GMo Blog

About debit cards in the Netherlands

Guillaume Mouron — Thu, 10 May 2007 23:46:00 +0200

I've just recently open a bank account in the Netherlands and with it comes a debit card. in this entry, I will talk about the differences with my french debit card, and especially about the security involved for internet banking and also with the french banking system.

So this is it :

First thing, it belongs to the Maestro network. Not very common in France, for instance, you can't pay the highway toll with it but very often shops take it (not online sites though). Hopefully I've kept my French VISA card.
Talking about VISA cards, in the Netherlands, if you want a VISA or EuroCard/MasterCard, you can't have it as your regular debit card, but as another, separate one. It works completely differently : it is a credit card, so you will be charged for a transaction (and lots of shops don't take them because they also pay a fee, so I can't use my French VISA card either), the money will be retrieved one month later, and you can have your credit card with bank A while you have your bank account in bank B (without having any bank account in bank A).
It appeared to be a bit strange to me as I'm used to the fact that my VISA card is also my Carte Bleue, so my regular debit card, that the amount is directly taken from my account (which, surprises everybody here in the Netherlands) and that I don't pay any fee (but French shops do as far as I remember). I think this is here a French specificity and I find it much more convenient.

Now let's continue with differences between French and Dutch cards :). You can see that there is a chip. You (if you are French) might think that this is for the security stuff. It's not. Actually, it's a bit like the Moneo system, you can transfer money from your bank account to the chip and use it for paying the parking or in the supermarket. I'm not sure if I will use it, I still have to see some scenario where it could be convenient.
So if I want to pay with my card, I have to use the magnetic band. Basically I slide the card in the device, then I have to type my pin code and press ok. And that's it. So it's a bit different from the French system where the verification is made with the chip. However, when I use my French card here (for instance for paying at the gas station), I also have to use the magnetic band. But I do not type my pin code and I just have to sign the receipt. That's what I will have to do if I want to use my Dutch card in France.
It's really strange to see that even with Europe, euros and things like that, the bank card system is different and that when you change from a country to another, you kind of "swap" the way you have to use your card ...

So, let's talk about internet banking. When I opened the account, they gave me a small device, similar to a calculator (but it isn't, which is a bit silly, they could have added that ...). I've been told that this system is not used by every bank in the Netherlands, but Rabobank does it so ...

This device is necessary for internet banking. I have to go on my bank website, enter my card number. Insert my card in the device, press "I", enter my pin code, then a token is generated by the device and I have to enter it below my card number. Then I can login.
According to my colleague, I can do "everything" with internet banking (and there is an English manual, but not a direct English translation). We'll see but at least, I can do more than with the Société Générale internet banking system as I can move money from my bank account to an international bank account whereas I can't do that with Société Générale (I have to send a fax).
Talking about money transfer, if I want to do one, I have to reuse the calculator. I have to press S this time, enter the pin code, then enter another random (?) code displayed on the web site and it gives me another number that I have to enter to confirm the transaction.
The login procedure with my French bank account is just to put my bank account number, then a flash numeric keyboard is displayed with the digits being randomly placed and you have to enter a code that you chose when you opted for internet banking. This can be logged by a malicious program so the randomness of the keyboard is useless, and the fact that YOU choose the code is bad thing in my opinion. Especially because it's limited to 6 digits.
See what Serge Humpich thinks about it on google video :D

OK so that was the description part. But I'm wondering exactly how secure this is. The device doesn't communicate with the web site, so it means that this can't be completely random (I know it can't anyway but I mean not even pseudo-random) even if the device is called "random reader".
So I guess one could find the algorithm. What do you think is taken into account as input parameters ? Probably the card number, the pin code. Maybe another code stored into the card. There is no info on the product page concerning that topic. You have to know also that this random reader is not personal, so I can use someone else's reader for authenticating meaning that all the input parameters are related to the card.

What do you think of such a system ?

Back to this bookmarks thing ..

Guillaume Mouron — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 02:22:00 +0100

I've been thinking again of my bookmarks manager (see my previous post) and came to two different ideas ...

The first solution came during yesterday's night. Use a blogging platform and add a new blog entry for each bookmark, with tags associated ... That might seem a bit "overkill" but it has several advantages that I will detail further.

The second solution is, of course, the DIY solution. But I've been thinking of a specific one I would do. It's not necessarily the one best suited for this task but it would involve some technologies I'd like to work out.
It would be a quite simple xml file, one entry per bookmark, with a <taglist> containing the tags, a <state> tag to mark it as read or unread (very often I keep some bookmarks to read them later, and very often I forget to do so ), probably another one to know if it's a personal bookmark or a professional bookmark (to be able to keep both at the same place, but separated), a field to keep the date and probably one for a title and a last one for a description (which will mostly remain empty as I am to lazzy to fill it :).

Why use an xml file and not a database backend ?
Well, because there are several xml technologies I'd like to test or to reuse. The first one is the RelaxNG schema language. I've already used XSD schemas several times and I've read everywhere that RelaxNG is much simpler to use but does the task as well, so I want to give it a try.
The second one is xslt ... I've already used xslt but I want to continue using it and improve my skills. I would use xslt to build a complete set of pages from my xml bookmark files with corresponding queries when I select a set of tags, counts for each tags, etc etc ...
The third one, linked to the previous point, is I would like to minimize the use of a script language. And if possible, use python instead of php ... I'm not really fond of php but I'll use it if I have to. I would only use the script language to build a small interface for adding a new bookmark ... or maybe, why not, provide a webservice to do so ? With a nice WSDL file

Well, now, let's see the pros and the cons of each solution :

Blog Solution :
+ easy to set up and get it working
+ search integrated (by date, etc etc ...)
- is it possible to get the blog entries combining several tags ? (let's say I have a link tagged with java and "webservice", can I retrieve it by combining those two tags or do I need to browse through all links tagged as "java" or all links tagged as "webservice" ?). It mainly depends on the blog engine but does one with my requirements exist ?
- Need of a manual synchronization with your web browser (or maybe possible with an extension and the xmlrpc interface of the blog ? (I think dotclear and wordpress, at least, have one)

DIY XML Solution :
+ Will fit all my needs
+ Make me work different technologies
+ Possibility to make a firefox extension to synchronize with the firefox bookmark manager ? (maybe by tweaking some existing extension that let you upload on your ftp your bookmarks ?).
- Take time

So, it's still needs some thoughts and maybe some pieces of advice from friends ?

Web Bookmarks Manager

Guillaume Mouron — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 02:33:00 +0200

During the last few weeks, I've been thinking of a web application I liked to see ...

This would simply be a del.icio.us-like or blogmarks-like (choose the one you want) application BUT where you could host it on your own website.

First reason of self-hosting, not being "filed" by a company. You're also not sure it won't end its service and you'll lose your bookmarks.

The third reason is because of a feature I thought : imagine you install it on a company intranet. Every employee could put links related to his work so that first he could find it later and secondly it could benefit to other employees and/or another employee that would have to continue the work of the first one ...
So the employee finds a new link, he adds it to the portal and tags it correctly with keywords about what is in this link of course, but he could also add a tag giving a target (e.g. if it's interesting for every employee in the company or every employee in his service or just for people working on a specific project, ...).

On a more personal-use point of view, I would also see a public/private system so that you can publicly share links with people coming on your website (and why not a corresponding RSS feed ?) but also keep some personal bookmarks (like the one to this photo album of your nephew for instance ).
I would also add a "temp" system for keeping bookmarks that you know might be interesting but you don't have time to read (I said "system" and not "tag" as Nicolas is against the temp tag ).

Well, that's more or less all I had to say about it, maybe I'll do it in a coming future (maybe based on hariCow ? )

PS: the date you entered the bookmark would also be kept to find back bookmarks by date

Building a "web application" without a single line of html/javascript code ?

Guillaume Mouron — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 17:37:00 +0200

I've found today a possibly interesting java framework for building webapps without a single line of javascript/html code, named Echo2

I only ran the demo, but it seems quite impressive with a lot of pre-built widgets (panels, layout, components ...).
Instead of making your own html/javascript code, you build your interface in Java and it generates all the code for you.

The framework is opensource (MPL/LGPL) and they provide you with an EchoStudio built on the Eclipse Framework, though you have to pay for this piece of software.

I haven't tested it (yet ?) but appearantly you can built custom components and, of course, use your own stylesheets.

Maybe it is something to try ...

Echo2 website

PS: Thanks to Lionel for the corrections

Where are you in the hierarchy ? :D

Guillaume Mouron — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 21:02:00 +0200

Just a funny link found while browsing ... :)

Watch this diagram : The programmer Hierarchy
As a :

Java (mostly),
Ada (well, a long time ago, but I'd like to get back to it)
COBOL (hum, just during the period we had lectures :p)
Javascript
Ajax
PHP
Python (still have to learn a lot though)
C

programmer, it's hard to find my way ...
But it's even more complicated when I'm working on a J2EE project (it's currently the case) and I switch from java to javascript every 5 minutes ...

Schizophrenia ? :D

Does Internet Explorer really progress ?

Guillaume Mouron — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 21:29:00 +0200

As I am currently creating my homepage (not an easy task), I am running some tests on Internet Explorer 7 beta 3 and already having a bad feeling ...

So that was the big piece of news somewhere around 1 year and a half ago ...
Microsoft is working on a brand new version of Internet Explorer ...

So the purpose here is not to talk about the UI evolutions (TABS) but the CSS, Javascript and XHTML support (or standard compliance hum ...). Well, and also on the whole enhanced security thing with an "event" that occured yesterday ...

So, as already written in the excerpt, I am building my homepage, that will be available soon (at least I hope so :)).
And I wanted to put some transparency on my page ... Internet explorer has been handling html elements transparency for a long time with, of course, a proprietary instruction filter:alpha(opacity=number) or filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(opacity=number) where number is between 0 and 100.

But things have changed since that time ... Mozilla and firefox supported it through the -moz-opacity:number instruction with number between 0 and 1. And Konqueror and Safari through -khtml-opacity:number with number between 0 and 1.
Since then, it has been introduced into CSS 3 specifications (still working draft though) ... And now Opera, Mozilla Firefox and Safari support opacity:number, number between 0 and 1. Konqueror is supposed to but I can't make it work in the 3.5.1 version, even with the old -khtml-opacity property. See here for some other people being confronted to this problem ...

So as you could probably guess, IE7 beta 3 does not support the opacity property. You have to use their own filter property, which, of course, is not standard and gives you a validator error
So ok, I'm probably a bad programmer compared to those working on IE7, building a parser is not an easy thing (I still remember this compilation project ;)) but would it be THAT difficult to catch the opacity line, retrieve the number, multiply it by 100 and call the SAME function used with their filter thing ?

So that was the first point with this opacity thing ... But as we say in France un malheur n'arrive jamais seul (I don't know if there is a real translation but literally and poorly translated it would be a misfortune never happens alone hum ...). So Microsoft has enhanced the security within their browser (or at least, that's what they pretend) and you can't execute ActiveX applets or javascripts if you're not on a trusted site or you don't specifically allow the page to do so.
And that's the problem here. The filter property within the css is, appearantly, handled in a way or another by an ActiveX function. So when you include it in you css file, Internet Explorer prevents it from being executed (so no transparency) and displays a warning message if you want or don't want to execute ActiveX or script content !!

So, as you can see, I'm not convinced by IE7, at least with a ''web developper" point of view, who wants to make some cross-browser websites ... and there are still some differences in interpretation of "pure" xhtml, even if some progresses have been made ... The thing I really hope is that they won't release IE 7 and then do nothing for another 2 or 3 or 4 years ... They need to continue improving their browser because firefox, opera or safari are becoming more and more popular, and support more and more things ...

Some links :
the stylesheet (only the filter part)
the official IE7 blog

PS : Thanks to Nicolas for his corrections and YES I use the word "so" too much

Premier billet

Guillaume Mouron — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 02:51:00 +0200

Et ben voilà ...

Et ben voilà ... J'étais plutôt réticent jusque là à me faire un blog, n'en voyant guère l'utilité ...
Et puis j'ai sauté le pas

Il y aura de tout et de n'importe quoi ... Et aucune promesse de mise à jour régulière n'est faite
J'espère qu'il y aura 2 ou 3 trucs intéressants quand même :p