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The Founders of Whitedust

An anonymous reader writes "Whitedust is running an informative interview with their Founders - Mark Anderson and Mark Hinge. In the interview the two Mark's set out the reasoning behind and the future of Whitedust.net." From the article: "Mark Anderson had been on at me as regards doing what he coined 'HTML Ezine' for a long time - I had been a bit of a purist about it but he finally won me around to his mode of thinking. At the same time there was something that had personally been bugging me since @stake took over hackernews and that was the lack of centralized INFOsec information; people had tried to produce a site along these lines but had either become totally bias, or been maintained badly (lack of updates etc). I saw what I considered a gap in the market and convinced Mark that the topic of any 'HTML Ezine' should be Information Security (something we both knew a fair bit about anyway)."

50 comments

  1. Whitedust? by Landshark17 · · Score: 1

    That's just begging for a cocaine joke...

    --
    This sig is false.
  2. Sneezeworthy by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 1

    "Whitedust"? Isn't that anthrax? Or cocaine? Meth? FETLA?

    Smash White Powder!

    --

    --
    make install -not war

    1. Re:Sneezeworthy by Da_Biz · · Score: 1

      My thoughts exactly. Bolivian Marching Powder or Peruvian Go Dust, anyone?

  3. RE by Alex+P+Keaton+in+da · · Score: 2, Informative

    Whitedust: From Whitedust.net
    An Introduction To Whitedust
    The Whitedust Security Portal is an attempt to bring back the now forgotten way to repaying the community by putting material of interest back into it. While many diverse sources of security news and articles are available on the internet, few of those sources are specifically targetted at the security community and none of them are unbiased. Known for bringing quality security news, articles and resources to IS professionals all over the world, the Whitedust name stands for integrity.
    Whitedust is expected to become the most popular supplier of security information to the EU and the United States. This vision of a new security content landscape is attributed to Whitedust's dedication to always present timely and current news.
    Mission Statement
    Having firmly established ourselves as the leading independent security news portal, Whitedust is now the leading distributor of timely and current uncut security news. As we push past our 1st anniversary, Whitedust will capture the attention of an even larger readership by maintaining our unique tradition of reporting the news as it happens, not when it suits us.

    --
    And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
  4. A bit of editing never hurt anybody... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "Mark Anderson had been on at me as regards doing what he coined 'HTML Ezine'...

    "people had tried to produce a site along these lines but had either become totally bias, or..."

    1. Re:A bit of editing never hurt anybody... by sempf · · Score: 1

      And when will people learn the difference between possessive and plural?

      the two Mark's set out

      --
      /usr/bin/grep -i -E meaning life.txt
    2. Re:A bit of editing never hurt anybody... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You want editing from a guy who posted "from the glace-in-the-rear-view dept."?

  5. So? by sharp-bang · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So, basically this is a press release for a security portal with ambition. This is fine, but did anybody other than these guys perceive a crying need for a new security portal? 'Cause I sure didn't. If I start one, will Slashdot post that story, too?

    --
    #!
    1. Re:So? by FiDooDa · · Score: 1

      i don't know if slashdot would have posted your "new" site. But thanks for sharing your links about other good (or even better security portals) that made your post worthwhile.

  6. I'll bite. by OctoberSky · · Score: 1

    The Founders of Whitedust.

    I thought that was George "Boston George" Jung?
    But I guess you could just say that he founded it in America, much like Columbus. Maybe we should get him his own holiday too?

  7. News is nice, has anyone built an archive? by Beryllium+Sphere(tm) · · Score: 1

    At one of the Oakland conferences, it seemed like every Q&A session had some old-timer saying something like "Are you aware that the technique you just presented was covered by a 1983 paper from Incunabular and Obscure?". There was some chatter about building a bibliography so that literature searches would be more practical. Has anyone made progress that I haven't heard about?

  8. Mark's favorite hardware by Luxifer · · Score: 3, Funny

    I especially like the part where he mentions the Atari ST as his favorite piece of hardware. That says alot. I still have mine too, and it's still my fave. Brings back the good old days of cracking each others' BBSs while tightening your own code up.. A good evolutionary approach to security.
    In my books, Atari ST == Street Cred.

    1. Re:Mark's favorite hardware by butlerm · · Score: 1

      The Atari ST was nice, especially compared to the PCs of the day, but the OS left a lot to be desired. The Amiga, on the other hand, ran circles around machines released ten years later using a fraction of the resources. I still miss pull down, variable resolution screens, volume:dir/file style path names and the related volume insertion request system, the way you could eject a disk that had open files, even in the middle of a write, and everything would be okay if you put it back in when asked to, etc.

      Logical 'assigns' were much more useful than symbolic links too, mostly because they were global. Sort of like network drive letters, except multiple character like volume names. It would be nice if Unix had dynamically updating / delayed binding environment variables that could be used anywhere a file name is accepted...Amiga style volume specifiers would be even better.

    2. Re:Mark's favorite hardware by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I especially like the part where he mentions the Atari ST as his favorite piece of hardware. That says alot.

      It says "I couldn't afford an Amiga."

  9. Obviously not website designers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Never heard of Whitedust before this /. story. Never heard of the founders either. They may know what they are doing regarding security. But, that is without a doubt the ugliest website I've ever seen and I've seen Slashdot.

    1. Re:Obviously not website designers by parkrrrr · · Score: 1
      Never heard of Whitedust before this /. story. Never heard of the founders either. They may know what they are doing regarding security.
      Repeat after me, kids: Security through obscurity is no security at all!
    2. Re:Obviously not website designers by Ohreally_factor · · Score: 1

      Didn't whitedust used to go by the name of loud cloud?

      Oh, wait, different Mark.

      --
      It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
  10. What does this mean? by ats-tech · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "Mark Anderson had been on at me as regards doing what he coined 'HTML Ezine' for a long time -"

    EH?

  11. Re:Why is the hell is this on Slashdot? by InsaneProcessor · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I am totaly convinced now that articles are only printed if they are submitted by ScuttleMonkey, CmdrTaco, or Cliff or, in the direct interest of one of these. /. is going downhill and will be replaced, probably by digg.com. I am going over there to read something that I am actually interested in reading.

    --

    Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
  12. The two Mark's WHAT? by yobtah · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    I'll play "grammar Nazi" because it would be nice to see things like this done correctly on the front page of Slashdot. The plural of "Mark" is NOT "Mark's". At least the submitter was anonymous and won't look like an idiot.

    1. Re:The two Mark's WHAT? by dan828 · · Score: 2, Funny

      He still looks like an idiot. We just don't know who he is.

    2. Re:The two Mark's WHAT? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Almost certainly one of the Mark is.

  13. the future of Whitedust.net by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Publish teh exp1oits!!!!111 Whohoo.. |-)

  14. Re:Why is the hell is this on Slashdot? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You're an idiot. Those are the people who work at slashdot and post the submitted stories. They don't submit them like you claim. CmdrTaco is the founder of Slashdot you ignoramus.

  15. Re:Why is the hell is this on Slashdot? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Whilst I had heard of the site, I hadn't visited it until clicking your link. Digg rocks! It reminds me of what Slashdot used to be like about 3-4 years ago. In fact, I doubt I'll bother coming back here much from now on.

    Ta muchly!

  16. The Scene by TubeSteak · · Score: 0, Offtopic
    The geek inside me always took 'The Scene' a little too seriously - but I don't regret it, it was more enthusiasm than social life replacement on my personal behalf so I can live with my past.
    http://www.welcometothescene.com/

    Sorry, but someone had to bring it up.
    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
  17. Is it just me? by TheSkepticalOptimist · · Score: 1

    Or is Slashdot really having a slow news day. I almost feel like whipping up a quick website right now just to see how quickly it will get slashdotted, I could use 15 seconds of fame myself.

    --
    I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
  18. Re:Why is the hell is this on Slashdot? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    The problem with digg is that it's filled with 15 year olds saying "k3w1 CSS HaXor5!!!!!!1!!eleventy-one!!" and "Cool Tutorial!!!!!!!" and other inanity. For every decent article, there's 10 with the title of "Check This Out!!!" There's just too much chaffe at digg.

  19. Same shop that gave us the last crap security post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Reconnaissance In Virtual Space
    http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/24/191 3233

    Basically Whitedust shows you how to use whois. Talk about once again whoring it up for the /. crowd.

  20. Re:Same shop that gave us the last crap security p by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative
    Yeah... But they also gave us this: This and...

    Thisand...
    This
    and...
    This
    Some of the best security interviews I have seen in a long time. Not to mention articles like:

    This
    So I guess they are not perfect but who is?

  21. Stop referancing HNN by spacerog · · Score: 3, Insightful
    At the same time there was something that had personally been bugging me since @stake took over hackernews and that was the lack of centralized INFOsec information; people had tried to produce a site along these lines but had either become totally bias, or been maintained badly (lack of updates etc). I saw what I considered a gap

    Gap in the market? In order to have a gap in the market you must first have a market. Why do you think that @Stake, Guardent, Foundstone, et al never made it to IPO stage? Because the bubble burst or because the market wasn't there? They were all in trouble well before the dot bomb. Sure they got bought out because they did have some cool tech, doesn't mean any of them where actually making money. Since there is no market for security specific products there definitely is no market for security news and information. Don't believe me? Look at your own home page, how many stories have comments on them? Ummm, that's right, none. You've been online a year but can't garner enough traffic to warrant any comments? Either you really suck at marketing or no one is remotely interested in your content. (I won't even mention your crappy website design.)

    Oh, and just let HNN die in piece. Stop resurecting it every other month. I mean its been what? Six years now? Jeez, let it go.

    - Space Rogue

    1. Re:Stop referancing HNN by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hit a raw nerve? :/

      Their articles seem to have quite a lot of comments... and to be fair their news is only up about 5 hours before it's totally replaced... so... hmm.

  22. Just Don't Forget... by Aqua_boy17 · · Score: 1

    You'll also need to conduct an interview with yourself, make it in an extremely small hard to read font, and post it on a butt ugly page. Did I miss anything else from TFA?

    I agree with some of the parent posts. It must be a slow news day. Either that, or everyone still has their hands full gathering data from http://www.broward.gov/

    --
    What if the Hokey Pokey really is what it's all about?
  23. Nice synopsis but you missed the best parts! by dyoung9090 · · Score: 1

    "had been on at me as regards doing what he coined 'HTML Ezine' for a long time - I had been a bit of a purist about it but he finally won me around to his mode of thinking. "

    "people had tried to produce a site along these lines but had either become totally bias, or been maintained badly (lack of updates etc)."

    I make more than enough mistakkes (I'm going to leave the extra k because of the irony of writing a complaint about editing and non-edited stuff) but this is simple copy (in the industry sense of referring to bulk wordage as copy) with mistakes that could be caught on an easy pass-through.

    And, as a personal issue, I hate when people use a cliche but try to cover it up with some "clever" avoidance. The cliche (should have an accent, but doesn't, just to continue pointinng out my own mistakes) is "way of thinking", but by changing way to mode, you're not hiding the cliche or making a unique phrase, you're just drawing attention to how awkward the cover-up is.

    Now, as far as cliches are concerned, they are a perfectly fine form of verbal (and non-verbal) shorthand that convey a commonly held notion (ie, it's easier to say "way of thinking" than "the collection of my own thought processes on that particular issue") and not nearly as bad as high school teachers will lead you to believe (or, "try to convince your thoughtstream that this is a proper, and in some cases, the only proper, way") but if you're still so set against using them, you have to hide them a little better.

    I apologize for excessive comma usage, and the abuse of parenthetical phrases, but I'm not putting out a thinly veiled press release posing as a community awareness feature.

  24. OT by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Referring to your sig, shouldn't that be --not war, since it's more than 1 letter?

    1. Re:OT by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 1

      My .sig is not GNU compliant. A GNU compliant wrapper, I believe, would be

      make install --not-war

      .

      --

      --
      make install -not war

    2. Re:OT by WilliamSChips · · Score: 1

      That is a correct GNU-compliant wrapper.

      --
      Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
  25. WBG Links by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Here's a INFO Sec web site that has been around before all of them:

    http://www.wbglinks.net/

    It's not the best site in the world but they have never sold out, like HackerNews.

  26. What about InfoSec News? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    InfoSec News - http://www.c4i.org/isn.html has been going on steadly since 1998, and nearly daily since 2000. While not a 'HTML Ezine' you really have to hand it to the editor to have not sold out or folded like many other sites over the years.

  27. I miss HNN :( by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    HNN used to be *useful* back before @stake came along and trashed it. I've seen Spacerogue post here a few times, but I've long missed something like HNN. That said, the current articles on Whitedust look pretty good...

    Still, I liked the green & black theme on HNN. There was just something about it.

  28. Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If these are Whitedust's 'founders', who's doing the interview?

    I can't see why this is worthy of a Slashdot story, or even the wasted bandwidth for that matter. There are no genuine insights into the 'scene', just a little melancholy name dropping and vain attempts at plugging the authors' unrelated projects.

    Whitedust, as far as I can tell is a collection of RSS feeds with a few random articles peppered in by it's contributors. Nobody appears to actually read it or show any interest - try and find an article with any comments on the front page.

    It's a bit of self congratulatory cock stroking, or a publicity stunt at best.

    1. Re:Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://www.whitedust.net/view.php?PageID=27

      There seems to be a few comments there... I really love it when Slashdot trolls do their research.

  29. If Only... by 3fiddy · · Score: 1
    I could use my mod points to mod down this article.

    -1 Irrelevant

  30. ac grammar nazi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    the two Mark's set out the reasoning

    no apostrophe here, please

    not sure why this mistake has become so common in recent years

  31. I guess no one has heard of rootsecure.net by StankDawg · · Score: 1

    http://www.rootsecure.net/ has been around since 2002 and has custom/exclusive content as well as top stories from other news sources. Not to mention that it offers RSS feeds for syndication, an audio podcast, and daily email newletters.

    --
    --- The revolution will be digitized! - http://www.binrev.com/ ---