Cartoon of The Day: Police Racer

 

 Taken at the RFL Car and Bike Show. Among the cars there, a suped-up police cruiser. Police cars built for speed are nothing new, I've heard of one department that bought some Transams for high speed pursuits on country roads. But they certainly invite some comments. For those who didn't grow up in the CB era, "Smokey Bear" means policeman. 

 

By Bixyl Shuftan

 

It Came From Bellisseria Chat: Traffic Cop

 

From Traci Quandry-Marabana (Traci Quandry): "As a  public service I need to warn all citizens of Belle we now have traffic cops."''

 

That traffic cop looks familiar. 

 

"Wait a minute ,I'm getting a ticket? And since when did Bellisseria get police ?"

 

Cartoon of The Day: Fuzzy Policeman

 

 

 Taken at the "Crime and Punishment" event at Club Cutlass. Should we ever have real-life furs among the police, they may need a new nickname.

By Bixyl Shuftan

Relay Track Sneak Peek

 

No, the Newser hasn't run afowl of the law. This is a sneak peek of one of the displays on the Relay track. So what is it? Come and find out when the sims open. Some will be open in a couple days with the Relayfest that starts on Wednesday June 8.

Stay tuned for more information.
 

Cartoon of the Day: Bacon Bribery

Taken at the Fantasy Faire Jail and Bail

By Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day

Taken at the Christmas Expo

By Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day

From the "Bid the Lindens Bald" party. Among those there was this tiny skunk, Tazzie "Tazz" Tuque, in a Fairelander "Pawlice" uniform.

By Bixyl Shuftan

Online "Swatting" Prank Leads to Death

by Bixyl Shuftan

It's fair to say most online gamers have heard of "Swatting." For those who haven't, this is when someone calls a police department and makes a phony claim of a serious crime, such as a hostage situation, at someone else's address. While hoax calls to the cops are nothing new, they've become more of a concern in recent years with angry video and computer gamers tracing down the address of a rival and calling the police to claim the person is either about to seriously harm someone or already has, with the intention of terrifying their target and possibly getting them arrested.

Not only is this a waste of taxpayer dollars and the policemen's time, and possibly diverting them from any real crimes at the moment, but there's the potential of the police shooting someone. And on Thursday December 28, it happened. Police in Wichita Kansas responded to a caller claiming he was holding people hostage at an address, and ended up shooting and killing a man whom had been doing nothing wrong.

As it turned out, the man wasn't even involved in the dispute that led to the crime. What had happened was two "Call of Duty" game players ended up arguing over a wager of just $1.50, and one whose Twitter handle happened to be "@SWAuTistic" made a call at the 911 center in the town of what he thought was his rival's address. But he had been given the wrong one. The caller claimed to have shot his father and holding the rest of the family hostage, and had poured gasoline around the house. The address police were given was that of Andrew Thomas Finch. Police shot Finch at his front door when his hand moved to his waist, and the unarmed man was killed. Finch was 28, and is survived by three children. The man's family has stated he wasn't a game player.

As news of the shooting spread, "@SWAuTistic" changed his Twitter address. But other gamers took pictures of and shared a tweet of his insisting he was blameless for what happened, "I DIDNT GET ANYONE KILLED BECAUSE I DIDNT DISCHARGE A WEAPON AND BEING A SWAT MEMBER ISNT MY PROFESSION". The call and tweets were traced to Tyler Barris, 25, of Los Angeles, whom was arrested. Barris has been in trouble before, charged and convited of making bomb threats to a TV station.

While there are no Federal laws about swatting, Barris faces a number of charges. On state level, he could be charged with reckless homicide, plus California has a law against swatting punishable by a year in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Sources: Wichita Eagle, Los Angeles Times, Click On Detroit,  PC Magazine, CNN,

Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day

Picture from Cynthia Farshore, taken at the Relay Weekend's Sunbeamer camp. Looks like her "Tin Lizzy" took the most inopportune time to get bad brakes.

By Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day

With Skylark Lefavre in her Judy Hopps avatar. Looks like this feral fox is just realizing it made a big mistake.

By Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day

Taken at Bay City. Sometimes when the cops get your attention, it's not for what you might think.

By Bixyl Shuftan

Tinies' Jail and Bail at the Fantasy Faire

While cancer is usually a serious subject, those at the Relay for Life try to have a little fun with their events. But add some fun-loving tinies, and the results can be downright hilarious. The "pawlice" going about in tiny avatars in police uniforms have been a part of the Fantasy Faire for a while, helping with "jail and bail" fundraisers. But when they went after two fellow tinies, Clover Dezno and Druscilla Ferraris, the result was a mock demonstration against "ebil pawlice ohpreshun."

Read more in People.

Hopps To It: Bringing a Touch of "Zootopia" to Second Life.

Taken by Rezzdammit Resident, Becky Shamen tries on an avatar and outfit looking a lot like the perky police officer Judy Hopps of the movie "Zootopia," which has gotten quite a bit of attention among my furry friends at Cutlass, notably the song "Try Everything" getting played many nights at the clubs. Although Judy was gray-furred in the movie, Becky's avatar did match an earlier concept sketch.

Zootopia has done extremely well at the box office, making 700 million by the end of last month, and is expected to make a total of over a billion. Not bad for a cartoon. As for the idea of a "Zootopia" themed event in Second Life, the running joke is that in this virtual world, it would be redundant.

Marusame Arai Interviewed in Kotaku

Among those in the Sunweaver Estates, where the Second Life Newser's office makes it's home, is Marusame Arai. Between there and a few hangouts such as Luskwood, Marusame, or simply Maru to her friends, she's gotten a little attention through her cutsie mannerisms and her pinkish appearance, selling a few wares on Marketplace and appearing in an occasional cartoon.

More recently, Maru's made news by being interviewed by Kotaku, a video game newsblog. Besides her Second Life activities, she's a self-described "angry video game nerd" whom has a number of games on Steam. Among the things that makes her angry is the censorship of some video games, such as certain Japanese ones before being put on the US market. So she created a group on Steam: the "Cut-Content Police," which currently has over 970 members.

"I felt that knowing whether a game has been altered for censorship or is lacking features and or content should be transparent and it often isn’t." Maru told Kotaku, "Cut-Content to me is defined as content that was snipped out to appease something or someone AND is still being actively sold in its original form, that’s KEY." One can read the article, "The Steam Players Who Fight Against 'Censorship' " in full in Kotaku.

Most of her time Maru's appeared as a black Lusk "Wah," or red panda, dressed in pink with pink wings,  though more recently has gone about in a pinkish Kemono avatar. She's occasionally been called "The Pink Wonder." She also has her own "pink and fluffy" webpage at www.marusame.info.

Bixyl Shuftan

Fantasy Faire: "Pawlice Corruption"

Although the Fantasy Faire is over, people are still looking back at it with fond memories. As serious as cancer can be, people did try to have fun and joke at the Faire, as well as writing about it. In one article on the Faire's blog, Sonya Marmurek wrote a fun article, "Pawlice Corruption," about supposed corruption in the ranks of the dinkie police tinies.

Every Faire visitor knows that the peace within the Fairelands is guarded by the fiercely wafflesome Tiny Sheriffs Association, led by the Commandant Xavian Starsider. The Tiny Sheriffs guard and protect the Fairelands, catch and imprison the miscreants for the general justice, allowing the Faire Folk to operate as the judge and jury. The bails can be paid straight into the RFL kiosks, and should it be high enough, the Tiny Sheriffs might benevolently free the criminals and pad away in search of more waffles wrongdoers. Surprisingly the worst offenders tend to be found amongst the world builders and creators. Perhaps it is a much needed balance after all the selfless work for the greater good, or perhaps there’s something more afoot here, something much more sinister and — dare I say? — corrupt!

Read the rest of the article (here).

Cartoon of the Day

By Bixyl Shuftan

SL Club Alliance Discusses Reports of ISPs to Police Music Downloads This Month

Earlier this year, the SOPA and CISPA bills in Congress raised fears about Internet censorship and the loss of privacy. In a recent meeting of the FCA (Furry Club Alliance), a group of music clubs in Second Life, some DJs and club staff brought up some other Internet news from earlier this year. A number of Internet Service Providers were set to begin policing downloads on July 1st.

An article on Cnet.com in March discussed about an agreement between several ISPs and RIAA, the Recording Industry Association of America, to adopt policies to discourage illegal music and software downloads last year. The White House was also involved in the deal. "During a panel discussion before a gathering of US publishers here today (March 14)" RIAA's CEO stated most of the ISPs in the program were set to "begin implementing the program by July 1st."

The program has been called "graduated response." Those suspected of illegal downloading will receive one or two notices. If the downloads do not stop, confirmation notices are sent, and "the accused customers will also be informed of the risks they incur if they don't stop pirating material." Further flags for illegal downloads can bring on a list of penalties, or "mitigation measures" as RIAA calls them, such as slowing down the ISP's customer's Internet connection speed, or web access suspended.

The issues with the plan were brought up in a dottech article, such as false accusations, punishing multiple users on a network when only one is downloading questionable material, and privacy concerns, "What gives the entertainment industry of America the right to bypass these basic American rights?" On the plus side, "none of the ISPs have agreed to permanently shutdown subscribers." Plus "there are bound to be services and software that crop up to beat the system, for those that are really bothered by this." Forbes.com listed Apple as having patented a technique to fool trackers.

The people at the FCA meeting talked about the bill, "so basically the government is trying to screw us again, does that sum it up?" Adrianna Aeghin advised calm, "No ISP is going to analyze all the datastreams in use at any one time, EVEN if they're participating, which I think most won't. So they're mostly only going to look at people they have a reason to expect. … I really don't think this is going to be a problem for SL DJs. … Too many people are in a blind panic over this." One DJ at the begining had wondered if she would have to stop playing music in Second Life. But as the discussion went on, she felt more assured.

The group decided to take a wait and see stance, keeping an eye on the news to see if anyone was going after users for downloading music, and not jumping to conclusions over any rumors and whispers.

In other news, two of the men in Washington who helped defeat SOPA, one Democrat, one Republican, spoke out last month, calling for some form of Internet "Bill of Rights."

Sources: cnet.com, dottech.org

Bixyl Shuftan

Pathfinding Test, "Smokey and the Bandit" Style

From AC14 Hutson, and mentioned on New World Notes, a fun little film on Youtube of some "messing around" with Pathfinding, with music by Jerry Reed.

Cartoon of the Day: An Arrested Valentine

Looks like "Clumsy Cooper" just can't stay out of trouble, though this time the arresting officer's a lot friendlier.

This was actually taken at a "Cops & Robbers" party, with special thanks to the DJ.

Happy (Belated) Valentines Day

Bixyl Shuftan