BOSTON/Back Bay - After announcing his appearance on short notice, Linden Lab founder and CEO Philip Rosedale addressed over 300 attendees - all of whom are active participants in the Second Life virtual world - at the morning plenary session of the Second Life Community Convention at the Park Plaza Hotel on Saturday.

Rosedale's talk touched on a number of issues. Some technical. Most related to calming the rumors that Linden Lab - and Second Life itself - are in trouble in the wake of the layoff of 30 percent of their staff in June. Just before his return to the company's leadership.

When asked if he expected any more layoffs over the next year, Rosedale was succinct, "No. We don't. We're profitable right now and we think we're staffed right for what we're doing. So, no, we don't expect to have additional rounds of layoffs."

BOSTON/Back Bay - This weekend, over 300 people from all over the nation and world will be descending on the Park Plaza Hotel "to network, build friendships and to discuss Second Life in a common forum" according to the leaders of AvaCon, Inc. - the non-profit behind the Second Life Community Convention 2010. This year's SLCC is the sixth since 2005 and like its predecessors is entirely organized by active residents of the Second Life virtual world.

The event is open to the public, and day passes are available for those who'd like to dip their toe in the digital waters of a sometimes exotic online universe.

BOSTON/Boston Common - Approximately twenty members of the Free Software Foundation and supporters of free open source software gathered at the entrance to Boston Common from the Public Garden Wednesday to erect a giant trash bin into which they threw representations of proprietary software like Microsoft Windows 7, Mac OS X and the iPhone. The demonstration marked the launch of their Windows 7 Sins campaign, which identifies seven negative cultural impacts of Microsoft's proprietary software ecosystem and encourages users to use free software instead.

AN OPEN MEDIA BOSTON INVESTIGATIVE REPORT. Verizon's default wireless security for subscribers to its FiOS Internet and DSL High Speed Internet service has been shown to include several critical security flaws and weaknesses that Verizon phone support agents do not disclose to its customers. These weaknesses are exacerbated by poor training and installation practices that leave users vulnerable to network infiltration, identity theft and data loss.

BOSTON - In an August, 2007 newspaper article, former Boston Globe national legal affairs correspondent Charlie Savage wrote that the federal Department of Homeland Security is “funneling millions of dollars to local governments nationwide for purchasing high-tech video camera networks, accelerating the rise of a ‘surveillance society’ in which the sense of freedom that stems from being anonymous in public will be lost, privacy rights advocates warn.”

BOSTON - A suit brought against three MIT students last week by the MBTA prevented them from presenting their findings on Boston subway security vulnerabilities at the DEFCON conference in Las Vegas. Professional security researchers have expressed concerns that the gag order and the treatment of the students as criminals may dissuade researchers from identifying vulnerabilities in public systems for fear of litigation. As a result, vulnerable systems may remain unfixed and pose a risk to those who use them.