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Computer
Virus turns 25
The
computer virus turned 25 years old last July, according to www.theregister.com.
Long-suffering computer users would be forgiven for thinking that the
first computer virus appeared in the mid-1980s, but the first virus actually
predates the arrival of the first IBM-compatible PC.
Elk Cloner, which spread between Apple II computers via infected floppy
disks, has the dubious distinction of the first computer virus1 to spread
in the wild. The malware is thought to be the work of Rich Skrenta, a
15-year-old high school student from Pittsburgh, who released it in July
1982.
The payload of Elk Cloner was largely benign, harking back to an earlier
more innocent age before today's generation of Trojans that turn compromised
PCs into clients on zombie networks controlled for profit-motivated cybercrooks.
Elk Cloner's payload was merely a verse or two of poetry. Mostly harmless.
Although the malware did set the theme for a stream of annoying pieces
of malware which popped up on the screens of Apple II, BBC Micro and,
later, early PC users' screens.
"Back then it was just a prank. A bit of fun. Today's malware is
frequently malevolent and coded by criminals and/or hackers who are intent
on extracting money from - as well as destroying the data of - innocent
computer users and the organisations they work for," said Phil Higgins,
a senior partner with security integrator Brookcourt Solutions. "An
example of this is the MPack tool kit which is being used by criminals
to infect legitimate websites and then deliver a crimeware payload to
unsuspecting visitors."
Some historians of computer malware, such as Kaspersky Labs, reckon the
Creeper virus, which was detected on ARPANET, ought to be considered the
first computer virus. The majority, however, date the first computer virus
back to Elk Cloner, the first to affect personal computers.
Culled from: www.theregister.com
Why
Omatek Computer has become a household name -
Seriki
Omatek Computers, a leading
indigenous Operating Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) has said that it has always
been aware of the presence of international brands in the Nigerian market
explaining why the local brand has always tried to come out with products
that can compete favourably with the international brands.
Chief Executive Officer of Omatek Computers, Engr. Florence Seriki who disclosed
this in an interview with ICT TODAY magazine said her company uses the same
equipment and components used by the international brands and so, does not
see why the company cannot compete favourably with the international brands.
“We ensure that our suppliers are people who are directly supplying
those international brands. So, in terms of components, we buy from the
same source like them.”
Seriki maintained that the presence of these international brands does not
pose a challenge to her and her company even though she admitted that the
only challenge her company faces is in the minimum order quantity expected
by the key manufacturers.
She said that what Nigeria needed at this moment to compete with international
brands was to market the Nigerian brands. “We should be able to take
the Nigerian brand to the doorsteps of the key manufacturers. By this, they
would be able to patronise our brands.
“Consumers tend not to be comfortable with local brands and that is
why even as we buy our containers from key manufacturers just like HP, people
still go there to buy. In terms of quality of product, the ingredients are
same.”
Recalling that Omatek Computers started about 21 years ago, Engr. Seriki
said the first set of the PC brand was launched in 1993 at the American
Embassy organised CTO. Ten years after, in 2003, its factory was built so
as to take its business to a bigger and larger scale.
For those who may want to know what a Chemical engineer would be doing in
computer business, Engr. Seriki disclosed that her interest in the computer
was developed while she was in the university where she was assigned a project.
She said she realised that she needed a computer to do the project and that
was how she developed interest in the technology.
“While in Lagos for my Youth Service, I realised that many of the
people had computers but does not know how to use them. I now had to take
on the training of executives on how to use the computer to do some other
things”.
The Omatek CEO was full of praise for the former president who according
to her did enough to revolutionise the IT industry especially by encouraging
local entrepreneurs. “The last regime brought a revolution to the
IT industry; former President Olusegun Obasanjo did bring out a lot of policies
that encouraged manufacturing in the ICT sector so we benefited. And we
were able to also get some incentives like the zero per cent duty.”
She noted that
before the introduction of the Computer for All Nigeria Initiative (CANi),
Omatek was already running the e-xpress service, which was a consumer initiative
aimed at helping the youths, tertiary institutions and other categories
of schools as well as offices and hospitals.
She said that following the introduction of the CANi-GAPP by former President
Obasanjo, her company had to get more people involved in the project. “e-xpress
as it stands goes beyond CANi, it now goes beyond end-users to schools,
youths and others.
The whole thing is a continuous
scheme; the banks are involved and a lot of sacrifices have been made to
reduce prices.”
Engr.
Seriki stated that in the first CANi allocations that were made, Omatek
did about 7000 PC units adding that the company has been making supplies
previously under its e-xpress initiative, which is still running.
The Omatek CEO said the company's expansion programme was still on course
following the opening of an office in Ghana. According to her, the company
is on a massive rollout mission in the continent of Africa with offices
expected to be opened soon in some of the continent's regions.
She remarked that the sudden interest being shown by Nigerians in her
products was a testimony of the high quality of products coming out from
the Omatek stables. “To have a factory like this compete with the
international brands, you need to come out with something that would appeal
to every Dick and Harry. That's why I said that Nigerians should begin
to patronise Nigerian products because in our own case, we buy our ingredients
from the same source as the foreign brands.”
Engr. Seriki recalled that the company won an award from Microsoft because
of the quality of products it has been bringing to the market attributing
it too to hardwork on the part of her staff. “My team has been working
very hard; we do not compromise quality at all and that is why we are
still going to win more laurels in the future because Omatek Computers
has come to stay.”
She expressed happiness that in the Nigerian PC market today, her brand
has an appreciable share even higher than some of the foreign brands and
pledged that the company will sustain this standard.
APC-MGE
in love with Nigerian Market
Regional
Director Africa for ACE-MGE, Carl Kleynhans admits in this interview
that the Nigerian market is very important to the Critical Power
and Cooling Services Company. ROMMY IMAH was at a media conference
he addressed recently and now reports...
Why
has APC not been able to open an office here in Nigeria?
As you know, we are part of the Schneider Group; our plan is to
use the Schneider office as the representative office for APC-MGE.
We already have resident officials here in Nigeria.
Why is it taking this long, does it
mean the Nigerian market is not important to you?
No it doesn't mean that at all, may be it could be as a result of
misunderstanding in terms of what we say about opening up an office.
In our jogging, sometimes opening an office means that we have a
person on ground in Nigeria; we have our choice on ground for so
many years now.
How will you describe the Nigeria market in
terms of patronage?
You know the problem with the UPS industry is that there is no independent
source that tracks the business in Africa like Gartner does with
the polls and so many movements like that. But nobody really tracks
the UPS business. However, we believe that we are market share leaders
especially with the APC-MGE brand in the Nigerian market. Though,
we don't have official statistics that can support our claim. So,
I can't say we are a very dominant brand in the Nigerian market
place except that this year is going to be a very good year for
us on both the APC and MGE business. It looks like there are a lot
of opportunities in the Nigerian market place. It is going to be
an exciting year for us yet; Nigeria remains a very important market
for APC-MGE. In fact, this is the very first African market that
I have visited as a Regional Director of APC-MGE.
Does the African environment encourage durability of APC product?
The issue is that every UPS vendor and APC is no exception, has
some range of products from entry level to the high end; from the
cost option to the value option to the performance option, which
is the most expensive option with the highest performance. What
we find in Africa and in Nigeria is that customers often upgrade
their system. To be quite honest with you, an offline UPS especially
in the smallest series is not really the ideal UPS solution for
the African environment because every time there is fluctuation
in power, that UPS goes down especially where there is a line directed
to an online UPS; that is what we call automatic voltage regulation.
Yes we do have solutions that are geared for the Nigerian market,
but there is always a limit as to where you can go; there is no
system designed to handle fluctuations that go like that, it is
not just APC. If you live in an area within Nigeria that rarely
has exceptional power fluctuations, you need to consider some degree
of land conditioning to assist that UPS.
Did you have such consideration before setting up in Nigeria?
We consider only land when we are researching for manufacturing
of new systems. Nigeria is not taken into individual account but
basically we design systems to cope with any environment where there
is power fluctuation.
In
what way has APC contributed to the economy of Nigeria?
One of the most important things about the old APC and now that we
run a fusion called APC-MGE is that we are channel focused;
everything
we sell in the Nigerian market goes to a channel of focus. We recently
brought a whole lot of Nigerian companies down to South Africa for
training; we recently held an event in Barcelona where a number of
companies from Nigeria attended a training session. We have been contributing
our quota in terms of training and investment over the years. But
the most important thing is that those activities represent us to
a large degree in this market. What is your corporate social responsibility?
When we started to develop MGE business this year, there was an organisation
that is called COPAS. It is an organisation that gives credit to a
company that did well in its business deals with a particular country.
When we started business in Nigeria, there was no credit given to
Nigeria before then but when we came in, they started to give credit
to Nigerian companies. We are working in terms of direct employment,
training people and so on but in the area of particular programme
like sponsorship, we don't have any. What impact has the merger on you as a company?
The full scale of the decisions why Schneider decided to buy APC and
merge it with MGE is better answered at the most senior level. As
I mentioned in my presentation, one of the biggest effects is of course
that we are much bigger organisation in Africa and sub- Sahara Africa
today in terms of the people we have in Nigeria, Benin, and Ivory
Coast. We have a lot of people on ground in the region and across
Africa, we have more offices and we have a better service thanks to
MGE organization. We have much stronger service operation on ground
in the various markets obviously to increase our offering. Are you aware of grey market?
Grey market is a big issue particularly in Africa. There are a number
of sources of brand market; the one area we have to make an issue
is bad product from time to time. We recently took action in China
taking some fake products on legal action. We have a problem of reconditioned
unit at times as a company that reconditioned APC unit started using
it as new unit. But this is not peculiar to APC-MGE; these are problems
all vendors face in the technology. But I think the most common problem
we are prone to is due to a number of things, for example we have
a great competitive market inside the Far East, and no matter the
kind of structure we build inside Africa or US or elsewhere sometimes
those products will leak into other markets.
CANi:
Beneficiaries receive PCs in Osun
A
cross section of the Osun State civil servants, have received their
personal computers from the Federal Government's Computer for All
Nigerians Initiative, according to a recent statement.
The statement quoted Governor, Prince Oyinlola Olagunsoye as saying
that Osun State had once again taken the lead in pioneering the
actualization of the ideals of empowering its citizens through access
to computer systems.
Oyinlola, who was represented by the Head of Service, Segun Akinwusi,
said the actualization of the project was another landmark achievement.
Brian Integrated Systems Limited and the Osun State Government recently
signed the Memorandum of Understanding for the supply of Pcs to
the state civil servants for personal ownership under the umbrella
of the CANi scheme.Earlier in his welcome address, the Permanent
Secretary of the Computer Bureau, Mr. Abiodun Oladapo, said that
with the ceremony, all doubters could now see that the administration
was committed to fulfilling its promise of providing computers for
the people of Osun State, pointing out that the occasion marked
the fulfillment of that promise.
The Managing Director, Brian Integrated Systems Limited, Mr. Tunji
Balogun, the General Manager, Marketing, Sam Adeyemi, led the Brian
team.
Balogun said, “Brian is ready, not only just to supply Brian
brand of computer systems, but have also opened a full service center
to support all the systems and to handle all enquiries from the public”.
He said that with Brian systems, the purchasers could go to sleep,
as the company will provide top of the range support service for all
its products.
