Archive for the ‘Open Source’ Category

MD5 calculator using php

Sunday, January 25th, 2009

This is a very simple php code for an MD5 calculator.

There are two pages, index.htm and md5.php The index.htm page contains a simple form to submit the text to be hashed. The md5.php page displays the md5 hash result.
code for index.htm

<form action=md5.php method=get>
<input type="text" name="word">
<input type=submit value="Hash this text">
</form>

code for md5.php

<?php
$str = $_REQUEST["word"];
?>
Original text entered by you:
<?php echo $_REQUEST["word"]; ?>
The md5 hash for this text is:
<?php echo md5($str); ?>

To see a working demo of this code, visit: | http://www.rohasnagpal.com/projects/md5-calculator

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Guide to life – the *nix way

Saturday, December 29th, 2007

The *nix family of operating systems has a very rich syntax. So I figured, why not write a comprehensive guide to life using *nix syntax.

As a humble beginning, here is the first page that summarizes the “moral of the story” of the game called life:

The English version

You are a prisoner of your yesterday, you cannot escape it
You are a slave to your tomorrow, you will always fear it
But today, my friend, is yours, enjoy it

- Rohas Nagpal aka Poorman

The *nix version:
(No flames for errors, this code is not supposed to run..its just for fun ;)

finger you
yesterday
tomorrow
today

nslookup yesterday
prisoner .bash_history
logout
ERROR: Cannot escape

nslookup tomorrow
slave
ls tomorrow
fear
fear1
fear2

nslookup today
en.jo.y

- Rohas Nagpal aka Poorman

Posted in Humans, Open Source | No Comments »

In search of the perfect Operating System

Monday, October 8th, 2007

My first “real” experience with computers was on a Windows 3.1 machine. (Of course I had tinkered around with a lot of “non-GUI” operating systems as a kid, but let’s get real – that’s ancient history).


Windows (in its myriad variations) is a great set of operating systems (except maybe Windows Millennium Edition). Its ease of use and massive popularity also makes it the most (successfully) attacked.

Linux (with its wide range of flavors) is a great open source choice – saves you money and gives you a great and secure product. But after years of working with different operating systems, I have come to one conclusion – BSD rocks!!


BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) is the name of distributions of source code from the University of California, Berkeley, which were originally extensions to AT&T’s Research UNIX operating system.

BSD comes in many flavors, notably -

FreeBSD – currently the most popular version, it is easy to use and very high on performance. (btw Yahoo runs on FreeBSD)


NetBSD is considered a particularly good choice for running on old non-Intel hardware. Its main aim is maximum portability. It runs on almost everything – from palmtops to large servers.

OpenBSD is the popular choice for aims for banks, stock exchanges and Government departments. Its core guiding principle is code purity – derived from a brilliant combination of open source and rigorous code reviews.

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Story of a breakup, Vodka and a U3 app for data privacy

Friday, July 13th, 2007

Its been 24 hours since we began playing around with U3… and I am impressed to say the least. If a suitable number of developers (and  buyers!) show interest in U3, it has a great future…unless the next Microsoft operating system supports USB autorun ;-)

My friend and collegue Abhijeet Parandekar just broke up with his girl friend of many years. Instead of drowning his “dukh” in Vodka .. he decided to “code” some happiness into his life….by creating a simple U3 app for data privacy.

Based on the excellent open source project “True Crypt”, his app is titled “MySecrets“. The app (and the source code) and the 10MB MySecrets digital safe can be downloaded from here.

Enjoy!

IMPORTANT: MySecrets is free to download, distribute, enjoy etc etc. In case of any comments, suggestions, bouquets and brickbats…please contact Abhijeet directly….NOT ME!

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