GSCentral.org database of codes...

[OldSchoolGamer]

Are all the codes from GSCentral.org's database already listed in this website's database of codes?

[Lazy Bastard]

Pretty much, yes. About the same time KW people split from GSC, a copy of GSC's DB found its way onto the net. As GSC's database was down for months on end, GameHacking.org (then GSHI.org) hosted a copy of this database (called BSFree), so the world could enjoy it. Most of GSC's veteran hackers had left for Kodewerx or GSHI, and they agreed that the DB belonged to the scene, not the remaining GSC staff.

Since then, GSC has been adding codes to their database, but they're mostly ripped from sites like GameHacking.org. Lately, they have at least begun to give proper credit for codes.

We removed Rune's codes from our copy of BSFree, and sent out emails to as many hackers as we could find who had codes in the BSFree DB, requesting permission to add them to our DB directly. After a year, we received many positive responses, and zero negative responses, and thus began migrating all codes from the BSFree DB to our DB. It's a long and tedious task, but it's slowly underway. In the meantime, you can browse and search each one separately on the main page.

[OldSchoolGamer]

gotchya

[Rune]

Um, no?

http://board.gscentral.org/showthrea...132#post175132

[Lazy Bastard]

Ah, Rune. Good to see you.

As always, your response is peppered with lies and stretched truth. All of the well-known, skilled hackers formerly of GSC.org (Parasyte, Viper187, etc) will agree with what I've already said.

Credit is given properly here, and, though I haven't bothered to check your site in some time, it has historically not been given properly at GSC.org (GSC.com is a different story).

I guess that's really all that's left to say.

[Rune]

Then we will have to agree to disagree. However, the difference between you and I is that I lived through it and had distant objectivity of the entire situation that would not have been possible for both Parasyte and Viper187. Both of those members frequented the IRC chat rooms and and have their own personal reasons to be bitter about the general tardiness of the scene beyond GSCentral after their desired departure. (i.e. the birth and death of Kodewerx, the loss of their prominent positions in the scene, etc.) I would have only lied had I chosen to agree to what you have written above as being de facto and the entire truth, which it is not even remotely.

Credit is given where it is due and the people know that will always be the standard at GSCentral for the years to come.

[OldSchoolGamer]

I dont want to get involved between you two but your conversation has made me curious about if you guys get paid for working/running the website or is it all non-profit organizations? And also who is the person that owns (the main guy or guys) this website? And what does the title "Moderator" do? I'm assuming the title "Administrator" are the people that run the site. I'm just curious.

[Lazy Bastard]

GameHacking.org is non-profit, as I would assume GSCentral.org is.

You can see the staff structure of GameHacking.org on the main site, under "Misc", "Credits". Admins have power across the whole forums, and usually the site itself. Moderators control a specific forum (such as Last Gen & Retro Hacking, etc).

[OldSchoolGamer]

I see. I read the credits and understand except what is a "Chronicler"? And thank you for your time & effort for making such a great website.

[Lazy Bastard]

Thanks

Chroniclers have the ability to add codes to the code database.

[Lazy Bastard]

I almost forgot; I would be remiss if I didn't respond to this snippet:

Both of those members frequented the IRC chat rooms and and have their own personal reasons to be bitter about the general tardiness of the scene beyond GSCentral after their desired departure. (i.e. the birth and death of Kodewerx, the loss of their prominent positions in the scene, etc.)

Kodewerx is not dead; it has been re-hosted at GameHacking.org, entirely unmodified from its previous state, and still owned and managed by Parasyte. It still has a large traffic flow, and people still reference it as a great place to learn and find great hackers.

Parasyte and Viper187 have not lost "their prominent positions in the scene". If anything, they're more well-known now than before, which is something to say. Any hacker worth a damn knows who they are, and what they've done.

By the way, does GSC have any well-known hackers left? Or even any skilled new ones?

[Rune]

I almost forgot; I would be remiss if I didn't respond to this snippet:


Kodewerx is not dead; it has been re-hosted at GameHacking.org, entirely unmodified from its previous [dead] state, and still owned and [mis]managed by Parasyte. It still has a large traffic flow [for a dead website with no active hackers], and people still reference it as a great place to learn and find great hackers [who are not dead but do not post codes there].

Kodewerx is in the top 1.3 million websites, a fact that no honest webmaster would love to share with anyone:

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/kodewerx.org#

Not dead? Sure. I am sure Parasyte is proud that his website is more popular than the Girl Guides of Asia website! I fixed your quote for you while I was at it.

Parasyte and Viper187 have not lost "their prominent positions in the scene". If anything, they're more well-known now than before, which is something to say. Any hacker worth a damn knows who they are, and what they've done.

Viper has hacked approximately 5 codes in the last 6 years, hardly the sign of someone who is very active in any scene. He also hardly posts here and was famous for posting codes tens of thousands of codes. More well-known than ever before? Hardly. Parasyte has made a public admission recently that he hasn't hacked a code in 3 years. I can find that quote if you wish to argue it senselessly. Make my day.

By the way, does GSC have any well-known hackers left? Or even any skilled new ones?

Oh how quickly the blind lead the way for others!

[Lazy Bastard]

For once, your response was at least mostly coherent, and you only dodged one question. But, to be fair, I only asked one question.

Viper has hacked approximately 5 codes in the last 6 years, hardly the sign of someone who is very active in any scene. He also hardly posts here and was famous for posting codes tens of thousands of codes. More well-known than ever before? Hardly. Parasyte has made a public admission recently that he hasn't hacked a code in 3 years. I can find that quote if you wish to argue it senselessly. Make my day.

Viper187 and Parasyte built the hacking tools that allow most of the hacking work done in the last few years to take place (kenobi and Link having made the next biggest contribution to that). PS2CC and RenegadeEX were both made after Viper187 left GSC. Incidentally, I believe he asked you to remove all links to his work from your site. You really should respect the wishes of hackers and developers.

Oh how quickly the blind lead the way for others!

Your usual evasive tactics...it would have been easier to simply answer the question.

[Rune]

For once, your response was at least mostly coherent, and you only dodged one question. But, to be fair, I only asked one question.

Is this a recent problem of yours or have you always struggled with the English language?

Viper187 and Parasyte built the hacking tools that allow most of the hacking work done in the last few years to take place (kenobi and Link having made the next biggest contribution to that). PS2CC and RenegadeEX were both made after Viper187 left GSC.

This is all nice and good but you have clearly forgotten that very few people are hacking the PS2, at least at the BSHI/GH or whatever symbol you guys call yourselves now.

Incidentally, I believe he asked you to remove all links to his work from your site. You really should respect the wishes of hackers and developers.

I have never received any requests from Viper of that sort. However, you should really take your own advice; thousands of former and current GSCentral members never received an e-mail from your BSHI/GH website asking for the use of their codes in the BSHI/GH database. I suspect you would have very little hosted at this website if you had.

Your usual evasive tactics...it would have been easier to simply answer the question.

Congratulations on stealing the GSCentral database but we have already taken steps to include hundreds of thousands of codes that your mangled and stolen BSHI/GH database will always lack.

[LiquidManZero]

Kodewerx is in the top 1.3 million websites, a fact that no honest webmaster would love to share with anyone:

Interesting you seem to place great value in knowing how popular a website is with users who have their browser infected with a notorious toolbar.

This is all nice and good but you have clearly forgotten that very few people are hacking the PS2, at least at the BSHI/GH or whatever symbol you guys call yourselves now.

I must ask, exactly how many people at GSC.org are hacking at all much less PS2?

Congratulations on stealing the GSCentral database but we have already taken steps to include hundreds of thousands of codes that your mangled and stolen BSHI/GH database will always lack.

You seem to be unaware of how exactly the codes wound up here. Somehow I wound up with a complete dump of the MySQL database and the PHP scripts driving GSC.org at the time. The data was completely mangled before I unscrambled the layout thanks to a terrible flat file importer. In fact, it may have been the worst flat file database conversion software ever written between the fact that it had zero error handling of any kind, along with this little detail documented at http://gshi.org/wiki/How_Shit_Works_...rocessing_Time

Estimated Processing Time

Two samples taken from gsc_code_1_1, the first and last entries in the "created" column: 2006-12-31 11:12:42 and 2006-12-31 13:18:21.

Since the date is the same, only the time is significant.
11:12:42: 40362 seconds
13:18:21: 47901 seconds
47901 - 40362: 7539 Seconds from the beginning of the table, to the end.

Then, there's the total number of rows in that table: 102642

102642 / 7539: 13.61480302427377636291285316355
So that makes about 13.615 codes per second. Must be a gang of illegal immigrants in their basement doing this stuff by hand.

The "total" number of codes in the entire database (assuming the statistics BSFree swiped out of the original DB are
correct, which they aren't) is 2116065.

2116065 (codes total, estimated) / 13.615: 155421.59383033419023136246786632 seconds processing total (estimated)

43.172664952870608397600685518423 hours total (estimated)

With all this, I think it's safe to say that a lot of time was wasted for a very low quality result.


Also, here's what seems to be the earliest and latest timestamps in the code tables.

Start time?: 2006-12-31 11:12:42
End Time?: 2007-01-05 04:47:13

To think that somebody actually spent the better part of a week, with their code grinding away at this, is really rather amusing.

Also, where exactly did these "hundreds of thousands" of new codes come from? Were they posted with permission? I realize this "opens" me to a circular argument, however...

I have never received any requests from Viper of that sort. However, you should really take your own advice; thousands of former and current GSCentral members never received an e-mail from your BSHI/GH website asking for the use of their codes in the BSHI/GH database. I suspect you would have very little hosted at this website if you had.

There very well have been requests by users to have their codes taken down. It may not seem as such thanks to these people often later requesting their material put back up. The policy regarding codes being up here is quite simple:
If codes are submitted and the person doing so is not unreasonably suspicious, they go up. If we have codes up by a user (either by way of former submission or due to the BSFree data) and they request removal, the codes are taken down except under the extremely rare event that multiple credits are on specific codes. Under that condition the rest are removed, the multiple credit entires are left as is, and this is explained to whoever made the removal request. As far as the stuff in BSFree, attempts have been made to contact the hackers. In most cases there's no successful means of doing so. Rather than have their codes lost from the internet they are being kept up unless and until there's reason not to do so.

Also, I seem to notice Ugetab's codes are still up on GSC.org mostly with no and incorrect credits despite his repeated requests they be purged. Why exactly has this yet to happen? Have any users gotten codes removed after requesting?