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How to Remove a Trojan Virus

A Trojan virus is faulty computer program that can infect remote computers by changing the desktop or deleting important files. Generally called a Trojan Horse, it appears as a legitimate file or software from a trusted source, therefore tricking users into opening it or downloading it. Take action and protect your personal computer files by learning to delete this Trojan virus.

The Instruction :
Step 1. Reboot your computer if you have a Mac. Do this by holding down the "Shift" key while the computer restarts itself.

Step 2. Launch an antivirus program that you should have installed on your computer, such as Symantec's Norton or McAfee. Wait for the program's window to appear, then go to "Disk View." Highlight your computer, then select "Scan/Repair" so that the antivirus can detect the Trojan and trash it.

Step 3. Exit the antivirus program on your Mac. Restart your computer again to ensure that the Trojan has been deleted. Empty the trash can on your computer once it is back up and running.

Step 4. Disable the System Restore feature if you're a Windows user. Go to "Start" at the bottom of your screen, then right-click the "My Computer" icon to go to "Properties." Check "Turn off System Restore" under the System Restore tab in the "Properties" window, then select "Apply." Confirm that you want to disable System Restore by clicking "Yes" and "OK."

Step 5. Update your virus definitions in your antivirus program. Open the program, or go to the website, to download the latest definitions so that you can receive the most recent alerts and keep your computer protected.

Step 6. Scan your files to detect the Trojan file. Follow the instructions in your antivirus program to delete any suspicious files. You may want to write down the path and file name of the Trojan, which is usually found in the "C:\" hard drive. Then, edit your computer's backup registry by choosing "Start," then "Run." Type "regedit" in the window that appears and click "OK."

Step 7. Search for the registry entry from which the Trojan derived, which may begin with "HKEY" followed by the file path. Delete the registry entry to ensure that the Trojan is removed. Exit the registry entry, and restart your computer so that the changes can take effect.

Trojan Walls: Heresy, schism and Holy Spirit

"The first Christians were Jews." So begins Henry Chadwick's classic book, The Early Church. This post will briefly outline the history of the ancient Church as presented in Chadwick. The time span of interest ranges from the apostolic times of the first century A.D. to the Muslim invasions of the seventh century A.D., but the dating and naming of eras (which, I must mention, are my own poor inventions) are oversimplified for convenience. There are three prominent themes in Chadwick's history: response to heresy, interaction with paganism, and separation of the Greek East from the Latin West. This outline will focus on these topics, and I hope it may prove of use to others as it will to me in seeking the significance of this formational period of the Church.

The primary debate of the apostolic age (30-70) was over the continuity of the Christian Church with Israel, especially whether to continue with Jewish customs like circumcision. St. Paul the Apostle, in his mission to the Gentiles, appealed to the Greek mind by emphasizing the wisdom of God rather than Christ's fulfillment of Jewish prophecy, the main impetus for Jewish conversion. The outcome of the continuity debate was a middle way embodied in the Pauline doctrine: the Jews were the race chosen by God to prepare the way for his Son, Jesus Christ, and while the New Testament fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament, the latter remained important as a pedagogical aid to understanding the fullness of God's revelation.

The sub-apostolic age (70-140) witnessed three trends. First, the center of Church activity moved from Jerusalem to the Gentile world: Asia Minor, Greece, Rome. While many Gentile Christians respected the Roman empire as a just earthly government keen on upholding law and order, the first empire-wide persecution of Christians began as early as 64 when Nero found a scapegoat for a fire that ravaged Rome. The Church went underground. The final trend during this time was the emergence of the first great heresy: Gnosticism. More a collection of diverse teachings than a doctrine, Gnostics generally believed in a dualist reality where the material world (including the human body) counted for nothing compared to the knowledge of spirit (gnosis) reserved for an elect elite. Such dualism gave the Gnostics license to forego a moral code (antinomianism) and engage in debaucherous rites, while orthodox Christian clergy fought hard to extinguish the heresy.

The period of early theological formation (140-250) witnessed greater debates between Christian and pagan thinkers and the popularization of Christianity: paganism was on the defensive. One of the first great Christian thinkers was Justin Martyr. Trained in the schools of Greek philosophy, Justin came to regard Christianity as 'the true philosophy', wore the costume of a teacher of philosophy, and created the Logos theology: the Father was God transcendent while the Son was God immanent, the two being different yet the Word (Logos in Greek, implying Jesus Christ) being derived from the Father. Another theologian of this era - one of my favorites - was a man named Origen from Alexandria whose teachings were later condemned by the Church. A scholar devoted to the ascetical life almost to the point of folly and self-mutilation, Origen had great knowledge of the pagan classics and of the Old Testament, saw Christ as the connection between the Old and the New Testaments, and believed that an allegorical interpretation of the Bible (as opposed to a literal or moral one) could reveal eternal truths. This period witnessed several new heresies: Quartodecimanism, simply a refusal to change the date of Easter from the date of the Jewish Passover to the Sunday following it; Montanism, a following of a man and woman in Asia Minor who claimed to have been possessed by the Holy Spirit and demanded recognition (the Church reacted to this movement by declaring that the age of miracles and revelation had already passed); and Monarchianism, an attempt to protect monotheism at the cost of denying independence to the Son in the Trinity.

The great age of the Greek East (320-410) witnessed the legitimization of Christianity in the Roman Empire as well as the golden era of the Greek Fathers. After converting to Christianity and ending the persecution of Christians, the Roman emperor Constantine held the first ecumenical (all-church) council in Nicea in the year 325. The council heralded two achievements: condemnation of the heresy of Arianism, which held that the Son was a creature, albeit divine, and creation of the Nicene Creed, the enduring statement of faith for all orthodox churches to this day. The Creed went as follows:

"I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible;
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only-begotten, Begotten of the Father before all worlds, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, Begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father, by whom all things were made:
Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and was made man;
And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered and was buried;
And the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures;
And ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of the Father;
And He shall come again with glory to judge the quick and the dead, Whose kingdom shall have no end.
And I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, and Giver of Life, Who proceedeth from the Father, Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, Who spake by the Prophets;
And I believe in One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.
I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins.
I look for the Resurrection of the dead.
And the Life of the world to come. Amen."

The Roman emperor Julian the Apostate (361-3) was educated as a Christian and in the classics, but adopted paganism, outlawed Christianity, and began another empire-wide persecution of the religion. Only two years into his reign, Julian was assassinated by a soldier's lance. Before expiring, the emperor is said to have flung blood from his wound into the sky, exclaiming to the pagan sun-god, "Be satisfied" (a more suspect Christian version of the story goes that Julian rather shouted, "Galilean [Jesus Christ], you have conquered"). After Julian, the Roman empire again became Christian, but paganism in its various forms lingered, including the outcropping of new sects like the Manichees, a Middle Eastern version of a universalist religion combining elements of Buddhism, Gnosticism and Zoroastrianism. This era in Church history was the heyday of the Greek Fathers: men like St. John Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople, who preached the Gospel with passion enough to displease local authorities, who had him exiled. The Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom still remains the main worship service in every Eastern Orthodox church around the world. Additionally, the tradition of monasticism reached fruition during this time. The rigorous discipline of the apostolic era-Church was officially abandoned by Rome in 251, so ascetic Christians withdrew from society. The formational period of monasticism was a turbulent one, as the temptations towards seclusion for sinning's sake or self-mortification were great until men like St. Benedict developed rules for harmonious monastical life. Finally, two more Church conflicts arose during this time: Apollinarianism, a heresy which held that Christ did not have complete manhood because the Logos is unchangeable, and Donatism, a schism over whether traitorous bishops could still confer the Holy Spirit.

The golden age of the Greek churches was followed by the great age of the Latin West (410-500). Before this time, Rome and the western Church lagged intellectually behind Constantinople and the theological tradition of the eastern Church. Jerome was the first great western theologian. He wrote caustic polemics against western heretics, had great command of the Latin classics, and infused his writings with references to them, setting the tone for the dialect of Western Christian theology (Jerome even once had a dream that he was before the Judgement Seat and heard the damning pronouncement, "You are a Ciceronian [a follower of Cicero], not a Christian"). After Jerome came St. Augustine of Hippo, perhaps the greatest western theologian of all time. Augustine came slowly to the faith, only accepting canonical Christianity in his early 30s and only beginning to seriously study the Bible in his early 40s. In his autobiography titled Confessions, Augustine addressed a prayer to God in the style of a Psalm, which described the suffering of a soul until it returns to its God. While his belief in predestination and his disapproval of the East's doctrine of the Trinity further estranged the theology of the West from the East, Augustine's work The City of God - a response to Plato's Republic and the sack of Rome in 410, which asserted that God's Church in heaven is separate from the fate of earthly empires - was a masterpiece. Also during this era, the idea of the papacy - the primacy of the bishop of Rome above all other clergy - reached fruition. The popes Leo I and Gelasius I epitomized the doctrine of the pope as first among equals and successor of St. Peter (the scriptural argument for Roman supremacy comes from the Gospel of Matthew, when Jesus says, "And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it"). There were three main heresies in this era: Nestorianism, which held that there were two separate persons in Christ; Monophysitism, which believed that there was one nature in Christ, not two (while the ecumenical council of Chalcedon in 451 estranged the Monophysite Oriental Orthodox Church from the rest of Christendom to this day, modern theologians agree that the controversy was due more to poor politics and linguistics, not theological differences); and Pelagianism, which claimed that man can take the initial steps to salvation without the grace of God.

Finally, the age of separation (500-750) witnessed the conclusive parting of ways between the Greek East and the Latin West short of the East-West Schism in 1054. Barbarian invasions in the west dismantled what was left of the once-great Roman empire (Rome fell in 410, Carthage in 439) and by the time of Pope Gregory the Great (590-604), the Roman Church saw its destiny more in missionary work with barbarians than in diplomacy with Constantinople. At this time, John of Damascus (675-749) summarized the achievements of the fathers of the Greek East. Pope Gregory and Saint John were the last church fathers of the West and the East, respectively. While Rome turned West towards the barbarians, the Muslim invasions which rocked the eastern empire (Jerusalem fell in 637, Antioch in 638, Egypt and Alexandria in 641, while Constantinople only thwarted disaster by the use of 'Greek fire') turned the attention of Constantinople to the East.

Henry Chadwick also includes a chapter on early Christian worship, art and music, an intriguing aesthetic history. In his conclusion, Chadwick writes, ". . . Eusebius was no doubt right in seeing the successive controversies as making much of the stuff of church history, and most of the main issues then faced by the church in its formative period have remained virtually permanent questions in Christian history - questions which receive an answer but are then reiterated in a modified shape in each age." What a fascinating idea: new theological problems are ancient questions in voguish clothing. Can it be the case that, for instance, contemporary absolvement of the body from moral laws is a resurgence of a neo-Gnostic philosophy? Or, is it the same spirit of naive universalism which moves modern fad religions and philosophies as once inspired the Manichees? To what extent can we look to the past for insight into solving present dilemmas? One of the best reasons for studying the thought of the Church fathers comes from the Hebrew Scriptures, where Bildad the Shuhite says to his ailing friend Job, "For enquire, I pray thee, of the former age, and prepare thyself to the search of their fathers; for we are but of yesterday, and know nothing, because our days upon earth are a shadow. Shall not they teach thee, and tell thee, and utter words out of their heart?" Indeed, if we look to the past, we will encounter dozens upon dozens of generations of people who have left spiritual roadmaps for the modern man.

In the Middle: The Disavowed Pleasures of Gowther

It's the end of the semester: classes to conclude! meetings to attend! papers to grade! exams to compose! deadlines to miss! All of us academics are nearing exhaustion.

Agreed! Agreed! And articles to proof! And write! And grants to write! But lord knows it's not as bad as adjuncting. Lord knows it's not bad at all.

Yesterday one of my students observed that "everyone thinks everyone in the Middle Ages was dirty and stupid, but you make it seem like they were just like us." My response: "Yeah...stupid." Thankfully she got the (perhaps ill-advised) joke, and I hope she gets what drove it: another attempt to drive out any sense of temporal superiority or, for that matter, nostalgia.

Strangely enough, her comment came after a class on Sir Gowther, in which I went after the familiar strange mixture of titillation and sanctimoniousness in its opening stanzas. It starts:

God, that art of myghtis most,
Fader and Sone and Holy Gost,
That bought man on Rode so dere,
Shilde us from the fowle fende,
That is about mannys sowle to shende
All tymes of the yere!

More below!

I observed that the lines looks like any of the usual invocations for a Middle English narrative (cf The Avowyng of Arthur and Emaré), but they're not in fact, at least not yet, calling down a blessing on its audience. Rather they throw up a barrier against demonic forces, whose ability to "shende" the human soul is in fact a direct result of the infernal thoughts this very poem inspires. See Neil Cartlidge, at 136, which observes that the opening stanzas problematize

the whole business of tale-telling by implicitly raising the question of discursive responsibility: for if it is accepted that describing the Devil's activities in any sense invites them [a point Cartlidge had already established], then the author's decision to tell the story of Sir Gowther has to be morally questionable.

Not only morally questionable, then, but also an invitation to bodily injury or erotic sin: for the primary demonic threat in Gowther is not to the soul: "Sumtyme the fende hadde postee / For to dele with ladies free" or, as it explains later on, demons "sarvyd never of odyr thyng / But for to tempe wemen yon." By casting its protective net over the readers, the prayer implicitly interpellates them, and its orator, the collective "us," as women-about-to-have-sex-with-(or -be-raped-by-) demons. This is, after all, what demons do, at least within the confines of this poem.

The flirtation of these newly hailed women with--or their perilous proximity to (so much depends on how we understand the demonic sex!)--infernal forces occurs simply because of the telling, and the desire for, this poem, which, according to the poem's own self-promotion, is a "ferly" or "selcowgh" thing to hear. What have we, the listeners, gotten ourselves into? Something--what, I don't quite know yet--much more than the "schame" from which the narrative voice hopes to be shielded. Something terrifying, wonderful, strange, uncanny, monstrous, something in which cupidity and fear and disavowed desire, surely the seed of shame, are inextricably intermingled.

In the most straightforward reading, that shame ("As Cryst fro schame me schyld") is the shame of relating the particular details of how demons, despite lacking bodies of their own, impregnate women. The shame here may also be the shame of lacking a proper explanation for the events of the poem: according to a scholarly consensus (see Aquinas (reply obj 6), who agrees with Augustine), demons do not impregnate women themselves, but rather artificially inseminate women with stolen semen, and thus "the person born is not the child of a demon, but of a man." Because the demonchild Gowther, in other words, should not actually be a demonchild, the shame here is in part the shame of getting the doctrine wrong and then cheekily ascribing the (willfully mistaken!) notion to the misunderstood scholars ("Therof seyus clerkus, y wotte how"). Mostly, however, I think the shame is the shame of wanting to hear this story, despite or indeed because of its dangers, a story of women suffering macerated breasts, friars thrown off cliffs, parsons hung on hooks, nuns (at least in one of the manuscripts) raped and burned to death in their own convent, a story, that is, crowded with the grand guignol of hagiography.

Jesu Cryst, that barne blythe,
Gyff hom joy, that lovus to lythe
Of ferlys that befell.

And that's the beginning of the introduction's final stanza. Give us joy indeed, and give us, but not too much, protection from the shame of our own joy. Although Robert Mills' Suspended Animation: Pain, Pleasure and Punishment in Medieval Culture is only on my shelf, not yet read, I felt certain enough to wind things up by linking the desire for Gowther and the hagiographic pendulation between imitatio and admiratio with the purportedly pious obsession in hagiography with mutilated erogenous zones: faces, breasts, skin, genitals, the beautiful naked bodies of men and women, boys and girls, virgins mostly, made to live out, and die for, fantasies badly veiled by sanctimoniousness.

It's this reading that led to the student remarking on the medievals being just like us. Of course I've just committed a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to believe that my student, and by extension all my students, found themselves implicated, caught up, in Gowther's pious titillation of torture.

Gowther Recommended Bibliography

Blamires, Alcuin, "The twin demons of aristocratic society in Sir Gowther" Pulp Fictions of Medieval England: Essays in Popular Romance. Ed. Nicola McDonald. Manchester UP. (2004), 45-62

Cartlidge, Neil. "'Therof Seyus Clerkus': Slander, Rape and Sir Gowther", in Corinne Saunders, ed., Cultural Encounters in the Romance of Medieval England. D. S. Brewer, 2005, 135-47

(our own) Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome, "The Body Hybrid: Giants, Dog-Men, and Becoming Inhuman," in Of Giants: Sex, Monsters, and the Middle Ages. Minnesota UP, 1999, 119-141.

Gilbert, Jane, "Unnatural mothers and monstrous children in The King of Tars and Sir Gowther." Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain. Essays for Felicity Riddy. Ed. Jocelyn Wogan Browne, et al. Brepols, 2000, 329-344

McGregor, Francine, "The Paternal Function in Sir Gowther." Essays in Medieval Studies 16 (1999):67-78

Saunders, Corinne J., "Symtyme the fende". Questions of rape in Sir Gowther." Studies in English Language and Literature: "Doubt wisely". Papers in honour of E.G. Stanley. Ed. M.J. Toswell and E.M. Tyler. Routledge, 1996, 286-303

Uebel, Michael. "The Foreigner Within: The Subject of Abjection in Sir Gowther." Meeting the Foreigner in the Middle Ages. Ed. Albrecht Classen. Routledge, 2002, 96-118.

Final HCS Cosmos completed

After over 130 ships built (and over 100 now in service) the last Clone built Cosmos cruiser has been completed and has been delivered to the HCS Space Navy to begin trials. CSS General Joahime is the 24th and last Cosmos S to be built and will join it's sister ships and the 85 older Cosmos in service early next year.

The Cosmos is a Raegris design which the Clones bought the licence rights to many years ago as a back-up for their Kalahati Tuul programme. During the Clone-Utrek War of 2101 the vast bulk of the HCS fleet was Utrek derived but these ships were rendered useless by a trojan virus planted by the Utrek. Only the small number of Cosmos and a couple of ex-Bolitic ships remained available until the virus could be defeated. After the war the Clones embarked on one of the largest ship building projects in history and set out to make the Cosmos the basis of their fleet (at the time they had just 6). At one stage a new Cosmos was entering service every 2 days as the Clones poured in vast resources to build a huge fleet of these ships to form the new basis of their fleet.

The Clones also improved the breed with weapons, system and engine improvements. The current Cosmos S is one of the best warships around, so good that the Raegris are to upgrade their own Cosmos along the lines of what the Clones have done.

But now production has ceased, a few ships early as the Clones want to start rebuilding their oldest Cosmoses which have reached the end of their fatigue lives. It is likely the Clones will maintain a fleet of 100 of these reliable, popular and versatile ships into the 2120s.

Unfortunately for the HCS recent budget restrictions mean the rebuilt Cosmoses will not be as potent as originally intended. The Cosmos SR was basically going to be older Cosmoses rebuilt to S standard. Now the rebuilds will be of the Cosmos K type which will retain much of the original systems and engine.

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Thursday, 27 August 2009

How to Remove a Trojan Virus

Trojan Walls: Heresy, schism and Holy Spirit

In the Middle: The Disavowed Pleasures of Gowther

Final HCS Cosmos completed

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