Sunday, January 13, 2013

Learning - The Learning Ability

The learned is not the one who has learned a lot but actually the one who has learnt the ability to learn, unlearn and learn back again. How do you gain such an ability? Is it god-gifted or can you actually learn it starting fresh and ultimately become an expert?

I know more than few people who are prodigiously good at what they can do and that too without any formal education. These few people are either brilliant researchers or have such an amazing mind that they are able to grasp the complex of concepts within a blink of an eye.

We all think -- but most never analyse our thinking process. Why do we assume, perceive, take, mind, view and even idealise things as we do? Yes culture, peers, society, knowledge and education plays its part but in the end all this adds into our own thinking and we come to a certain liking, disliking, opinion and conclusion.

Let's take an example of one of my friends. She would shop or eat from a place where everyone is shopping or eating. The sole reason being, masses cannot be wrong. When this friend buys an eatable from some not so famous place -- she would start complaining about the taste, quality, quantity etc.

We are learning constantly amazingly even when we are taking a nap. It is nearly impossible not to learn even if you are trying not to learn. Learning is easy -- but unlearning what we have already learnt and learning a totally new concept over it is pretty hard.

If we can unlearn our notions and develop new notions over them then we can be classified as learned in real sense. How can you achieve such learning ability? It is not simple but you can try by being open-minded, ready to challenge your norms, accept being wrong, ready to being corrected, ask others for help and lastly but more importantly never becoming an expert. 

Friday, January 11, 2013

Or Something Similar

There comes a time in your daily routine life -- when whatever you do ends up being a mistake or something similar. You become frustrated and want to scream and cry out loud or something similar. What should you do when everything you touch becomes dust and evaporates in thin air or something similar, you get the idea. Right?

Life's full of curvy ups and downs. The thrills, twists, turns and climaxes depend mostly on your instant reactions and counter actions or something similar. The spoken word and the sped arrow or something similar like spent time cannot return but the after-thought feeling actually does to haunt and taunt. In matters of mere seconds you lose it if you do not control it -- your temper, temptations, anger or similar wave of emotions.

Yes, controlling your self is the hardest task to perform and executing it perfectly is near to impossible or something similar. Day-in and day-out you have to sweat like a champion sports-person to control your own self. The self that can instantly destruct like a nuclear bomb ready to shred everything into pieces that comes in its way. There are commonly two results of your actions. Either you win or you lose. Let me tell you the hidden third result which would make you a master of your self. An action that results in a win-win situation. Yes, neither you nor anyone else loses -- try it or something similar and see for your self.  

Words Will Not Rhyme

Up this time and thinking about
Time lost with a furious clout

A human can err, so what?
Angels cannot, so bait!

Nothing is over and out till
You believe in miracles still

You live in matter of seconds
The moment that fast descends

Let's face it with vigour
Destinies that keep rigour

Waiting for that exact time
When words will not rhyme

See you soon in cloud nine
Always you were, are mine!

Saturday, November 10, 2012

The Pakistan Saga!

What follows is just my individual thinking, analysis, observation, view, opinion and by no means I am promoting and marketing some or any doctrine what so ever! 

Pakistan recently banned quite a few sites for the blasphemous content that were displayed on Internet. Some one who is in my social circle asked a question which went like this, "Should we use Facebook now as the government has lifted the ban?" A heart throbbing question indeed.

Okay! Lets be a little logical here. Internet was the mean used to spread such hatred. Does that mean we should ban Internet in Pakistan? It is not just about Facebook. Why do the Pakistanis think they are the owner of Islam? Why did not the Muslims in other countries come out of their homes in protest? Why do we think we have to save Islam in our own righteous ways? So now what can be the solution to such issues? Well in my humblest opinion we should simply ignore. The less we care about such heinous displays of mediocre mindset the better would be the end result! We should focus on constructive solutions rather than hiding from the problem on hand. The blanket ban is not ignoring it is like what the Ostrich does to protect itself from the sandstorm. I think ignoring is the best solution. You can come up with better one.


I would also like to shed some light on the plight of Ahmadies in Pakistan. How many of us have read the religious books of Ahmadies? For that very matter how many of us have read our own religious books? Going into further granularity how many of us have really read Quran with translation? So who do we think we are to label someone as Kaafir?

Lets now just for the sake of our own well being start treating each other as mere humans and do not go into sects and divide ourselves and become prey to others! If I am Abbasi, you are Syed, she is Chaudhary and he is a Khan... What does it have to do with me being superior than others? In the very same manner, if I am Brelvi, you are Deobandi, she is Wahabi and he is Ahmadi... Please let them live and they will let you live. These are all different paths to the same destination. Let them have their path. Let us go on our path. In the end we will meet at the same place. Lets do it without pointing fingers at each other.

“Darkness can not drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” 

- Martin Luther King


Let's all live in peace and harmony! :)

Life is important?

Why is money a priority in our lives? Why are the things bought from money important to us than our relations? Surely you can give me hundreds of reasons for these two questions but that would simply show your materialistic approach towards life. Do you think what you buy from money is important in any way than your life? 

On one particular day I witnessed a car accident. Definitely a horrible thing to happen to anyone. But what happened after the accident was more horrible than the accident itself. You may ask why? Well instead of thanking the stars that we are safe the accidentees started abusing each other for the loss that each incurred the other. Whoa! I wonder if they would have done the same after losing two three limbs and going unconscious or to the extreme if had reached the package expiration date. Why we start giving importance to unimportant things and do not see the obvious?

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

CISSP - Domain 10 - Operations Security

Operations Security relates security aspect in day to day activities of a business enterprise. The domain discusses all the questions regarding: How to keep the data at rest secure? How to securely destroy the data? What privileges need to be assigned and to whom and when? How to protect the hardware (maintenance) and software (piracy)? And how to carry out patch management, problem management, incident management etc.? The important access control concepts  like least privilege and need to know are also discussed along with mechanisms to facilitate and perform audit and monitoring. It can be said that Operations Security is basically the concise combination of all of the other domains of CISSP.

CISSP - Domain 9 - Application Development Security

Security Architecture domain focused on securing systems part while Application Security domain focuses on securing software and applications from their development phase to implementation phase to maintenance phases. The domain highlights that security should be the component of every cycle of Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). Applications include agents, applets, software, databases, data warehouses, knowledge-based systems. The domain discusses concepts like data mining, data ware-housing, intelligent systems and elaborates on what application controls are needed to ensure confidentiality, integrity and availability of information system. The domain also touches on concepts of penetration testing with regards to applications.