So I guess I am writing to commend and to condemn your new site plans.

                 On the one hand, I am glad to see a more "reversing" than cracking 
                 approach in a site; after all, that is where I came from and where I am 
                 going, more or less (a lot of coding these days, cracking is for 
                 teenagers :).

                 But then again, you have to realize what your site means to the 
                 "cracking community". It would make more sense for you to create a 
                 script that automatically posts cracking articles to fravia.org and 
                 start a new site somewhere else...


                 So here's the deal: don't be so hard on "cracking". Instead, limit the 
                 cracking essays to only allowable topics. Grantedm you are making an 
                 attempt at this, but your requirements sound more like "loopholes 
                 through which you can get an essay published on my site" than like an 
                 encouragement to work (which is, after all, the effect you should want  
                 to have).

                 So, on to my suggestion: Keep the Reversing approach. Make this a 
                 serious, responsible site. But add a few "projects"--
                 "Our Tools"--cracking the newest versions of tools we use; we stay on 
                 topof their prot schemes, then battle us, we win--like an old college 
                 rivalry. Plus, it will provide enough "current" targets for the
                 students 
                 to practice on.
                 "Dongles"--I've been looking a bit into EPROM programming and have 
                 thought of some tricks (like loading an 8253 on the dongle with the 
                 value input by the user and forcing it to sync with the system clock or 
                 die ;) to play with...at any rate, this is a subject that everyone
                 needs 
                 help in
                 "RAD languages"--these bastards inadvertently make things harder and 
                 harder. We have methods, but we need better methods.
                 "Other OS cracking"--Linux is finally getting a treatment, but BE OS?
                 or 
                 even the Mac? Or hey, DOS and CP/M?

                 There are a ton of areas that need work. I agree with you that cracking 
                 in general is kind of old, but hey man there is so much we can apply
                 its 
                 techniques to. And remember, just because you know cracking up and down 
                 doesn't mean everyone else can just "figure it out". One of the
                 founding 
                 ideas of your site was "bringing cracking to the masses", and while I 
                 agree that the masses deserve it, I do not agree that you should 
                 therefore cut off all beginning crackers.

                 OK, that's my 2-cents worth. And then some...

                 later
                 _m