Bill Gates partners Aliko Dangote to fight Polio in Nigeria

Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ foundation and that of Aliko Dangote, the Nigerian businessman labelled Africa’s richest by Forbes, announced an alliance during a ceremony in Kano.
Nigeria is one of only three countries still considered to have endemic polio, alongside Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Under the four-year alliance, the Bill and Melinda Gates and Dangote foundations would provide funding, equipment and technical support to the Kano state government to strengthen polio immunisation.
Eradicating polio “will be Kano’s gift to Nigeria and Nigeria’s gift to the world,” Jeff Raikes, the head of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said at the ceremony.
Mr Dangote, whose Dangote Group includes interests ranging from cement to flour and real estate, said “myself and Bill Gates met in New York and agreed to partner and intervene in polio eradication.”
“There is no reason for any one of us not to assist in keeping our people healthy,” said Mr Dangote, who is from Kano.

Forbes has labelled Dangote Africa’s richest man, while the magazine says Gates is the richest man from the United States — as well as “the planet’s most generous person.”
The amounts the two foundations intend to commit in the partnership were not disclosed.
Since 2003, Kano has been especially hard hit by the transmission of the polio virus in Nigeria following the state government’s suspension of immunisations for 13 months.
The suspension followed allegations by some Muslim clerics that the vaccine was laced with substances that could render girls infertile as part of US-led Western plot to depopulate Africa.
Despite the resumption of polio immunisations, Kano has continued to record polio cases as many parents still reject the vaccine.
According to the most recent World Health Organisation weekly report on polio, Nigeria accounts for 104 of the 193 cases so far recorded worldwide this year, with Kano having 22 cases.
In 2011, Nigeria recorded 62 polio cases, including 17 in Kano.
The WHO said earlier this year that an Islamist insurgency in the country’s northeast was harming efforts to eradicate polio due to insecurity. Source :dangote.com/forbes, Channelstv.com

Cybercrime bill scales through second reading at the Nigerian House of reps.

Two bills seeking to provide a legal framework to combat computer misuse and cybercrime in Nigeria have passed second reading in the House of Representatives.
The bills, which were presented by rep. Aisha dahiru, seek to amend the criminal and penal codes to provide for offences and penalties for computer misuse and cybercrimes as she cited the recent gruesome killing of Cynthia Osokogu who was lured to Lagos, raped, robbed and strangled by her “friend” on a BlackBerry chat room as one of the ills of cybercrime which must be fixed during her lead debate on the bill.
According to her, the absence of cybercrime laws portrayed Nigeria as “very porous nation” for cybercrime.
Ahmed who described cybercrime as “well organised and coordinated enterprise” said the absence of cybercrime legislation has exposed sensitive economic, intelligence and security and sundry government outfit to hacking by cybercrime syndicates.
The Taraba lawmaker told lawmakers that the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) has made 288 cybercrime- related arrests but 234 of the cases were still pending in court largely due to absence of cybercrime legislation to prosecute the cases.
Most members who contributed to the debate on the bill were unanimous in their submissions that it is time for the nation to have a cybercrime law.
Minority Leader, Femi Gbajabiamila in his contribution to the debate said, “This issue (cybercrime and computer misuse) has become a menace to society that needs to be dealt with frontally.”
Most of the lawmakers supported the bills, saying it will empower law enforcement agencies to combat the crimes which have negatively affected Nigeria’s image internationally. Source : channelstv.

Antivirus software a waste of money for businesses, report suggests

Antivirus Software is now so ineffective at detecting new malware threats and most firms are probably wasting their money buying it, an analysis by IT security firm Imperva has concluded. A research team ran a collection of 82 new malware files through the VirusTotal System that checks files against 40 different antivirus products, finding that the initial detection rate  was a zero and its took three weeks for even the best-performing products to add the previously undetected sample to their database.

 The researchers recommend two free antivirus products, Avast & Emisoft and McAfee came up as an acceptable performer too.
Let's talk about businesses. Organisations continues to insist on licensed antivirus software but stipulation should allow them to "buy free products" instead and put the saved money into other forms of security. "To be clear, we don't recommend eliminating Antivirus. We do, however, recommend rebalancing and modernizing security spend to meet today's threats, " said the Imperva report.

In August NSS Labs noticed that many antivirus products were unable to block malware attacks exploiting two prominent Microsoft vulnerabilities that had been patched weeks before.

We think the Nokia Lumia 920 is the best smartphone ever made...Do you agree?

If you've never developed much of a fondness for either Android or iOS, it goes without saying that Windows Phone deserves your attention. The Lumia 920 packs some serious treats for camera junkies, which offers superb low-light performance and peerless optical stabilization technologies -- a boon for those who tend to shoot shaky videos. In all, the Lumia 920 promises to be a thoroughly premium smartphone, and it'll even offer wireless charging via a pillow, of all things & we believe it is the best ever made by Nokia. What do you think?
with bits from Engadget.com

How is the PS3 still just as slow at downloading updates in 2012, as it was when it was launched? @rjcc

Quote of the day

Unilag trio wins Google+ Apps developer challenge

Three University of Lagos (UNILAG) students, have won the Google Apps Developer Challenge for the Enterprise/Small Business Solutions category in sub-Saharan Africa.

The students: Bolutife Ogunsola, Michael Adeyeri and Willie Aniebiet, created the Form+ application software; an interface that creates application forms by just dragging and dropping components. The user can create forms – such as curriculum vitae (CV) or resume submission forms for businesses and coursework submission page for lecturers.

Emeka Afigbo, Program Manager, Google, stated: “Our expectation is that this motivates more young Nigerian developers to develop apps that change the way we live in Nigeria and Africa at large.”

The winners were rewarded with Chromebooks and $20,000. They also won a grant worth $18,000 for their school’s department.

Congrats from us guys!

Cheer up guys.. it's Cyber monday... hooray!!!

 Black Sunday has passed but many online stores are offering deals for online consumers from Amazon to Wal-mart because not everyone can get to the stores especially if you are not in the US.
Not everyone was willing to wait in line. Online sales soared over the two-day shopping period, climbing more than 17% from last year on Thanksgiving and nearly 21% on Black Friday, according to IBM Benchmark. Sales made from mobile devices grew by nearly two-thirds over 2011.

A long list of online retailers -- including Wal-Mart, Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500), Best Buy (BBY, Fortune 500) and The Disney Store -- unveiled "pre-Black Friday deals" even before Thanksgiving.
"We've absolutely seen this whole weekend turn into one big promotional event," said Jay Henderson, strategy director for IBM Smarter Commerce. "Black Friday deals are no longer just for the [brick-and-mortar] store, and Cyber Monday deals are no longer just for Monday."
However, the initial surge is likely to be temporary. By Sunday morning, Cohen expects shopper traffic to fall back to normal pre-holiday sales levels. "There are more hours to shop, but consumers don't have more relatives or more money in their pocket, so once all the dust settles, we won't see too much growth overall," he said.
 with input from CNN money.