Like so many things in the programmers tool kit, PHP has developed almost accidentally. What started as one person’s experiment with scripting, managed to fulfil a need for many other programmers, a need for a small, fast and simple scripting language that could work seamlessly with many other components. In the last three years PHP has grown to become a major player in the server side scripting market.

Recently, another acronym was coined, LAMP, standing for Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP – now considered an important package in the Internet world, a set of programs that work together to produce dynamic, data-driven Web sites.

As a general-purpose programming language, PHP code is processed by an interpreter application in command-line  mode performing desired operating system operations and producing program output on its standard output channel. It may also function as a graphical application. PHP is available as a processor for most modern web servers and as a standalone interpreter on most operating systems and computing platforms.

Great Online Resources to Learn PHP

courtesy: webhostingsearch

When it comes to learning a programming language, there is a set path to achieve perfection in it. No shortcuts and no ‘7 day’s fast tracks’. PHP used to stand for Personal Home Page, but is now popularly known as Hypertext Preprocessor, is most probably the most widely used language on the web today.

PHP is an interpreted language and it’s used to create dynamic web pages. Examples could be website registration systems, forums (PHP Bulletin Board is the most popular), web stores and so on… If you want to get a head start at PHP then we’d recommend you bookmarking the following free online resources.

The list is categorized into:

• PHP Programming Forums

• IDEs (Integrated Development environments for PHP)

• Online tutorials

• Free PHP books

PHP programming forums:

PHP.NET

Nothing is more helpful than the official website. This is the place where you can find all the different versions of PHP, code repository and for starters they have a pool of really helpful tutorials. It is maintained by the PHP consortium and it works with the help of donations in terms of technical help from 3rd party applications, which are also mostly developed in PHP. In a sense it’s a way of giving back to the community. PHP.net is a useful guide for writing your first very PHP page. Besides the quick starter guide, they also have an extensive FAQ section that will help you accelerate your learning curve and steer you away from making unnecessary rookie mistakes.

PHP DN FORUMS

The Tracking-ID for this request is 18039675.

PHP DN forums is one the most visited places by amateur as well as expert PHP programmers. Forums give quick access to a repository of common errors that programmers face during their initial learning curve. You can utilize PHP Developer Network (DN) forums as a one stop shop for PHP tutorials, design issues, error reporting and resolution and above all, to get work offers from several people hunting for quality PHP developers.

Delphi PHP
Delphi is another one of the more popular PHP flavors out there used by thousands of PHP developers. They are a good resource that PHP programmers can take advantage of in almost any scenario. You can interact with other PHP programmers through the Delphi PHP forums, which are membership based, exchange programming help and hunt for PHP related work opportunities. New PHP programmers should register on these forums and get active from the get go.

Stack Overflow

Stack Overflow is one of the most awesome programming forums out there. It’s quite a general programming forum and it does not stick to one specific language but still the quality, and speed, of the replies you get on Stack Overflow often surpasses what you get on dedicated PHP programming forums. It’s membership based and the trick to get quick replies to your queries is adding tags to your question. Programmers usually search for tags (for example: #PHP) when looking for new queries and help requests.

Daniweb Forums

Daniweb is yet another general programming forum but nevertheless, just like with Stack Overflow, you should put up your programming related queries on it too. Daniweb has a huge number of members, 0.8 million programmers, designers, engineers and counting, so you can expect quick replies. It’s also membership based and the key to getting quick replies on Daniweb is to be as specific and concise as possible in your queries.

PHP IDEs (Integrated Development Environments)

An Integrated Development Environment is the software that you use for… Well, your development. It typically has a debugger, compiler, documentation generator (not necessary), code snippets and an integrated web browser. There also are other features found in some of the leading PHP IDEs, such as source control, class view, multiple language support, database navigation and more.

Eclipse

Eclipse has two very popular plug-ins for PHP development. One is the official PHP IDE Project which is an Eclipse foundation project. You can download Eclipse right away and try out the several coding examples it provides for PHP. The other popular PHP development plug-in is PHPEclipse which is a 3rd party plug-in. Eclipse is definitely good for beginners as it’s very easy to use.

Komodo

Komodo has a vast user base and is also a popular IDE for PHP development. Komodo has support for Windows, Linux and Mac OSX. The only obvious downside with Komodo is that it isn’t free.

PHP Designer

PHP designer is a PHP IDE which includes built in HTML, CSS and JS editor in addition to the basic PHP editor. It has all the standard features and there is a free version available so you can try it out to see if it works for you. Another great feature is that it can easily integrate FTP/SFTP and TortoiseSVN for source control and versioning. A good thing for all the professional PHP developers.

PHPEdit

PHPEdit is a PHP Editor and IDE with an impressive set of features which includes support for all the popular PHP frameworks, code snippets, source control through Subversion or FTP/SFTP, besides the standard PHP editor, debugger and compiler. It also has a free version which you can try for evaluation purposes. The full version will cost you $89.

Zend Studio

Zend Studio truly is one of the top PHP IDEs out there. Zend is not just for individual PHP developers, it’s also ideal for large development teams working on big PHP projects. A big bonus is that Zend hosts weekly webinars on PHP development and general programming, as well as conducting PHP training and certification for individuals and companies. There is trial version of the Zend Studio available for download.

Online PHP Tutorials

IBM PHP Developer Network
IBM has a really comprehensive set of tutorials covering everything from basic to advanced PHP topics. Early stage PHP developers can utilize these tutorials as a quick starting guide on how to do some really everyday things in PHP, such as form authentication, managing file I/O and XML interoperability.

PHP Builder

PHP Builder has a huge database of quick PHP starting guides, tutorials and articles. An example is the tutorial on how to make your own web mailer program in PHP. This is a common feature used by many dynamic websites for contact forms, registration forms etc. They also have accompanying forums that can be utilized for posting problems or questions you have regarding their tutorials.

W3Schools

It’s impossible not mentioning W3Schools when it comes to tutorials and help guides related to web programming languages and frameworks. They have a quick starters guide, covering the most essential parts of the PHP programming language. Beside the guides, they also have a comprehensive reference manual on the most commonly used PHP functions and once you are ready you can take the PHP certification which definitely adds to your credibility.

Tutorialized’s PHP Tutorials

This resource has a pretty thick set of high quality PHP tutorials freely available. There are more than 600 tutorials categorized into around 50 categories, ranging from how to build ecommerce shopping carts to security. Once you understand the fundamentals, you can start experimenting with the help of these tutorials.

DeveloperTutorial’s PHP Tutorials

This is a great place to go hunting for tutorials on PHP related topics that you find interesting. They do not have a thick set of tutorials but the ones they do have are of the highest quality. Most of these tutorials have been written by expert PHP developers.

Online PHP Books

• Web Blazonry’s free PHP books
• TuxRadar’s Practical PHP Programming
• Free Programming Resources / PHP Books
• FreeTechBook’s PHP books
• WikiBooks’s PHP Books

Due to illegal smuggling of Tiger Skin and other body parts, there are very few tigers left in the world today. According to the World Census of Tigers, there are only 5000 -7000 tigers in the world today.  Out of which, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, China and Myanmar claim to have a population of 3000 to 4500 and India alone claims to have a population of 2500 to 3750. However, a 2008 census held by Government of India revealed that the tiger population had dropped to 1,411. What started as a Royal Sport during the olden times is now a target of Poaching and Depleting Habitat. Our National Animal is fighting for its life!

The population of tiger is not only decreasing because of illegal poaching but also because of continuous shrinking of its natural habitat. If we don’t act now, we’ll loose this beautiful heritage from us. The questions is what we can do??? and How we can save the tiger???

Every little bit helps. You can speak up about the cause. You can write or blog about our tigers. Even staying up-to-date with tiger facts like knowledge of tiger sanctuaries, their population, news updates, etc. helps. You can also donate money to NGOs working for the cause, like WWF-India.

Tiger Facts

• From around 40,000 tigers at the turn of the last century, there are just 1411 tigers left in India.
• 2009 was the worst year for tigers in India, with 86 deaths reported.
• There are 37 Tiger sanctuaries in India. However, 17 sanctuaries are on the verge of losing their tiger population.
• Corbett National Park is the oldest tiger park in India. It was created in 1936 as ‘Hailey National Park’.  The Kanha National Park’s lush sal and bamboo forests, grassy meadows and ravines provided inspiration to Rudyard Kipling for his famous novel, The Jungle Book.

Until now they were used read “misused or abused” by thousands of stimulant seekers and high snorters, ignorant people who are looking for herbal / legal supplements to get the artificial highs, weight reduction and other feelings of pseudo hallucination. Its a irony that despite of stringent drug control measures in almost all countries, these drugs are rampantly available to people at drug stores, head shops,shops selling smoking paraphernalia and alternative stuffs.

I don’t simply understand why government allows such vendors to establish and sell these herbal /legal highs over the counter, I guess the law enforcements agencies are also on a “high” forgetting their primary focus of eradicating such wreck stuff from the society. Here is the latest story I read in daily mail UK:

The bride killed by bath salts – the new ‘legal high’ Ivory Wave drug that’s sweeping Britain

Barely a year ago, Sarah Forsyth walked down the aisle in an ivory wedding dress.

‘She was beautiful and so happy then,’ says her mother Margaret Moyle, slowly turning the pages of the wedding album. ‘She will be wearing that dress for her funeral.’

Sarah, 35, died a week ago today, after falling into a coma. Her parents are in no doubt as to what killed her.

Since October last year, she had been regularly buying and using a legal substance called Ivory Wave. And although the coroner is yet to record his verdict, the Moyles lay the blame for her death firmly at the drug’s door.

They insist the powerful powder-form legal drug, sold in £15, 500mg bags on the internet and over the counter in specialist herbal shops, destroyed Sarah’s mental and physical health with terrifying speed.

They are convinced it caused severe swelling and irreparable damage to her brain and raised her heart rate to such a level that when she was taken off life-support it gave up under the strain.

Sarah first bought the drug ten months ago after she read on an online forum that it could help with weight loss.

Just two weeks ago, the drug – also known as Ivory Coast, Purple Wave or Vanilla Sky – was linked to the death of a young man in the Isle of Wight and in recent months has hospitalised dozens more.

Ivory Wave is marketed as bath salts or plant food and is labelled ‘not for human consumption’ to circumvent strict laws governing the supply of pharmaceuticals in Britain.

But the substance’s true purpose is not a secret online, where news and reviews of readily available legal highs spread quickly on dedicated internet forums.

Drug experts and doctors are hugely concerned – they now believe the substance, which is either ingested orally or snorted, is potentially more dangerous than Meow Meow, the previously legal high which was banned in April after officials identified 26 cases where it may have been a contributing cause of death.

There is little or no information available about exactly how many people are taking Ivory Wave, how the drug is made or what it contains. The manufacturers do not publish a list of ingredients.

‘I honestly don’t think Sarah had a clue what she was getting herself into when she bought it,’ says Margaret, 60. ‘To my knowledge, she had never been a drug user.

‘Legal high’: Ivory Wave is sold in £15, 500mg bags on the internet

‘As far as I knew, she just wanted something to help her lose a few pounds and, stupidly perhaps, she got this stuff she’d seen on the internet.

‘It got hold of her so quickly. She was in its grip.’

Within months of taking her first hit, their happy, healthy, newlywed daughter had become a paranoid, aggressive agoraphobic, insomniac. She dropped from a size 16 to a size six.

Soon, it was too late for their daughter – and Margaret and her husband Robin, a 65-year-old retired school caretaker, had no idea of the havoc that Ivory Wave was causing elsewhere in the country.

‘When Sarah first fell into a coma even her doctors had never heard of the stuff,’ says Margaret.

But that has changed now. Exactly a week before Sarah’s death – as her parents and her husband Jim kept a hopeful vigil by her hospital bedside – the body of 24-year- old chef and regular Ivory Wave-user, Michael Bishton, was hauled out of the sea by fishermen off the coast of the Isle of Wight.

He is thought to have jumped or fallen from a clifftop on the east side of the island while high on Ivory Wave. He died from his injuries, rather than from the effects of the drug. But his was the first death to be linked to its use.

His mother and girlfriend both say he had become deeply disturbed since first taking the drug, suffering severe paranoia and hallucinations.

Meanwhile, A&E departments from Scotland to Dorset have reported a sudden surge of admissions suffering from the effects of Ivory Wave.

There were 20 recent A&E admissions in lothian, Scotland, and 12 in Cumbria, where several patients were suffering such acute and long-lasting paranoid psychosis after taking it that they had to be completely sedated before they could be treated.

The drug is also known to raise the heart rate and blood pressure to dangerous levels and cause kidney failure, seizures, muscle damage and loss of bowel control.

Every A&E department in England has now been sent an alert about it and the chief medical officers in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have issued similar warnings.

At home in Braintree, Essex, Margaret and Robin want some good to come from their terrible loss.

‘This stuff comes with no warning, no ingredients list, no dosage advice,’ says Margaret, who works as a school cleaner and exam invigilator.

‘It’s legal and it’s advertised as all sorts of things, from plant food, to bath salts. The truth is, it’s a dangerous drug. It destroyed our beautiful daughter.’

Looking at Sarah’s wedding photographs is especially painful, because they know it was seeing these pictures that made her so determined to lose weight in the first place.

‘Sarah had suffered from depression for a while and then, about three years ago, she was diagnosed with diabetes,’ explains Margaret.

‘The combination of anti-depressants and insulin made her put on weight and she felt very self-conscious.’

She describes Sarah as ‘vulnerable’ and says that as a teenager she had been anorexic for a time.

‘Not being in control of her weight really troubled her. When she saw her wedding pictures she kept saying: “oh god, I look so fat.” I said she looked beautiful in those pictures. She really did. But she wouldn’t hear it.’

In October, Sarah told her parents and her husband Jim, a 46-year-old transport worker, that she was taking a diet aid that she’d bought online.

‘She didn’t think there was anything dodgy about it, so she was quite open with us about taking it at first. We thought it was legitimate and I think she did too.

‘She went from a size 16 to a size six in about four months and, of course, she thought this was fabulous. She thought of it as her magic potion.

‘I don’t know if it suppressed her appetite or increased her metabolism – perhaps a bit of both. But the weight just fell off her.

‘I was shocked at the sight of her when she was at her thinnest. I said: “Darling, you’re too thin now. You’re taking it too far. Stop.” Then we realised that she’d become dependent on this stuff.’

At around the same time, Margaret realised that Sarah was not ingesting her ‘slimming aid’ but snorting it like cocaine.

‘I was horrified and said: “It can’t be natural if that’s the way you’re taking it. It sounds like drugs.” She said: “No Mum, it’s just the quickest way to get it into your system.”

‘We begged her to stop – her brother even said she was going to kill herself if she wasn’t careful – but we couldn’t watch her all the time. She was a grown woman and whenever we weren’t there she bought the stuff with her credit card and took it.

‘I asked her several times if she knew what was in it. She didn’t seem too sure, but she said it was all totally legal and above board.
Read more: http://www. dailymail.co.uk /news/article-1306877/Legal-high-bath-salts-Ivory-Wave-kill-bride.html

The Web was abuzz Wednesday after it was revealed that a hacker had exposed corporate information about Twitter after breaking into an employee’s e-mail account. The breach raised red flags for individuals as well as businesses about the passwords used to secure information they store on the Web.
hat account housed some of Twitter’s private financial documents and notes, according to Twitter’s official blog.

Some of those documents circulated the blogosphere on Wednesday, and TechCrunch, a technology blog, published a Twitter financial forecast. The hacker sent 310 documents to the tech site, according to a post by Michael Arrington, TechCrunch’s founder and co-editor.

he attack on Twitter highlights the problem. For its internal documents, the company uses the business version of Google Apps, a service that Google offers to individuals free. Google Apps provides e-mail, word processing, spreadsheets and calendars over the Web.

The content is stored on Google’s servers, which can save time and money and enable employees to work together on documents at the same time. But it also means that the security is only as good as the password. A hacker who breaks into one person’s account can access information shared by friends, family members or colleagues, which is what happened at Twitter.

The Twitter breach occurred about a month ago, Twitter said. A hacker calling himself Hacker Croll broke into an administrative employee’s e-mail account and gained access to the employee’s Google Apps account, where Twitter shares spreadsheets and documents with business ideas and financial details, said Biz Stone, a Twitter co-founder.

The hacker then sent documents about company plans and finances, confidential contracts, and job applicants to two tech news blogs, TechCrunch, in Silicon Valley, and Korben, in France. There was also personal information about Twitter employees including credit card numbers.

The hacker also broke into the e-mail account of the wife of Evan Williams, Twitter’s chief executive, and from there accessed several of Mr. Williams’ personal Internet accounts, including those at Amazon and PayPal, Mr. Stone said.

TechCrunch revealed documents showing that Twitter, a private company that so far has no revenue, projected that it will reach a billion users and $1.54 billion in revenue by 2013. Michael Arrington, TechCrunch’s founder, said in an interview that the hacker had also sent him detailed strategy documents about potential business models, the competitive threat from Facebook and when the company might be acquired.

Some analysts say the breach highlights how dangerous it can be for people and companies to store confidential documents on Web servers, or “in the cloud.”

But Mr. Stone said that the attack “isn’t about any flaw in Web apps,” but rather about a bigger issue that affects individuals and businesses alike. “It speaks to the importance of following good personal security guidelines such as choosing strong passwords,” he said.

Instead of circumventing security measures, it appears that the Twitter hacker managed to correctly answer the personal questions that Gmail asks of users to reset the password.

“A lot of the Twitter users are pretty much living their lives in public,” said Chris King, director of product marketing at Palo Alto Networks, which creates firewalls. “If you broadcast all your details about what your dog’s name is and what your hometown is, it’s not that hard to figure out a password.”

Security experts advise people to use unique, complex passwords for each Web service they use and include a mix of numbers and letters. Free password management programs like KeePass and 1Password can help people juggle passwords for numerous sites.

Andrew Storms, director of security operations for nCircle, a network security company, suggested choosing false answers to the security questions like “What was your first phone number?” or making up obscure questions instead of using the default questions that sites provide. (Of course, that presents a new problem of remembering the false information.)

For businesses, Google allows company administrators to set up rules for password strength and add additional authentication tools like unique codes.

The Twitter hacker claims to have wanted to teach people to be more careful. In a message to Korben, the hacker wrote that his attack could make Internet users “conscious that no one is protected on the Net.”
Shaila Smith

Abraham Lincoln
Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is; the tree is the real thing.

Warren Buffet
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero
“When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men’s minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.”

Colin Powell
“Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence.”

China, sources point out, has been consistent in its position of trying to block such bids. It was China’s opposition that had kept the Jamaat-ud-Dawa and its chief Hafiz Mohammad Sayeed off the UNSC terror list for a long time. After the Mumbai terror attacks, even China could not block India’s renewed bid to proscribe the JuD as a Let front.

After getting the JuD proscribed in December, India had then move to put Maulana Azhar, who was released by India in exchange for hostages of the hijacked IC-814 flight, on the UNSC terror list. Since the Jaish e Mohammad and LeT are already proscribed by the UNSC, New Delhi had hoped that complications would not arise in getting the two on the list even though it anticipated opposition from known quarters.

However, it was certainly not anticipating Britain to seek more evidence. The British move is being seen as unpalatable considering that the UK has also been the target of a series of terror attacks.

The British themselves have tried to justify their move by saying that they want to ensure that India has a foolproof case against Masood Azhar and Cheema. But this explanation has failed to find any takers in New Delhi which is confident of the case it has against Masood Azhar, who is accused of masterminding the Parliament attacks, and Cheema, who is wanted for the Mumbai train blasts.

This episode has once again revived memories of Mr Miliband’s disastrous visit to India in January this year. Mr Miliband managed to kick up a diplomatic storm after he linked the resolution of the Kashmir issue to the Mumbai terror attacks. He was further accused of being arrogant during bilateral talks.

In spite of the road block, India will continue with efforts to get the two on the UNSC list of terrorists and terror organisations, which was set up through the “Al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions” resolution (1267). Individuals and groups on this list are subjected to a travel ban, freezing of accounts and a travel ban.

India is keen to get the JeM chief on the UNSC list even though Pakistan has continued to express ignorance about his whereabouts. This is seen as one of the ways to put pressure on Pakistan. After the JuD was proscribed, Pakistan was forced to arrest Sayeed and take some preliminary action against the JuD, which had for long been operating as a charity organisation.

Think twice before you kiss any swine – it might cause swine flue!!

Swine flu spreads in the same way as ordinary colds and flu.

Swine influenza does not normally infect humans, although this occasionally does occur – usually in people who have had close contact with pigs.

Swine flu regularly causes outbreaks in pigs.

Pity the poor pig. The otherwise estimable mammal has never had a very good rep — something about the mud, the snout, the oink. Now add the flu.

When bird flu viruses replicate in pigs, they pick up the viral machinery that gives more selective flu strains the power to spread to other mammals, like us. That’s what makes pigs such potent mixing bowls for flu.

Avian flu that is passed through the pig’s mammalian system, however, can be passed readily among humans.

Pigs that carry influenza tend not to die en masse the way flocks of birds do, eliminating the immediate tip-off that a serious pathogen is at large.

This American money had been diverted to help finance weapons systems designed to counter India, not Al Qaeda or the Taliban, the officials said, adding that the United States has paid tens of millions of dollars in inflated Pakistani reimbursement claims for fuel, ammunition and other costs.

This is now evident, as they used the American money to enrich their goal of making improvised Islamic nuclear bomb with the help of china. They succeeded in their plans, they made nuclear bombs, proliferated the nuclear technology to terrorist states like North Korea in exchange of missile technology and still harboring global terroirsts and reaping money.

But US strategists and law makers are still sleeping, they are not understand the pakistan is making fool of them and reaping US tax payers money for their own cause of developing  weapons of mass destruction. Recently, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the United States would provide $100 million to Pakistan in humanitarian aid such as food, tents, radios, generators and other items and that the U.S. Defense Department would give a further $10 million in unspecified assistance. After announcing this huge money of $110 million to Pakistan, she said that “Providing this assistance is not only the right thing to do but we believe it is essential to global security and the security of the United States and we are prepared to do more as the situation demands,” .

Clinton also described the last three decades of U.S. policy toward Pakistan as “incoherent,” saying that the United States had worked with Pakistan to arm the Mujahideen fighters who helped drive the Soviet Union from Afghanistan in the 1980s only to effectively abandon both countries.

She needs to understand that they shake hands with US for their own strategic interests and they got huge money in return of their grey support to US during these years.

They are now a bigger threat than afganistan and long time enemy Russia…as it is now starkly evident that they are the biggest nuclear proliferator regime in the world.

A recent Congressional report has told US lawmakers that North Korea received designs for uranium enrichment centrifuges from Pakistan’s disgraced nuclear scientist A Q Khan in return for its long range missiles.

I don’t understand the use of AQ khan instead of Pakistan because North Korea has provided missiles to Pakistan not to AQ Khan. North Korea has been exporting missiles to countries in the Middle East and South Asia and has had joint collaboration in development of missiles with Iran and Pakistan, it said.

In the 1990s, North Korea exported Scud and Nodong missiles to Pakistan, Iran, Yemen, Syria and reportedly Egypt. It entered into joint development programmes with both Pakistan and Iran.

Pyongyang received designs for uranium enrichment centrifuges from Pakistan nuclear “czar” A Q Khan and has attempted to purchase overseas key components for uranium enrichment centrifuges, but some of these purchases have been blocked, according to the report.

Even after so many reports were declassified to US law makers they are still providing hundreds of millions of dollars to Pakistan and they in turn are conspiring with Iran and North Korea to design new power corridor by developing weapons of mass destruction. I am not a strategic analyst, nor I am a defense person…  I am just a common citizen but still I wish to know from our responsible / sensible government, why they are directly/ indirectly supporting terrorist nations.

Life-size stickers of people were stuck on automatic sliding glass doors at a mall in Mumbai, India. When someone approaches the doors move apart and it feels like the people on the door are moving away. The person enters to find the message ‘People Move Away When You Have Body Odour’.