Write PHP online with this site

     In some of my previous posts, I have shown you a few great websites that allow you to test and run code online, like the Java online IDE, and the online C++ compiler. This post points you towards another such website, which allows you to write and run PHP codes online.

     With the information revolution changing the way we view our world, development and programming skills in the information superhighway has become an essential skill for any programmer. PHP, which in a recursive backronym for PHP:Hypertext Preprocessor, is the most popular server-side programming language for web development.

     writephponline.com gives you a very clean and stripped down interface, allowing you to paste code into box, hit 'Run code', and get the output below. The PHP beautifier that auto-formats your code into something much easier on the eye is very helpful as well.

The highest paid actors and actresses of 2015

     The profession of acting is not an easy one. But with a high demand of one's ability comes massive rewards. When these charismatic performers mount the pinnacle of their industry, the dollars that fills their pocket gets quite buffed. Here is the list of the most paid, and just as well the most talented actors and actresses who made their mark on the big screen in the year gone by.

Actors:

1. Robert Downey Jr.: $80 million
2. Jackie Chan: $50 million
3. Vin Diesel: $47 million
4. Bradley Cooper: $41.5 million
5. Adam Sandler: $41 million
6. Tom Cruise: $40 million
7. Amitabh Bachchan: $33.5 million
8. Salman Khan: $33.5 million
9. Akshay Kumar: $32.5 million
10. Mark Wahlberg: $32 million

Actresses:

1. Jennifer Lawrence: $52,000,000
2. Scarlett Johansson: $35,500,000
3. Melissa McCarthy: $23,000,000
4. Bingbing Fan: $21,000,000
5. Jennifer Aniston: $16,500,000
6. Julia Roberts: $16,000,000
7. Angelina Jolie: $15,000,000
8. Reese Witherspoon: $15,000,000
9. Anne Hathaway: $12,000,000
10. Kristen Stewart: $12,000,000

All credit for this list goes to: http://www.slashfilm.com/highest-paid-actresses-actors-of-2015/

Eminem would love this site

     And what sort of site do you think would get Slim Shady reaching for his laptop in his back pocket?

     One that spits out rhymes, of course.

     www.rhymezone.com is a website that does what it says on the tag: It gives you rhyming words for any word you enter in, in English.

     What's more, it divides it's results into words that have one, two, three syllables and so on, and also provides entire phrases that rhyme with your input. Also included is words that 'almost rhyme' and a stunning collection of original literary works from which examples for rhyming involving the word you searched for is shown. 

     Real handy for poets and rappers alike. I mean just read these words together real fast : "Universe blank verse converse disperse obverse wet nurse privy purse reimburse heroic verse biodiverse..."

     Nice, innit?

Summer is here!

     So as a typical teenager, I had to deal with the annual exams over the last month, and finally, it's over! I guess the exams went well, and now I'm looking forwards to the bright summer days of 2016.

     I'm sure everyone of you living above the equator is looking forward this time as well, as it's the time of parties, reunions, summer albums, tours and hangouts. Here's to a happy and cheerful summer for all of you. =)

Copying and pasting from VirtualBox to host

     One of the most useful softwares that you can have on your device is a virtual emulator, that allows you to run an OS of your choice within your host OS, allowing you to take full advantage of the services offered by one one operating system while not compromising the comfort of your host. This is especially useful for running Windows and Linux devices in parallel, as dual booting is a risky and difficult maneuver for inexperienced users. Also, dual booting does not allow us to run programs and perform tasks in both operating systems in parallel, which brings us to the need of copying and pasting from the virtual environment to the host, or vice versa.

     In this post I shall use Oracle VirtualBox, one of the most used, recommended, powerful and efficient virtualisers available for free. (You can download a suitable version from HERE.)

     So the present scenario is: You have downloaded and installed Oracle VirtualBox, installed a guest OS, and looking for a way to copy and paste between the systems. Here's how you do it:

     Launch VirtualBox, then click on the operating system for which you wish this setting to be enabled.

     Click on settings, and in the window that pops up, under General → Advanced, set 'Shared Clipboard' to bidirectional. Setting Drag n drop to bidirectional is recommended as well as it allows you to drag and drop files and folders between the systems, but VirtualBox currently supports this only for Windows OSs.

     And just like that, you can now copy and paste between your guest OS, and your host OS!

Hope you found this useful!

Faith in Humanity

Check out this 'Faith in Humanity' post by Vlade of Memecenter!

Although Memecenter is known for shoveling out hilarious memes faster than a bullet train, there are several posts on there that is quite deep. The Faith in Humanity series of posts by the user Vlade, for example, will leave you in awe while you were expecting just another ruddy joke.

All credit for this post goes to Vlade. Check out his work at http://www.memecenter.com/vlade/posts !

Science shall lead the way

Science shall lead the way

“Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world. Science is the highest personification of the nation because that nation will remain the first which carries the furthest the works of thought and intelligence.” Said Louis Pasteur, the famous French microbiologist. This is indeed true. We are fortunately living in a world where science, reason and rationality are fast replacing ancient and twisted religious ideals and illogical rituals that shackled a large section of the Indian society not more than a few decades ago. This beacon of light that has lead us from the darkness of doubt to glory of knowledge shall indeed be the driving force behind the future development of India.

Science encompasses nearly infinite amount of topics. From the golden rays of light during a beautiful sunset to a rocket accelerating to escape velocity to launch into outer space, science surrounds us and plays a vital role in every aspect of our lives. When James Watt, the boy who played with the kettle, invented the steam engine, little did he realize that he started a chain of events that would take us from the embers of the great Renaissance to the revolutionary Industrial age. As industrialism and subsequently, urbanization, spread across the globe, the people who lived until then as peasants who tilled the land started transforming into workers of newly established activities belonging to the secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy. Science has helped us to dispel hoaxes, rise above and beyond limitations, and has truly unlocked the true potential of the human race.

India has a similar story to tell, although it was the colonisation by European powers that lead to the scientific development of India. We have definitely come a long way from the introduction of the first printing press at Goa in 1556, as now high rise malls and shopping complexes, several internationally renowned companies with multi-billionaire CEO’s at their helm, sprawling software parks and high skilled education centers are becoming common in India’s urban centers. India’s space missions are a testimony to just how much we can achieve, and to how much we can compete with international superpowers.

While development in India has by no means been stagnant, the bitter truth is that it is far from the levels achieved by European and American countries. The previously mentioned religious and caste-based stereotypes and the shockingly huge amount of population who still believe in such things have played a major role in hindering the nation’s development. Conservatives are getting it wrong on almost all facets, and are irrationally supporting worn ideals that form an obstacle to development.

All this means that it is past time that India has awaken to face the obstacles that has manifested itself as underdevelopment, poverty and inequality, crippling India’s development rate.

First and foremost, we should discard all baseless practices and believes, which is by no means limited to caste and religious ideals and also include inefficient economic processes and unreasonable laws of division and inheritance, and embrace change and science. We should try out new technologies being evolved and made available in the ever-expanding market. Spread of education and computer literacy will go a long way in promoting change and development in rural areas. Computers and the internet, which are increasingly taking over every aspect of our lives, can play a major role in development of our nation. Provision of smartphones and making internet access available all across India deserves nearly as much attention as improving agriculture and proper redistribution of land. Integration of satellite services into primary activities and using scientific research to develop bleeding-edge tech that can greatly simplify various processes and vastly improve the efficiency of various methods needs to be on the forefront of scientific development.

If our nation fully utilizes its potential and uses science as the basis of development, science will surely turn out be the force, as Buzz Lightyear’s catchphrase goes in the Toy Story movies, that takes us “To infinity…..and beyond.”

Article written by Aswin G

Cracking the Enigma

The Imitation Game was centered around a top secret British programme at Bletchely that aimed to decode encrypted German communication during the second world war. Towards the end, the cryptography team engaged by the Churchill government sought to break a German encryption device, the “Enigma”, which was believed to be one of the greatest in history.

To decode a particular German message that had been encrypted by Enigma, it had to be fed back into a similar Enigma device. Though the British were in possession of the same, they were rendered helpless by lack of knowledge as to the settings of the device. The ingenuity of the system lay in the fact that the Germans meticulously switched the settings every midnight, leaving less than 24 hours for the cryptographers to decode the day’s encrypted communication. Adding to their woes, the machine had around five rotors and ten plug board cables, giving rise to several trillion possible combinations.

Cracking the code was of paramount importance as details regarding secret convoys, U-boats in the Atlantic and surprise attacks by Germany on the Allied forces were communicated via the encrypted format afforded by Enigma.

The polish mathematician, Marian Rejewski, was the first person to achieve a major breakthrough on the Enigma, when he developed a method to crack the key of the machine once sufficient messages encrypted with the same key was collected during a time when the Engima used just 3 rotors. However, this method eventually failed when the Germans decided to change the procedure for choosing indicator settings. However, after this he went on to construct an electromechanical machine called bomba kryptologiczna (literally meaning cryptologic bomb), which attempted to brute force the key of the Enigma. The Germans later added 2 more rotors, exponentially increasing the number of possible keys and rendering brute force mostly useless.

The infamous cryptanalysis work at Bletchley Park started on 4^th September, 1939, when Britain declared war on Germany. Most of the work here, after receiving a jump-start due to the decision of Poland to share their research, was based on the principle of common words with known positions allowing identification of the key. (This is in contrast to the portrayal of the same in the movie The Imitation Game, where this realisation is the breakthrough that allows Alan Turing & Co to finally crack the Enigma.)  A British version of the bombe was designed by Alan Turing and built by Harold Keen, and was called 'Victory'. Over the next few years, over 200 such machines were built and placed in allied military bases so as to decrypt German communication effectively.

A rebuilt Victory machine, now residing at the Bletchley museum.

Due to the efforts of the entire team consisting of thousands working at Bletchley Park and because of an important mathematical input by Gordon Welchman, the Victory eventually succeeded in breaking several crucial messages transmitted over the Enigma, which later became a decisive factor in the Allied triumph over Germany in World War II.

Thus, one of the greatest encryption devices known to mankind, was broken due to the use of predictable words and repetitive communication, and set the wheels rolling for what eventually became the cyber world today.

Article written by Nivedith George and Aswin G

The Imitation Game move review

The Imitation Game Review

‘When people talk to each other, they never say what they mean.’ This is one of the many dialogues from the Andrew Hodges biography based movie Imitation Game that reflects the life of an introverted genius, of an unsung hero. A man who saved the lives of millions by cutting the war short but who himself suffered an unfair life and death.

The story unfolds in three parts, all reflecting how a man who could decipher the trickiest cryptographic conundrums in the world could not decipher the intricacies involved in living the ‘normal’ human life. The crux of the film involves the life of mathematician Alan Turing, played by the very versatile Benedict Cumberbach, who is employed by the British Intelligence to crack the Enigma, the infamous encryption device that allowed the Nazis to communicate across the continent unrestricted. The film, directed by Morten Tyldum, is however not entirely about how the world war was won by five persons hunched over their work tables in a small town northwest of London. It is also a touching story on how the various characteristics that set apart Alan Turing, the obsessive compulsive genius, from the rest of the pack resulted in him making one of the most important contributions to modern humankind, while also condemning him to suffer a cruel death as a depressed loner.

The stigma that we have against people whose sexual orientation are different from what we term ‘normal’ was much more so during the time in which the movie is set. Just being a homosexual was a crime, one punished by severe means. One of the most significant quarters from where the Imitation Game found acceptance was from the LGBT community who lauded the makers for their strong take on the subject.

While the first part of the movie shows the protagonist being bullied by children in his school, the second part snaps back to portray him at his marvelling best, breaking codes and helping his country win the war. The final leg of the movie shows the anguish of a man who is judged for being what he is made to be and consequently punished for the same.

Though the film stars a cast line of talent that includes Matthew Goode, Rory Kinnear, Allen Leach, Charles Dance and Kiera Knightley, it is Benedict Cumberbach who steals the show completely. He is smooth and solid in his portrayal of the vulnerable Turing. Not only does he mould himself into the skin of Turing, he is convincing without a blink of effort, or so it seems. From the stammering speech typical of Alan Turing to the emotional moment when he breaks down when Joan visits him post war, Cumberbatch brings the his character to life with amazing accuracy that leave moviegoers awestruck.

The true legacy of The Imitation Game is in the strong messages it gives to all viewers. It teaches us that the circumstances of one’s birth does not define our lives, but it is the choices we make and the actions we take that does so. It teaches us to never judge a person for what he is, but rather for who he is. And above all, quoting the movie, it tells us that “It is the ones no one imagines anything of that does the things no one can imagine.”

To conclude, Imitation Game is a true masterpiece and a movie that will stand out and endure as the golden standard in the biopic genre for a long time to come. It is one truly worth adding to any movie collection.

Review by Nivedith George and Aswin G

Identify file types easily

     Identifying file types is usually not on the agenda of a typical computer user. But it sure is useful in multiple situations, especially in things like online forensic analysis challenges. Receiving a file with an unknown or suspicious extension from an e-mail or a torrent download is also a fairly common occurrence. In such cases, you will want to find out the actual file extension to check for potential malicious content or to get the right software to open it.

     Either way, a reliable and free file extension software is hard to come by on the vast internet. So here, I'm directing you to a really great, really accurate online tool (with a standalone offline version) that does just this.

     The tool is called TrID file identifier, and can be found here : http://mark0.net/onlinetrid.aspx

     The process is as simple as uploading the file to be checked, and clicking the 'Analyze!' button.
If you have to analyse large files or is not comfortable with uploading personal files to the internet, the offline version can be downloaded and used instead. (Small heads-up: It is command line based, and lacks a GUI. Might be uncomfortable for some users.)

     This project has been active since 2003, and recognizes over 6315 file types, and is surprisingly well maintained and updated for it's age. It also support multiple platforms, and gives you just about anything you can ask for from such a tool.