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CRN Australia's piece on the economics of malicious software is fascinating. They assert that the days of intellectual curiosity-fuelled hacking are behind us and that today's botnetters and spyware creeps are all about the dough. However, competition seems to have crashed the price of some of the market's commodities, like infected PCs, which only generate a $0.30 payment to the infector. I wonder if botnet time itself has crashed -- with botmasters controlling botnets with tens of millions of PCs, you'd think it'd be pretty cheap to get ahold of ten or twenty thousand boxes to do some distributed computation or to zap that kid who just fragged you in Counter-Strike. I keep waiting to see spam for botnet time (apart from the spam offering to send spam, which, of course, is a kind of botnet rental) -- "GET A MILLION PCS FOR AN HOUR: ONLY $5!"

"There are programmers who are working for brokers, and the brokers are selling the malware to other criminals, who are then reselling the malware to other criminals," says Trend Micro's Parry. "When they capture a bunch of systems, they resell those systems to another criminal, and another criminal. The actual hacker types don't want to get their hands dirty with something that would actually send them to prison." Other groups build affiliate networks that tap into legitimate and semi-legitimate businesses. In a presentation at the Defcon hacking conference this year, Peter Gutmann of the University of Auckland's Department of Computer Science described networks in which businesses would pay affiliates up to 30 cents for each machine they infect with spyware or adware...

Other operations mirror legitimate software as a service providers. These "malware-as-a-service" providers rent out access to botnets or Web-based attack tools. Gutmann noted one example in which a Russian group rented out its malicious Website. A prospective buyer could get the 100 visitors for free, but then had to pay US$4 per 1,000 visitors up to 5,000, US$3.80 per 1000 up to 10000, and US$3.50 per 1,000 if they bought 10,000 or more. "Software rental is just another way to get money out of this market," says Oliver Friedrichs, Symantec's Director of Security Response. "It's common to see authors who write keyloggers and botnetworks, and then rent them out to people ultimately who may launch a phishing campaign or a spam campaign."

Link (via Beyond the Beyond)

Designers, artists and architects who have completed projects using glass have until the end of October to enter the Bombay Sapphire Prize 2007 - the world’s richest international glass award.

The annual award has a £20,000 first prize - last year won by Jaume Plensa for his Crown Fountain in Chicago (above) - and a £5,000 prize for best newcomer. Previous winners include Paul Cocksedge and Thomas Heatherwick.

Shortlisted entries will be showcased in Milan during the international furniture fair in Aprl 2008, where the winners will also be announced.

More information on the Bombay Sapphire Prize website, or download the application form here.

The closing date for entries is 31 October 2007.

This is really, really cool: an animated NYC subway map, with the lines and stations appearing in the order in which they were built. It's amazing to me that the West Side IRT -- what are now known as the 1/2/3 lines -- were built way before lines in lower Manhattan, at a time when lower Manhattan probably had a crushingly greater need for a subway line; it wasn't until later that the IRT was extended down into the lower reaches of the island. (It's also cool that two lines in Brooklyn started it all.)

(with comments)

The BPS Research Digest reports that children with autism are seemingly 'immune' to contagious yawning - perhaps as a result of their reduced social awareness.

Yawning is mysterious: no-one really knows why we do it, but we do know it's reliably 'contagious'.

Seeing someone yawn, or indeed, just thinking about someone else yawning, makes us more likely to do the same. For example, this article may well be enough to trigger a yawn in some people.

One of the three key aspects of autism is a difficulty with social interaction (the other two being difficulties with certain types of abstract thinking and a restricted or repetitive range of interests or behaviours).

So a group of researchers, led by psychologist Dr. Atsushi Senju, wondered whether children with autism might be less susceptible to yawn contagion.

They came up with the 'I wish I'd thought of that' idea of showing videos of people yawning to groups of typically developing children, and children with a diagnosis of autism.

The study [pdf] showed that children with autism were far less likely to yawn in response to watching others do the same.

Often, autistic social difficulties are put down to a problem with 'theory of mind' the ability to understand other people's beliefs, intentions and desires, but it's not clear that contagious yawning relies on this.

The researchers don't have any easy answers for why yawn contagion is reduced in autism, but suggest, without committing, that known differences in viewing faces, possible differences in mirror neurons or problems with imitating others might be linked.

The BPSRD has a talent for picking up on previously obscure but striking studies, and this is another great example.

Link to BPSRD on autism and contagious yawning 'immunity'.
pdf of full-text of scientific paper.

By Nat Torkington

"A Map-based Approach to Content Inventory" caught my eye. I love the aesthetics of subway maps, the clever way in which they distort space while still presenting a more aesthetically true representation of the relationships between places. Patrick Walsh used the subway map metaphor to understand the gnarly structure of the intranet he was redesigning. (found via Matt Jones)

I wonder whether this would be useful as a general daily-use navigational aid for any web site. It wouldn't be hard to implement this as a Firefox plugin—a sidebar that puts heads on the x axis, external links on the y, and links within the same site on the diagonal. Daily use would let you know whether it's useful to have, to borrow Patrick's metaphor, a GPS in your web browser.

Remember my post detailing several prototypes developed at the course of Fashion & Technology at the School of Arts and Communication at Malmö University? There was one project missing, a spectacular luminous dress that pulses according to the rhythm of the music. My over-zealous spam filter had eaten the student's email. Calle Rosenqvist sent me the info about her Beat Dress again and here's the gist of our online dialogue:

What's the tech behind all those pulses, sound beats and bursts of light?

The dress i sew is sewn in 4 layers of cloth. Underneath it all is a very simple jersey-dress design. On that dress there are 10 detachable patches, all equipped with 10 leds each (a total of 100 leds). From each of these patches there is a wire attached to a battery, which is hidden in a pocket on the very front of the dress. Not only the battery is hidden in this pocket but also a microphone and a small equaliser connected to a small microcomputer (called arduino). On top on all this there is a nylon cloth and also two layers of see through cloth that helps to spread the light from the leds to larger clusters.

How does it work?

When music or any sound is detected by the microphone it is being led to the equalizer connected to the computer. If there is a base sound the computer transmits a signal to the battery to send pulses of electricity out to the leds in the dress. This obviously lightens the leds up. Then in a second or so they softly go of again. So when listening to music the leds are pulsing to the rhythm of the music. There is also a small lever attached to the microphone, making it possible to adapt to the loudness of sounds around you. This makes the dress work both where there are low volumes like being at home listening to music or out clubbing where the music is very loud.

What was your inspiration/motivation for this project?

When I made the dress I were out clubbing a lot. Finding it dull that so many people weren’t dancing but just hanging around sipping on their beer. I wanted to make a garment that would help to create an atmosphere of dancing and partying even though the wearer wouldn’t dance. Much like something visual such as a discoball or a set of strob-lights helps to give a greater experience of sounds. The garment is of course not only made for people that doesn’t dance, but for all people in the club.

Most challenging step you encountered while working on the dress?

The most challenging part of the task was creating a functioning equalizer out of some electronic devices, and also making the programming of the computer work as I wanted. It was an absolute nightmare! But I got loads of help from Mackie and Marcus two teachers and students of our school.

Thanks Calle!

Photos by Johan Sundell.

The Guardian writes today of a "new strategic landscape" taking shape as long-range Russian bomber patrols cross over into "remote areas" of ungoverned ocean air, brushing up against the aerial terrain of 21st-century British sovereignty – England scrambles its jets, phone calls are made, the crisis is defused – and as newly affiliated militaries co-simulate and train, linking distant nations in strategy.

[Image: A Russian TU-95; the TU-95s were originally "designed as bombers but are now frequently used for maritime reconnaissance." They have recently been intercepted in the north Atlantic].

"A burst of war games and military manoeuvres around the world hints at a new strategic landscape," we read.
NATO is training in Sevastopol, for instance, a former Soviet sea port; Japan, Singapore, Australia, and the United States are hosting "war exercises" with India in the Bay of Bengal; China has constructed "an intelligence listening post on the Cocos Islands" in that same Bay of Bengal (a future flash point?), even while helping Pakistan and Bangladesh "build deep-water ports"; and, of course, "Russia and China held their largest ever war games in the Urals last month," during which uniformed men and armed helicopters terrorized fake villages and filled empty architecture with smoke.
Stripped of ornament and devoid of decoration, such training sites are the military's version of a Modernist utopia: eminently functional, purpose-built, a testing ground for new forms of management and planning, they are temporary cities built for and by war – destroyed just as quickly by the forces that assembled them.
Meanwhile, repurposed jets fly above summer coastlines, radioing back and forth with coordinates and suspicious greetings.

Bruce Sterling calls Joel Garreau's Washington Post interview with William Gibson, "One of the best William Gibson interviews ever." Garreau interview Gibson about Spook Country, his new novel that is so futuristic, it could only have been set in the recent past, and digs into the meaning and purpose of sf and literature in general, and how it ties into a world of technological change and splintering subculture. Garreau pinged Bruce for good, meaty Gibson questions, something I did for my 1999 interview with him for the Globe and Mail (Bruce said, "Ask him about the shoes"). It's good advice -- the Sterling questions evoke some of the most interesting material in this piece.

"Every hair is being numbered -- eBay has every grain of sand. EBay is serving this very, very powerful function which nobody ever intended for it. EBay in the hands of humanity is sorting every last Dick Tracy wrist radio cereal premium sticker that ever existed. It's like some sort of vast unconscious curatorial movement.

"Every toy I had as a child that haunted me, I've been able to see on eBay. The soft squeezy rubber frog with red shorts that made 'eek eek' noise until that part fell out. I found Froggy after some effort on eBay, and I found out that Froggy was made in 1948 and where he was made and what he was made of. I saw his box, which I'd long forgotten. I didn't have to buy Froggy, but I saved the jpegs. So I've got Froggy in my computer.

"This is new. People in really small towns can become world-class connoisseurs of something via eBay and Google. This didn't used to be possible. If you are sufficiently obsessive and diligent, you can be a little kid in some town in the backwoods of Tennessee and the world's premier info-monster about some tiny obscure area of stuff. That used to require a city. It no longer does."

Link (via Beyond the Beyond)

(Photo credit: cropped, downsized thumbnail ganked from a larger image credited to Pouya Dianat -- The Washington Post.)

See also:
BoingBoingBoing #15: William Gibson
William Gibson's Spook Country
Original proposal for William Gibson's Spook Country
William Gibson explains why science fiction is about the present
William Gibson on writing in the age of Google

Here are some photos showing construction of Cityscape, a giant timber installation in Brussels by designer Arne Quinze.

The installation opens on September 14.

More info and images in our earlier stories here and here.