42 PC Security - then and now...

ipears — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 01:41:00 GMT

Sitting on the plane on the way back from IT Forum having attended a few sessions on security, I was reflecting on the changed priorities when looking at security for PC systems. Nowadays the main concern is protecting the systems from ‘virtual attack’ - viruses, Trojans, hacking etc. followed by physical security
Back in the dim and distant past when setting up one of the first PC based computer clusters at Birmingham University our main concern was physical security. A concern over systems being stolen was first in our thoughts, so a case hardened steel chain was run the length of the benches and the systems were padlocked to it – this was before the days of off the shelf security devices remember.

The machines were diskless workstations so for a few years we had little concern about the newly emerging phenomenon of viruses and the internet was a gleam in a few people’s eyes.
But… we had reckoned without the security risk known as ‘the uninitiated’. At that time the labs were largely unused during the summer vacation so they all got a ‘spring clean’, floors were polished and so were bench work surfaces. That summer the cleaners had discovered a wonderful new silicone based spray polish which, when sprayed from a great height over the bench tops, gave them a superb shine.

The first indication of trouble that we had was when we started the first lab of the new academic year and there were complaints about the keyboards being ‘stuck’. Yep, they were actually glued to the bench tops by the polish – and when finally removed by BFI (brute force and ignorance) the potential damage was plain to see. There on the bench top was a lovely rectangular unpolished space - they hadn’t moved the keyboards when applying the polish…

So, over the next few weeks the polish crept into the innards of the keyboards and insulated the contacts on the keys. These days we would have cursed a little and then bought in a batch of new keyboards – but this was the mid-eighties – replacement keyboards were, if I remember correctly, about £120 + VAT each. Plan B was needed as we could not afford to replace 32 keyboards at that price. Talk is cheap and so was technician labour (I was the technician…). We convinced Zenith to send us a shipment of keyboards that had failed electronically and been returned. We then proceeded to unsolder the key-switches (yes, discrete switches) on all the failed keyboards, put them in an ultrasonic bath (the benefit of having an Acoustic and Sonar Research Group in-house) to clean them, test and then replace any that failed to respond with the ones from the ones supplied by Zenith. Was it worth it, well yes, if nothing else it taught a valuable lesson – anyone going into a computer lab for any reason had to have a total ‘hands-off’ approach or be instructed in what they could and couldn’t do – and that applies today, it’s just a lot more complicated these days – the price of power, flexibility and freedom…

And just for info, in case anyone was wondering, the PCs we installed in that lab were:
Zenith Z-151 systems, CPU 8088, 320K ram, mono ‘green’ screens – see here (one more example of how marvellous the WWW is…) http://www.atarimagazines.com/creative/v11n9/50_Zenith_Z151_choice_of_U.php
– the servers, 4 of them, were similar systems but had massive 10Mb Winchester hard drives… giving each student a massive 200K of online storage, and the network itself was a 3Com Etherseries v1.0 based on 10Base2 thin ethernet.

IT Forum 2005

ipears — Sun, 27 Nov 2005 00:49:00 GMT

Well, life is full of good intentions and my good intention was to blog from IT Forum. So, as usual I didn’t. And I have all sorts of excuses – not least of which was the stellar rate at which the wireless networking kept failing – Andrew Cheesman get your Tu-Tu out. That and total information overload of my brain.

We started the week with a pre-conference session on “What’s new in Server 2003 R2” – I didn’t think there would be enough to occupy the full six hours scheduled – oh boy was I wrong! OK we had coffee breaks but even so… Lots of new stuff including Active Directory Federation, Remote Differential Compression – only saving the changes in a file during replication, quotas including document size and type screening, print management, control, and quotas, the ability to monitor hardware whilst the OS is running and during pre-boot and post-crash (it does this by talking to the BMC - Baseboard Management Controller)… Lots, lots more…

The Keynote on Tuesday was based very much around Server 2003 R2, Virtual Server 2005 (including clustering) and Office 12.

I then went to a session on Office 12 Servers (or SharePoint as we know it…) Now I knew that MS were putting a lot of effort into SP but I hadn’t realised quite how much. So, it’s been enhanced to provide intranet, extranet and internet sites. I hope I’m getting all this right as I was typing at a rate of knots – support built in for blogs and wikis out of the box, archive site for email, server based InfoPath forms, CMS and scaleable content store, major/minor versioning is back, Excel services – share a spreadsheet via a zero-footprint browser display, a 2-stage recycle bin for administrators, document and list trimming based on security access controls, enforceable document checkout – the list goes on, and on.

Anyway – suffice to say that I’ve come back buzzing with all sorts of ideas for the server farm I’m going to set up, with duplicate blade-server systems running multiple Virtual Server Clusters with automatic failover, storage on iSCSI devices and all fronted by an ISA server…

Now all I need is the national budget of a small country…

Now, the strangest thing – whoever put the following two facilities close together obviously had a sense of humour…

The only way to stay alert and on-top of things was lots of caffeine and the occasional sugar rush – this was provided for me on Wednesday by freshly made waffles smothered in chocolate sauce – these had the calorific value of a small planet…

Many thanks to Clara, the Australian waitress in the Irish Bar, for keeping us under control despite everything… OK – we weren’t that bad…

The UK Academic event on Wednesday evening was good – held in a tapas restaurant, my favourite sort of eating – bits of everything, I even managed to get back to my hotel in the same day as I left it!

Took a few hours out of the last afternoon to go and visit Parc Guell as the last twice I’ve been to Barcelona I’ve not managed to get there. I took a few pictures some of which are below. Parc Guell was built in the early part of the 20th Century, it was planned to be a garden city, but only two house were ever built.

It was a long way up, thank goodness they provided travelators...

But the view was well worth it, the Torre Agbar is to the left with the Sagrada Familia to the right.

And you can't get away without a picture of the 'signature' Gaudi lizard.

All in all a fantastic week – all I have to do now is write a report up…

Moving On

ipears — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 22:41:00 GMT

Well, what can I say? After over 26 years at The University of Birmingham I've decided that it's time for a change...
On 3rd October I start in a new role at The University of Nottingham as Learning Research Systems Manager at the LSRI (Learning Sciences Research Institute) so I'm going to be involved in "advancing the science, technology and practice of learning and teaching to benefit everyday life."

I'll be working with Mike Sharples to create resources for the Institute including a new Flexible Learning Room and a Usability Lab, taking what we've learned at CETADL and building on that using new and emerging technologies. It was an easy decision to accept the job at Nottingham but a really difficult one to decide to leave Birmingham. We shan't be moving house yet as my daughter has just started her GCSE options. On that note we're really proud of her as she has just obtained a double award GCSE in Applied ICT, taking it two years early and completing the coursework and taking the exam in just over a term! Doesn't take after me then!!

I'm really looking forward to working at Nottingham alongside my new colleagues - Caroline Windrum, Research Development Director and Heidi Mather, Institute Administrator are two people I've met already, and if everyone is as welcoming and helpful then it will be an easy transition. The LSRI is to be based in The Exchange on the Jubilee Campus the Exchange is the building to the side of the Djanogly Learning Resource Center (the inverted cone shaped building) in the pictures below.

Imagine Cup 2005 Software Design results

ipears — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 03:52:00 GMT

Just a quick post - congratulations to Russia placing 1st in the Imagine Cup Software Design Invitational and also well done to Greece and China.

Results:
1. Russia
2. Greece
3. China

All the IC 2005 results are here

I'm looking forward to hearing how everything went and seeing some pics of the whole thing.
Hope everyone had a great time, look forward to hearing how team UK did guys...

Imagine Cup 2006 - will take place in Delhi, India, next summer and will call on the students to “imagine a world where technology enables us to live healthier lives.”

UK Imagine Cup Final 2005

ipears — Sat, 25 Jun 2005 03:35:00 GMT

Well, it’s all over. So now it starts…

OK – so the heat is getting to me. The UK Final of the Imagine Cup was held on Tuesday 21st June in the BT Tower, 8 teams of students representing the best of the best.

Monday 20th June 2005:
My excursion to the final (as a judge) started on Monday with a hot and sticky train journey from Birmingham to London, the air-conditioning had failed. Then, my faith in human nature was restored – got into a cab to take me to the hotel, only to find that he was taking me to the wrong St. Giles Hotel, so he reset the meter and headed off to the correct hotel, and then refused to accept the amount on the meter as it was ‘too much’. Wow!

Anyway, a brief trip through the hotel room for a shower and off to Planet Hollywood to meet up with the students and the Microsoft team. That was a nice move, remove the students from their laptops long enough to force food down them, not that it took much forcing.

22:30 back to the Hotel. At which point the St. Giles Hotel turned into something resembling a high tech car boot sale with students spread to the 4 corners of the hotel, unloading laptops, PDAs, Tablet PCs, Wireless Routers and goodness knows what else. I’m not sure what the other residents made of this, remember that this was the start of Wimbledon and all the hotels were full. Oh, did I mention the crates of Red Bull…

Tuesday 21st June 2005:
Next morning dawned bright and sunny with stories of who went to bed last, stories of 3 a.m., 4 a.m. and “Bed? What bed?”

The judges had a lazy lie in – we didn’t have to be there until just after 8:00…. This is my third year of involvement with the Imagine Cup, as a judge at the previous two world finals and as a team mentor in the UK final in 2004, so I’m getting used to the pattern for these events, early mornings and late nights.

08:05 Arrived at the BT Tower to find it a hive of activity – the car boot sale had transferred itself here – but with a lot more organisation I have to say. We were searched, scanned and allowed through to be escorted to our ‘deliberation room’. Otherwise known as a fridge – the air-conditioning was obviously working here! It was at this point that I was glad I had my suit on. The judges trickled in over the next 30 minutes or so, introductions all round. Mark Johnstone was to be the judge’s guide and mentor through the day – Nice suit Mark – and just in case some don’t believe it…

OK – on to the competition. The judges had already been impressed with the datasheet outlines that we had been sent covering the team’s entries so we knew we had a hard task ahead of us.

9:30 and Team DeLorean are first up. We were seeing two teams present back to back followed by a short break and then the next two. All the teams did a fantastic job in an extremely pressurised environment; this was going to be a tough one…

15:15 and the presentations are over, now comes the even harder part – reviewing your scoring to ensure you’ve been consistent and taking into account that some teams had obviously not prayed hard enough to the Demo Gods… Discussions were held about presentations, technology, business cases – and then… we had the results, we had a team to go to Yokohama to represent the UK in the World Final!

The presentations were made in typical fashion, the 5 runners up announced in alphabetical order followed by the top 3 in reverse order.

In 3rd place - Team mSpace from Southampton University

In 2nd place – Team Genesys Innovations from Sheffield University

And the team going to the world final was … The Bit Shifters! Believe me you have to be careful how you say that… Adrian Collier from Bournemouth University, Andrew Webber from City University in London and Joseph Wardell from Aberystwyth University.

Another fantastic competition, my congratulations go to all teams involved, you did a fantastic job, seeing the dedication, enthusiasm and passion made it all worth while. It was good to see that the sponsors, Microsoft, BT, CapGemini and 3i were all making the most of the recruitment opportunity too.

Well done to the Bit Shifters – today the UK – next month, the world!

19:00 – Off to the South Bank for the Imagine Cup party. For the life of me I can’t remember what it was called (Edit:Namco Station), but it’s on the Thames on the right just before you get to the London Eye(mainly because if it was on the left we would have gotten slightly damp…) An Aladdin’s Cave of multi-player video games, pool tables, 10 pin bowling… and a bar. Well, what can I say; Andy Sithers and I were beaten 2-1 at pool by Emily and Kevin. Emily then proceeded to thrash me on the Dance machine, the motor racing, the horse racing, that game is soooo undignified it’s not true – ok I won’t go on. Except to say that in round two of the Dance Mat Challenge I managed a surprising come-back!

And finally; many, many thanks to Caroline Phillips and to the whole Microsoft team for organising this event. Also thanks to the sponsors, BT, CapGemini and 3i for their support and helping to make it happen. It was great to see that people understood the reason for doing this, for encouraging talent, for pushing students onwards, to help them realise their dreams and potential.

Now, I’m afraid that my camera work was a little shoddy this year and most of the pics are blurred so I’m only posting a few.

Oh - and the air-conditioning was broken on my return train too...

View from the 34th floor of the BT Tower

The 34th Floor demo area

Happy Bunnies - 2/3rds of The Bit Shifters

On the way to Namco Station - would you buy a car off this man? Sorry Chris :)

Andy really should have picked a different partner.

Like Emily - pro stance there...

Dan and Paul grooving to.... (snigger) Steps...

Caroline and Nikki

Imagine Cup UK 2005

ipears — Mon, 20 Jun 2005 17:33:00 GMT

Well, I'm not even going to start apologising for not blogging recently, and not posting the pictures I promised last time, I'm not sure I could grovel enough...
OK - with the pictures I forgot my camera...

Anyway, nearly time for the final of the UK Imagine Cup SDC 2005. Being held on the 34th floor of the BT Tower in London, cooool. I'm lucky enough to be one of the 7 judges this year so I've seen the pre-release material of the final 8 teams! Looking good! Very impressed with the standard of entry again this year - can't wait to see the team presentations and get a good look at the apps.
Good luck to all the UK finalists, in fact good luck to all the teams and contestants in all invitationals worldwide. Just remember, relax, breathe deeply and go through your presentation as you planned (and for goodness sake have a backup scenario should the technology go wrong).
Just remember Seamus' Law - the one that says Murphy's Law is optimistic...
And if the judges seem to be asking a lot of questions, don't panic, it probably means that you've given them plenty to think about :)
Right, this time I've checked - I have my camera (well I've actually loaned one as mine is not exactly pocket sized..) so hopefully I'll be able to post a few pictures of the final.

Gen'05, XBox Party and things...

ipears — Tue, 01 Feb 2005 04:42:00 GMT

Whooh! Long time no blog ... again.

Thought I'd better do something and, with the Gen'05 tour about to land at Birmingham on February 10th, now seems like a good time.

Looks like this is going to be a great day - all sorts of pods and talks - Imagine Cup, Hurricane, theSpoke, MSP Programme, MSDNAA, Student Options, XBox, Media Centre and even better there'll be Microsoft people here to talk to about your career, internships with Microsoft and how to get free or cheap Microsoft software. Oh, and of course the obligatory giveaways - there's an XBox and a Media Centre up for grabs.

Hmmm - must thank the F1 guys for setting our campus IS people on to me - F1 contacted the University about setting up for network connections for Gen'05 and named me as the 'sponsor' !! my first thought was 'How much is this going to cost me?', But all they wanted was someone to vouch that it was a legitimate event :) Oh, F1 are the company who set up and support the IT at external events for Microsoft - they did all the IT at the UK Imagine Cup finals last year. Well, Emily is really busy getting things organised for this and also setting up transport to get students from Aston and Wolverhampton here on the day.

The MSPs here are also having an XBox Party on Tuesday and Wednesday 8th/9th Feb, and the CETADL team are meeting up with Mark, Andy, Caroline and Andrew on Wednesday the 9th - so all in all a busy Microsoft week on campus.

We're planning a trip to The Jamhouse in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter on the evening of the 9th - the music that evening is provided by Carl Stanley's Funky Family - described as 'Soul and Funk with plenty of SAX'

I'll post pics of the Xbox party, Gen'05 event and hopefully the visit to the Jamhouse later next week. Well, sometime.

OK - so now I've watched the first two episodes of '24 - Day 4' - I'd better watch the prequel - this is NOT doing my blood pressure any good at all...

Life, XBOX and dexterity implants

ipears — Fri, 15 Oct 2004 01:08:00 GMT

Well, it's been ages. I'd planned a blog from Barcelona on holiday and didn't find one wireless access point even though we stayed in a 'business' hotel. Barcelona was fantastic, although the road system must be logical to the locals it's something of a pain to have to know where you want to turn off 2 miles before you need to. And the hotel garage was something else - you needed snow chains and climbing gear to get the car out, talk about steep and winding, I slowed down half way up one day and had to reverse to the bottom to gain enough traction to get back up. They had hacked the concrete out of a couple of the corners to allow your door mirrors to get through...
My birthday last week - other half bought me a Crystal XBOX - YAY!! Along with Project Gotham Racing 2, Halo and Rainbow Six 3. So far I've been slaughtered, literally, at Halo by my godson (my clones were heaped in piles on the floor after he decided I was the next target), in PGR2 my daughter thrashed me around Edinburgh in a VW Beetle (I had a Ferrari Spyder). So, for Christmas I want dexterity implants and a way to get rid of cramp setting in after 5 minutes of gripping the controller like my life depended on it. I eventually beat her in a comeback race by 3 thousandths of a second.
Just had an email about IC2005 from Caroline - all speed ahead - looks like it's going to be a good one again. Need to get the info out to our students asap.
Off to Educause in Denver next week - think it's going to take me as long to get from home and onto the plane as it will be to fly there. Meeting with a few people there to try to kick start an Educational Innovations Network for U21 - it's been suggested that we meet in the Rock Bottom Brew Pub, apparently good food and good beer - anyone any comments?
Also off to Microsoft IT Forum in Copenhagen in November - anyone else going? We're staying at the Ascot Hotel.

Imagine Cup - The Results - It's all over now - well, nearly...

ipears — Fri, 16 Jul 2004 11:53:00 GMT

Hi all from not so sunny Brazil. Well most of you will know by now the results of the Imagine Cup 2004 Software Design Invitational:
1. France
2. Russia
3. Greece
4. South Africa
5. Belgium

Congratulations go to all the students that took part from an absolutely blown-away judge.
The UK team did themselves proud and placed in the top 12 - but competition was really tough this year and they didn't make the final 5. They're putting a brave face on it but I think they, and several dozen others, are pretty devastated after all the hard work and long hours.
Anyway, well done Ali, Andy and Mat. You have every right to hold your heads high - 3 of the top students in the world - that has to be worth something.
Honorable mention must go to Caroline and Gavin from Microsoft and Paul Rhodes (Team Mentor) from Bradford. They've been working flat out looking after 'the kids' :o) to make sure the guys stood every chance and I think they'll need to sleep for a week after this. Well done guys you really are all special people.

Arrgh - blinded by the light - the sun just came out - been cloudy for 2 days and it chooses the moment I look up to shine straight through the hotel window - I think there's a keyboard here somewhere...

Another interesting discovery...
Optical mice don't work too well on glass desktops, actually - not at all - obvious really but then I'm shattered and the brain isn't in gear.
Brought along my Father's day present - 20Q - thanks for the tip-off Rob - the guys had it foxed with one thing - but I then discovered Gavin had lied about a question or two - humans ARE dangerous and they DON'T (normally) have claws...

I'll post more pics from Imagine Cup 2004 shortly when I have them in a format suitable for FTP and upload.

Oh - and check out the 'cans' story from Mat, Ali and Andy - and ask to see the video.

More Pics from the Imagine Cup

ipears — Thu, 15 Jul 2004 11:58:00 GMT

Sorry for the delay in getting these up – been a busy time as you can ‘Imagine’.

Here are some of the pics from the party after the final judging round. I have more of these and will get them up as an album shortly.

I've put more pics here as there are too many to post here. They are taken at the Sao Paulo Jockey Club at the formal Imagine Cup Dinner. I tried my best to get everyone there but I must apologise if I have missed you or your team.

If anyone wants to copy them they are quite welcome - and if you want a higher quality version then let me know the pic number/name and I'll send them on.

The kids that provided the entertainment that night were quite spectacular, and talk about enthusiasm! In fact I met a few of them at the airport on Wednesday, they too were heading for Heathrow – never actually found out where they were heading or if they were just passing through. Shared a cab with Eric Chang from Microsoft’s Advanced Technology Centre in Beijing – so we’ll hopefully be speaking again soon as we have couple of projects and interests in common.

Thursday 8th:

Well, back in the UK – Warned by my wife that the SE of England had been hit by power blackouts, severe weather warnings were issued for most of the UK – what a welcome home! Writing this on the train back to Birmingham. Did my presentation at the JISC/CNI conference in Brighton – seemed to go ok – made lots more contacts and have been invited to submit a paper at a conference in Germany in March 2006, I know it takes me a long time to do these things but…talk about forward planning.

Stayed in The Grand – dial-up only - but someone let me know that there was a free wireless lan available on the beach, yes, on the beach. It has an SSID of, wait for it, PierToPier. Which is only cute if you realise that Brighton has two piers. My room had a beach view so I was able to connect quite easily.

Have brought home some of the ‘devil drink’ (Cachaca) from Brazil. Well, it was cheap! Less than £2.00 per litre – I’m going to inflict it on whoever is game enough to try it. Just a warning to the CETADL team – if you thought the Czech spirit was ‘interesting’ – wait until you try this…

Rant: London Underground!! I was so relaxed when I got off the plane from Sao Paulo – I’d been bumped up to ‘plus’ so it was a most pleasant and relaxing experience. And THEN I hit London Underground. Lifts not working – where there were lifts of course – crowded, hot, stuffy – the list is endless and unpleasant, the whole thing needs filling with concrete and capping.

Imagine Cup 2004 Photo Blog

ipears — Wed, 07 Jul 2004 01:04:00 GMT

Well, here we are - Sao Paulo - me by the skin of my teeth. Taxi did not turn up, the train was late - and I've left all my paperwork on the plane.
Anyway - here come the first photos of the IC2004 Photo Blog.

First one is Team UK testing the system somewhere west of Lisbon, at just over 10,000m up and at a speed of 881Km/h

And to prove it...

More from Imagine Cup

ipears — Sat, 03 Jul 2004 22:49:00 GMT

Can't post pics of teams yet as we are about to start round 1 of the judging - Lightning Round. Will post some after we have finished judging.
Anyway, more - in no particular order:

Iguasso Falls - superb place - absolutely fantastic...

Me...

Amy - still in good humour even though dealing with a set of 'revolting' judges...

Further Imagine Cup adventures

ipears — Sat, 03 Jul 2004 21:14:00 GMT

You can see the attraction of the entertainment...

Gavin and Caroline taking a well earned breather:

And Smartphone technology gets everywhere - Matt Rogers of Orange at Iguasso Falls:

Caption Required

ipears — Sat, 03 Jul 2004 21:08:00 GMT

OK - short one - Here's Marie and part of dinner - Captions on a blog post please

Pics of Brum

ipears — Tue, 15 Jun 2004 01:21:00 GMT

Well, having just fought my way through my digital photo collection looking for a pic of me to put on here - and not having much success 'cos I take photos, I don't appear on them - I've decided that I'm going to put some pics of Brum on here that I've rediscovered in my collection. So here we go...

Night view from CETADL, where I work, to the City Centre:

Misty morning from my office window:

The 'Birmingham' Wheel - great fun, the last place it had been was Paris and they forgot to change the audio feeds in the carriages - so you were told things like "and to your left you can see The Eiffel Tower":

The Birmingham to Worcester canal that runs through campus past the Vale halls of residence and straight into the City Centre:

Just for Caroline...
Selfridges in the new Bull Ring development + Kate (No.1 and ONLY daughter) and myself:

St. Martins Church (looking from Selfridges)

Canal boats - looking from The Sea Life Centre towards the ICC (top left)

More to follow...