I am a CISA

After a long and nail-biting wait for the results of the CISA exam, I am relieved to know that I have passed the exam successfully. It had been some very difficult months for me leading up to the exams. You see I was back in India at the I registered for the exam and I had registered for it in Washington DC in anticipation of my assignment in the US starting sometime February this year. The trip was getting delayed for some reason or the other and I was in self doubt as to whether to postpone this or cancel it or change the location. But finally I stuck to the initial plan of taking it in US and I came here. I had not purchased any review manual from ISACA and was relying on the CISA Prep guide by Richard Kramer from Wiley books. The reviews of the books were not very encouraging, but I being short on cash, still went for that and studied using that book. Then there were the re-location pains from India to US and the fact the client manager was demanding more and more from me. Add to it a 7 month old son who traveled half the globe for me and I had to set up house for my family and everything. I finally got around to some serious study by May 15th and finished reading the book just once 3 days before the exams.

Then I took some sample tests from the Boson Simulator software and attempted almost 500 questions. But the results were far from satisfactory. I could manage a best score of 60% correct answers in all the tests I took. I was so very down in dumps. But my wife managed to egg me up quite nicely and gave me the confidence I needed to tackle the exam. I finally took the exam and I guess, very soon I will get a certificate that will look like this:

Looking back at my experiences, I think this was the most planned and the best test I ever took. I had planned to be a CISA back in April - May 2004 and had found out that the exam is held only once (now twice) and registration has to be done sometime before February. I saved some money, registered and took the test and passed. I think now I can rest on my laurels for some time.

But just for a little while.

My bout with Spyware

I had my first very serious bout with Spyware. And sadly enough, it won the war. I won the first round by identifying the Spyware, but the originator had hid it very well and would have taken me some more time to get to the root of it. But this was the computer in a corporate organization where re-installation is not a big deal and to top it, the computer was the home computer of the President of the company where I work as a contractor. So my objections of not giving up didn't count.

The computer actually was taken over by someone (I would have loved to find who) and was acting as a Zombie for that person spamming all over the place. There was a rouge process called 18.tmp running on the computer and was not getting killed. I worked for only 30 minutes and figured out some articles
here, here and here. I did not get chance to try out some of the things I know, but I am sure it will come up again sometime and at that I will be ready to kill.

I have started a war against Spyware and Adware, but this incident is going to take it to active combat levels.

If you need services of Spywareman, then let me know. The friendly neighbourhood Spywareman will be there to help.

Did anyone had similar experiences? Let me know.

Beating at their own game... or should I say thought?

Microsoft yesterday launched a new product called Virtual Earth, which is being called as Microsoft's answer to Google Maps (which by the way is very impressive). Virtual Earth is still not available on Microsoft's website, only in some forums. No definitive information yet. But they are late, very late. Google has launched another product called Google Earth which while working off the internet is desktop application working without browser and can find almost anything on this earth, literally and its much more detailed than Google maps and has animation / movements that give a very great feeling. This picture is captured while the earth is moving towards you and it feels great. Searching the Earth for addresses gives great details and here is where I live. But that's not the point . Microsoft plans to add Local Search in it very soon which will allow a person to search places of interests like restaurants near his / her area. According to Computerworld columnist Elizabeth Montalbano - "Local search has been a gaping hole in the MSN search engine. In addition to Google, major search-engine providers Yahoo Inc., Ask Jeeves Inc. and America Online Inc. also have local search tabs on their search Web sites.

Local searching is becoming increasingly popular with users and online advertisers. It lets users find business listings and complementary information from a specific geographical area, while advertisers are able to aim their ads at those who are looking for services and products in their vicinity."

In his best selling book "Business @ the speed of thought" Microsoft chariman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates talks exactly about this. I don't have the copy of the book with me now, but I read it and I thought it made perfect sense for local businesses to have targetted advertising rather than general advertising where the hit rate is very poor. So if their CSA had this idea so long back, why is it that Microsoft never developed this product? According to me Microsoft is not a market leader. It is a fierce competitor. It waits for someone to develop an idea and then jump on that and develop it. They are good at developing and taking forward others' idea and so good that it appears their own idea to common folks (Remember the Mac like interface? Office suite is a improved version of Wordstar, Lotus 1-2-3, dBase, Visio was purchased and so on an so forth). Is Microsoft afraid of developing new products for fear of failure? Nobody would like to admit it, but I guess that is what appears.

Any thoughts?

Asta la VISTA baby!!!

Microsoft has changed the name of the latest in the line of Windows family of Operating system to Windows Vista. As everybody knows it was code named as Windows Longhorn (which seemed funny to me). The good part seems to be Microsoft finally seems to be moving away from the ridiculous year based naming convention they were following since Windows 95. First it was Windows XP and now it is Windows Vista with the tag line "Bringing clarity to your world"

I have worked a bit on the Longhorn Beta build 4074 and I must say that I am impressed with it. I know the experts have criticised it very badly about not living upto the promise, but I say guys, it just a beta and I am impressed with what I have seen so far. The experience is smoother than any of the Windows OS so far, it is user AND administrator friendly and the interface is intuitive. I am not a great fan of Microsoft and Windows, given a choice I would choose Linux anytime, but I think Windows Vista might just make me think a little bit.

Not too much.