Eygptian civil engineer Mamdouh Hamza offered to pay a hired killer $100,000 to assassinate an Egyptian government minister and three other government officials. Hamza called his plan "the final solution." The hired killer — actually an undercover British police officer — arrested Hamza, who went to trial in 2005.

In 2006, prosecutors charged Chinese national and Canadian citizen Xiaodong Sheldon Meng with 36 felonies, including economic espionage to benefit a foreign government. Meng's crime? Stealing code his former employer, Silicon Valley-based Quantum3D uses in fighter-pilot training software. A judge sentenced Meng to 24 months earlier this summer.

In 2007, Lan Lee, 42, of Palo Alto, and Yuefei Ge, 34, a Chinese national living in San Jose also faced charges of economic espionage after prosecutors accused the pair of stealing computer chips from Mountain View-based NetLogic Microsystems with plans on selling them to the Chinese government. Their indictment alleges the pair formed a company, Sico Microsystems, in order to create new chips based on stolen designs.

In May 1995, Silicon Valley engineer Bill Gaede rushed into a New York Times office and told a reporter: "I'm a spy, and I think they're going to kill me, so I want you to know what has happened." Gaede claimed he'd stolen computer chip designs from Intel and tried to sell them to Cuba, China and Iran before the CIA got onto his case and began hunting him down. The Times reporter didn't believe it at first, but it all turned out to be true. Gaede began serving a 33-month sentence in July 1996.

Richard Wade Farley goes by three names in the newspapers — never a good sign. In 1988, Farley was fired from Sunnyvale-based ESL, accused of sexual harrassment. Not long after, he returned with a shotgun. Seven of his former coworkers died. He barricaded himself in the office for six hours before police dragged him out.

In a way that reminded some of Farley's rampage, recently fired NEC Electronics employee Kenneth M. McMurray came back to his old office and forced Maria Elizabeth Lualhati, his ex-girlfriend and an associate systems programmer, into a lab where he shot her and then himself.

Aptix founder and ex-CEO Amr Mohsen faced charges of perjury, mail fraud, and obstruction of justice after prosecutors said he forged engineering notebooks in a failed attempt to sue a rival for patent infringement. When that case started to go against Mohsen, he allegedly told another inmate he wanted the judge to "disappear." The plan failed. Mohsen was sentenced to 17 years on January 5, 2007. According to AmrMohsen.com, "Amr and the family believe the 17-year punishment to be excessive."

Legendary Linux developer Hans Reiser, a hero to the open-source community, murdered his wife, Nina. He swore to his innocence almost up to the very end — until a judge agreed to reduce his sentence if he led police to her body. He eventually did. The reaction from Reiser's most ardent defenders: "Whoops."

So it's only fair to show you what they missed.

Marissa Mayer: 155 friends
Yes, the VP of search products and user experience is turned on by candlelight. That should come in handy on her perfect first date, which ends with "talking until dawn." To Marissa, sleep is for other people. Does she ever actually use those silk pajamas that are ostensibly in her bedroom?

Eric Schmidt: 66 friends
The CEO doesn't share any romantic info (his wife wouldn't like that), though his favorite book, A World Lit Only By Fire, sounds close enough to candlelight. Surprise surprise, he calls himself a workaholic. (Surprise surprise, by Google's standards he isn't.)

Larry Page: 112 friends
One of co-founder Larry's listed styles is "alternative." Anyone else turned on by the idea of a shaggy, Nirvana-worshipping Larry Page?

Sergey Brin: 123 friends
Sadly, this is probably a diagram of his actual DNA. But the dude shares no info whatsoever. Smart move, Sergey.

Bill Coughran: 33 friends
The senior VP of engineering and research's favorite TV is "24 hour news." Yeesh. Engineers.

Jeff Huber: 252 friends
Yet another VP who loves "Blade Runner." Sense a pattern here?

George Reyes: 9 friends
Oof. The CFO title doesn't come with a few placeholder friends? No sense making fun of this guy — it'd be like kicking a very lonely puppy.

Jason Shellen: 232 friends
This dude deserves every friend he's got and more. One of the original engineers at Blogger (he came to Google along with Blogger maker Pyra), Jason lists his favorite Cuisinart as Kitchen Aid.

Eric Case: 94 friends
The new king of Blogger is no slouch either. "Television = consent manufacturing," he says. That's why the indie Eric Case reads obscure authors like Michael Crichton. (To be fair, he's a Bill Bryson and Victor Hugo fan too.)

There are the interesting Googlers. All the others aren't worth knowing.

The Google Connection: Google Employees on Orkut [Google Blogoscoped]

Cal built a tool that grabbed two photos from Yahoo's internal org chart, juxtaposed them Hot-or-Not style, and quizzed the user on which one was the other's boss. Based on the results, the tool showed who needed a promotion — and who needed a demotion. No word on how often Lloyd Braun checked his rank.

Says the creator, "j6chan": "As a single engineer in Silicon Valley I have too much time on my hands."

Lonely engineer in silicon valley makes music video (J Lo) [YouTube]