For about 2 weeks now, I am every day alerted of the suspicious behavior of some computer/server from the Google’s IP range:

Dec 5 05:39:33 mx suhosin[3701]: ALERT – tried to register forbidden variable ‘_REQUEST[option]‘ through GET variables (attacker ’66.249.71.20′, file ‘html/index.php’)
Dec 5 05:39:33 mx suhosin[3701]: ALERT – tried to register forbidden variable ‘_REQUEST[Itemid]‘ through GET variables (attacker ’66.249.71.20′, file ‘html/index.php’)
Dec 5 05:39:33 mx suhosin[3701]: ALERT – tried to register forbidden variable ‘GLOBALS’ through GET variables (attacker ’66.249.71.20′, file ‘html/index.php’)
Dec 5 05:39:33 mx suhosin[3701]: ALERT – ASCII-NUL chars not allowed within request variables – dropped variable ‘mosConfig_absolute_path’ (attacker ’66.249.71.20′, file ‘html/index.php’)
Dec 5 05:39:42 mx suhosin[3701]: ALERT – tried to register forbidden variable ‘_REQUEST[option]‘ through GET variables (attacker ’66.249.71.20′, file ‘html/index.php’)
Dec 5 05:39:42 mx suhosin[3701]: ALERT – tried to register forbidden variable ‘_REQUEST[Itemid]‘ through GET variables (attacker ’66.249.71.20′, file ‘html/index.php’)
Dec 5 05:39:42 mx suhosin[3701]: ALERT – tried to register forbidden variable ‘GLOBALS’ through GET variables (attacker ’66.249.71.20′, file ‘html/index.php’)
Dec 5 05:39:42 mx suhosin[3701]: ALERT – ASCII-NUL chars not allowed within request variables – dropped variable ‘mosConfig_absolute_path’ (attacker ’66.249.71.20′, file ‘html/index.php’)

These requests repeat up to several hundred times per hour, with periods of no or very little malicious requests.

Here’s WHOIS information about 66.249.71.20:

OrgName: Google Inc.
OrgID: GOGL
…
NetRange: 66.249.64.0 – 66.249.95.255
CIDR: 66.249.64.0/19
NetName: GOOGLE
NetHandle: NET-66-249-64-0-1
Parent: NET-66-0-0-0-0

Does Google attack you, too?

These attacks initially started from a different Google IP – 66.249.71.2; I wrote to abuse at google, and got an automated response with the ticket number (in the hundreds of millions range). A week after that, requests started flowing from IP 66.249.71.20. I am not inferring “evil Google abuse department” here, just that there was no response, and the problem shifted to a different IP from the Google’s IP range.

Update: I decided just to ignore this class of problems.

“Evil?” image by copyblogger.com.

To help in this celebration, you can make a barcode with your site’s address (there is at least one more at barcodesinc, but at the moment of writing it is painfully slow).

I find these parameters nearly optimal:

• Type: Code 128-B
• Styles: Draw value text
• Size: 234×60 (half-banner size)
• Xres: 1
• Text font: 5
• Value: bogdan.org.ua

If you wish, you can also exactly replicate today’s Google logo – which says “Google”, as you could have guessed.

You can place this barcode on your “souvenirs” – pens, cups, t-shirts. Many phones now have barcode scanners (e.g. Nokia E71), so put this code onto your namecard.

Read on to learn about matrix barcodes.

You may also investigate further into matrix/2D codes, which may contain much more information. To the left is the QR code of my blog’s address – try and scan it with your cameraphone! Or make one for yourself.

Here’s an encrypted message:

There are many types of matrix/2D barcodes. QR code (above), datamatrix (left picture) and Semacode (right picture) were all successfully recognized by my phone.

Main emphasis of their website is on collaboration and access from anywhere to your documents. Although Firefox (together with IE) is listed as a supported browser on XP/Vista/MacOS (Linux is not listed), there is a note that some Office Live features require ActiveX. So Office Live is not really a match for Google Docs in portability (quite expectedly).

An update installs some new menu commands into Office XP/2003/2007, which allow working with Office Live from within your local M$ software.

I wonder if there is already an OO extension which allows working with Google Docs – no more wondering, here it is (thanks Paolo!).

You can sign up for updates on Linux version.

After reading the Google Chrome book, it is a long time waiting for it to be released for Linux….

Also, I’m looking forward for the plugins to enhance Chrome. Although it did import my settings/passwords(?!)/bookmarks from Firefox, but it has no Foxmarks, AdBlock and some other goodies I’m now used to on all the computers I regularly use.

Worth reading for any IT guy, especially for people dealing with lots of HDDs.
Also might be interesting for those, who have Gmail with (now) over 6GiB storage…

When I switched to English (UK) UI, everything went just as described in the help article, and I added one address to fetch emails from.

After fetching some mails, I switched back to Ukrainian UI, and – quite expectedly – the Fetcher part disappeared from the Settings/Accounts. Now I’m waiting to see if the Fetcher is nonetheless functional, or if it is also disabled… It’s functioning! So the only thing which was really changing in this case was the portion of the Settings/Accounts page not displayed while using Ukrainian UI.

The moral of the story is: when you think that some functionality is missing in the Google service you’re using – just switch to English UI!

First thing to think about: at least they did transfer all my emails to the new account.

Second: hey, they had given up their own email interface! Are they leaving the web-portal market of Ukraine? Was the part of their team (which later formed MI6) too important to handle their exodus with no consequences? Is that just a desire to give customers “better” interface and not invest anything into development?

I hope this won’t be a trend, for every service to have Google behind their servers. Or even just behind the name, to avoid extra complexity of having a server.

Finally, I think I’ll get used. But it was only yesterday, that I read the Google anti-utopia, where Big Brother’s name is (evidently) Google, and it’s webcams and microphones and search history define each person’s future AND guilt. Scary…

And I wonder which will be the next service of bigmir.net, “outsourced” like their email.