hausmasta writes "Since August 30, there are massive problems with PayPal subscriptions. The automatic renewal of subscriptions stopped that day, causing headaches for lots of web site owners that rely on this kind of revenue. The problem is global, as this thread in the PayPal Developer Community shows. PayPal is aware of the problem but hasn't indicated any progress yet; some posters are wondering whether they have stopped working on it over the long (US) holiday weekend."

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insidedesign writes "Blogger Marco has recently discovered that the newest version of Google Earth includes a flight simulator. Though simple in comparison to full-blown simulators, Google Earth's is fun and addictive. To get started, press Ctrl+Alt+A for the initial dialog (on OS X, Command+Option+A). Then choose your plane (F16 or SR22) and initial airport. Joysticks are supported; it has even been reported that force feedback works. The game's controls are sensitive so it takes some getting used to. Here are all the available controls. For a quick overview, check out this YouTube video."

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ianare sends us to Ars Technica for news of the Ubuntu Xorg BulletProof-X feature, coming soon to a 7.10 (Gutsy) build near you. "It provides a failsafe mode that will ensure that users never have to manually configure their graphics hardware settings from the command line. If Xorg fails to start,the failsafe mode will initiate with minimalistic settings, low resolution, and a limited number of colors. The failsafe mode also automatically runs Ubuntu's new GTK-based display configuration utility so that users can easily test various display settings and choose a configuration that will work properly with their hardware."

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Public Works is the third collection of DMZ comics, and it's stupendous. DMZ is Brian Wood's remarkable war comics about a civil war in America in which both sides have turned New York into a heavily shelled no-man's-land where the fighting never stops, and the story is told from the point of view of Matty Roth, an intern journalist who is stranded in Manhattan and becomes the world's most celebrated reporter of the war.

In Public Works, Matty -- fast becoming one of the best characters in comics -- goes undercover on a work-crew operated by a thinly veiled version of Halliburton, a profiteering, ruthless government contractor whose savage mercenaries fight with the UN for jurisdiction over New York.

Wood is a tremendous writer, with a great sense of plot and a soft, smart touch at portraying the two sides that are most opposed in any war: the combatants versus the noncombatants.

DMZ is unrelentingly angry and mean, smart and shocking. Riccardo Burchielli's artwork is the perfect complement, using simple layouts and a great eye for facial expressions as well as backgrounds to keep the pace up. This is one hell of a collection.

I was privileged to write the introduction for this one, and I'm still glowing at the honor. This is special stuff, like Watchmen or Transmetropolitan, comics that have changed the way I look at the genre. Here's an excerpt from the intro:

DMZ is a special kind of angry comic, the kind of angry war comic that tells the story of the other side in the war. Non-combatants aren't just cannon fodder or collateral damage. We've got every bit as much agency, as much control over our destinies, as the guys with the guns and the satellite photos. But you wouldn't know it from how we're depicted in the press -- instead, we're the bodies blown apart on street-corners, the shoeless sheep having our hemorrhoid cream confiscated at the airport.

DMZ is an inspiration to we who refuse to be dismembered and unshod. It's a wake-up call to stop letting greedy profiteers sell fresh wars to cement their authority and profitability.

If I had my way, this comic would be required reading in every civics class in America.

Link, Link to info on launch party, Sept 8, Brooklyn

See also: DMZ: graphic novel, a worthy successor to Transmetropolitan

speardane sends us word of a proposal in the German legislature to make it legal for that government to email spyware to terror suspects. The action comes in response to a court denying prosecutors' requests to break into suspects' computers over the Internet. The German chancellor supports the measure despite considerable outcry from political opponents and rights groups.

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What's better than a lumpy, cozy, hand-knit sweater? A lumpy, cozy, hand-knit sweater with Space Invaders! Etsy seller n2Imaginations has one for $60. Link (via Wonderland)

Many BoingBoing readers have sent in word of a "hidden" flight simulation feature in Google Earth that's making the blog-rounds. TechCrunch has a post on how to use it here. (thanks Chris and others)

37-year-old Google engineer Tad Chade-Meng collects snapshots of himself with celebrities, heads of state, and tech stars who visit the Googleplex in Mountain View.

The New York Times did a sweet profile on him today: Link to that feature, and here is his large online photo collection: Link. Above, here he is, smiling, with la Gwyneth (and another famous dude in a rad "Aquabats" t-shirt). He seems like a very friendly fellow.

derrida writes "During the many threads discussing Ingo Molnar's recently merged Completely Fair Scheduler, Roman Zippel has repeatedly questioned the complexity of the new process scheduler. In a recent posting to the Linux Kernel mailing list he offered a simpler scheduler named the 'Really Fair Scheduler' saying, 'As I already tried to explain previously CFS has a considerable algorithmic and computational complexity. This patch should now make it clearer, why I could so easily skip over Ingo's long explanation of all the tricks CFS uses to keep the computational overhead low — I simply don't need them.'"

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John Kanzius, a retired TV station owner, believes he's come up with a way to "burn" saltwater, by bombarding it with microwaves.

The TV reports on this YouTube compilation never dip-below the gee-whiz surface, unfortunately. I'm guessing what's happening here is the radiation is splitting the water into hydrogen and oxygen. The salt has nothing to do with it, and the radio wave energy used to split the water exceeds the amount of energy produced by the flame, resulting in a net loss.

Link (Thanks, Cosmic Ray)

James Hardine writes Wikileaks, the website for whistleblowers, has broken one of the world's biggest corruption stories in the international press (Guardian, BBC, Forbes, Sydney Morning Herald). The site has leaked a secret report on looting by ex-president Moi of Kenya — and possibly altered the outcome of an impending national election. Moi has become a key player in political life in Kenya, and is now an essential pillar in President Kibaki's campaign for re-election in December 2007. From the Wikileaks page: 'The suppressed auditor's report reveals that currency worth billions of US dollars was looted from Kenya by President Moi and his associates. The money was laundered across the world and includes properties and shell companies in London, New York and South Africa and even a 10,000 hectare ranch in Australia.'"

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kiracatgirl writes "The NYTimes has a fun story about a relatively unknown Google employee and his hobby — taking photographs of himself with famous visitors to Google's headquarters. Tan Chade-Meng 'is a household name only in his own household,' but his gallery is posted on the walls at Google HQ. It's also available for our viewing pleasure at his Picassa photo album."

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Here's a short article on how to make a simple "snoot" -- a lightproof tube that tightly directs the light from your camera flash. It produces a nice effect, as shown here. Link

SkiifGeek writes "When the team at Sunbelt Software picked up on a sneaky hack present on the Bank of India website, it became a unique opportunity to see how anti-phishing and website trust verification tools were handling a legitimate site that had been attacked. Unfortunately, not one of the sites or tools identified that the Bank of India website was compromised and serving malware to all visitors The refresh time on a trust-brokering site is too long to be useful when a surf-by attack on a trusted site can take place in a matter of seconds, with a lifetime of hours, and with a victim base of thousands or greater."

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bl8n8r writes "The first wave of problems for Monster.com came in the form of malware as recruiters cluelessly pointed trojaned Windows systems into Monster's database. The incident reportedly gleaned more than 1.6 million records from the job search site's database. The second incident followed two days later in the form of an infected Monster.com server pharming out malware by way of advertisements hosted on its websites. The latest incident now shows jobseekers using USAJobs are also at risk from the pharmed Monster trojan. The worst part is Monster.com seems to shrug it off with: 'As is the case with many companies that maintain large databases of information, Monster is from time to time subject to illegal attempts to extract information from its database. Despite ongoing analysis, the scope of this illegal activity is impossible to pinpoint.'"

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athloi writes "Invention is new and clever; innovation is a process that takes knowledge and uses it to get a payback. Invention without a financial return is just an expense. Ideas are really the sexy part of innovation and there's rarely a shortage of them. If you look at the biggest problems around innovation, rarely does a lack of ideas come up as one of the top obstacles; instead, it's things like a risk-averse culture, overly lengthy development times and lack of coordination within the company. Not enough ideas, on the other hand, is an obstacle for only 17 percent. At the end of the day all that creativity and all those ideas have to show on the bottom line. The goal of innovation is to make or save money, and IT should never lose sight of that central fact."

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StCredZero writes "There's something about these things that seems eerily alive! The Starfish Robot reminds me of the Grid Bugs from Tron. But it's very real, and apparently capable of self introspection. In fact, instead of being explicitly coded, it teaches itself how to walk, and it can even learn how to compensate for damage."

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Soveit Gen-1 mouse for sale on eBay:

ABC writes "Zango sued Kaspersky Lab to force the Company to reclassify Zango's programs as nonthreatening and to prevent Kaspersky Lab's security software from blocking Zango's potentially undesirable programs. In the important ruling for the anti-malware industry, Judge Coughenour of the Western District of Washington threw out Zango's lawsuit on the grounds that Kaspersky was immune from liability under the Communications Decency Act."

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bsdphx writes "While Theo may have a reputation of being "difficult" in some circles, this response to the recent relicensing controversy is thoughtful and well penned. Through this whole process I've learned some new things about both GPL and BSD licensing, and especially about combining the two."

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