The Abomination Read Online Free PDF Page A

4  Growth of Carnivia
    Early life and kidnap
    Daniele Barbo was born into the aristocratic Barbo dynasty of Venice, whose business interests at the time included Alfa-Romeo cars. His father Matteo was a noted playboy before taking over the family investment trust. In later years Matteo devoted himself to establishing the art foundation which bears the family name.
    Daniele Barbo’s childhood coincided with the period of sociopolitical turmoil in Italy known as the anni di piombo or “Years of Lead”. Although his father reportedly favoured progressive industrial relations, the family’s profile and wealth made them a target for far-left organisations such as the Brigate Rosse , or Red Brigade .
    Daniele Barbo was kidnapped on June 27 1977, aged seven. It was widely reported at the time that his father was under pressure from the Italian government not to negotiate with the kidnappers, [2] although it was later claimed that this was a smokescreen erected by the security forces to buy time while they located him. [Citation needed] On August 4 1977 Matteo and his American wife Lucy received Daniele’s ears and nose through the post.
    In a subsequent operation led by Italian Special Forces, the boy was freed and all seven kidnappers killed or captured. The three surviving kidnappers refused to cooperate with the court on the grounds that it was part of the para-capitalist hegemony . [3] They were sentenced to jail terms of between twenty and forty years each. [4]
    Conviction for computer fraud
    Little was heard of Barbo between the end of the trial and the early 1990s, although it is understood that he attended an institute for deaf children before going to Harvard to study mathematics. Whilst at Harvard he had the unusual distinction of having a term paper on cybernetics (specifically, on the application of Kullback-Leibler divergence to complex dynamical systems) published in a peer-reviewed academic journal. [5]
    In 1994 he was one of those arrested for the Comcast Hack , in which a loose-knit group of computer activists took control of the cable giant’s website, reportedly in revenge for poor customer service. The method they employed was both simple and effective, accessing the database of the company from whom Comcast had purchased the domain name Comcast.com and re-registering it as theirs. This enabled them to redirect Comcast’s web traffic to a page containing an abusive message. [6]
    Barbo’s lawyer later confirmed that he was the hacker known as Defi@nt. [7] At his trial it was claimed that he suffered from a number of medical conditions as a result of his childhood kidnap, including partial deafness, Social Avoidance Disorder and Autistic Spectrum Disorder, making a prison term unfeasible. The judge evidently agreed: Barbo was given a suspended sentence, although this may have been because the Italian government had no wish to see the murky circumstances of his kidnap and botched rescue rehashed in court. [citation needed]
    Barbo/Defi@nt was rarely seen, either in public or online, in the years after his trial, although he may have used a number of other aliases including Syfer, 10THDAN and Joyride. [8] In 1996, following the death of his father, he moved back to the family residence, Ca’ Barbo in Venice, and took a non-executive seat on the board of the Barbo Foundation. [9] A 2004 newspaper report described him as “an almost total recluse”, stating that he rarely leaves his home except during the Venetian Carnevale, when he wears a costume mask to disguise his facial disfigurements. [7]
    Creation of Carnivia
    In 2005 Barbo emerged as the programmer behind Carnivia , a 3D mirror world of his home city, Venice, notable for its obsessive attention to detail. It has been claimed, for example, that the real St Mark’s Square and the version in Carnivia contain exactly the same number of paving stones. The Doge’s Palace alone is reputed to have taken Barbo