Three Bears IT Consultancy

Archive for October, 2009

You must have seen those adverts on the television with the bloke from Love Actually and My Family!! It’s okay, because everything is securely held on the BT Vault, so all our treasured family photographs and important documents are safe. If only that were the case…

BT Forums have been full of users reporting issues with the system – either autobackup not working, an inability to access any of their files, an inability to delete their files or problems with upgraded software.  Their are also issues with slow upload times (sometimes up to 8 hours for 1GB upload) and the problem seems far beyond becoming resolved.

Three Bears in association with Humyo can take the hassle out of the situation for you.  With the free account, you get 5GB of storage for photographs and 5GB for other files.  This can then be extended for more hungry users and we can offer packages for home users and business users alike.

If you’d like more information, please contact us using the form.

Cultured people that we are at Three Bears IT, we were listening to Case Notes on Radio 4 yesterday and a discussion surrounding the use of plain lanugage and metaphors when relaying often complex conditions and treatments to patients. Is the same applicable to the field of information technology and information systems?

Previous systems design methodologies have extolled the virtues of mathematical modelling for systems using a variety of set based and other notations. Natural language and plain English were often frowned upon, due to potential language ambiguities, but then how can the client be sure that the system design specification they are reviewing is what they actually asked for. A balance needs to be struck between ensuring that a robust specification is agreed, ensuring that both parties are aware of their responsibilities whilst also making the document accessible for extensive review.

The move toward agile systems and technologies seems to be a step in this direction. With the use of story cards to quickly and easily record high level requirements, end users are now able to directly interact with the development project whereas previous systems such as PRINCE2 often required all user requirements to be filtered through a central Senior User or user group.

Human civilisation has thrived upon the tradition of story telling and whilst titled such as Software Engineering and Computer Science give the impression of an old and noble tradition, the truth is that the levels of tolerance demanded within other engineering and scientific disciplines are not applied to systems design and development.

The use of mathematical notation is often a barrier to all but the most ardent of user groups and the whole industry is now beginning to take a long overdue step towards engaging with users in the most appropriate way for that individual. Like pupil based teaching, we can never achieve a situation where everybody’s requirements are always embedded within a system (even if the latest Windows 7 advertisements would have us think otherwise!)

Much better that we revert back to story telling and clear language to engage with the end user and to discern what they want from a system as well as how it should behave. The true science/engineering task is to take a seemingly disparate set of requests and to refine and merge them into a new system which everyone feels they have contributed to and which meets their current and future needs.

October 29th sees the release of the latest version of the open source, Linux derivative operating system, Ubuntu. Whilst not necessarily receiving the hype and publicity surrounding the recent launch of Windows 7 (which really is an excellent operating system!), Ubuntu has fast become the favourite of a variety of smaller and large companies looking to avoid high licencing costs whilst still utilising an operating system capable of running mission critical systems.

Three Bears IT has experience of using Ubuntu to run a variety of system including anti-spam, anti-virus and Internet proxy servers – available individually or ask a package on a pre-installed virtual machine. Contact us for more information.

More information is available at the BBC news web site (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8327082.stm)

Users of the Guardian’s jobs site yesterday received confirmation from the web site of a sustained hacking attempt, resulting in the potential theft of personal details which could be used by identify fraudsters.  A message today on the Guardian jobs site contains assurances that the site is now secure, though no information is forthcoming on how the attack took place or who may be responsible.

Below is a copy of the email received by potentially affected parties:

24 October 2009

Security breach – Guardian Jobs

Dear Name,

We learned yesterday evening that the Guardian Jobs website has been targeted by a sophisticated and deliberate hack, which has breached the security of the data on the site. You have used the site to make one or more job applications and we believe your personal data, relating to those applications, may have been accessed.

We are absolutely committed to the privacy of our users, and would like to assure you that we are treating this situation with the utmost seriousness.  The matter has been reported to the police, who are now undertaking a full investigation through the police central e-crime unit at New Scotland Yard.

The supplier who runs the site has identified the manner in which it was hacked and taken steps to prevent a recurrence.

We have no reason to believe that any financial or bank data was compromised in this incident. However the police advise that those whose personal data may have been stolen in this way should take a number of precautionary measures. These are outlined below:

1) Contact your creditors, even if they have not been affected, so that they can monitor your accounts to ensure they remain protected.

2) Contact a credit reference agency: Callcredit, Equifax or Experian provide suggested steps to resolve the situation and prevent it happening again.

3) Contact CIFAS protective registration: If you think you have been a victim of identity theft you should consider subscribing to CIFAS. This places a notice on your credit file indicating that your name and address may be used to perpetrate identity fraud.

In addition the following websites are sources of useful information:

www.met.police.uk/fraudalert/
www.stop-idfraud.co.uk
www.banksafeonline.org.uk
www.getsafeonline.org

We will continue to work with the police whilst the investigation is carried out. Please refer to the following page for updates:
jobs.guardian.co.uk/securityupdate.html

Please do not reply to this e-mail.

Three Bears IT Consultancy are now able to offer domain name registration services for all common domain names via their web site at http://www.threebears.biz

Pricing Information:

Top Level Domain	Min Years	Max Years	Price
.co.uk	2	2	£7.99 every two years
.org.uk	2	2	£7.99 every two years
.me.uk	2	2	£7.99 every two years
.biz	2	10	£9.99 every year
.com	1	10	£9.99 every year
.info	1	10	£9.99 every year
.net	1	10	£9.99 every year
.org	1	10	£9.99 every year
.tv	1	1	£29.99 every year
.cc	1	1	£29.99 every year
.eu	1	1	£12.99 every year
.mobi	1	1	£11.99 every year
.me	2	10	£19.99 every year

Contact us at hosting@threebears.biz for more information and to place an order.  Automated customer centre coming soon …

Well, like many of you we were awaiting 12:00 midnight to begin downloading our version of the new Windows 7 application having received our link via an email after pre-ordering the software.  Download speeds were excellent at first, then fell away again as the world seemed to wake up, but the whole 2GB download was done in just over an hour.

We’re currently installing it on a raft on a number of machines – some of which are capable running the Aero interface, others which are not – and will update this post later with our first reactions.

Feel free to comment and contribute to the debate.

Well … how did it go?  Pretty well to be honest, once I’d found the drivers for my SATA hard disk.  Once that was done, plain sailing … I even found that some of the hardware which the Windows 7 analyser has said wouldn’t work after the upgrade kept on working.  Even the old Radeon 9800 AGP card managed a 5.3 in benchmarking and looks to be running the Aero interface without any issues.

The only problem I’ve uncovered is the Netgear NAS device that was always a bit flakey, but now installs and won’t run … it’s small comfort that I appear to be in a majority of people suffering this same problem since moving from Windows XP.

All in all, I couldn’t be more pleased with it … much quicker to load, quicker to close down … pretty swish!!!  Make the switch, you’ll be glad you did …