Philotic Web

Zelda: Majoras Mask and Super Paper Mario(the only Mario I can deal with, much less like)

I'm rather disappointed that the Portal 2 ARG only lead to the game being released, what, six hours early? As fun as the ARG was.

To be fair, everyone who collected all 36 potatoes got a free copy of the Valve complete pack...

Been playing "Record of Agarest War"

Kind of a fun Final Fantasy Tactics Advance-style strategy-RPG, with heavy elements of H-game (negative Life points if you know what I mean). The generation-concept, playing the game into several generations of your character's lineage, is kinda neat. Gameplay is pretty basic, although the battlefield "connection" and subsequent strategizing of position is a decent tweak. Very linear though.

I'm surprised that no one here is talking about the major PSN security breach. Personal infoormation compromised for over 70 million acounts. Possibly including credit cards. Unbelievable...

Hahahaha, we were laughing (and a few of us were crying) about that today at work. Apparently PSN was sending credit card info through _GETs! True, they had SSL, but come on.

For those not in the know, a _GET is when you send information through a URL. For instance, in your address bar you should see "www.philoticweb.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.ph ... thernumber]. The "t=" and "start=" and the numbers that follow them is the information being passed in the _GET, which tells viewtopic.php what topic you want to view.

PSN was sending credit card info like this: "creditcard=4111111111111111". Unencrypted. And very unsecured.

SSL

Unencrypted.

What.

The URL isn't encrypted though. Only the content within the page. If they were sending the content back and forth through the URL, then it was visible while being transmitted.

They also didn't hash user passwords. They also had their entire security system rely on the client consoles never being compromised. Silly Sony.

Why does Steam make its own stupid shortcuts instead of using regular ones? I shouldn't have to dig around in the program files to pin a game to the taskbar.

You could just make Steam make a shortcut and then copy the address from that shortcut...

It doesn't work. Steam shortcuts are url shortcuts (steam://rungameid/#####) which apparently can't be pinned instead of program shortcuts. It doesn't really matter now that I've found where Steam stores the actual game files and can make my own shortcuts. It's just a bit annoying that I have to do the extra work in the first place.

The URL isn't encrypted though. Only the content within the page. If they were sending the content back and forth through the URL, then it was visible while being transmitted.

No, all data in the application layer for HTTPS goes over SSL. There is no HTTP-level traffic before the SSL negotiation occurs (which is a bit nonobvious, since most everything else that uses SSL/TLS doesn't work that way, but HTTPS is dumb), so the entire request is encrypted.

That doesn't mean it's a good idea or anything, as URLs are not really designed to be secret. Many things (clients and servers alike) tend to keep track of them without much regard for security. So it wouldn't surprise me if the way the card numbers were leaked were just from a webserver (or reverse proxy or whatever) access log, and there was some other database of card numbers that is much more secure and wasn't breached.

No, all data in the application layer for HTTPS goes over SSL. There is no HTTP-level traffic before the SSL negotiation occurs (which is a bit nonobvious, since most everything else that uses SSL/TLS doesn't work that way, but HTTPS is dumb), so the entire request is encrypted.

That doesn't mean it's a good idea or anything, as URLs are not really designed to be secret. Many things (clients and servers alike) tend to keep track of them without much regard for security. So it wouldn't surprise me if the way the card numbers were leaked were just from a webserver (or reverse proxy or whatever) access log, and there was some other database of card numbers that is much more secure and wasn't breached.

I guess this is what I meant by "unencrypted." You don't use a _GET for sending anything you never want anyone else to see. It's just ridiculous. Like, they had other encryption set up, but still sent information through URL. What?

Dwarfs!? It appears to be a simpler, prettier Dwarf Fortress for people like me who could never wrap their brains around DF's alphabet soup of an interface.

Back at home with internet for my wii.

Playing Smash Bros. with people that don't suck, online, after a long school year of playing hopeless nubs.

This is the life.

Dwarfs!? It appears to be a simpler, prettier Dwarf Fortress for people like me who could never wrap their brains around DF's alphabet soup of an interface.

Oh hey, I picked that up yesterday! It's pretty fun, but I kind of wish it had more base-building... but with the scoreboard basis, it makes sense.

Have you seen the Simon plays Dwarfs!? video? It's pretty funny.

I'm not a scrub.
*skips the tutorial*
*turns help off*
*death by water*
*death by water*
*death by water*
I'm starting to think I should've played that tutorial...

Then he proceeds to read the entire tutorial in a dwarf voice.

Hahahaha! Oh, man. Rarely have I laughed out loud so quickly at an LP. That's dramatic irony.

Apparently dwarfs sound a lot like Johnny Vegas.

Another Yogscast fan! Yay!

Me and Mich finally played Smash Bros.

If there's anyone else on here who has the game, and used to play, it'd be great if you could join us whenever we decide to play again.

Unfortunately, I don't own nor am I very good at the Wii version. Now, if we could play the Gamecube or 64 version, then we would be talking.

Brink is pretty disappointing. I was willing to overlook the bad reviews as just poor multiplayer experiences, but was also very annoyed there was no demo whatsoever, awfully suspicious for a game that looked like standard FPS fare with a few extra features but was selling itself as a fun, free-flowing experience.

Bottom line, I felt no scruples about downloading a pirated version. Seriously, the last few games I've done that with I've immediately bought, just after seeing that "yes, I would enjoy this." But I've grown bored with Brink after playing a few rounds, and I figure that's a horrible sign, so I will not buy it.

The degree of customization is cool, but really, Halo Reach does the exact same thing. The parkour aspect is not really awesome; I was expecting Mirror's Edge amount of movement, but it's really "hold sprint to sometimes climb up boxes or hop rails," which isn't that exciting. And the rest is either slight changes on the usual class system or really boring "push the cart"-style missions.

Glad I didn't get super-excited and preorder.

Now, Human Revolution, on the other hand, I feel completely comfortable about my preorder.

I kinda feel like we should get an old console for the kid to grow up with so that they develop the love of classic gaming.

I've been bored again with modern gaming and my 360 collected dust for awhile so I've been downloading emulators/roms and playing NES, SNES and Gameboy.

What are some of your favorite old-school games?

Oooh, ooh! Ninja Gaiden, and all three of the classic Zeldas (four if you count Awakening), 1943, Super Mario Bros 2, Vectorman (for Genesis), along with all of the classic Sonics and the classic Lion King game.

If we can get into the Playstation game, Siphon Filter 1 & 2, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Metal Gear Solid, and, of course, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver.

My sure favourites from those systems...
NES: Mario 3, Probotector (same game as Contra, but with combat droids instead of commandos)
SNES: Mario World, Yoshi's Story, all three Final Fantasies, Chrono Trigger, Zelda, Tales of Phantasia (imo best j-rpg in snes)
GB: Pokemon (really, only reason i ever got a GB emulator)

So far I've gotten:

Gameboy: Golden Sun 1 and 2, Kirby
NES: Legend of Zelda
SNES: Donkey Kong Country, Super Mario World, Super Mario All-Stars

Definitely gonna get more. I went out and got a gamepad just for playing roms now.

I know more about and love NES more than any other system so I'll throw some of my favorites out there. I see you have the original Legend of Zelda. I would definitely pick up Zelda II: The Adventures of Link (NES) and A Link to the Past (SNES). And the Mario series is a must, but I think you have the NES games covered with Mario All Stars.

Here is a list of some of my favorites by category.

Side Scrolling(for the most part)
Metroid
Mega Man series (namely 1-3, but all are enjoyable)
Castlevania series (I think there are 3 of them)
Contra and Super C
Wizards and Warriors (There is a sequel but never played it)
Ghosts 'N Goblins
River City Ransom

Early RGPs (if you are into that type of thing)
Dragon Warrior Series
Final Fantasy Series

Odd Games I remember enjoying
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1 & 2
Duck Tales
Sanke, Rattle 'n' Roll
Spy Hunter
Maniac Mansion
Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers
RC Pro Am

Sports!
Mike Tyson's Punch Out (one of the most fun games out there)
Tecmo Super Bowl (Fun game plus it has actual players from late 80s/early 90s)
Baseball Stars(Get to build and power up your own team)
Blades of Steel

That's what I got off of the top of my head. It's a shame my old laptop crapped out on me, I had a boatload of games on there that probably would have jogged my memory further.

Thanks! Got a lot of playing to do. Gonna add some TMNT games to that list too, original Metal Gear and Breath of Fire as well. And any more that spring to mind.

The list so far for the 3 systems (may get PS1 as well):

1942
Aladdin
Breath of Fire II
Bubble Bobble
Chip 'n Dale's Rescue Rangers
Chrono Trigger
Contra
Donkey Kong Country
Dragon Quest VI
Earthbound
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance
Final Fantasy III
Golden Sun
Golden Sun 2: The Lost Age
Kirby Superstar
Kirby's Dream Land 3
Maniac Mansion
Mega Man VI
Mortal Kombat 3
Ninja Gaiden
Ninja Gaiden 2
Ninja Gaiden 3
Super Steet Fighter 2 Turbo
Super Mario All-Stars (Super Mario 1, 2, 3 +)
Super Mario Kart
Super Mario World
Super Metroid
Tales of Phantasia
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3

Definitely need to add Metroid 2 (GameBoy) and Super Metroid (SNES) to those lists, man. Unless you don't like Metroidvania-style games, which is sad.

Steam have started doing sales every day now. This is not going to be good on my wallet.

Gee, that's a funny-lookin list without Secret of Mana and Seiken Densetsu 3 on it! Possibly Secret of Evermore, too, but I haven't played it yet.

And River City Ransom is nice and all, but I find it gets old really fast unless you're playing with someone else. And you like (pretend) beating them up.

Definitely gonna get more. I went out and got a gamepad just for playing roms now.

I don't know how expensive actual retro controllers are, but if you have your old NES or SNES controllers, the adapters aren't too bad. Nothing beats an original SNES controller for me, and the things are built damn well! Super Metroid always puts a bit of a strain on mine, but it's still fine after all these years.

Definitely need to add Metroid 2 (GameBoy) and Super Metroid (SNES) to those lists, man.

You might need to take a closer look at that last list, boyo (for the latter, anyway).

MEGA-BUMPOSAURUS!

So, I just got myself a brand new kicking MSI Wind U135DX netbook. And it's really great for all uses and purposes, except for gaming..which I still want to do.

So, do tell please: what games would you recommend for these specs?

(P.S.: Hi everyone!)

(P.S.2:

and the classic Lion King game.

- how the hell did you manage to get past level 2 on that thing? It's impossible!).