Sneak remembers a bygone age, not too long ago, when men were men and women were women and we all went about our daily business in a fairly well-grounded kinda way. Then came Second Life. Where men are avatars and, um, so are women. Aside from being the natural home of the self-loathing geeks that Sneak used to bully at school, it's now being used by staff at IBM.

Yes, the disgruntled staff at the Italian outpost of Big Blue have decided to organise a protest against their paltry wages, and want the avatars of their global colleagues to join in. A virtual strike? Sneak wonders what they hope to achieve from this – a virtual settlement from their employer of thousands of virtual pounds perhaps?