The tone of his retraction is odd. Seems almost as if he is reluctant to admit IBM is committed to virtual worlds.

His whole attitude towards SL is odd. I always thought (hoped) journalists were able to be objective..

he just seems angry. reuters would do well to embed another reporter, who can be more openminded into SL to give a truer picture, IMHO .

Well, technically most journalism aims for subjective and neutral.

Neutral, because you're not supposed to be pushing an agenda. Subjective because you're supposed to be putting data into context

so that it can be understood.

Data that is both objective and neutral is just... data. Not information. And people generally want info, not data.

So you have to be somewhat subjective to give it context and meaning to the readers. You should *try* to remain neutral when you do.

He doesn't appear to be able to do that.

Crap summed it up!

I believe that he chose to leave on his own.

He already had the SI gig lined up.

um, Crap - you make stuff up??? *Gasp*

tateru - fully agree, but there's this tone that feels um slammy, and that undermines the context setting

There seems to be a sense of non-neutrality there.

He sounds angry.