More Holiday Gadgets: Valentine's Day!

Posted by Kathy Walrath, Technical Writer

Today is Valentine's Day. Traditionally, this day of romance is celebrated with chocolate or flowers, lavish dinners out, or even more lavish dinners in. But what if you're still looking for that special someone, or you're miles away from the one you love? Google Desktop to the rescue: Here are a few desktop gadgets you can use to find or celebrate love.

	Crush By Lahiru Lakmal Priyadarshana Let a special Google Talk friend know that you have a crush on him or her.
	Cupid's Gadget By Teodor Filimon Are you too shy to ask someone out? Do you want to see if he or she likes you, too? Try "like-marking" with Cupid's Gadget!
	Find My Heart By Lahiru Lakmal Priyadarshana Give your heart to a Google Talk friend. Your friend wins if it takes five tries or less to find where you hid the heart.
	Kiss Me! By Kathy Walrath Decorate your desktop with a kissable, framed picture of your sweetheart � or anyone else you'd like to kiss. Send your prospective valentine a picture of yourself and a pointer to this gadget, and you're sure to get a kiss! (Virtually, at least.)
	Love is in the Air By James Yum Heart-shaped fireworks simulate the graffiti inspired by first love. What could be more romantic?
	Flower Pot By Google Inc. If you're too late to order flowers for your honey, try giving virtual flowers instead. You might even try to convince your valentine that electronic flowers are ecologically superior to chemically treated flowers that have been transported hundreds of miles. Good luck with that.

You can find Valentine's Day gadgets and more at our holiday gadgets page. If you feel inspired to create your own holiday gadgets � pi Day, anyone? � visit our Developer Site and be sure to grab the Google Desktop SDK.

Happy Valentine's Day from the Google Desktop Team!

Hackers! What a waste!

I keep seeing errors, in my FreeBSD/Apache webserver log (/var/log/httpd-errors), of the type: POST /_vti_bin/_vti_aut/fp30reg.dll HTTP/1.1" 401 517. According to NSFOCUS these are a Microsoft FrontPage 2000 Server Extensions Buffer Overflow Vulnerability attacks on my webserver. Really? this exploit is nearly six years old. Guess old habits die hard? Thanks again Micro$oft for enabling so many hackers and criminals. Will Vista be any better?

FreeBSD on Dell Inspiron 3500

When Micro$oft decided to end support for Win98 my old laptop, a Dell Inpirion 3500, seemed destined for the recycle center. It was still in good shape and all the peripherals worked (CD, dual batteries, floppy, etc). So I didn't just want to toss it out. Upgrading to Win2K was not an option because of the limited resources (400Mhz processor and 4Gb hard drive).

Instead I installed FreeBSD 6.1 (later upgraded to 6.2) and added the BlackBox window manager (pkg_add -r blackbox). I'm sitting here editing this blog from my laptop. Admittedly FreeBSD is not a 'normal' choice for an ex-WinDoze system, but having worked with FreeBSD at Fermilab it was not completely unfamiliar either. I can run the command line interface (useful for home network admin tasks) with as little as 20Mb of memory (the laptop only has 64Mb). The 4Gb hard drive is still 75% free after the install.

Running X windows w/ the BlackBox (/usr/ports/x11-wm/blackbox) window manager and Firefox 1.5 requires only 60Mb! Factor in the zero cost for FreeBSD and Firefox and this old laptop will still be in the house for the foreseeable future.

For a 'simple' networked device that gets used on weekends and evenings to browse the web (in an ultra secure OS) I can't complain! Heck I'm so happy with this system I had to tell others.

Where have you gone Aleksey Kamardin?

The Security and Exchange Commission filed a complaint against Florida college student Aleksey Kamardin charging him with fraudulent trading activities, commonly referred to as pump-and-dump. In the complaint it states that Mr. Kamardin made about $83k. The St. Petersburg Times states Kamardin made about $15k in three hours trading St. Petersburg-based Cyber Defense Systems Inc. (CYDF). To pull this off Kamardin, with help from others hacked into online trading accounts and used these accounts to trade illegally. The money transferred into and out of many accounts in the US, Russia and Latvia.

This is not the most recent SEC investigation into pump-and-dump trading. Most recently, in December 2006, the SEC filed a complaint against the Estonian Evgeny Gashichev for activities with his own company Grand Logistic.

Kamardin has since fled (the country?) and some believe he is hiding in Russia.

So what are the online brokerage firms doing to prevent this? How are they making their client accounts more safe?

The Freedom To Doubt

While clearing out a bookshelf, I rediscovered a series of three lectures given by the Physicist Richard P. Feynman. A truly remarkable man indeed. Below is an excerpt from the first of these three lectures (given in April 1963).

Scientists, therefore, are used to dealing with doubt and uncertainty. All scientific knowledge is uncertain. This experience with doubt and uncertainty is important. I believe that it is of very great value, and one that extends beyond the sciences... If we were not able or did not desire to look in any new direction, if we did not have a doubt or recognize ignorance, we would not get any new ideas.
The freedom to doubt is an important matter in the sciences and I believe, in other fields. It was born of a struggle. It was a struggle to be permitted to doubt , to be unsure. If you know that you are not sure, you have a chance to improve the situation. I want to demand this freedom for future generations.

Why I hate software

While trying to archive an email message on google (gmail) it generated an error message "Oops... the system was unable to perform your operation (error code 602). Please try again in a few seconds." Now normally I have few complaints w/ google or gmail because by and large "it just works". However after a particularly frustrating day wrestling w/ my own software and software from others at the office I had had it! Yes, true to the error message, I was able to archive the message. Perhaps I should be more forgiving, considering I make a living from software, but I'm not. I believe that software should be infinitely difficult to configure incorrectly. It should be, conversely, "hung over from the Christmas party at 4am" easy to use, configure and install. Have I achieved that with the products I write? Nope. So I should be more forgiving but I refuse to allow my lack of planning, my poor planning to ruin the customer's experience. I'm paid to think of failures and plan for them, all of them. Harsh? Yep. Perhaps it's a calculated behavior serving as a stark contrast to the lackadaisical image some in the industry are fond of displaying.

Copenhagen Top Ten (or not?)

On a recent trip my wife and I took to Copenhagen (her first European trip) we comprised our top ten things we DIDN'T expect to see in Copenhagen (Denmark in general).

10. So many bicycles (Kim). Bikes we expected... but double decker bike racks at the train stations?
9. Witch at the Hovedbaneg�rden (Keith). I swear I saw a witch right out of a Macbeth!
8. Roskilde teenagers (both) -- we 'planned' our trip to Roskilde right before the music festival (oops)
7. Fruit stands on the street (Kim).
6. 7-11s everywhere! (both). When did this happen? Guess there are worse American exports (see #2).
5. Guy wearing a dress on the Str�get (Keith). The combat boots 'made' the dress! I do hope he was wearing a slip but suspect I am wrong.
4. A "Sister" cleaning the rooms in our hotel. (both). She even had an accent from the islands.
3. Two gay guys in Rosenburg Gardens (Keith). "Not that their is anything wrong with THAT"... but come on... get a room! I would say the same if it were a heterosexual couple too. That much 'free love' needs a room.
2. Hummer (both). Even in America an H2 Hummer is large... seeing one in downtown Copenhagen, it's obscenely large!
1. Graduation Caps (both). These caps rock! Graduation caps in America suck compared to these!