Frav,

first of all let me say that it is definately time some changes were made,
the site has definately begun overloading itself with information hedging on
mass redundancy

note that much of what i may write here may or may not be useful to what you
are envisioning, but all are my opinions and ideas even if they agree or not
with your plans

cracking essays as such: here is my app fravia, here is how i cracked it,
and please post it with the 4 million other ones
...are definately good for the archives, but we have enough of them for many
new generations to be able to learn from without having to play the game of
'you changed your protection this week and so we deprotect it again next
week' etc...

my first thought is that not much more in the way of guidelines shold be
set, people have a tendency to come up with ideas that, if given too many
rules, will be difficult to impart, often the way of a bureaucratic society
(sorry ma'am but i dont care if your program will fix our server, you must
get it approved in triplicate by the department heads who built it, complete
with documentation and critiques by at least three doctoral candidates who
share your opinion. Incidentally, the guys in charge of original programming
take major offense at someone who claims there are problem areas, but thats
okay they will be back from their golf trip in New Zealand in the first week
in March when you can post your rough draft of your changes to them for the
review board to decide if it is even feasible...) <--- hoops to jump through
can get a little tricky!

don't laugh, a friend of mine working in a banking firm on their intranet
has to fill out a work order any time he wants to change a single javascript
error - then wait until he gets the department's approval before he can make
the change...

but back to topic - what i am suggesting is make some headings like you have
done, and some sections like our old 'hcu projects' section

a topic in the 'general' section might be REALITY CRACKING, whereas the
section on more direct projects could be 'reprogramming winNT workstation to
become winNT server' (yes its been done this is just an example)

why both? because many people who are good at problem solving are not as
good at coming up with problems to solve as they are at solving them, and
some people come up with topics on their own quite easily.

here is something i was thinking as well, a 'how to write tools of our
trade' section
too much to deal with? too broad a topic? who knows, as i said - its just an
idea

also, i love the idea of increased functionality programming (again using
examples we have seen)
like 'adding a save function to IDA or SoftICE' and such - basically
increasing the usability of an application (hence helping the programmer and
the user of the program at the same time)

maybe a forum of 'what i would like to see a program be able to do' so that
people would have assignments they could work on and accomplish for the
benefit of many

please let me know if there is anything else i missed that you would like
feedback on as i am always available for comment

* * *

mammon - heres an idea, a one way dongle...

basically this idea is a dongle that doesnt actually send data back to the
program at all, or bogus data so it appears to be a normal dongle, possible
even having a code section that really is older cheesy dongle code that
really does something

BUT

apply some of the old self modifying code techniques, and so when the
program calls the dongle, it overwrites some of the program in ram with new
code that does entirely different operations (without the dongle the program
will be missing calls and entire sections of functionality that unless you
have the full app with dongle, no hint that other functionality even exists
is evident)

the SMC could overwrite completely several parts of the program including
the old dongle stuff in place of newer more effective methods

again - just an idea :)

+gthorne