Ten years ago, we did as we were told. If we didn’t like a dish, or a table, or a wine, and the waiter asked us if everything was alright, we’d say “Yes thank you!” in a meek voice.

Today we know what we want. We won’t stand for ignorant waiting staff, sloppy service and bad background music. In fact, we like to complain.

But complaining, like cooking, is an art. For the best results, mastery of discernment, timing and presentation is required. And, perhaps most importantly, the appropriate attitude.

See it less as complaining, more as explaining there’s a problem and giving the restaurant a chance to put things right.

Here, three leading industry insiders with the 10 most commonly encountered problems, as voted for by Olive Magazine readers, and asked them to give us a masterclass in how to handle them effectively.

The Panel
Charles Campion Author of Charles Champion’s London Restaurant Guide 2008 and critic on BBC2’s Eating with the Enemey. “Common sense is terribly important when complaining.”

Oliver Peyton Owner of seven restaurants around London and judge on BBC 2’s Great British Menu. “People need to let their opinions be heard at the time. Good restaurants appreciate fair feedback.”

Alex Polizzi, hotelier and presenter of Channel 5’s Hotel Inspectors. “I believe in that old-fashioned thing: that you eat out for the pleasure of being looked after.”

1) “A 12.5% service charge has been added to my bill but I’d rather pay what I think the service is worth.”

The recent trend for a dollop of service on the bill topped our list of complaints. It was also unanimously bashed by our expert panel. “I hate it,” says top hotelier Alex Polizzi. “I regularly ask for it to be taken off.” It’s her firm belief that tips should be reserved for service above the ordinary. “You don’t tip a shop girl for finding you the right size of pair of trousers, why should I tip a waiter just because they brought me a plate? I reward extremely good service: charming, well-informed, polite. Someone who adds to the experience.”

As a restauranteur, Oliver Peyton agrees. “You should only pay for the service you receive. I would say, ”Fine“. Absolutely no problem. How much would you like to pay?”

2) “My dish is way too salty / oily / small / hot / cold.”

An adverse reaction to the taste or texture of a dish is a common area for complaint but difficult territory for a restaurant to respond. “It’s very subjective,” says restauranteur Oliver Peyton. “I personally like a lot of salt. But Pru Leith - if there’s salt in the same room, she thinks the dish is too salty. By and large, one would automatically replace a salty dish or an oily one. But with other nuances of taste it’s quite hard. At the very least, I’d be happy to take it back to the kitchen and discuss it with chef.”

The key here though is to complain immediately in a firm and polite manner. “It’s no good getting through half the dish, then getting angry and sending it back,” he says. “Anybody who runs a restaurant wants you to leave happy. And they certainly don’t want you eating and drinking things that aren’t correct.”

Alex Polizzi is in agreement. “If one of my customer really doesn’t like the dish, I always say let me change it and give you something else.“

3) ”I’ve had to wait an hour for my table even though I made a reservation.“

“Only an hour?” says Oliver Peyton. “Hahahah. Many restaurants want you to be there, waiting. It’s part of the whole concept of keeping the restaurant full. Generally speaking a restaurants going to book a table for 2 hours, 2 hours fifteen. Plus, most customers want a good turn on their table and you can’t push them off. Expect to wait.”

The consensus seems to be that a wait up to half an hour should be accepted with grace. Anything over that and you can start a polite nudge towards recompense. “If it’s a mistake, most good restaurants will try and tidy it up for you and make you feel better with a free drink,” says Charles Campion. “But no guarantees.”

Ultimately though, if you’re waiting, the panel believe, it’s probably a good sign. “I always think: Well how badly do I want to go to this restaurant?,” says Charles. “If it’s a top place, a long wait is part of the experience. So no complaints.”

4) “My wine’s is being kept over the other side of the room. The waiter’s constant filling is distracting and an obvious ploy to get me to drink more.”

“Oh I hate that,” says Alex Polizzi. “I’m out to dinner to talk to my friends. I don’t like table interruptions. I like my wine being on a table where we can help ourselves. On the other hand, I have a lot of elderly guests who complain bitterly if they ever have to touch a wine bottle. So it’s hard to get right.”

For Charles Champion it boils down to a matter of style. “If you are at Le Gavroche where the silky service runs on oiled wheels, your glass always - by some magic - has the right amount of wine in it. However, if you’re having a jolly time at an informal dinner somewhere, and your wine bottle gets stranded five yards from you, just say: ‘Bring it over here and we’ll pour it ourselves.”

As ever, remain calm and confident, he advises. “If your wine’s getting topped up too much at the first occasion just say, ”Stop that now. Bring the wine over here and we’ll worry about when we need it.“

5) ”I don’t like this table. It’s too dark / noisy / bright / smelly.“

Everything seems perfect when you walk in. The atmosphere. The lighting. Then they plonk you down a rickety two seater, ringside of the toilet. Are you in a position to complain? Our panel thinks not.

”Generally you’ve seen the room and table before you sit,“ says Charles Campion. ”You need to get these things straight. Because after sitting, you’ve accepted them already. If you don’t like it, say ‘No thank you. I wish to sit over there.“

If the place is too busy to relocate you, you’re left with a stark choice: stay or leave. “If a restaurant is packed it’s quite likely that its quite good. So, either put up with it an enjoy the good food and go to a bad restaurant where you can be on your own.”

6) “I keep asking to tap water but the staff keep ‘forgetting’ to bring it.”

The tap water contraversy continues to rage, especially now “evil” bottled water is off the menu for eco-sensitive diners. Our panel is clear on the issue though.

“It is unforgiveable to refuse or forget tap water,” says Alex Rolizzi. “I would complain bitterly. I would make a big fuss over it.”

Charles Campion suggests staying firm and polite. “What should never happen when you ask for water is that someone leans over you and asks: still or sparkling? At this point you have to be grown up and assert your contract with the restaurant and say I should like a jug of tap water please. And stare them in the eye. Don’t be frightened.”

But what if they refuse or delay? “They shouldn’t. But if there’s any delay, you can call the manager over and say, ”Look I know it’s difficult for you but I want a jug of tap water now, please. Thank you.“

7) ”The music is too loud and definitely not to my taste.“

There are few things worse than being seated underneath a speaker blasting out chintzy lift music or, worse, tuneless world music that matches the theme of the restaurant. But can you really do anything about it?

For hotelier Alex Rolizzi, this kind of protest is a serious bugbear. ”I care enormously if someone in my restaurants doesn’t have a good time. But in general I’ve noticed many more people moan about things you can’t quite believe they’re moaning about. You know, someone doesn’t like the lighting or music in the restaurant. Honestly!“

”In an empty restaurant - early evening, first table, no buzz - obviously a bit of music will take the edge off,“ says Charles Campion. ”But remember there’s a dial somewhere behind the bar, and if you really don’t like it, call the manager over and ask him to turn it down.“

”But,“ he adds, ”if you want a place that was loud and lively, then you’ve got to accept that it’s going to be loud and lively.“

8 ”I asked for a well-done steak but this is totally blue.“

You’re on safe ground with this classic complaint. ”The first rule of complaining is to know what you want and ask for it,“ says Charles Campion. ”If you say I want this steak terribly, terribly blue. Wipe its bottom, cut off its horn and bring it here. And then it turns up overdone, then you have a proper contract between you and the restaurant. They broken it. You complain. Everyone knows where they stand.“

For restauranteur Oliver Peyton this is a no-brainer. “Yes, obviously we’d change it straightaway,” he “But I’d be thinking: why would you want your food well-done? Why cook all the flavour out of it? That’s what the staff will be thinking when you send it back to be well done. Why?”

9) “The waiter can’t answer any of my questions about this dish but it’s really important for me to know what I’m getting.”

Okay. Sometimes you really need toknow if the eggs are freedom farmed free range. Or if the asparagus is definitely Peruvian or just grown in a plastic tent down the road. Or perhaps you’ve even got a (sigh) vegan at the table. If the waiter responds to your question with a ‘Wha-?’, it can be grating.

“As soon as a waiter looks at you blankly, it’s time for action,” says Charles Campion. “Providing your question is reasonable, it is reasonable to expect him to answer it. If he cannot answer, he must know where the answer is to be found. So send him off to find someone who knows the answer. ‘Go and ask the chef, please’.

“Yes, if I no problem as long as the waiter is willing to find out and does it in a charming manner,” says Alex. “You do have a very high turnover of staff in this industry. I wish I could say that everyone’s trained as much as they shoud be. But they aren’t always. As long as they say something like “I don’t know but I’ll be back in a moment with that information” you should be happy.“

10) “The service is far too clingy.”

Is everything okay with your meal? Do you need anything else? Can I get you something else? Do you need anything else? Shall I hover around your table during the entire meal like a fly?

“Hah you should be pleased to get clingy service!” Oliver Peyton jokes. “It’s pretty rare these days. Turnaround is fast and staff are a lot more savvy about what diners want. Unless the restaurant is terribly quiet you tend to get ‘normal’ service.”

“Urg. I hate clingy service! I hate it,” says Alex Rolizzi. “Why do people have to ask 20 times during your meal if you’re having a good time? Is my plate empty? Yes? Well it probably means I’ve enjoyed it. I think once at the end of a meal is probably enough for anybody.”

Their recommendation? Be firm and state your needs. “We’re okay thanks. We’ll see you at the end of the meal.”

THE FIVE COMMANDMENTS

Good Timing Air your grievance immediately. Don’t sulk and then write a letter 3 weeks later.

Choose Your Target Take the waiter aside and ask to speak to the manager.

Delivery Remain as calm as possible, polite and reasonable. Icy politeness is the most effective response.

Don’t Expect A Free Meal The restaurant won’t tear up the bill unless your evening has been a complete disaster. Expect a free bottle of wine or comped main courses for a severe mistake. For a minor blip, coffee or deserts on the house.

Be Constructive A good restaurant really appreciates fair feedback. We’re all here to have a good time, right?

The Customer Is Not Always Right
The worst complaints our panellists have received.

Oliver Peyton: “Oh I’ve had a 3 page letter from a doctor in Finchley. He thought the coffee was amazing, but he thought we were cheating him financially and emotionally by not putting chocolate on it.”

Alex Polizzi: “Someone once complained to me that my waiter’s jackets were too clean . They could still smell the washing powder on them. I wrote back, saying I thought he was a complete loon. ”

Charles Campion: “When I was cooking, I had a customer who’d sit down down, plate of food, take the salt cellar and biff it all over the food, before tasting it. Incredible. So everyday time he came, I made things progressively saltier in the hope that one day he’d say ‘Bloody salty!’ so I could then say ‘Then you should taste it before you put salt on shouldn’t you?!” But he never did. It was a great disappointment.“

(A little spoof I rustled up. Enjoy it. Oh - and see if you can find the secret pages).

Doctors from London University have revealed details of what they believe is the largest amount of ecstasy ever consumed by a single person. Consultants from the addiction centre at St George’s Medical School, London, have published a case report of a British man estimated to have taken around 40,000 pills of MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy, over nine years. The heaviest previous lifetime intake on record is 2,000 pills.

Though the man, who is now 37, stopped taking the drug seven years ago, he still suffers from severe physical and mental health side-effects, including extreme memory problems, paranoia, hallucinations and depression. He also suffers from painful muscle rigidity around his neck and jaw which often prevents him from opening his mouth. The doctors believe many of these symptoms may be permanent.

The man, known as Mr A in the report in the scientific journal Psychosomatics, started using ecstasy at 21. For the first two years his use was an average of five pills per weekend. Gradually this escalated until he was taking around three and a half pills a day. At the peak, the man was taking an estimated 25 pills every day for four years. After several severe collapses at parties, Mr A decided to stop taking ecstasy. For several months, he still felt he was under the influence of the drug, despite being bedridden.

Hallucinations

His condition deteriorated and he began to experience recurrent tunnel vision and other problems including hallucinations, paranoia and muscle rigidity. “He came to us after deciding that he couldn’t go on any more,” said Dr Christos Kouimtsidis, the consultant psychiatrist at St George’s Medical School in Tooting who treated him for five months. “He was having trouble functioning in everyday life.”

The doctors discovered that the man was suffering from severe short-term memory problems of a type usually only seen in lifetime alcoholics. But evaluating the full extent of his condition was difficult as his concentration and attention was so impaired he was unable to follow the simple tasks involved in the test.

“This was an exceptional case. His long- term memory was fine but he could not remember day to day things - the time, the day, what was in his supermarket trolley,” said Dr Kouimtsidis. “More worryingly, he did not seem aware himself that he had these memory problems.”

With no mental illness in his family and no prior psychiatric history, the doctors concluded that his unique condition was direct result of his intense ecstasy use.

“This is obviously an extreme case so we should not blow any observations out of proportion,” says Dr Kouimtsidis. “But if this is what is happening to very heavy users, it might be an indication that daily use of ecstasy over a long period of time can lead to irreversible memory problems and other cognitive deficits.”

For 10 years, MDMA has been suspected of causing these kinds of effects in heavy users. It is thought to be due to its disruption of the regulation of serotonin, a brain chemical believed to play a role in mood and memory. It remains unclear whether these effects are the result of permanent neurotoxic damage or just temporary reversible alterations in the brain.

A special two-part MDMA study in recent issues of the Journal of Psychopharmacology (available online at sagepub), suggests long-term side-effects may be temporary. The researchers from the University Of Louisiana could find no significant relationship between depression and recreational ecstasy use.

In the case of Mr A, a structural MRI brain scan failed to show any obvious damage or atrophy in his brain. However, these results, says Dr Kouimtsidis, are difficult to interpret. “A scan of this type is not sensitive enough,” he said.

Such limitations in brain scanning technology, along with ethical and legal barriers to giving MDMA to human test subjects, have limited direct observation of the drug’s effects in humans.

Instead, scientists have had to use recreational drug users as subjects in their studies. Conclusions from this are often flawed because few, if any, drugs users use ecstasy in isolation.

Cannabis user

Mr A was also a heavy cannabis user, and when he was encouraged to decrease his use, his paranoia and hallucinations disappeared and his anxiety abated. But his memory and concentration problems remained, leading the doctors to suspect that these may be permanent disabilities.

When he was admitted to a specialist brain injury unit and put on anti-psychotic medication, he did start to show some improvement. “Unfortunately, he discharged himself before we were able to complete the assessment,” says Dr Kouimtsidis. “We continued to support him. But he started to use cannabis again and he dropped out. We tried to re-engage him but we lost him about a year ago.”

The Guardian made several attempts to find the man without success.

Effects of ecstasy

MDMA is one of the most intensely studied recreational drugs in history. But despite thousands of research papers and studies, scientific evidence on the side-effects remains inconclusive.

Death by overdose

Undoubtedly, large amounts of ecstasy can lead to over-heating which in turn, in rare cases, can trigger fatal heat stroke. Many factors contribute: number and strength of pills taken, environment, alcohol-consumption, body weight - but women seem more at risk. The bulk of ecstasy-related deaths around the world have been young women.

Water-poisoning

Panicking users, fearing they are overdosing, drink too much water and provoke hyponaetraemia (water-poisoning). Leah Betts died after drinking 14 pints in just 90 minutes. The recommended amount of water to drink per hour is one pint.

Toxic reactions

Much of the reports of toxic reactions are muddled with overdose or water-poisoning deaths. There is no clear evidence that some people suffer allergic reactions to ecstasy. However, around 10% of Western users do lack a key liver enzyme CYP2D6 needed to break down MDMA. This may make them more sensitive to the effects and more prone to accidental overdose.

Depression

Many weekend users report a mid-week mood dip. This is suspected to be related MDMA’s effect on serotonin, but hard evidence is lacking. In heavy users, dips can turn to crashes and depression. However studies suggest this effect reverses after a 2-3 month abstinence.

Positive effects

Users still claim “long lasting improvements in self-awareness, self-esteem, openness and insight into personal problems”, reports the study from the University Of Louisiana. In the US, research continues into the use of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

_______________________________________
Originally published in The Guardian, April 2006

Albert Hofmann still remembers very clearly the moment when, on a spring afternoon, riding his bicycle, the whole world - and his life - changed.

“Everything in my field of vision wavered and was distorted as if seen in a curved mirror,” says the chemist, who celebrates his 100th birthday tomorrow. “I had the feeling that I could not move from the spot. I was cycling, cycling, but the time seemed to stand still.” It was 1943, and Hofmann was experiencing the world’s first LSD trip.

By the time the frightened 37-year-old research chemist reached home, he was terrified. The room spun. The walls rippled. His worried neighbour resembled a malevolent witch. He felt like he was dying.

After a few hours, the intensity of the experimental drug he’d dosed himself with fell and he was able to enjoy the “fantastic and impressive” effects. Next day, he felt wonderful: “A sensation of wellbeing and renewed life flowed through me. The world was as if newly created.”

It all began with a peculiar accident. The doctor, employed by the Swiss chemical firm Sandoz, was pursuing respectable but unremarkable research into ergot. This poisonous fungus that grows on rye had been used for centuries as a folk remedy to bring on childbirth and ease headaches. The doctor believed that ergot could be a storehouse of new medicines, and he set about synthesising new chemicals from it.

In 1938, Hofmann had synthesised the 25th chemical: lysergic acid diethylamide. It showed little effect in test animals, bar restlessness, and it was shelved.

Five years later, on a hunch - or a “peculiar presentiment”, as Hofmann puts it - he brewed up a fresh batch. In the process, he was overcome by dizziness. Sent home, he “sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition, characterised by an extremely stimulated imagination”.

The next day, Hofmann concluded that the sensations could only have been caused by accidental exposure to something in his lab, perhaps the LSD. To be sure, the cautious doctor gave himself an extremely conservative amount of the chemical - 250 millionths of a gram. It was, in fact, the equivalent of a megadose of the mind-agent, still one of the most powerful known to man.

Alarmed by the strength of the ensuing effects, he clambered on his bicycle and tried to make his way home. The rest is history.

Sandoz was keen to find a use for this new compound, and Hofmann thought it could have an important role to play in psychiatry. After animal tests showed it to be virtually non-toxic, it was made freely available to qualified clinical investigators. “Properties: causes hallucinations, depersonalisation, reliving of repressed memories and mild neurovegetative symptoms,” read the label on the bottle.

LSD’s effects did not come as much of a revelation to science. Such psyche-manifesting agents, or “psychedelics”, were already well known. Mescaline had been discovered in the late 1800s and made famous in 1954 as the subject of Aldous Huxley’s book The Doors of Perception. What was extraordinary about LSD was its power. It was about 10,000 times more powerful than mescaline, and a tiny amount was enough to trigger profound alterations in consciousness.

Through the late 1940s and most of the 1950s, LSD caused a revolution in psychiatry. Therapists and doctors used it to treat forms of mental illness, including neurosis, psychosis and depression. More than 40,000 people underwent psychedelic therapy. Respected figures considered it a wonder drug and gave their careers over to LSD research. Some believed it gave a glimpse into the way schizophrenics perceived the world. Others used it as a catalyst to accelerate traditional psychotherapy - and even took the drug themselves along with their patients.

By 1965, more than 2,000 papers had been published, many reporting extremely positive outcomes in treating anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder and alcoholism. Hofmann’s vision of LSD as a “medicine for the soul” seemed to be coming to fruition.

But LSD began to leak out into élite society. Artists, painters, performers and musicians began to experiment with it in looser, less formal contexts. Anaïs Nin, Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg and Huxley all explored its creative potential.

Huxley believed such drugs gave normal people the gift of the spontaneous visionary experience usually reserved for mystics and saints. He would later request an injection of LSD on his deathbed.

In the United States, newspapers and magazines began to fill up with sensational reports of LSD experiments, miraculous effects, mystical rebirths and self-transformations. In 1959, the film star Cary Grant received the first of 60 LSD-assisted psychotherapy sessions, and concluded: “I have been born again.”

The public grew more and more curious about this “miracle drug”. Self-experimentation began to increase. In a society facing growing industrialisation and urbanisation, alienation and boredom, everyone wanted to be reborn.

Already, a counterculture had sprung up to oppose the wealth-driven homogeneity of capitalist America. LSD was rapidly adopted as the sacrament for this bohemian “hippie” movement. In the age of the moon landings and the exploration of space, here was a tool that allowed a similar, metaphorical journey, a short cut to enlightenment. By the mid-1960s, the drug was booming.

Hofmann remembers the time distinctly. “I had not expected that LSD, with its unfathomable, uncanny, profound effects, so unlike the character of a recreational drug, would ever find worldwide use as an inebriant. People had the mistaken opinion that it would be sufficient simply to take LSD in order to have such miraculous effects.”

Rampant use led inevitably to “bad trips” among recreational users, and Hofmann could only watch with a mixture of astonishment and dismay. “They did not use it in the right way, and they did not have the right conditions. So they were not adequately prepared for it,” he says. “It is such a delicate and deep experience, if used the right way.”

He was stricken by doubt and concern that misuse and fear of the drug would lead to it being taken out of the hands of responsible investigators and psychiatrists. Would LSD - the drug which, on that spring day in 1943, reconnected Hofmann with the “deeply euphoric” visionary encounters he’d experienced in nature as a boy - become a blessing for humanity, or a curse?

A curse, the authorities concluded. In 1966, the drug was outlawed around the world. Psychiatric treatment continued but was steadily throttled by red tape and LSD’s reputation as an “insanity drug”. By the 1970s, research had stopped altogether. Today, it languishes in near obscurity, banished to the fringes of science and society.

Hofmann saw his discovery slip from psychiatric miracle medicine, to psychedelic sacrament of the Sixties, to outlawed, feared street drug. Today, he is saddened but sanguine. “Wrong and inappropriate use has caused LSD to become my problem child,” he says. “The history of LSD to date amply demonstrates the catastrophic consequences that can ensue when its profound effect is misjudged and the substance is mistaken for a pleasure drug.”

Hofmann himself continued his career as a chemist, and developed several other medicines. All the time, a steady stream of people continued to visit the “father of LSD” in Basel during the 1970s and 1980s. Many were en route to India and the Far East in search of gurus and a context for the LSD-driven mystical experiences. Many stopped off in Zürich seeking his counsel - often trying to score some of Hofmann’s “secret stash”.

Hofmann considered it was his responsibility as inventor of the drug to meet as many of these people as possible. “I have tried to help, instructing and advising,” he says.

Only now, 40 years later, is there renewed interest in the therapeutic potential of LSD and other psychedelic drugs. The British Journal of Psychiatry last year called for a reappraisal of psychedelics “based upon scientific reasoning and not influenced by social or political pressures”.

An international symposium convenes on Friday in Basel to discuss LSD research. By today’s standards, much of the research from the 1950s is flawed. Clinical studies are slated to restart at Harvard this year, organised by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Study (maps.org), this time looking at LSD as a treatment for cluster headaches.

Hofmann hopes research will continue, but he believes LSD should remain a controlled substance. “As long as people fail to truly understand psychedelics and continue to use them as pleasure drugs, and fail to appreciate the very deep psychic experience they may induce, then their medical use will be held back.”

Today, he lives with his wife in a house overlooking the countryside around Basel. He is head of a large family, including eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

He took the drug many times, but now, he says, he has no use for LSD. He believes it is just another means to attain extraordinary states of consciousness. “Breathing techniques, yoga, fasting, dance, art” are, he thinks, equally good.

He takes pleasure in recalling his boyhood experiences in nature that he links with psychedelics. “LSD brings about a reduction of intellectual powers in favour of an emotional experiencing of the world. It can help to refill our consciousness with this feeling of wholeness and being one with nature.”

Published in The Guardian, August 05

Just four weeks ago, my desk was a shrine to disorder. It was cluttered with letters, takeaway menus, MiniDiscs and dead batteries, while stacks of printouts lay everywhere. A skyscraper of stuff towered in my inbox, untouched for months.

Now it is pristine. My intray is empty. My desk is clear. A smile is on my lips and I am getting things done. All thanks to one book.

David Allen’s Getting Things Done is a best-selling time-management manual that advocates a highly structured workflow and a very specific office/desk design that must include a filing cabinet (or portable digital equivalent).

Adherents of the book learn how to filter the “stuff” in their lives - information, ideas, emails, projects and even people - into a sensible, meaningful system. Then they are shown how to relentlessly process these “open loops” to a conclusion.

The results, if you can stick to it, are a streamlined information flow, a welter of projects completed on time without stress, and a brain state known as “mind like water”, free from unconscious worrying. It’s the kind of thing that appeals to those familiar with relentless busyness, a sense of being “bogged down”.

After four years in the Amazon Top 100, the techniques outlined in Getting Things Done have spilled out across the net and into the mainstream. For information-overloaded workers like me, drenched by a daily deluge of emails, phonecalls, texts and papers, it has never seemed so relevant or necessary. So, stressed and dogged by a slew of never-completed projects, unpaid bills and forgotten friends, I finally gave the book a test run.

Implementing the system has been a struggle. As a “creative person”, I recoil from order. My feeling - and my conceit - is that being organised is somehow opposite to being creative. Those unanswered emails and teetering skyscrapers of old copies of Wired and NMEs from 1987 define me somehow, and give me my creative edge.

In my life, however, there is one puzzling exception to this. While my office looks freshly burgled, my computer remains a pristine monument to organisation. Everything on there is in a precise hierarchy of folders.

“You did it organically because you cared about the results of having an organised computer,” says Allen. When you trust and care about the system, organisation comes naturally, he maintains.

But it takes some serious “front-end decision making” to get started. Those who undertake initiation must dedicate at least two full days to constructing the system and the collecting and processing of stuff.

In Allen’s world, “stuff” is things in your environment - or in your head - that requires resolution. That resolution may be filing it, trashing it or acting upon it.

All must be corralled in one place and then processed using Allen’s core mantra of “Do it, delegate it, defer it”. If the action takes less than two minutes, do it there and then. If longer, you either hand off to someone else or defer it into your pending tray. Otherwise it is trashed or filed. The in-tray thereby becomes sacrosanct. You never put stuff back into “In”. Never.

My stuff occupied the floor space of my study (with spillage into the hall) and took three days to process. It was mind-pounding but surprisingly enjoyable. It reminded me of similar personal pogroms I had undertaken in the past. When chaos had reached an intensity even I couldn’t bear, I would break. An insane night of purging would follow. Armed with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and often wearing just a string vest, I would reorganise and tidy wildly until dawn.

The problem was, I realise now, that I would simply rebuild a system that never worked in the first place. I would be clean for a few days, weeks, then steadily, inevitably, the descent into chaos would begin again.

Once you are up and running with a good system, it holds and you can feel the effects instantaneously, says Allen. “When the brain is free from the responsibility of thinking about stuff, it can move on to what it actually does much better: making intuitive, creative choices about the options. It also releases a lot of energy. When we coach people they are often bouncing off the walls.”

It sounds like marketing. Allen is rapidly becoming the Dr Atkins of the information-slimming world. Book sales, and regular coaching sessions for Microsoft and the US military have made him very rich. But something about the book seems to be effective for a broad range of people - especially geeks.

On the web, for example, Getting Things Done (GTD) has gone supernova. Web and IT professionals have taken Allen’s core ideas and refined them into ever more effective tips called “life hacks”. Adherents swap these across a broad network of blogs, wikis and websites such as 43Folders.com - all amid a considerable amount of one-upmanship over who has the biggest and best system.

“As lovers of systems and frameworks, geeks take to GTD easily,” says Merlin Mann, a writer from San Francisco who runs 43Folders.com. “They hate boredom so they are often jumping around, multitasking and trying to keep a dozen balls in the air.”

“Life hacks are really a superset of GTD - basically any kind of trick you can devise that makes it hard to screw up,” says Mann. “Most often this involves taking some problem or hangup out of your head and getting it grounded in the physical world. Remember how your teacher would pin a note on your shirt whenever she wanted your parents to see something? Same thing.”

He outlines others. “Always forgetting your glasses for night driving? Hook your car keys on the clip on the eyeglasses case. Want to keeping meetings short and on topic? Write an agenda and make sure everyone drinks a litre of water at the beginning.”

In the meantime, a slew of software tools and widgets - from workflow programs to email filters - have been written to help geeks implement the system. Offshoot sites such as 43Things.com and 43Places.com even use it as a backbone for social networking and finding like-minded dates in foreign cities.

A month down the line and I am feeling pretty smug with my new life.

Take this week: I have submitted a book proposal, written two articles, met an old friend, posted three packages, finished my tax return, arranged to have my broken car removed, recycled old technology, played tennis, and written 412 emails. I even trimmed the number of backed-up texts on my phone from 774 to five - by using downtime on public transport more effectively. That’s a quantum leap for me.

There is something of the cult about it and I am definitely an acolyte. I find myself surveying the desks of others with a critical eye. Phrases such as “defined outcomes” and “actionable items” have crept into my vocabulary.

It is enjoyable. I feel lighter, and less preoccupied. It could be the placebo effect, but I feel like I am finally “in the driver’s seat”, as Allen puts it. That is even though I have 162 projects active in my life (the average is 150).

Actually, there is one I can cross off now. “Write a story about my experience of Getting Things Done.” Done.

Next.

Published on Wired.com, Aug 05

Dissident scientists advocating a controversial theory of the universe are having a field day in the wake of NASA’s Deep Impact comet collision earlier this month.

Scientists promoting the Electric Universe model say their predictions for the comet mission appear to have been more accurate than NASA’s.

The Electric Universe theorists, collected at Thunderbolts.info, believe that electricity, when factored properly into astrophysics, plays a greater role in the cosmos than the standard gravitational model, which says electrical forces are insignificant on a cosmic scale.

Proponents of the Electric Universe model say they can explain many of the bizarre phenomena and mysteries in cosmology, from a swath of anomalies seen in the solar system to unusual surface features on Mars and Jupiter’s moon, Titan. The theory can also sweep away the need for theoretical “dark matter” and “dark energy.”

Comets are a cornerstone of the model, visible proof of the legitimacy of the theory as they traverse eccentric orbits around the sun.

According to the model, comets are not inert balls of ice and rocky dust particles aggregated into a “dirty iceball” as standard comet theory holds. Instead, they are solid, asteroid-like rocks, containing little ice. Negatively charged with electricity, their motion through the positively charged solar wind triggers electrical discharges. These, not vaporized ice, produce the characteristic comet glow and tail.

Prior to the July 4 impact, the Electric Universe group published a detailed chain of events they expected to see when Deep Impact struck comet Tempel 1 with an 820-pound copper projectile.

The prediction said there would be two impact flashes: a small flash as the projectile penetrated the comet’s electrified atmosphere, followed by a huge impact flash that would be “unexpectedly energetic.”

And that’s exactly what appeared to happen on July 4, in an impact that astonished NASA investigators.

“What you see is something really surprising,” said mission co-investigator Peter Schultz. “First, there is a small flash, then there’s a delay, then there’s a big flash and the whole thing breaks loose.”

The renegades at Thunderbolts made more predictions, including an expected massive surge in X-ray production, a lack of subsurface water and very high explosion temperatures. However, confirmation or debunking of their predictions awaits detailed data from NASA, which has yet to release the results.

The Thunderbolts ragtag team of rebels comprises writers, researchers, electrical engineers and comparative mythologists, led by Australian physicist Wallace Thornhill.

Meantime, on the Deep Impact website, NASA scientists theorize that the collision’s intense flash was likely caused by tons of fine dust thrown up by the impact and lit by the sun.

And the double flashes, some have suggested, were caused by the projectile penetrating two surfaces on the comet: a soft outer layer and a harder deeper nucleus of rock and ice.

Indeed, NASA investigators have conceded that Comet Tempel 1 appears to be something of an anomaly that does not conform to the dirty iceball model. The theory now is that the nuclei of different comets may have different compositions, according to Donald Yeomans, a mission scientist on Deep Impact.

Whatever the outcome, the self-styled “alternate paradigm theorists” are energized by the evidence from Deep Impact, as well as the shifting theories and unexplained data from previous comet observations.

They point to photographs of comets by various probes that have revealed distinctly ice-free rock-like objects, and images of strange bright patches they say are proof of electrical discharges in action.

“Why are comet nuclei coal-black as if they have been burnt?” asked David Talbott, executive editor of Thunderbolts.info. “Why is there a superabundance of extremely fine dust?

“And if comet nuclei are merely melting in the sun’s heat, why are they sharply cratered and rocky? They should be smooth like a melting scoop of ice cream.”

The Electric Universe model is broadly dismissed as pseudoscience by scientists. Indeed, its Wikipedia entry was recently deleted after users successfully argued that it did not constitute a legitimate theory.

“It’s complete cobblers,” said Dr. David Hughes, comet expert and professor of astrophysics at Britain’s University of Sheffield. “Absolute balderdash.”
Crudely put, for astronomical material to be charged electrically, it must be in the form of hot ionized gas, otherwise known as plasma, Hughes said.

“The inside of a comet has a typical temperature of minus 100 Celsius,” he said. “Electricity on the surface of a comet? Forget about it. It’s not a contender.”

Scientists from NASA’s Deep Impact investigation team declined to comment on specific observations made by the Thunderbolts group.
Despite the skepticism, Electric Universe theorists are not deterred.

“All the things we see around comets fit the electrical model but don’t make much sense in terms of icy snowballs sublimating into space,” said Thunderbolts’ Thornhill.

Answers to the surprises of Deep Impact and the credibility of the Electric Universe theory will have to wait until NASA releases X-ray readings, spectroscopic analysis and other detailed data during the $333 million mission. These are expected in a few months.

But answers are not guaranteed. So much dust was thrown up by the impact that cameras on board the probe were unable to take pictures of the crater — a vital piece of evidence for settling the major unanswered question in comet theory: what a comet is actually made of.

Police have arrested and prosecuted more than 22 British customers of websites selling class A designer drugs online after a trail of electronic evidence from busted websites in the US led police to addresses across the UK.

Published in The Guardian May 05

The psychedelics drugs, known euphemistically as “research chemicals”, have been sold for several years openly on the internet from websites based in the US. The US drug enforcement administration shut down the sites and arrested the owners last year after two deaths, and several cases of people needing hospital treatment in the US, were linked to the use of chemicals bought online.

Customer records and credit-card details extracted from seized computers were passed on to the national crime squad in the UK.

Once investigators had verified the intelligence, details were sent out to police forces. In a countrywide action, named Operation Ismene, the police carried out dawn raids in 14 counties, including Avon and Somerset, Greater Manchester, and Leicestershire. Court cases this month saw several people given fines or community service.

A variety of synthetic drugs were confiscated in the raids, including 2C-I, a new psychedelic drug growing in popularity on the UK dance scene and described as “the new ecstasy”.

Frequently “research chemicals” have euphoric and visual effects similar to that caused by mescaline, ecstasy (also known as MDMA) and LSD. The majority do not have street names and are known only by their abbreviated lab names, such as 5-Meo-DMT, 2-CT-2, and AMT. Most are too powerful psychedelically to catch on with users or dealers, and have only been available via the internet.

The burgeoning online trade in these chemicals was first revealed in the Guardian last year. The trade has flourished in the past five years as law enforcement has struggled to keep ahead of fast-moving technology. Online outfits have been able to create a worldwide customer base for designer drugs by subverting the infrastructure laid down by legitimate e-commerce such as international couriers and online credit-card systems.

At the same time, chemists working “underground” routinely synthesise new drugs to slip through the gaps in international drugs legislation.

The trade only came to the broad attention of US law enforcers after a death in Louisiana last year. In March 2004, James Downs, 22, died after an accidental overdose of powdered 2-CT-21 he ordered online. Police investigating his death traced his purchases to a Las Vegas “research chemicals” website (americanchemicalsupply.com), one of several professional operations importing such chemicals from labs in China and India. The websites were shutdown in a US-wide sting in July 2004 known as Operation Web Tryp.

Court documents have revealed the extent, sophistication and success of these e-businesses. Each website had thousands of customers in the US and Europe. The public was able to order a selection of drugs with “one-click” systems of payment via credit card or Paypal. Ordered drugs were delivered next day by Fedex and other carriers.

Some sites traded openly while others were more clandestine. All the websites, including those mentioned here, have been closed down now.

RacResearch.com, based in New York, ran a slick modern site offering broad selections of up to 20 drugs with free sample packs for first-time customers. Adverts for the site appeared on Google. Another site - www.pondman.nu - appeared to be selling fish and pond supplies but was a sophisticated e-commerce drug operation. Police estimate some sites were making around $20,000 (about £11,000) a week.

So-called research chemicals are not officially listed as controlled substances under US drugs laws. However, the website operators were prosecuted under a law that prohibits the possession and supply of chemicals “substantially similar” to controlled drugs. All the operators face likely life sentences. Several have been charged additionally with causing death or serious injury.

Last week the operator of pondman.nu - 52-year-old David Linder - was found guilty on 27 charges, including drug conspiracy and money laundering. He was sentenced to a total of 410 years in prison. He was also ordered to pay back $700,000 (£389,000) in profits from the website. The severity of his sentence was related in part to the death of an 18-year-old man in New York who overdosed on the drug alpha-methyltryptamine (AMT) purchased from Linder’s site.

Deaths caused by research chemicals, however, appear to be isolated tragedies. Like ecstasy, most of the chemicals seem to be physically harmless at low or average doses. The underground websites documenting their use advise extreme caution. Despite glowing reports of “wow” type experiences, the site Erowid.org carries the disclaimer: “It is not reasonable to assume that these chemicals are in any way ’safe’ to use recreationally.”

Because the recommended dosages can vary by as little as a thousandths of a gram, a slight miscalculation can trigger an overdose. When smoked, just 2mg (a dose smaller than a grain of salt) of the potent chemical 5-MeO-DMT can cause a short-lived but powerful “trip”. Heavy doses, or overdoses, have been known to trigger undesirable physical and psychological symptoms including profound anxiety, “bad trips”, overheating of the body, and even death.

Thanks to the psychedelic intensity of these drugs, few of the chemicals have made it as street or club drugs. Their use is generally championed by “psychonauts”, drug hobbyists, usually young men, who experiment alone or in small groups, exchanging information online.

Many of those arrested in the UK seem to have fallen into this category. Among those arrested have been students, primary-school workers and people running lifestyle drugs outfits. They were not primarily career criminals or drug dealers. Although initially arrested on suspicion of intent to supply, many saw their charges altered to simple possession.

The national crime squad would not comment yesterday on whether there would be more arrests.

The UK has the strictest laws in the EU on designer drugs. The Misuse Of Drugs Act was amended in 2002 to include a “catch most” clause outlawing every drug, and possible future drug, from the LSD (tryptamine) and ecstasy (phenethylamine) chemical families. The amendment is a virtual cut-and-paste from the books of the respected American biochemist Alexander Shulgin, who obtained a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr Shulgin, a former research chemist at the Dow Chemical Company, re-discovered the recipe for MDMA in 1976 and published the recipes for more than 170 designer drugs of his own invention.

While research chemicals are still available from websites in China, India and Japan, the illicit online drugs trade has gone underground as law enforcers have become more skilled at tracking hi-tech crime. “A drug supply route between the US and the UK has been dismantled,” said Jim Gamble, deputy director-general of the national crime squad. “Anyone considering purchasing drugs online should think again, the crime squad and other law enforcement agencies will track you down.”

Published on Wired.com May 05

Some pirated movies are now even appearing in newsgroups before being released worldwide across popular P2P systems like BitTorrent. The alt.binaries newsgroups — which mostly carry pirated software, ripped movies and MP3s — have logged a steady and substantial rise in traffic over the last few years.
Posts to a key “warez” newsgroup, alt.binaries.multimedia, have quadrupled from 700,000 in 2001 to 2.8 million last year, according to Microsoft’s Netscan System, which logs all Usenet traffic.

Meanwhile, more than 60 GB of complete DVD rips are now being posted each day to a single Usenet forum, according to stats at NewsAdmin, which tracks Usenet usage.

Many pirates are being driven to Usenet by the threat of lawsuits or by fear that their ISPs will soon be slapped with subpoenas from the Recording Industry Association of America or the Motion Picture Association of America.

Newsgroups offer relative anonymity compared to Kazaa, eMule and BitTorrent, which are now heavily monitored by the RIAA and MPAA.

In the ’90s, the alt.binaries newsgroups formed a key part of the underground “warez” piracy scene, offering scads of illegal software and music for download. But Usenet has always been regarded as a poor man’s piracy resource, thanks to its unreliability and lumbering performance. Posts to this dinosaur of a P2P system take days to ripple across a planet-wide network of news servers.

Additionally, each file posted to the system must be split into separate parts, thanks to an inherent 10,000-line limit on each post. For a 700-MB DivX movie of, say, Revenge of the Sith, that means thousands of parts must be collated and reassembled by the diligent downloader. If just one is missing, the file is garbage.

And parts do go missing all the time, routinely lost or often indiscriminately auto-deleted by servers trying to save disk space. Successful downloading depends on luck and the quality of your news server.
But a recent open-source technology, the NZB file, solves this age-old problem. Developed by Usenet indexing site Newzbin, the XML file permits the automatic gathering of scattered parts of Usenet postings.

Published on the BBC News Magazine, Feb 2005

Today, 20% of UK households - around five million people - have broadband in their homes. By the end of next year that figure will be nearer eight million. Tony Blair says every home that wants broadband should have it by 2008.

I can barely believe I’ve done it myself. As a committed early adopter and geek, I never thought I would ever backwater in the face of technological advancement.

I had broadband before it was famous, way back in the 20th Century. In those days, most people drummed fingers on desks and made tea while they awaited their webpages and postage stamp-sized videos to trickle through their paltry 56K modems.

I, however, had a ‘phat pipe’ installed at home. Every evening: me, 17 browser windows open, working the keyboard like a concert pianist, dazzling my friends with all the film trailers, terrible flash animations and MP3s I could download simultaneously.

‘Bandwidth guilt’

Gradually, though, the novelty of a fast connection has worn off. Disillusion has set in. I’ve slowly come to a terrible realisation: there isn’t really that much I can do with broadband.

I have no far-off relatives to wave at down a video conferencing connection. Threats of divorce stopped me playing online games a few years ago. Sure, I enjoy streaming clips of the news but I can also just turn my head slightly and watch it on my TV. There used to be some joy for me feeling secure downloading hefty Microsoft security patches, but now I’ve given up on Windows and got a Mac instead.

Having nothing much to do with your broadband gives rise to a curious sensation that could be termed: “bandwidth guilt”. When I’m not using it, I feel like I should be. I keep trying to find ways to utilise its sheer power - and justify the £30 a month fee. I feel bad if I don’t.

And the only thing I’ve discovered that really gives my ADSL a workout is, sadly, illegal. I’d rather not go into it here. Let’s just say it’s the not-so-well-kept secret of what everyone is using broadband for. Depending on who you talk to, between 50% and 65% of all internet traffic is currently peer-to-peer (p2p) piracy. Everyone’s doing it. Do you know what technology makes it possible? Yep. Broadband.

Spending an inordinate amount of time at my computer, using my broadband, I’m developing what I can only term an information habit.

Sit down to work. Ten minutes in, the new mail icon tempts me from the bottom of the screen. I’ll just check. Nothing like a few juicy new e-mails. Click a few links. Scan a few websites. Oh 20 minutes has just passed. Better get back to work. Now where was I? Start work again. Feel like a reward. I’ll just check news.bbc.co.uk. See if anything’s happened in the three minutes since I last looked. Follow a few ‘related links’…

Half an hour has passed. I feel like I’ve done something, but actually I haven’t. All that’s happened is that I’ve been distracted by constantly rising info urges. I spend most of my day like this, divided between what I need to do and what the internet wants me to do - which is look at it. Constantly.

So, just like a drug addict, I can’t control it. If web access is there, I’ll have it. Especially now, since I had wireless internet installed I can browse on the toilet, in the garden, even in the shower. There’s no escape. So the only recourse for me is an extreme one: to have it chopped off.

Reaction from my friends and colleagues has been extreme. Ranging from shock and surprise (Whaaaat? Why? How? Guh?) to outright suspicion (”Have you been downloading something you shouldn’t?”). One friend even raged at me: “How could you? Don’t you know broadband means progress?”

I don’t regret my decision. I have to say I feel lighter, freer. I’m certainly getting more things done, especially now I schedule a time every couple of hours to log on and check my e-mail and websites.

The internet on 56K isn’t as bad as I thought. Pretty much every website is designed for 56K users anyway. But I still make the mistake of impatiently opening two, three, four other browser windows while waiting for the first one to download.

I can’t say I’m missing flash or streaming video. And there’s no doubt it’s killed any p2p temptations I may have nurtured. And that’s a good thing, right, vast corporate entertainment industry?

I do confess, however, that I now carry a network cable around with me. Like some kind of petrol thief, at friends’ houses I can be found hooking up my laptop for a quick broadband fix.

I used to spend all day slaving away at my computer, watching the day ride past my window - only to come home and do the same in the evenings. But now I’ve distilled the useful and vital from the compulsive (and illegal), I am left with just two online activities: e-mail and web browsing.

Isn’t that what the internet is really for?

Published in The Guardian Feb 04

They first detected it at 13:03 GMT, 10 days ago. An innocuous attachment in an email sent from Russia triggered a minor alarm at the Global Operations Centre of Messagelabs, a leading email security firm. No one paid it much attention. Just another new virus, one of the handful that are trapped, analysed and blacklisted every day in the darkened bunker in Gloucester they call the war room. Little did they know…

Here, like mission control, a large map of the world hangs over rows of terminals. A staff of pale, young operators work around the clock, filtering more than 30m emails a day for the UK government, international banks and other large organisations. Monitors spool incomprehensible code like screens from The Matrix. Viruses, spam and other “malware” are checked upstream by expensive super-processor towers before they can reach their client’s computers.

Initially, the number of copies of the new virus - christened MyDoom after a misspelling of “my domain” in its code - were small, just a few hundred. Three other, more dangerous looking viruses were swirling around the world’s email networks at the time.

“We were concentrating on those,” says Alex Shipp, a senior anti-virus technologist. “MyDoom wasn’t that interesting.”

Unexpectedly, within just a few hours, MyDoom numbers started to rise: to 40,000, then to 80,000, then 100,000. “We were on the phone to everyone,” says Shipp. “‘Drop everything. Get your anti-virus signatures out as soon as possible.’”

It was too late. At 9pm GMT, after eight hours gestation in the wild, MyDoom spiked. Millions of copies poured across the internet and all hell broke loose. Email servers around the world buckled. By the time it reached its peak last Tuesday week, one in 12 emails in the world was MyDoom-generated.

This tiny sliver of code had wiped out the records of August’s Sobig and the legendary Lovebug worm of 1999 to become the fastest-spreading virus of all time.

2.
MyDoom, like most viruses, was easy to detect, but stopping it spreading was another matter. Messagelabs’ heuristic virus-recognition engine, known as Skeptic, spotted it instantly. However home users and small companies, unable to use this lightning corporate filter, had to rely on consumer level anti-virus software with one main flaw. Most of it relies on constantly downloaded fingerprints or “signatures” to recognise and block newly discovered viruses.

“Once a signature is installed, you’re protected,” says Paul Woods, chief information security analyst at Messagelabs. “The problem arises in the time between the virus appearing and the signature being released and installed - the so-called ‘window of vulnerability’.”

The duration of this window is crucial to whether a virus succeeds or fails. With a short window, say an hour or two, the virus is usually snuffed out before it can become a threat. A longer window, however, gives the virus enough time to propagate millions of copies of itself without being detected. This was the case with MyDoom. Even working as fast as they could, anti-virus technicians took eight hours to start cranking out the first signatures.

Eight hours during peak European and American business hours was more than enough time for the super-distributed virus to reach critical mass. By 9pm on Monday, thousands of people were opening it. It began replicating exponentially, shedding millions of copies of itself in all directions.

Previous viruses have masqueraded as love letters or even as emails from the FBI. MyDoom’s genius was to disguise itself as an error message. “Mail delivery failed: returning message to sender” reads one of its terse subject lines. A text or Zip file of the message appears to be attached. Open it and the virus is activated. Thousands fell for the ruse. MyDoom has a further twist. Once activated, most modern viruses send themselves to a selection of email addresses found on the infected hard drive - and then stop. “But MyDoom loops forever,” says Mikko Hypponen, Anti-virus Director at F-secure, “sending more and more infected messages to every single address found on the hard-drive for ever and ever”.

Worse things, however, were in store for the Utah-based software company SCO. In an act of apparent terrorism, MyDoom and all its copies were programmed to attack www.sco.com simultaneously at 16.09 GMT on February 1. And right on time, more than a million computers attempted to load the company’s web homepage three times a second. It was the largest distributed denial of service attack seen on the net. The site folded. SCO quickly pulled the plug.

Another less successful variant of the virus, MyDoom.B, tried a similar attack on Microsoft.com, but it was shrugged off. This attack may give a clue to the identity of the author. SCO is embroiled in an ugly dispute with the web’s open source community and its free operating system, Linux. SCO claims key parts of its copyrighted Unix code have found its way into Linux. It is suing IBM, Red Hat and Novell, and demanding that individual corporate users pay a licence fee. This has made the company very, very unpopular in some circles.

“Whoever wrote MyDoom is definitely a Linux fan,” says Jack Clark, technology consultant at McAfee Associates, an anti-virus company. Most Linux users, however, condemn the virus author. “Well, you stupid, ignorant bastard, if you’re reading this - no one admires you,” reads one post on tech community site Slashdot.org .

However, there is speculation that these website attacks are just a smokescreen to hide the real motivation behind the virus. MyDoom installs a backdoor that turns infected machines into spam relay robots. Anyone with the virus could become the unwitting propagator of penis engorgement and toner cartridge deals.

“I think it’s because now spam is such a big business, obviously some guy is paying people to write these things,” Paul Woods, an analyst at Messagelabs, says. Other viruses have pioneered this technique. He believes an unholy alliance between spammers and virus writers will define the nature of future threats. But not everyone agrees with him. “I believe the virus writer just simply thought: ‘I may as well throw this feature in’,” says McAfee’s Clark.

The experts do agree on one thing: there will be many more viruses to come. “These things come in two or three-month cycles,” explains Messagelab’s Shipp. “After a big virus, everyone becomes extra vigilant with their anti-viruses, but after a while, it tails off. They forget or can’t be bothered. That’s when another virus sneaks through.”

It’s also easy to make viruses. Freely available toolkits can auto-generate them at the touch of a button. “In the old days, it was a skillful task. Nowadays, anyone who wants to can write a virus,” says Shipp.

The Anna Kournikova virus, which caused widespread chaos in 2001, was kit-produced, using mostly default settings. The 20-year-old Dutch author surrendered to police. Despite $250,000 bounties offered by both SCO and Microsoft, there’s little chance of the MyDoom writer even being tracked down.

“The writer may be American, compromising a machine in China, to send stuff from Russia,” says Shipp. “Besides, if I was him, my computer would be at the bottom of a deep lake by now.”

3.
Virus outbreaks may be dramatic, maintain experts, but they are just occasional annoyances compared to spam. A massive 62% of all email in the world is now spam. On a visit to the UK last week, Bill Gates signalled Microsoft’s focus on developing email technology to allow recipients to verify the sender of emails. “This is critical for security,” he said, “and for getting rid of spam.”

While welcoming the comments, some security experts are more pessimistic, even fatalistic. “Email is dying,” says Hypponen. “It’s coming to its end.” Any day now, he says, a MyDoom-style virus could quickly overload and break the entire email system without a chance of recovery - simply by sending out millions of generic, unfilterable messages in a loop, round the clock, forever. Then we would have to drop email as we know it. Every email server, every email client in the world.”

Back in the Messagelabs war room, the atmosphere is less apocalyptic. More than a week later, they are still at level one, high alert. MyDoom is programmed to self-destruct on February 12, Paul Wood explains. No one is quite sure why, but it is unlikely to signal the end of MyDoom. Previous viruses had cut-off dates but copies still circulate in the wild and probably will forever.

“There’s so many computers out there using old operating systems with the date and time set incorrectly or with their battery flat,” he says. “Lots of viruses are coming out of those machines.”

Also, many people simply don’t use anti-virus software. Now, and in the future, it will always be this underclass of uneducated users who will spread the infection. “Eventually, there may be two internets,” he says. “A clean one where security is part of the infrastructure, and a ‘dirty internet’ for all the old insecure technologies and people who just can’t be bothered.”

Wood eyes the world map and sighs. Whole swathes are still glowing red, showing the spread of the MyDoom virus. And the phones keep ringing.