हिन्दी में प्रथम लेख

कई बार मुझे इस बात का एहसास होता है कि हिन्दी हमारे देश कि प्रमुख भाषा होते हुए भी कंप्यूटर पर कदाचित् ही उपयोग में लायी जाती है। शायद इसकी एक वजह हिन्दी की देवनागरी लिपि हो सकती है, जो कि मूल रूप से कंप्यूटर पर लिखी जाने में थोडी कठिन होती है। प्रायः हमारे कुंजीपटल पर अंग्रेजी अक्षर अंकित होते है और हिन्दी कुंजियों का क्रम शायद ही कोई जानता हो। परन्तु अब अंग्रेजी कुंजीपटल के माध्यम से भी देवनागरी बड़ी ही आसानी से लिखी जा सकता है। यह लेख उपरोक्त कथन का जीवंत उदहारण है।

तो फ़िर क्या वजह है कि हिन्दी का उपयोग आज भी व्यापक रूप से नही हो रहा। हमारे देश मैं इंटरनेट का उपयोग करने वालो कि संख्या दिन प्रतिदिन बढ़ रही है, पर हिन्दी लिखने वालो का प्रतिशत आज भी नगण्य है। एक आम उपयोगकर्ता आज भी हिन्दी मैं लिखना नही जानता। कहने को तो आज हम सूचना प्रौद्योगिकी की महाशक्ति है, पर हम हमारी ख़ुद की भाषाओँ में ही लिखना नही जानते।

हम अपने सामने ऐसे कई उदहारण रख सकते जिन्होंने अपनी भाषाओँ को ससम्मान इंटरनेट तक पहुँचाया। जर्मनी एवं दुसरे यूरोपियन देश, चीन, जापान, थाईलैंड, अरबिक देश आदि आज कामयाबी से व्यापक तौर पर अपनी भाषाओँ का उपयोग कर रहें हैं। पर हम आज भी अंग्रेजी पर पूरी तरह अवलंबित हैं।

कोई दोमत नही कि आज हम जहाँ है उसमें अंग्रजी का महत्वपूर्ण योगदान है। अंग्रेजी की वजह से ही हमने सूचना प्रौद्योगिकी में यह मुकाम हासिल किया है। पर इस वजह से आज हिन्दी का तिरस्कार होने लगा है। यदि आप हिन्दी बोल रहें हो तो लोग आपको नीची निगाहों से देखने लगते है। कम से कम तथाकथित 'कॉस्मो' शहरों का 'मल्टीप्लेक्स कल्चर' तो यही कहता है। बच्चो को बचपन से हिन्दी बोलने पे सज़ा दी जाने लगती है। हिन्दी को प्रायः दूजी श्रेणी कि का दर्जा ही हासिल होता है। या तो अंग्रेजी कि वजह से, या उस प्रदेश कि प्रांतीय भाषा के सामने। कई लोग तो हिन्दी में बात करने वाले को सीधे-सीधे पिछडा करार दे देते हैं। लोग फ्रेंच, जर्मन या कोई विदेशी भाषा बड़े गर्व के साथ सीखते है। पर हिन्दी का ज़िक्र तक करते उन्हें शर्म आती है। यह दर्शाता है कि हम में कितना आत्मसम्मान है।

हो यह गया है कि हम ना तो घर के रहें है न घाट के। ना हमें ढंग से अंग्रेजी आती है, (जी हाँ, आज भी हमारी अंग्रेजी का आंग्ल-देशों में मज़ाक ही उडाया जाता है) ना ही हम ढंग से हिन्दी बोलने के काबिल रहे हैं, और ना ही अपनी प्रांतीय भाषा। और इस भाषा कि खिचडी को नये पीढ़ी की 'फैशन' करार दिया जाता है। मैं किसी हिन्दी के प्राध्यापक की तरह कोई भाषण नही देना चाहता, और मैं ख़ुद भी इसी 'फैशन' का जाने-अनजाने गुलाम बन चुका हूँ।

आज भी हमारे देश की ९० फीसदी से ज्यादा जनता (जो की पढ़ लिख सकती है ), प्रमुख रूप से हिन्दी या प्रांतीय भाषा का प्रयोग अपने रोज़मर्रा के कार्यो के लिए करती है। यदि उन तक हमें इन्टरनेट को पहुचना है तो अपनी भाषाओं को इन्टरनेट तक पहुचाना ही पड़ेगा। हम लोग भाग्यशाली है जो अंग्रेजी पढ़-लिख सकते है। परन्तु जो नही है उन तक इस चमत्कारी सूचना प्रौद्योगिकी को पहुचाने के लिए देशीय भाषाओं का इन्टरनेट तक पहुचना अत्यन्त आवश्यक है।

यद्यपि आज के दौर में अंग्रेजी अत्यधिक महत्वपूर्ण है परन्तु अपनी मातृभाषा का सम्मान करना भी हमारी ही ज़िम्मेदारी है। भले ही आप ख़ुद हिन्दी का प्रयोग ना करे, पर इस लेख को पढ़ कर यदि आप हिन्दी के लिए भी अपने ह्रदय में थोड़ा सा स्थान बना पायें, और हिन्दी को हीन भावना से न देखे, तो भी मेरा यह लेख सफल है।

Chrome shows passwords

This is really very very stupid on your part if you are letting chrome save your password. Go to

Settings->Options->Minor Tweaks->Show Saved Passwords

Select the website name and click Show Password, and there your are. Your password is shown as plain text! (Of course it should be plain text if it wants to show you the password in readable format. Plain text was just an intensifier to show my disbelief ;).

The same functionality (you can read a-hole-in-security as well,) is also available on FireFox 3.0. Go to

Tools->Options->Security->Passwords->Saved Passwords

But there is Master Password to protect anyone else from seeing the list. If you have not yet checked Use a master password then pray God & leave to mercy of intruder. [By intruder I mean anyone who has access to your machine with your login credentials and with whom you do not want to share your passwords. It can be your roommate, colleague, friend..... or anyone, not necessarily a hacker. ]

If you let your browser save your passwords (which is indeed helpful, given there are tons of site you have registered to), I strongly recommend using a Master Password which is, actually, a password for all passwords. Before auto-filling any of your saved passwords, FireFox asks you to enter the Master Password. So all you have to remember just one password, the Master Password. And the intruder cannot access site using your password-to-that-site unless s/he knows your Master Password.

Chrome simply doesn't have any provision of Master Password. This implies anyone who can open the chrome on your machine (with your OS login) can see all of your saved passwords with just few clicks. Pretty straight forward and easy. So don't ever leave your machine unlocked if you are trusting chrome to keep your passwords safe because it assumes you keep you machine safe :)

Chrome Contd...

I am using chrome since yesterday and believe me, its terrfic. A refreshingly new broswer with amazing speed.

Some links to convince you:

benchmarking

http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=2507

why yet another broswer? Google's answer on their official blog

Official Google Blog: A fresh take on the browser

the official chrome comic

http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html

wikipedia link, (guys who update wiki are really quick :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Chrome

Google OS Blog,

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/09/invisible-browser.html

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/09/google-os-is-actually-browser-google.html

There is lot more just a google away, Try it!

Hotmail on Chrome

When i was accessing hotmail from chrome, I was welcomed by this screen.

This was not a problem, just click continue and everything works fine. But why just MS site threw this ;-) ? Jokes apart, this is expected. New browser may take some time to be identified by some sites.

UPDATES: some of the functionalties are missing/not working.

Google Chrome - A Quick Look

Installation
Downloads very fast. Installs very quickly. Very easy.

Browser Startup
Very quick indeed. 10 times faster than ffx I'd say. Really lightning fast. Lets wait for some more features to add to it, like plugins etc.

Page Loading
I don't think browser can do much if your internet connection is screwed up. I didn't find any noticeable difference in terms of loading a page. For real benchmarking, test highly AJAXified sites on chrome. According to developers, V8 and WebKit would make rich internet applications work faster on chrome.

UI
Truly Awesome. Almost no UI. All you see is your webpage. Full marks for UI engineering. All not-so-used buttons/controls (which clutter up other browser's UI space) are safely hidden.
Window's title-bar's space is utilized for displaying tab. Even the browser's name is not shown anywhere on the screen. Looks like not a single pixel is wasted.

Tabs
Extremely Flexible Tabs, Pull out of one window, Push it in other window.
Secure. If one tab crashes, whole browser wont go down. (ffx3 on vista has become real pain in this regards)

Shortcuts
common shortcuts keys should work like they work for ffx/IE.
CTRL+TAB, CTRL+SHIFT+TAB, F5, CTRL+N, CTRL+T etc.
(They SHOULD work, for ease of new users)

Address+Search Bar
Address bar can act as search bar as well. (hmm...)

Application Shortcuts
drag and drop web applications shortcuts on desktop (..not a great deal, at least i think so)

Well well well....you can read about more features (downloads, security, incognito window etc) on chrome's site. Why am I wasting my time!!

Conclusion
Truly a new generation browser. Its worth giving a try. Very light weight and fast. Smart, streamlined and intuitive UI. But in the browser market, it has a long way to go.

Google Chrome

There was a time when browser used to be a separate application that was not a standard part of Operating System. People had options. Then came a big giant, and things would never be the same. Air would never be clean again. A cold war was set off. Do I need to tell more?

Internet Explorer, the blue E, had become synonymous to internet the same way Windows became synonymous to computer. [I have deliberately used internet in place of browser and computer in place of OS, so please, no hullabaloo regarding the same ;) ] . The little blue E was made an inseparable part of ubiquitous Windows. Though there was an Antitrust suit blah blah.. (which I don't want to discuss here).. it hardly made any difference.

Time kept passing by. The big M had now become a symbol of tyranny. The little E kept reigning the browsersphere. Given the backing of the big M, nobody could move E from its throne.

Meanwhile there was born a little g (then little), who had all good intents of organizing information. Little g would not intrude into business of others. It would just innovate (or take over small fishes in the pond).

At around same time a little m was born. By 2004 little m devised its flagship product named ffx (firefox, if you don't know). It was open source browser, all set to set all the records straight with M for whatever it had done to the poor chap NN (Netscape Navigator). And by far, it is climbing the ladder of success, successfully.

During all this, little g's growth had been exponential. Its journey from little g to bold face, font size 64, underlined, hyperlinked G was record breaking, jaws dropping.

G liked the good deeds of m. Shook hands. Together they looked like becoming a synomym of web 2.0. Glory of browser was coming back. People started realizing that Internet cannot only be explored by IE (and also computer cannot only be operated through a small service Window). G was ruling the web.

G should be having data of users like no other on the planet. G's offerings were increasing day-by day. G Offered win-win situation for businesses and end users by its Advertising services. G took control of everything, from search to email, blog to documents, code to health, finance to patents (and the endless list goes on). But somewhere in the back of its mind, G realized that all services it provides are still accessed through a medium (browser) on which it has little control.

Bang!!!! G lunched its own browser named chrome. They are giving good reasons as well. (Psst psst... has it got anything to with impending release of IE8)

As of now (2-Sep-2008), it (like all other Google products) is under Google's cool, all-new, exclusive forever-beta tag. Do they also think putting beta is trendy? because gmail, after 4 years, still has beta.

Anyways, I've always liked almost everything Google has offered. And am going to try this out as well and very soon gonna update you about it.

PS: Don't be deceived by the cynical language of this blog. I am a Google fan. I have respect to MS as well. They have done a lot good to the computing world. Please don't always disparage MS. It should really hurt the good folks working there.

PPS: Throughout this blog I have not mentioned the super brand with little i (and their broswer Safari). And also the browser with big O (Opera). This does not mean their contribution is insignificant. They were not here just because they would add a very little to the discussion. Now I have mentioned them, I feel better. Feel much safer from those iFanatics.

PPPS: You can find more on browser comparison (and almost anything that you can think of) on wikipedia

Delete data from tables

Ever needed to clear all the data from your database (usually while in development)?
You can use this script to clean the tables. It will work for oracle only, AFAIK.

-- script to clean the tables (ie the deleting the data only)
DECLARE 
cursor c1 is  select distinct table_name from user_tab_columns;

BEGIN
  for v1 in c1 loop
    dbms_output.put_line('cleaning '|| v1.table_name ||'...');
    execute immediate 'Delete from '|| v1.table_name ||'';
    dbms_output.put_line('done'); 
  end loop;
  dbms_output.put_line('completed');
END;

Disclaimer: I hold no responsibility for the havoc this script may create on your database ;) never use it on production databases.