Feed aggregator

Author: Wired Magazine
It’s a question that tends to arise when a neighborhood mutt sees a cat at 3 a.m., or if you live in an apartment above someone who leaves their small, yapping dog alone all day: Why do dogs bark so much?

Perhaps because humans designed them that way.

Find the full article here: furryne.ws | Published News

i made an entry for "zenwolf" on the wikifur thingy!
yay! i think its fairly neutral...just the facts.
<nods>

*against* the furry lifestyle? what a load of shit. first; *is* there a
"furry" lifestyle. thats as lame as saying theres a "gay" lifestyle.
by lumping people into groups one creates a false dichotomy. its a sign
of lazy mindedness. really, prove that i am in fact "against" this
alleged "lifestyle".

Here’s a useful link we stumbled across: Lindsay Cibos (one of the creators of the Ursa Major Award winning book Draw Furries, along with Jared Hodges) has put together a list of  36 “Graphic Novels with Animal Protagonists” using Amazon.com’s “Listmania” service. Some of the items she listed are well-known already of course — Mice Templar, Blacksad, Gon, Mouse Guard, and so forth, but she also listed several that we haven’t heard of around here before, like Chi’s Sweet Home, My Cat Loki, and Seekers: Toklo’s Story. You can check out the list here, or visit Lindsay and Jared’s web site here. Here’s your homework assignment: What other cool furry-themed graphic novels can you think of?

Need techincal help? Have questions about the site? Email admin[AT]gamingfurever.com or PM JoJoJoshua.

Have an issue that you're encountering with another member? Contact AlexRK through PM.

 

Most other questions can be answered at the GF Wiki or by creating a thread in the Suggestion Box or Bug Reporting/Help forum.

 

Need techincal help? Have questions about the site? Email admin[AT]gamingfurever.com or PM JoJoJoshua.

Have an issue that you're encountering with another member? Contact AlexRK through PM.

 

Most other questions can be answered at the GF Wiki or by creating a thread in the Suggestion Box or Bug Reporting/Help forum.

 

Rules

Rules, follow em! If you follow this set of helpful tips and restrictions, you'll enjoy your time here a lot more!

DO:

• Treat your fellow members as fellow human beings (or fuzzies, I guess!) Treat members with respect and talk with them as if you were speaking in person.
• Upload photos, videos, and personal blogs galore!
• Join a group! It's the easiest way to start finding friends.
• Use the message boards. There's always a good discussion going on.
• Use good judgement in deciding what to do if an issue arises.
• Find friends on the site and then hook up with them on another gaming service like Xbox Live, Steam, PSN, etc.

DO NOT:

• Abuse your freedom of speech. Please keep inflammatory, racist, offensive, or illegal content and comments off of this site. We don't want drama that isn't related to games on here, folks.
• Post or discuss anything illegal. GF takes no responsibility for what happens to you.
• Spam, abuse, harass, impersonate, or defame a user.
• Link to illegal content, viruses, or anything that will harm a fellow user.

Registration

By registering an account you agree that all information provided is truthful and accurate. We reserve the right to close any account created with falsified information. In addition, you agree to keep keep your e-mail address accurate and up-to-date (as is necessary to contact you or provide password resets).

Spamming/Abuse

Do not abuse the group creation, photo album, message board, UBlog, or any other features. Keep posting to these pages at a reasonable level of activity. Gaming Furever reserves the right to issue a warning or suspension of account for excessive spamming of these services.

Security

We at Gaming Furever value your privacy, and we are committed to safeguarding your personal information to the best of our ability. We will never use, share or distribute personally identifiable information (birth date, e-mail address, ISP/IP or other aliases) except when such actions are necessary to:

• to comply with law enforcement;
• to protect or defend our legal rights, property or interests;
• to investigate reports of illegal activities, fraud or situations involving potential risk or endangerment to the physical safety of our users.

You are solely responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account password, and accept all responsibility for any damages or loss resulting from willful negligence on your account security.

Gaming Furever does not engage in active data collection of its users. Your personal information will not be resold or distributed.

Enforcement of Terms

Gaming Furever will investigate any claims before action is taken. Members are expected to read warnings and follow instructions if given them by the staff if they have potentially broken the terms of Gaming Furever. Gaming Furever will only enforce its policies against actions made within the site's domain.

We reserve the right to take action against users found in violation of the Terms of Service or Acceptable Upload Policy. Depending on the severity of the action, appropriate action may be taken. This includes deletion of content submissions, temporary suspensions, or a permanent banning of your account for repeat offenses.

Site Rights

Gaming Furever staff reserves the right:

• to remove content not in accordance with site policy;
• to modify submissions (editing will be limited to: group titles, discussions, ratings, comments or titles not in line with site policy);
• to monitor private data or user communication to investigate potential illegal activity by state, Federal or international law, protect the interests of the site or to prevent threats, spam or harassment.

Account Creation Policies

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate any account without notice. Attempts to circumvent temporary suspensions or otherwise evade admin actions will result in permanent banning and the closure of all accounts owned by the user. Further, you agree to not hold us liable for loss of data/information or any financial complications resulting from site termination.

• Secondary Accounts - We do not permit users to create multiple accounts with the same identity.
• Group Accounts - Group accounts are not allowed, since group creation is a feature of the site. Please use this feature to organize groups and recruit group members.
• Impersonation Accounts - Accounts impersonating celebrities or other members of the community on GF are prohibited.

Site Availability

GF is not responsible for losses attributed to scheduled downtime, unforeseen outages or any site error that causes work to be lost.

Rules

Rules, follow em! If you follow this set of helpful tips and restrictions, you'll enjoy your time here a lot more!

DO:

• Treat your fellow members as fellow human beings (or fuzzies, I guess!) Treat members with respect and talk with them as if you were speaking in person.
• Upload photos, videos, and personal blogs galore!
• Join a group! It's the easiest way to start finding friends.
• Use the message boards. There's always a good discussion going on.
• Use good judgement in deciding what to do if an issue arises.
• Find friends on the site and then hook up with them on another gaming service like Xbox Live, Steam, PSN, etc.

DO NOT:

• Abuse your freedom of speech. Please keep inflammatory, racist, offensive, or illegal content and comments off of this site. We don't want drama that isn't related to games on here, folks.
• Post or discuss anything illegal. GF takes no responsibility for what happens to you.
• Spam, abuse, harass, impersonate, or defame a user.
• Link to illegal content, viruses, or anything that will harm a fellow user.

Registration

By registering an account you agree that all information provided is truthful and accurate. We reserve the right to close any account created with falsified information. In addition, you agree to keep keep your e-mail address accurate and up-to-date (as is necessary to contact you or provide password resets).

Spamming/Abuse

Do not abuse the group creation, photo album, message board, UBlog, or any other features. Keep posting to these pages at a reasonable level of activity. Gaming Furever reserves the right to issue a warning or suspension of account for excessive spamming of these services.

Security

We at Gaming Furever value your privacy, and we are committed to safeguarding your personal information to the best of our ability. We will never use, share or distribute personally identifiable information (birth date, e-mail address, ISP/IP or other aliases) except when such actions are necessary to:

• to comply with law enforcement;
• to protect or defend our legal rights, property or interests;
• to investigate reports of illegal activities, fraud or situations involving potential risk or endangerment to the physical safety of our users.

You are solely responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account password, and accept all responsibility for any damages or loss resulting from willful negligence on your account security.

Gaming Furever does not engage in active data collection of its users. Your personal information will not be resold or distributed.

Enforcement of Terms

Gaming Furever will investigate any claims before action is taken. Members are expected to read warnings and follow instructions if given them by the staff if they have potentially broken the terms of Gaming Furever. Gaming Furever will only enforce its policies against actions made within the site's domain.

We reserve the right to take action against users found in violation of the Terms of Service or Acceptable Upload Policy. Depending on the severity of the action, appropriate action may be taken. This includes deletion of content submissions, temporary suspensions, or a permanent banning of your account for repeat offenses.

Site Rights

Gaming Furever staff reserves the right:

• to remove content not in accordance with site policy;
• to modify submissions (editing will be limited to: group titles, discussions, ratings, comments or titles not in line with site policy);
• to monitor private data or user communication to investigate potential illegal activity by state, Federal or international law, protect the interests of the site or to prevent threats, spam or harassment.

Account Creation Policies

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate any account without notice. Attempts to circumvent temporary suspensions or otherwise evade admin actions will result in permanent banning and the closure of all accounts owned by the user. Further, you agree to not hold us liable for loss of data/information or any financial complications resulting from site termination.

• Secondary Accounts - We do not permit users to create multiple accounts with the same identity.
• Group Accounts - Group accounts are not allowed, since group creation is a feature of the site. Please use this feature to organize groups and recruit group members.
• Impersonation Accounts - Accounts impersonating celebrities or other members of the community on GF are prohibited.

Site Availability

GF is not responsible for losses attributed to scheduled downtime, unforeseen outages or any site error that causes work to be lost.

Want to talk a bit about furries and help science at the same time?

You are invited to participate in an anonymous online survey about furries and the furry fandom being conducted by social scientists at the University of Waterloo (Waterloo, ON, Canada) and Niagara County Community College (Sanborn, NY, USA)!

There are two parts to the survey. Part one asks a few questions to determine eligibility for the survey including  information such as  age and country of residence. This portion of the study will take no more than two minutes. If it is determined that you are not eligible your responses will be destroyed.

If you are eligible, you will be asked to continue with part two of the survey which asks questions about a variety of different aspects of furry culture, sexual orientation, and your attitudes about furries and the furry community.  To keep the length of the survey manageable, 4 different versions have been created which, while mostly identical, do contain several sets of different questions. You will be randomly assigned to complete 1 of the 4 versions of the survey.

Part two of the survey will take about 30-45 minutes of your time.  In appreciation, you will be invited take part in a draw for a $50 Amazon.ca gift certificate.  If it is determined you are not eligible for the second part of the survey, you will be invited to take part in a draw for a $10 Amazon.ca gift certificate.

The survey uses Survey Monkey(TM) whose computer servers are located in the USA. Consequently, USA authorities under provisions of the Patriot Act may access this survey data. All responses will be downloaded from SurveyMonkey and saved on a password protected computer located on the University of Waterloo campus, to which only a few authorized investigators will have access. If you prefer not to submit your data through Survey Monkey(TM), please contact one of the researchers so you can participate using an alternative method (such as through an email or paper-based questionnaire). The alternate method may decrease anonymity but confidentiality will be maintained. Information and the anonymous data provided by participants will remain confidential and will be stored indefinitely on a secure, password protected computer in a secure area at the University of Waterloo and at the Niagara County Community College, to which only authorized researchers have access.  This anonymous data may be shared with other researchers interested in this research.

This study has been reviewed by and received ethics clearance through the Office of Research Ethics at the University of Waterloo, Canada.  However, the final decision about participation is yours.

If you have any questions about the study details please contact the researchers using the email addresses listed below:

Courtney Plante, B.Sc (Honors), Graduate Student, University of Waterloo: cpla...@uwaterloo.ca

Dr. Kathy Gerbasi, Professor, Niagara County Community College:  kger...@niagaracc.suny.edu

Dr. Steven Mock, Assistant Professor, University of Waterloo: smo...@uwaterloo.ca

Link to the Survey https://artsweb.uwaterloo.ca/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/cplante/2ndIARP

Furries AND non-furries can take this survey, and it is a new one, different from the last one we did back in February / March (though, if people did the one at Anthrocon this year, they are discouraged from doing this one, since it’s the same one).

Finally, below is the website where all of our past research findings are available, as well as the researchers’ contact information.  It’s a great place for furries to find out what we’ve learned about the community so far and what we hope to learn in the future (it’s also where these findings will be posted in the future!)

Winter Survey Results: https://sites.google.com/site/anthropomorphicresearch/

submitted by QtPlatypus
[link] [8 comments]

...and here's a nice follow-up video to the article of humans training dogs to bark.

It’s a question that tends to arise when a neighborhood mutt sees a cat at 3 a.m., or if you live in an apartment above someone who leaves their small, yapping dog alone all day: Why do dogs bark so much?

Perhaps because humans designed them that way.

submitted by SamuraiSmurfette
[link] [1 comment]

An adult male fox is a 'Reynard', a female is a 'Vixen', and a group of foxes is called a 'skulk', an 'Earth', or a 'troop' of foxes. All this just goes to show that people who make up labels are idiots, since none of these words even come close to the truth. A fox is awesome. A male fox is awesome, a female fox is awesome, and a group of foxes is just about the most awesome thing that could ever happen. No, foxes are so cute, I need a new label just to describe them. From now on, foxes are Awesomegreateriffic.

Nightmarish images from a French campaign to stop the spread of AIDS.
(Nightmarish unless you're an arachnophile, I guess.)
NSFW.
[link]

submitted by Rad2
[link] [comment]

From the FurAffinity Twitter: We are currently investigating an issue with site access. Please hold.

It is unknown at this time if they are under a DDoS attack or if there has been a problem with the database.  The site currently reads:

System Error
Database responded: Too many connections!

Update from Dragoneer:

Dragoneer wrote:

We’re working on resolving it. It was a problem with MySQL. We’re going to be restarting the services and running checks on the system, just be sure.

1:00am EDT:

http://twitter.com/#!/furaffinity/status/85935654235680768

@furaffinityFur Affinity The site’s back. Services will be slow while the database re-caches (usually takes 10-15m).

 

Author: toonces
Okay everybody, we had a good time talking about dongers and hoohahs and what have you, but now it’s time to remember that we’re all going to die and there’s not a damn thing any of us is going to do about it, and if you can’t deal with it, just go ahead and go crazy. Why not? It went well enough for Newberg, the aging taxidermist at the heart of this week’s story from Not Tube. Inside his head, the chattering of stuffed animals fleshes out the various subsets of a broken man’s mind.

We hope you enjoy the podcast! Sure hope it’s better than swallowing yourself into the black and endless!… Read more..

Find the full article here: The Bad Dog Book Club » Podcast

The contents of this Podcast may have adult language and adult themes. The content is not produced by Furry News Network, but is posted for your convenience.

Stolen from RazorWulff:
http://www.961kiss.com/cc-common/gallery/photos.html?album_id=186111&p=17189504#/0/17189504


342 pictures with the radio personalities featuring AC attendees... I'm sure a lot of you will see yourselves in this gallery!!


I wasn't there, but maybe you were?
-J

Author: crossaffliction

Though it led the race at the box office this weekend, Cars 2 has become Pixar’s first critical failure after over a decade of critically acclaimed films.

This dismal showing with critics, plus new rules for the Academy Award for Best Picture, may have opened up the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for furry movies, with Rango and Kung Fu Panda 2 both currently top (if early) contenders for the title.

Cars 2 currently has a aggregate score of 33% on Rotten Tomatoes – considerably lower than previous Pixar pictures, most of which are above 90%. Critics lambasted the mediocre storyline, kid-unfriendly violence and dependence on a character (Larry the Cable Guy as Tow Mater) who many found annoying. Most reviews begin with a variation of the line “it had to happen sometime,” and agree that the animation itself is top notch.

Academy rules

According to the Academy, a year must contain at least eight animated movies released to theatres for the award to be presented; there are currently 18 listed on the Animated Movie Guide for 2011. In a year where 16 or more movies are released, the shortlist grows from three to five. However, not all movies listed may qualify, and there have only been two years in which five features were nominated.

New rules affecting movies released in 2011 require that at least five titles be nominated, and up to five more if the Academy feels they deserve it. Cars 2 would have been less likely to make the cut even if it had been a critical darling.

Past victories

Pixar has won Best Animated Feature five times since the award’s inauguration in 2002, and has never failed to gain a nomination. For the last two years, a Pixar feature has also been nominated for Best Picture. However, the shortlist contained ten pictures in those years. Disney’s Beauty and the Beast is the only animated movie to be nominated to a shortlist of five titles.

Though animated movies are unlikely to win Best Picture for the foreseeable future, nomination virtually assures a victory in the Best Animated Feature category. Up and Toy Story 3’snominations gave them a distinct edge over distinguished (and furrier) challengers such asFantastic Mr. Fox and How To Train Your Dragon.

This year it seems to be a moot point, as Cars 2 will probably be lucky to get a nomination for Best Animated Feature, with multiple titles from multiple studios making decent runs for the title.

Stiff competition

Rango currently holds the year’s best wide-release animated movie score on Rotten Tomatoes, with Kung Fu Panda 2 right behind. The original Kung Fu Panda was nominated for the award. Rio, another furry contender, is also ”certified fresh,” and has a decent studio pedigree.

Other upcoming movies with furry themes and decent chances of nomination include Winnie the Pooh (with its traditional animation and Disney heritage giving it an edge), A Cat in Paris (the Academy likes to round out the Best Animated Feature shortlist with a smaller-release animated film) and Happy Feet 2 (the original Happy Feet beat out Cars for the award). Less likely furry contenders include Puss in Boots – probably too commercial for the Academy – and the smaller release The Lion of Judah, with a current rating of 0% on Rotten Tomatoes.

The biggest challenge to a furry victory may come from none other than Steven Spielberg, who is directing his first animated movie this year, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. Just being a Spielberg directed movie could get it on the ballot.

Though 2011 is shaping up to be a good year for furry films at the Academy Awards, it’s possible that none of these films may win the fandom’sUrsa Majors, with the homegrown Bitter Lake throwing a twist into possible nominations. Cars was nominated for an Ursa Major in 2006 as an example of anthropomorphism, despite receiving the poorest ever reviews for a Pixar movie; its sequel is unlikely to manage that in such a furry-rich year.