area where they could rezz them without blocking the view from the seats made sense for everyone. At least one had the sense to make a sign large enough to be scene from the cameras and screenshots. There was one point where one of the signs was growing large enough to eclipse the virtual sun, and its creator was asked to hold off on doing that. It was still big enough to be seen by cameras and by the speaker.
4. Gingrich answered every question that was IMmed to the moderator. None of the questions came from the protesters. That probably makes it easier for them to claim they were left out of the dialog. Any questions from the protesters would have been put immediately into the queue and answered by the speaker. One of my favorite pieces of graffiti is "SHOUT SLOGANS! IGNORE COMPLEXITY!". There were plenty of slogans shouted, but I would have appreciated at least one question or comment from the protesters.
5. SL Capitol Hill is not one of the newer regions hosted on a faster computer, and while most events there use both of its 2 simulators, this one was held on just one of the 2 sims so that the speaker could appear on the steps. This limited the total number of attendees that could be there, and that attendance then needed to be allocated among the organizers, the Capitol staff, the Mod Squad, the workshop attendees, other interested avatars, and the protesters. When we met with the protesters before the event, we talked about this reality and estimated that about 10% of the allocation would go to them. The event was "closed" in that you needed to be on an access list, but "open" in that anyone who asked for an invitation before the event started (as well as some, including protesters) were added after the event. I think there may have been 1 or 2 avatar requests that may have fallen through the cracks after the event started.
6. Why does this kind of event make sense? Rather than having 50 isolated people watching an event on video and chatting in a chat room, the virtual world makes people that they've actually been some "where" together at the same time and the same place. It isn't a mass venue - yet - though these events do get amplified via YouTube, etc.