Second Life trains terrorists.

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I was hugely interested in reading this article right from the start. However, my interest soon turned into amusement, and very soon, this article is pretty much like a joke in my eyes.

Let's see...

Kevin Zuccato, head of the Australian High Tech Crime Centre in Canberra, says terrorists can gain training in games such as World of Warcraft in a simulated environment, using weapons that are identical to real-world armaments.

I'm sure the SWORD OF A THOUSAND TRUTHS will cause MASSIVE DAMAGE. I'm sure it would.

Firstly, this article places an insanely bad light on the word "Jihad". Jihad is a holy war taken by muslims, which can almost be used in the same context as "crusade". However, due to recent events, the word Jihad has been so distorted, the first thought that comes into your mind when you say "Jihad" is "violence" and "terrorism".

As seen in this article:

On the darker side, there are also weapons armouries in SL where people can get access to guns, including automatic weapons and AK47s. Searches of the SL website show there are three jihadi terrorists registered and two elite jihadist terrorist groups.

Er. You can't wage a holy war online.

That aside, the fact that you could actually TRAIN terrorists online, and in SL, is a notion so laughable, it isn't even funny. I'm sure GTA teaches you how to use a rocket launcher. I mean, put it on your shoulder, press the button, and BOOM it goes! However, anyone who has used a rocket launcher (for military purposes, duh), will say that it isn't that easy. It's like driving a car or a tank. Your arrow/wasd keys make it look so easy, but if you try driving one, you are in for a very rude shock.

Zuccato told an Australian Security Industry Association conference in Sydney that people intent on evil no longer had to travel to the target they wanted to attack to carry out reconnaissance. He said they could use virtual worlds to create an exact replica and rehearse an entire attack online, including monitoring the response and ramifications.

Welcome to the world of internet! Heard of Google Earth? The times of olden spying and taking photos of the place is long long gone. The technology age allows anyone to access anything at any time. So, are they going to shut youtube down because youtube shows pictures of a building?

Seriously...

However, what is seriously the most laughable is that companies actually treat the bombs as a real serious threat.

However, the American Apparel store is closing and moving out. The ABC has discovered that its bomb was a computer server error that it was able to fix within a couple of hours. Nonetheless, it is taking the likelihood of a terrorist attack seriously.

Fine, so it is a business. However, to take a "terrorist" attack on the virtual world seriously? C'mon. Someone needs to start downloading AVG and Norton. It is a virtual world, not a real world. Shouldn't better resources be placed into actually finding terrorist cells, actually discovering terrorist plots on the real world? Because, it's not good if you can find an online bomb, but fail to find the actual one sitting right in your toilet.

Point is, Second life, is, a second life. You simply cannot treat it like a real life. If you dislike it, get the creators to write it out of the code. It's not that hard. If that code was written in, or is allowed to be written in, it should be gotten rid of immediately because it is in a terribily poor taste.

Now, to see them saying Pac-Man constitutes to violence to children once again.