Flat Rock ICT Services

Due to sheer coincidence a huge security leak has been discovered in the Dutch government's internet user authentication meganism DigiD: A random person logged into one of the government's websites to file a felony claim. He owns a petrol station, and someone drove off without paying.

When he was logged into the system, it turns out he accidentally got into someone else's account. In this system he can do whatever he wants. Change personal details, file emigration details, stop or request all kind of welfare or child support, etcetera. He has full access to everything the government knows about this other person.

The response from the Department of National Affairs responds with "Coincidence exists. This never happened before." But is it really such a coincidence that will otherwise never happen, as they try to make it seem?

Ofcourse not. Such a high-profile system should have the highest security imaginable. And the designers of the security of this system made a very big mistake, that is not even allowed in simple internet fora or webpages for which you need to create a free account in order to participate: They allow users with the same username.
The effect of this is that you can only distinguish the different users by their passwords. That means the users must have different passwords. But what if they don't? Then the system can not distinguish the user, and will just open the account for whichever user is found first in the system.

How this system made it into production without anybody realizing this security flaw, is a miracle, and let's hope it will be fixed immediately. There is a reason why bank's use complex logon systems with dual codes and hardware devices according to the 'knowledge & possession' principle.

But no matter what: be most careful with your personal details online.

What's the big deal with having some fun in business applications? Why are companies so afraid of ridiculing their own software or throwing a silly joke at a customer? A subject we won't go into here, but just mentioning it because it's something that's worth thinking about.

For example: Google actually benefits from jokes and fun and silly things in its own products. Just a simple example. Try to search for the word recursion!

"Did you mean recursion" ???

That's what I typed!
When you click on it you get the same page...

Silly sells!

Interesting note, put up on Sun's website, by Oracle.

Another Flat Rock ICT Services client released their new website today.

AttachABadge, an online store for unique children's clothing designed by the customer himself/herself, has gone live today. The site provides a Flash interface where you (or your child) can place badges on clothes in any position or place you like. The clothes are then made by hand specially for you, and within no time your children will be running around in their own cool designer clothes!

If you have kids, you'll love this stuff. Have a look yourself overhere!

A few tips for those people who will have to go to India because of their jobs/work. Taken from my own, friends and colleagues little bits of experience overthere.

• Make sure you stay in atleast a 5-star hotel. It may sound weird, but anything less is not guaranteed to be hygienic enough. They go up to 7 stars overthere, so don't feel too weird about it.
• Concerning water: Never drink any water other than from a bottle you unsealed yourself. 5 star hotels will all provide you with that. Never take any water from a source you can't verify. This includes ice-cubes in cocktails and other drinks! Be careful when brushing your teeth or taking a shower. It's easy to accidentaly swallow some of the unfiltered water.
• Bring your own laptop. Most likely you won't have your own computer at the office you're being send to. And you won't have a computer at your hotel room. However, there will be internet at the hotel (check before you book!) so your own laptop will make sure you stay connected to the world (home!) and can look up things in an emergency.
• Bring a set of passport size photos. Once you arrive at the hotel, immediately ask the hotel manager to arrange a SIM card for your mobile phone. He'll need 2 photos for that. Do not use your own SIM card, because that'll cost you something like EUR 5,-- per minute to call home, where as using an Indian card is virtualy free.
• Do not use the phone in the hotel room to call back home (unless your boss pays for it ;-) ) because the rates the hotel will charge for that are higher than a flight to the moon.
• Bring some 'virtual corck' medication, to stop/block diarrhea in case you do catch a virus. Make sure you always carry it on you, because when it hits you, it hits you hard and instantaniously.
• Are you staying for more than 2 weeks? Try to take some food very high in fibre with you. The main parts of all the food in India are white rice, and white bread. It is impossible to find anything brown and with fibres. Western stomachs can't cope with that for too long. So if you stay for a bit longer, a little stash of fibre-rich snack-bars or very dense very dark bread (like the German/North-Dutch "roggebrood") would be a wise thing to take with you.
• Make sure to have the address and phone number of the embassy or consulate of your country with you at all times. If anything happens and you end up in police custody or a serious accident, that will be the very first number you are going to dial! (No... your partner can wait)
• If possible, don't go alone. Travel with a colleague. There is not much entertainment outside office hours. If you're on your own you'll be bored out of your mind. Also when going a bit further away from the office or the hotel, either at night or during the weekend, it is far safer to be together.
• White/western people are often regarded as "walking wallets" by the poorer people on this planet. And since there's a lot of those in India, you will be hassled by many of them. Sometimes whole masses at once, especialy at touristy spots like important temples. Be prepared for that, and don't feel ashamed to not give anything and just ignore them.
• Do not tip the hotel staff until the end of your stay. 20 rupees a person is apropriate. Feel free to add more, but realise that a full evening meal at a restaurant is only 35 rupees for them! So 20 may sound horrifyingly low (about 35 euro cents at the time of this writing) but it's worth much more to them.
• If you have your personal driver and car for the whole of your stay (certainly recommended) then do not tip him until the end of the last journey. 300 rupees for 2 weeks of service is appropriate. But again, feel free to deviate in a way you feel appropriate.
• Do not tip taxi drivers. You decide the fare for the journey before the journey starts. The driver has already overcharged you, because you are a foreigner (guaranteed!), and the deal is done.
• The motorised 3-wheel scooter vehicles are called auto-riksha's. Do not travel with them. They are extremely dangerous. And they will never take the shortest journey, but will take you past all the souvenir shops in town, wasting your time.
• All drivers get commision from the souvenir shops. That includes your private driver which is 100% available to you for the weeks you're there (if you arranged that). He will definitely try to take you to souvenir shops. It will sometimes take some strong effort to overrule them with your wish not to go shopping but to go to the place you really want to. Do not feel ashamed to give strong commands, because you are the paying customer and there is a hierarchy there.
• If you are at a souvenir shop to buy things like pashmina shawls, wooden craftwork, silk carpets, etc... you will be overwhelmed by the sales power of those people. If they show you carpets, they won't show you just one, but will easily pull out atleast 70 and spread them out on the floor for you. They'll do anything to convince you fo the beauty and durability and wonderfulness of their products. If you decide that you do want to buy some of their ware, think of the following:
  • Apart from carpets, only buy things which have a price-tag. Anything else and they'll tell you something much higher than the real deal.
  • With carpets, ask how much work it took to make the carpet. Usually a 3x5 foot pure silk carpet takes 1 person 6 months. Combine this with the knowledge that an average salary is 3500 rupees a month, and the carpet should cost no more than 21000 rupees. This is still too high, but it is unlikely that you are going to get any lower than that. But haggle as much as you like!
  • After you worked the price of your souvenirs down to something you might accept, tell the salesman that you don't want the driver to get comission and what that will do to the price. He will take you a bit further away from people who can overhear you and cut you a deal. The drivers are almost a bit mafia-like. If they notice that a shop is not paying them their comission (which they don't really owe them ofcourse) then they won't be happy! Cutting them out of the deal will make you some significant savings.
  • If you buy sandalwood figures, always test for genuinity. First of all there are official government shops that will always sell genuine stuff. But if you happen to find it somewhere else make sure it's not normal wood sprayed with some sandalwood spray. Wear a light shirt or something like that and give the wood a good rub. Does it come off on the shirt? If so, it's a fake.
• This is more of a rumour really, but from all colleagues and friends who flew from The Netherlands to India, most of the ones who used KLM/Air-France lost their luggage and had it delayed for a number of days or in 1 case lost permanently. Nobody who used Lufthansa had any problems.
• Fly business class. It's a long flight (twice!) and you'll need it.
• When dealing with Indian colleagues, be prepared for a lot of 'yes'. They are very friendly and very polite. A bit too much of it really. If you explain something, and ask if they got any questions they often won't have any and will say that they understood it all perfectly. So, interrogate them. Ask them to explain it back to you. Let them solve a problem which they should be able to, with the things you just explained.
• When they shake their head in acknowledgement in India, it looks like they're shaking it as if saying "no" in the western world. Don't get confused but doublecheck by asking a verbal yes or no, and not just a shake of the head.
• Check the prices of drinks and food before ordering at a bar. Some of the modern western-style ones are more expensive than rare champagne in central London.
• Be very weary of buying electronics. The real deal is usually the same price as in the western countries. And very often it is fake. The boxes look nice, and the products have a logo on them, but they're bad copies. Don't buy it, if you're not completely sure it's the real thing.

A quick update on the recent clients of Flat Rock ICT Services:

Dare Digital Ltd., London. A creative media company.

Intermax Interactive, Rotterdam. A web development company.

If you are in London, and feel the need for some networking, regardless of what business area you are in, here are a couple of tips:

• London OpenCoffee Meetup: a meetup for entrepreneurs and investors. Free wifi available. Every thursday morning from 10 to 12 at the 5th floor in Waterstones at Piccadilly.
• Dutch City Lunch: for Dutch speakers only. Once every 6 weeks, a prominent Dutch person does a speech, and there is a friendly get together with Dutch people working in London afterwards. Lunch is included. Admission usually 8 pound.

Steffen M. Boelaars of Flat Rock ICT Services has succesfully passed TOGAF8 training and certification. TOGAF8 stands for 'The Open Group Architecture Framework, version 8.1.1' and is a principle framework for Enterprise Architecture. This will be a mayor advantage in helping clients out in their architecture needs.

Who doesn't know them? Business cards. Everywhere you see them floating around. Mortgage advisers who visit you at home give them to you. Restaurants have them on the counter. And business people give them to each other at meetings and events.
This also counts for business people in the world of ICT. And I just found a picture of a very interesting business card on Flickr. Kevin Mitnick is a name synonymous with 'IT Security Expertise'. You can read more about him here on Wikipedia. The business card is highly technical and geeky. Most people in the IT security domain love the sports called 'lock picking', so his card is made of metal, and is a miniature break-out lock picking kit.

That's one attempt at being unique carried out all right!

The client wants work to be done during the weekend. Client is King, so the client gets its work done during the weekend. Working in an empty office building in Amsterdam, to make sure the people on the other side of the world (Bangalore, India) can do their work too is rather fun though.

While looking at iGoogle, a quote popped up from the time when computers were not invented yet, but the first steps were being made. It's by Albert Einstein:

You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.

It's funny because it's true. Hilarious! :)