_________SWAT MAGAZINE ISSUE TWENTY SEVEN MARCH  2000 __________
  /         \___________________________________________/          \
 /                 Review of BlackCode Ravers e-zine                \
/                     By -=The Firestarter=-                         \
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Well after SWAT gained another affiliation this month, this time with
BlackCode Ravers Magazine, it was agreed that i would review there
magazine.

Ok so firstly it is in it's early stages, only 2 issues have been
released (although issue 3 is almost near it's release date). Well since
i only have 2 issues to go over, i might as well get started.

Well issue one was intended as merely a newletter post so it only really
covers the basics and some information about BC, there was one article
in there though that i really did like, it was all about voteing for
pages on T100 lists, i liked it mainly because it really did pick up on
the points that tend to get lame pages to the top of the lists. You all
know the sites, the ones that steal the links from others and force you
to vote in order to get onto the page. Heh well i liked the article
since it was more of what i would class as a "general article" rather
than a specific h/p/a/etc article. The next article about PGP and
encryption was good, it was quite a large article (biggest in the
newsletter) it covered all of the usual bits and pieces that you would
expect from an article on PGP, but it also briefly covered passphrases,
file deletion as well as virii and trojans, although it only covered a
lot of it's points in brief it did get accross the overall article was
pretty good. So all in all, issue 1 was fairly good, about what you'd
expect for a first issue of a magazine that shows potential!

Now the basic downers...
Well the formatting, it's kind of uneven thoughout the document, but if
you can tolorate that (and it's not difficult) then it's fairly neat.

Now onto issue 2...

Issue 2 looks a lot better than issue 1, issue 2's formatting is a lot
better, that fixes the major "flaW" that was in the first issue, the
header to this issue is also a hell of a lot better, it looks more like
an e-zine now rather than a newsletter (heh, well it's now called
BlackCode Ravers Magazine as opposed to Newsletter). It's also twice the
size of the first issue, which is to be expected really. It also shows a
lot of improvement in the content. Like the first issue it covered the
Latest News With BlackCode Ravers, which is also pretty nice for those of
you who like to read about things like that. First major article in this
issue is about breaking schools security, although i've got to be honest
that i'm not usually very interested in such stuff, but i thought that it
was fairly good, some of it was humerous, some was serious and overall it
was pretty cool, since it was based around social engineering it makes
for a more universal article rather than ones that are specific to a
certain tyoe if network or whatever.

Next up was about Trojans, it covered pretty much all of your usual
trojan information, i think that it's pretty good for newbies. I liked
the review of the Vampire trojan, ok i've got to be honest, i do think
trojans - at one time where cool, although i do think they are a little
outdated now. But saying that they do have there uses for certain things.
Anyway what was next, arr yes, there newbies section, always very good
for any magazine, this was all about IP addresses and how to get them,
something that many people out there constantly e-mail me about.

One section i couldn't wait to get to was the section on Linux, this was
more of a general article aimed at people that use windows, and it kinda
give some encouragement to move to linux (kinda makes me think at times
that i should have never taken Mandrake off my box in favor of backing
stuff up). The article hightlights several points for choseing linux over
Windows (mainly security), i really loved the last part of that article,
and in my opinion was the icing on the cake, here' what it was:
"NOTE:
Windows is good for offices and for graphic designers also for people
that don't want to learn anything,that just want to surf BUT if you
want to know and you respect yourself you should get Linux and learn
how it works."
teehee, it made me smile, yeah i agree with The Maniac about that!

The next article was an interview with the webmaster of Blackcode.com
well what can you really say about an interview? some people like them
some don't, personally i like them and i enjoyed reading it. 

Well that was pretty much all of issue 2. 
Although the formatting of the issue could still be improved a bit it
still makes for an interesting read, i feel though that it is still
more of a newsletter than a magazine, but saying that however SWAT will
be helping them improve in the near future :o)

Anyway, you can all check it out at: 
http://www.blackcode.com/bc-tech/newsletter.shtm