Dear Antionline:





I have noticed that www.hackernews.com seems to hate you. Why is this?





Thomas Munn





Because we've only had the new site up for two weeks and are already

getting more hits than they do, and we're still the point contact for mainstream media when

it comes to security issues, and because we got venture capital, and because I've accused them

of using the standards of tabloid journalists in the past. Or it could just be that they're

jealous of the life size South Park Characters that we have in the corner of our office =/











AntiOnline should be proud of themselves





I saw a story on another website about the

hackers taking control of a British military communications

satellite. The MoD (Ministry of Defense) site had no additional

information, and the story was quickly removed from the website in

question, as far as I could tell. AntiOnline's story, by comparison,

had information on how this might have occurred, and cited an article

in the London Times for me to follow up on.





Excellent coverage.


Steven Kaye


Andersen Consulting





Thanks. Michael Buonagurio did a great job covering that story. Our traffic

patterns showed us that our readers were interested in that story, so we did the best we could to

cover it as in depth as possible.











John,





I must say, I am a bit impressed with the new site.

I had my doubts at first, but I really like how you are

doing things now as compared to last year. If you have the

endurance to keep things running smoothly, you may really

have something here!





Regards,


Andrew - CEO Fresh Software





Well, I'm young. Young people are known for having good endurance. I'll

do my best ;-)











I have a comment regarding one of the points raised in a recent

"Back to Basics" article. It was asserted that among the list of bad,

non-secure things users should be discouraged from doing is writing down

passwords. Well, I suppose that's true, but...


I am a user at a large corporation. I have written down 2 pages

worth of my many required passwords and placed them in my desk.

Yes, I have been bad. In addition to my workstation password I have

passwords to networks, servers, websites, databases - all related to my daily

work functions. The list seems to grow daily, and I can't possibly remember

them all. Everyone who has built anything of use seems to have decided it

needs password protection. To compound the problem, many of them expire every

30 days, requiring me to change them, further incenting me to write them down

in an effort not to get locked out of my own systems. I feel forced by the

overall design (or lack thereof) of the system to do this non-secure thing.

When I compare the very, very low probability of someone doing something bad

to my machine at work to the much higher downside of not being able to work

due to a forgotten password, I choose the pencil and paper solution.

I am not alone in this.





There seems to have been little to no thought given to the human factors

engineering issues raised by the proliferation of password requirements.

I think I am correct in saying that today's average users usually respond

to password protection schemes by attempting to defeat them on their own machines.





A new protection scheme which gets the average user back on the side of truth

and justice is very much needed at this time. I don't have the solution, but

I think the problem is legitimate and urgent.





Angry User





Two words for you my friend, Fingerprint Recognition! Then all you'd

have to worry about is someone sneaking up behind you and cutting off your thumb.











Hello, as a female and an avid reader of AntiOnline, I found it very

disturbing that your opening graphic features only males. Although they

still make up the majority of the security/hacker/computer enthusiast scene,

they are most certainly not the only ones. Women are a growing part of this

scene and deserve to be included just like everyone else. Don't get me

wrong, I get sick of all the political correctness b.s. just like everybody

else, I just think that the share of women who read AntiOnline is large

enough to justify showing some representation by you.





Erica Rettig a.k.a. Zuggie





Hrm. Maybe you're right. Of course, I don't have any

African Americans in that picture either. Erm, no handicapped individuals. No

Chinese either. Maybe I'll try to have someone draw up a picture of a one

legged black women being pushed in a wheel chair by a Shaolin Priest.











I also got a letter from Pitt CIS Staff Member David Schatz. Needless to

say, it wasn't worth the bandwidth to post.