English Recordings

decree
distracted
contagious
lenient
nullify
filth
indecency
forbade
invigorate
unbiased
retinue
vast
robe

persevering
distract
distracted
distracting
contemplation
cripple
weapon
detriment
rejoice
hoard
falter
faltering
falteringly

It’s happened to anyone who’s ever studied a foreign language: After spending years tirelessly learning grammar rules, building up vocabulary and listening to conversations in the school’s language lab, you finally visit a country where the language is spoken, and you DON’T UNDERSTAND A WORD! “What the hell?” you ask yourself. “Why do these people sound so funny?”

What we’re often taught in schools is commonly referred by linguists as prescriptive language — the language that people ought to use, which is dictated by a society’s status quo at a given point in time. Most people think of this as the “standard” form of language, and the confusing and seemingly indecipherable gibberish that language learners hear abroad is descriptive language — the language that native-speakers actually use in most informal settings.

Descriptive language varies across different geographical regions, socioeconomic backgrounds and generations, and these wonderful and interesting differences are called dialects. English is no different, and there are many wonderful dialects in America.

Generally speaking, there are seven major U.S. regions that define American dialects, but of course there are many more.

For the sheer intellectual challenge, Philet0ast3r replied, the fun of producing something ''really cool.'' For the top worm writers, the goal is to make something that's brand-new, never seen before. Replicating an existing virus is ''lame,'' the worst of all possible insults. A truly innovative worm, Philet0ast3r said, ''is like art.'' To allow his malware to travel swiftly online, the virus writer must keep its code short and efficient, like a poet elegantly packing as much creativity as possible into the tight format of a sonnet. ''One condition of art,'' he noted, ''is doing good things with less.''

When he gets stuck on a particularly thorny problem, Philet0ast3r will sometimes call for help from other members of the Ready Rangers Liberation Front (which includes Mario). Another friend in another country, whom Philet0ast3r has never actually met, is helping him complete his keylogger by writing a few crucial bits of code that will hide the tool from its victim's view. When they're done, they'll publish their invention in their group's zine, a semiannual anthology of the members' best work.

The virus scene is oddly gentlemanly, almost like the amateur scientist societies of Victorian Britain, where colleagues presented papers in an attempt to win that most elusive of social currencies: street cred. In fact, I didn't meet anyone who gloated about his own talent until I met Benny. He is a member of 29A, a super-elite cadre within the virus underground, a handful of coders around the world whose malware is so innovative that even antivirus experts grudgingly admit they're impressed. Based in the Czech Republic, Benny, clean-cut and wide-eyed, has been writing viruses for five years, making him a veteran in the field at age 21. ''The main thing that I'm most proud of, and that no one else can say, is that I always come up with a new idea,'' he said, ushering me into a bedroom so neat that it looked as if he'd stacked his magazines using a ruler and level. ''Each worm shows something different, something new that hadn't been done before by anyone.''

Virus writers are especially hostile toward Microsoft, the perennial whipping boy of the geek world. From their (somewhat self-serving) point of view, Microsoft is to blame for the worm epidemic, because the company frequently leaves flaws in its products that allow malware to spread. Microsoft markets its products to less expert computer users, cultivating precisely the sort of gullible victims who click on disguised virus attachments. But it is Microsoft's success that really makes it such an attractive target: since more than 90 percent of desktop computers run Windows, worm writers target Microsoft in order to hit the largest possible number of victims. (By relying so exclusively on Microsoft products, virus authors say, we have created a digital monoculture, a dangerous thinning of the Internet's gene pool.)

Microsoft officials disagree that their programs are poor quality, of course. And it is also possible that their products are targeted because it has become cool to do so. ''There's sort of a natural tendency to go after the biggest dog,'' says Phil Reitinger, senior security strategist for Microsoft. Reitinger says that the company is working to make its products more secure. But Microsoft is now so angry that it has launched a counterattack. Last fall, Microsoft set up a $5 million fund to pay for information leading to the capture of writers who target Windows machines. So far, the company has announced $250,000 bounties for the creators of Blaster, Sobig.F and Mydoom.B.

The motivations of the top virus writers can often seem paradoxical. They spend hours dreaming up new strategies to infect computers, then hours more bringing them to reality. Yet when they're done, most of them say they have little interest in turning their creations free. (In fact, 99 percent of all malware never successfully spreads in the wild, either because it expressly wasn't designed to do so or because the author was inept and misprogrammed his virus.) Though Philet0ast3r is proud of his keylogger, he said he does not intend to release it into the wild. His reason is partly one of self-protection; he wouldn't want the police to trace it back to him. But he also said he does not ethically believe in damaging someone else's computer.

So why write a worm, if you're not going to spread it?

The most ferocious threats today are ''network worms,'' which exploit a particular flaw in a software product (often one by Microsoft). The author of Slammer, for example, noticed a flaw in Microsoft's SQL Server, an online database commonly used by businesses and governments. The Slammer worm would find an unprotected SQL server, then would fire bursts of information at it, flooding the server's data ''buffer,'' like a cup filled to the brim with water. Once its buffer was full, the server could be tricked into sending out thousands of new copies of the worm to other servers. Normally, a server should not allow an outside agent to control it that way, but Microsoft had neglected to defend against such an attack. Using that flaw, Slammer flooded the Internet with 55 million blasts of data per second and in only 10 minutes colonized almost all vulnerable machines. The attacks slowed the 911 system in Bellevue, Wash., a Seattle suburb, to such a degree that operators had to resort to a manual method of tracking calls.

Philet0ast3r said he isn't interested in producing a network worm, but he said it wouldn't be hard if he wanted to do it. He would scour the Web sites where computer-security professionals report any new software vulnerabilities they discover. Often, these security white papers will explain the flaw in such detail that they practically provide a road map on how to write a worm that exploits it. ''Then I would use it,'' he concluded. ''It's that simple.''

Computer-science experts have a phrase for that type of fast-spreading epidemic: ''a Warhol worm,'' in honor of Andy Warhol's prediction that everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. ''In computer terms, 15 minutes is a really long time,'' says Nicholas Weaver, a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, who coined the Warhol term. ''The worm moves faster than humans can respond.'' He suspects that even more damaging worms are on the way. All a worm writer needs to do is find a significant new flaw in a Microsoft product, then write some code that exploits it. Even Microsoft admits that there are flaws the company doesn't yet know about.

Today, I was interviewed by a newspaper journalist while I was looking at Japanese calligraphy at a museum.

It was my mother's exhibition that she holds once a year, as she is a calligrapher.

It's kind of funny that I just was on local news last week, because I got interviewedwhile I was working out at the gym. Although it is said that TV viewing rate has been falling off, maybe because it was the evening news, I received many phone calls from my friends who noticed that it was me.

Back to today's interview by the newspaper, it left me with a bad aftertaste. Finishing the interview, he asked me my name. I answered it.

The problem was the next question.

"How old are you?"

I came up with an idea that lots of people who don't need to know my age will know it!

"Huh? Should I say it?"
"Yes!"
"I don't want to."

After repeated arguments for a short while, he wrote it off. It's alright for me, but I felt kind of bad. Refusing someone, like even towards bell ringers, often makes me feel bad.

I remembered that an American lady, who ran an international school in Japan, got mad because the newspaper revealed her age without asking her about it directly, when the school was in the paper.

I don't fully understand why ages are so important in this case. I was just a viewer of the exhibition..

Is it a Japanese thing that one's age is put in parentheses after his/her name?

You know, mine is my top secret! lol

(^v^) /

One might assume Philet0ast3r would favor destructive viruses, given the fact that his apartment is decorated top-to-bottom with anticorporate stickers. But Philet0ast3r's viruses, like those of many malware writers, are often surprisingly mild things carrying goofy payloads. One worm does nothing but display a picture of a raised middle finger on your computer screen, then sheepishly apologize for the gesture. (''Hey, this is not meant to you! I just wanted to show my payload.'') Another one he is currently developing will install two artificial intelligence chat-agents on your computer; they appear in a pop-up window, talking to each other nervously about whether your antivirus software is going to catch and delete them. Philet0ast3r said he was also working on something sneakier: a ''keylogger.'' It's a Trojan virus that monitors every keystroke its victim types -- including passwords and confidential e-mail messages -- then secretly mails out copies to whoever planted the virus. Anyone who spreads this Trojan would be able to quickly harvest huge amounts of sensitive personal information.

Technically, ''viruses'' and ''worms'' are slightly different things. When a virus arrives on your computer, it disguises itself. It might look like an OutKast song (''hey--ya.mp3''), but if you look more closely, you'll see it has an unusual suffix, like ''hey--ya.mp3.exe.'' That's because it isn't an MP3 file at all. It's a tiny program, and when you click on it, it will reprogram parts of your computer to do something new, like display a message. A virus cannot kick-start itself; a human needs to be fooled into clicking on it. This turns virus writers into armchair psychologists, always hunting for new tricks to dupe someone into activating a virus. (''All virus-spreading,'' one virus writer said caustically, ''is based on the idiotic behavior of the users.'')

Worms, in contrast, usually do not require any human intervention to spread. That means they can travel at the breakneck pace of computers themselves. Unlike a virus, a worm generally does not alter or destroy data on a computer. Its danger lies in its speed: when a worm multiplies, it often generates enough traffic to brown out Internet servers, like air-conditioners bringing down the power grid on a hot summer day. The most popular worms today are ''mass mailers,'' which attack a victim's computer, swipe the addresses out of Microsoft Outlook (the world's most common e-mail program) and send a copy of the worm to everyone in the victim's address book. These days, the distinction between worm and virus is breaking down. A worm will carry a virus with it, dropping it onto the victim's hard drive to do its work, then e-mailing itself off to a new target.

An hour earlier, he had dispatched three friends to pick up another case, but they were nowhere in sight. He looked out over the controlled chaos of his tiny one-bedroom apartment in small-town Bavaria. (Most of the virus writers I visited live in Europe; there have been very few active in the United States since 9/11, because of fears of prosecution.) Philet0ast3r's party was crammed with 20 friends who were blasting the punk band Deftones, playing cards, smoking furiously and arguing about politics. It was a Saturday night. Three girls sat on the floor, rolling another girl's hair into thick dreadlocks, the hairstyle of choice among the crowd. Philet0ast3r himself -- a 21-year-old with a small silver hoop piercing his lower lip -- wears his brown hair in thick dreads. (Philet0ast3r is an online handle; he didn't want me to use his name.)

Philet0ast3r's friends finally arrived with a fresh case of ale, and his blue eyes lit up. He flicked open a bottle using the edge of his cigarette lighter and toasted the others. A tall blond friend in a jacket festooned with anti-Nike logos put his arm around Philet0ast3r and beamed.

''This guy,'' he proclaimed, ''is the best at Visual Basic.''

In the virus underground, that's love. Visual Basic is a computer language popular among malware authors for its simplicity; Philet0ast3r has used it to create several of the two dozen viruses he's written. From this tiny tourist town, he works as an assistant in a home for the mentally disabled and in his spare time runs an international virus-writers' group called the ''Ready Rangers Liberation Front.'' He founded the group three years ago with a few bored high-school friends in his even tinier hometown nearby. I met him, like everyone profiled in this article, online, first e-mailing him, then chatting in an Internet Relay Chat channel where virus writers meet and trade tips and war stories.

Philet0ast3r got interested in malware the same way most virus authors do: his own computer was hit by a virus. He wanted to know how it worked and began hunting down virus-writers' Web sites. He discovered years' worth of viruses online, all easily downloadable, as well as primers full of coding tricks. He spent long evenings hanging out in online chat rooms, asking questions, and soon began writing his own worms.

Our modern virus epidemic is thus born of a symbiotic relationship between the people smart enough to write a virus and the people dumb enough -- or malicious enough -- to spread it. Without these two groups of people, many viruses would never see the light of day. Script kiddies, for example, were responsible for some of the damage the Blaster worm caused. The original version of Blaster, which struck on Aug. 11, was clearly written by a skilled programmer (who is still unknown and at large). Three days later, a second version of Blaster circulated online, infecting an estimated 7,000 computers. This time the F.B.I. tracked the release to Jeffrey Lee Parson, an 18-year-old in Minnesota who had found, slightly altered and re-released the Blaster code, prosecutors claim. Parson may have been seeking notoriety, or he may have had no clue how much damage the worm could cause: he did nothing to hide his identity and even included a reference to his personal Web site in the code. (He was arrested and charged with intentionally causing damage to computers; when his trial begins, probably this spring, he faces up to 10 years in jail.) A few weeks later, a similar scene unfolded: another variant of Blaster was found in the wild. This time it was traced to a college student in Romania who had also left obvious clues to his identity in the code.

This development worries security experts, because it means that virus-writing is no longer exclusively a high-skill profession. By so freely sharing their work, the elite virus writers have made it easy for almost anyone to wreak havoc online. When the damage occurs, as it inevitably does, the original authors just shrug. We may have created the monster , they'll say, but we didn't set it loose . This dodge infuriates security professionals and the police, who say it is legally precise but morally corrupt. ''When they publish a virus online, they know someone's going to release it,'' says Eugene Spafford, a computer-science professor and security expert at Purdue University. Like a collection of young Dr. Frankensteins, the virus writers are increasingly creating forces they cannot control -- and for which they explicitly refuse to take responsibility.

"Where's the beer?'' Philetoaster wondered.