Without doubt, AVG is probably the most popular, free, antivirus software. It protects your system against both viruses and spyware. Initially, the free version of AVG was stable and effective. As the Dark Side advances, AVG has fallen behind a bit, but, it is still a good product if you combine it with other products (specifically, #2 and #3). Don’t depend solely on AVG.

2: Malwarebytes

Malwarebytes fights malware — programs designed with malicious intent. Unfortunately, there’s no way to uninstall malware once it’s installed, because it doesn’t show up in the Control Panel. In addition, these files usually install helper programs that re-download then reinstall the malware if you delete it. Malware includes viruses, worms, rootkits, spyware, and trojans. As these products evolve, they are harder to detect and remove. Malwarebytes is one of the best programs, free or not, for detecting and removing malware.

3: Spybot – Search & Destroy

Spyware tracks your Internet usage to create a marketing profile that is then sold, without your knowledge, to advertising companies. If you notice a new toolbar in your browser, most likely you’re being tracked by spyware. Sometimes, these programs hijack your browser homepage, forcing you to browse the Internet through their system. Although spyware isn’t inherently destructive, it usually affects performance. If your system suddenly slows down, chances are you’ve been infected. Spybot – Search & Destroy detects and removes spyware, which isn’t covered by many other anti-malware applications.

Note: A combination of #1, #2, and #3 provides adequate protection for most single-user systems. They’re easy to use and don’t require special technical knowledge.

4: WOT

Within the context of the market, WOT is a fairly new offering that adds security, via an add-in, for your browser. It will keep your system safe from online scams, identity, theft, spyware, spam, viruses, and suspect commerce sites. As WOT encounters suspect sites, it alerts you. Of course, you decide whether to continue or not, but at least you go into the transaction forewarned.

5: WinPatrol

WinPatrol is a robust security monitor that alerts you to hijackings, malware attacks, and changes made to your system without your permission. Traditional security programs scan your hard drive, searching for specific threats. WinPatrol uses a heuristic (discovery) behavior to detect attacks and violations by taking snapshots of critical resources and alerting you to changes.

6: Secunia Personal Software Inspector

Most of us have at least one insecure program installed, which puts our systems at risk. Secunia Personal Software Inspector (SPI) scans your PC for insecure programs. It also keeps you informed of updates and patches for your installed programs.

7: Sysinternals Security Utilities

This free utility from Microsoft performs a number of important security functions:

* Lets you know who has access to files, Registry keys, and other Windows services.
* Finds programs configured to run on startup.
* Uses command-line utilities to list processes running on local or remote systems.
* Scans system for rootkits.
* Offers a Department of Defense-compliant secure delete program.

8: Wireshark

System administrators will appreciate Wireshark, a network protocol analyzer. Security features include, among other things:

* Live capture and offline analysis.
* Display filters.
* Rich VoIP analysis.
* Decryption support for many protocols.

9: Nmap

Nmap is a network-mapping utility for network exploration and security auditing. Uses for Nmap include:

* Determining what hosts are available.
* Determining what services hosts are offering.
* Determining what operating systems are running.
* Determining the type of packet filters and firewalls in use.

10: Online scans

If you suspect your system has been infected and your current tools aren’t able to deal with it, try one of the following free online scan services:

* Ewido Online Scanner
* X-Block Free Scanner
* Trend Micro Online Scanner
* F-Secure Online Scanner

In addition, you can test your firewall at ShieldsUP.

Obama and Raila

Dear friends this week i continue with my posts on African development with some ideas from Euvin Naidoo a Harvard Graduate who has worked with McKenzie consultanty agency as well as various development and investment agencies.

Watch the video below and share some of his insights into development in Africa.

Euvin Naidoo: Africa as an invesment

In my view Africa will really begin to take of when many of the economies become more integrated and goods and services can move indiscriminately across the different regions of Africa. It is also good to note that economies such as Angola are growing at 18% which is the highest economic growth rate in the sub saharan Africa.  Watch the Kenyan Prime Minister discuss about these developments in Africa.

Mpesa Banking

Watch Mark Shuttleworth, President of the Ubuntu Foundation,and June Arunga, Open Quest Media, speak about opportunities and challenges business and individuals face in developing parts of the world.This a lovely talk of African Prospects with historical occurences being put into context. June Arunga has travelled Africa from Cairo to Capetown and is an expert in the Mobile Phone revolution in Kenya. Kenyans are using mobile phones to expand their economic space and conduct business. She argues that the country needs to develop address systems to allow people to conduct business in a transparent manner. I also remember reading that issuing of title deeds to squatters would be an efficient way of distributing capital and wealth. Anyway here are the videos.

DLD Internet and Mobile Entreprenuership Conference

Watch Video [Click Here]

Dear Friends a few hours ago a friend of mine on FB put on his profile status “Jesus was black” as you can imagine this caused some acrimony amongst those who read it and responded. However it got me thinking and i decided to summon the most plausible argument with the little knowledge i have to prove that Jesus at least descended from one black parent (Virginal conception not withstanding) as i have come to believe from past, in between the lines reading of the JERUSALEM bible.

It is my hope the historians amongt us can settle in part this matter, because if this is true it could turn he’s-story upside down. Let us leave no stone unturned.

MY RESPONSE

Actually there is some truth to this. The question has never really been answered plus conquering invaders always rewrote history to suit themselves. Remember the Bible particularly the New Testament we read today was edited by Emperor Constantine’s Government to adopt Roman culture and pagan traditions to avert a political and religous crisis(Similar to the enactment of a new constitution… imagine BOMAS here).

For instance if you look at the Catholic rituals they are uncannily similar to the pagan rituals that were initially borrowed and assimilated from the Great Greek Empire (Remember Hercules and Diana and the other Gods). This as you would imagine had great influence in the formation of Roman traditions and consequently Catholic traditions and to this day a lot of catholic theology and logic is based on Socrates, Plato and Aristotle who were all Greeks.Hence the term the Roman Catholic church. In later centuries the protestant reformation would result in among other things King James’s english court rewriting the bible again into its current english form and it is what the protestants inherited, used and use to this day.

So for these reasons doubts about Christianity certainly linger, which as you are aware has led to a myriad of conspiracy theories the most infamous being Dan Brown’s DAVINCI CODE. Fundamentally these conspiracy theories are flawed because they address the aesthetic aspects of Roman Catholicism in particular with the aim of proving the non existence of God. This is not the aim of my thesis. I am simply saying we should examine the situational context of Jesus in light of the Political and Demographic Environment that existed then.

Having understood the historical context of Christianity and the Political machinations that took place it is now possible to place Jesus in a political, economic and social environment just like the ones we all live in today. Because the world has never really changed.

When Mary and Joseph left Nazareth(The Ghetto town of Israel so to speak at that time. Remember the Jews saying “What good can come from Nazareth?”) they escaped to Egypt which was a Black Nation at that time(Will smith is doing a movie on this) to hide. So they were hiding amongst people of their own or similar skin colour.

This passage is most crucial because it debunks the notion that Jesus was of Arabic or Mediterranean stock. Remember the current Egyptians in Egypt were not in Egypt 2000 years ago. They came 1400 years later. The current Egyptians are decendants of the Arabs from around Mecca (Saudi Arabia & Yemen) which became overpopulated around 600AD and the moved into and colonized egypt which had been previously been weakend by the Greeks and Romans. Also remember here that the bible was first translated into Greek because Greek was prevalent at that time in Jesus’s world in the same way we mostly speak French or English.

So once the Arab Egyptians took over they began to erase evidence of black egyptian history and infact Napoleon the French conqueror had the Noses and lips of all the sphinxes banged up to cover the negroid features. However luckily they could not destroy all evidence because it was hidden in tombs and secret places which were only discovered in the 19th century and are still being discovered to date.

I have been lucky enough to lay my eyes on these murals and mummy coffins which clearly depict Black and Brown people in Ancient Egypt. In fact Egyptians preferred for 1000 years to Install Nubians as their pharaohs and if you have seen them in Nairobi, black doesn’t get blacker than that.

Lastly Jesus never did speak Hebrew he spoke Aramaic a language that to date is only spoken in Ethiopia and Eriteria which has led Israel to begin repatriating Ethiopians back to Israel as the Black Jews or the lost tribe of Judah and perhaps that is why to this day many consider Bob Marley a modern day Prophet.

DISCLAIMER

It is not the intention of this note to cast doubts on the faith of either Catholics or Protestants because clearly the message of Christ has inspired many people to do good deeds and indeed leave the world a better place than we found it.

However in conclusion i would like to add that it is important we make our best attempt to search for the truth in the hope we will learn more about ourselves when we embark on that long and odious journey.

See more videos here on the issue.

Dambisa Moyo - Author Dead AID

I disagree heartily with the notion that Africa needs more economic AID to help spur its own economic growth. Indeed as evidence has clearly shown the last 50 years of economic AID have hardly helped any single country in Africa reach even middle income status. Furthermore the countries which have ignored economic AID like Malaysia and India have seen rapid growth and are now emerging as the dominant economies of the 21st Century. Indeed the AID dependency model that is employed by the World Bank and IMF has fueled corruption as well as laid back attitudes in governance.

Dead Aid

Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo has spent the better part of this year canvassing around the worlds huge media networkings promoting her book “Dead Aid” which among other things compares and contrasts different economic models that have worked for the Tiger Economies and the failed policies in Africa.

I have posted some videos here for you to watch and please feel free to make your comments there in.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame and Kenya’s Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta also echoed this sentiments and urged African countries to reduce their dependence on Foreign Aid. Uhuru encouraged the Private sector especially social entreprenuers to work hand in hand with goverments to reduce this dependence. It is interesting African leaders are begining to read from the same page, which shows that dambisa’s book is timely. Watch these Videos below.

Please read this feature on Rwanda’s model of economic development by Jeff Chu. [Read Here]

ALJAAZERA INTERVIEW – RIZ KHAN

PAUL KAGAME & UHURU KENYATTA

BOOK REVIEW

The question of international aid to developing countries is one of the most controversial subjects in modern development literature. One simply needs to look at any local bookshop under the “current affairs” section and you are hit with many large and often time consuming volumes on the subject. So when I stumbled on DambisaMoyo’s book at my favourite bookshop (Waterstones Charing Cross Station), I felt a mixture of delight and nervousness. Delight because here we have a Zambian academic weighing in on a subject that has been the preserve of self-appointed “development experts”. This should fill every Zambian with pride and admiration. God knows we have so few Zambian economists ready to engage such serious issues, let alone publish a book on it. That feeling quickly gave way to nervousness because with so much written on this topic by leading experts such as Easterly, Collier,Riddell and others, could Dead Aid really offer any fresh thinking on the subject? [Read More]