noinput.net | plug it in

Some things in life are sweet. Sweet things in life are free. Sweetie Icons are both.

Go download them, heh.

Oh and speaking of free, MSDN released their 2006 3disk Library set for download. Updated content sets in the May 2006 Edition include:

• Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server
• SQL Server 2005
• Microsoft Knowledge Base
• Internet Information Server SDK
• Internet Security and Acceleration Server SDK
• And More…

..sweet
hat tip -> brady

Now I really can’t wait to go back. Pretty awesome renditions of the new structure they want to build, click around and you’ll find some more pictures like these.

hat tip -> greg

New Scientist Tech - Breaking News - US loses momentum in spam battle

You know this is the truth. It’s a cryin’ shame how bad this has gotten. I was checking out some of the stats on our spamfilter the other day and realized that about 60% of all emails we filter for are spam. Sick isn’t it? Out of that 60%, almost half that number are from the United States, followed by China, Korea & Poland.

Efforts to curb the flood of unwanted emails, or spam, have lost momentum in the US, according to a report released on Monday.

A survey of international sources of spam, conducted by UK internet security firm Sophos, shows that the US still leads the world. It is the source of 23.2% of global spam between April and June in 2006.

The US had been making steady progress in reducing spam since the passage of a 2003 law dubbed CAN-SPAM, which introduced stiffer penalties for spammers. This progress now appears to have stalled.

“US spam has declined every quarter since the inception of CAN-SPAM, until now,” says Ron O’Brien, a senior security analyst with Sophos. “Despite the increase in arrests and significant monetary penalties, it’s clear that the US has more work to do.”

All that wasted internet bandwidth and time taking to clog up the tubes that deliver you valuable content like poker and porn.. hahah. Ahh Ted Stevens, we love ya man.. just don’t ever talk infront of a camera.

Dare Violate a Copyright in Hong Kong? A Boy Scout May Be Watching Online - New York Times

HONG KONG, July 16 — Movie and song copiers beware: use an Internet discussion site in Hong Kong to violate copyrights and you may be turned in to law enforcement authorities by an 11-year-old Boy Scout.

Young people of the Hong Kong Civil Aid Service search the Internet.

Starting this summer the Hong Kong government plans to have 200,000 youths search Internet discussion sites for illegal copies of copyrighted songs and movies, and report them to the authorities. The campaign has delighted the entertainment industry, but prompted misgivings among some civil liberties advocates.

The so-called Youth Ambassadors campaign will start on Wednesday with 1,600 youths pledging their participation at a stadium in front of leading Hong Kong film and singing stars and several Hong Kong government ministers.

The Youth Ambassadors represent a new reliance on minors to keep order on the Internet. All members of the Boy Scouts, Girl Guides and nine other uniformed youth groups here, ranging in age from 9 to 25, will be expected to participate, government officials said.

Wow, talk about a fun time for kids. Force them to watch discussion boards flooded with Porn, Swearing, hacks and rips, spyware and viruses and 13-year old German kids seeing how much they can pwn eachother. Just what I’d want for my son in Scouting. Although I don’t think web-scavenging will be the newest merrit badge on the sash.

So, how do you get your message across and get people talking about your product? You do what Papa John’s Pizza did. Created by Saatchi & Saatchi, Peru, this clever, yet simple idea in promoting Papa John’s Pizza won gold at the recent Cannes International advertising awards. Brilliant!

Found this at the coolhunter Up close and personal style. This is advertising at it’s best right here.

Wow, so have I just been living in a hole for the past month or did anyone else realize that Flash 9 was available for download. I saw this article about MySpace requiring Flash 9 when you login and did one of those double-takes.

hey folks - we are moving myspace music players and video players to flash 9.0. flash 9 has security fixes so that people can’t mess with you on myspace. if your ‘about me’ got screwed up this weekend, you could have been safe if you had flash 9 installed. here’s an easy way to install it, go watch this dashboard video i posted last week. if you don’t like dashboard, just watch any video in our video section, and you’ll be prompted to install flash 9.

strange. now i need to see what they’ve got packed into the new installer.

The Hoff is back. And he wants you in his car.
hat tip -> Tim