Text 48014, 78 rader
Skriven 2007-02-02 17:26:00 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
  Kommentar till text 48004 av Roy Witt (1:397/22)
Ärende: FidoNews 24:05 [02/05]: General Articles
================================================
Hello Roy!

On Thursday February 01 2007 16:17, you wrote to me:

 RW>>> Ahhh, your first mistake.

 MvdV>> If that was anyone's mistake it was my boss'es. No, my mistake
 MvdV>> was not walking away from that job when I still could...

 RW> Many people do the same thing. They're hoping against hope that the
 RW> company will survive and don't see the trees for the forrest.

True. As it was I indeed had some hope things could turn for the better. I had
not given up all hope yet.

 MvdV>>>> So.. I dropped the test. What could I do?

 RW>>> As the stubborn person you've proven to be, continue with your
 RW>>> tests on your own time?

 MvdV>> At that point it was already clear to me that I was in all
 MvdV>> likehood going to outlive that company and that investing my
 MvdV>> own time in it was not going to pay off. So I didn't.

 RW> You're right. You should have left the very minute your boss told you
 RW> to stop testing.

Quitting on a job on the spot is not a good idea under the Dutch legal system.
Actually quitting on a job without having a new one is a bad idea in any case.
Unless there is a very good reason. Like sexual harassment or being put in
physical danger.

 RW> One engineer came to me with a design for a locking system for the
 RW> money vault. I looked at his design and told him that it wouldn't be
 RW> secure enough.

Hmmm.. sounds very familiar... ;)

 RW> He told me to build it anyway and so I did, according to his
 RW> specifications. When it was finished, I showed it to him and he
 RW> was satisfied with how it worked.

Same here. No back doors, no tricks, no way - except for dynamite - to open the
safe without the (electronic) key.

 RW> Then I told him to step outside of the office door and take the keys
 RW> to it with him, then wait 1 minute and come back in. When he came back
 RW> in, to his astonishment, I had the vault open. We then sat down and
 RW> together we designed one that couldn't be opened without the proper
 RW> key.

Why did you not tell him *before* you made it?

I pointed out the weak spot of the system before we even started. The weak spot
being that it is not a good idea to have all the vaults spread around the
country - some 400 - have the same electronic key. The customer said that was
no problem as the electronic key was physically tied to the armoured car that
was to collect the money from the safe. To open the safe the armoured car
needed to get close enough to plug in the cable. To boot, there was not one
armoured car, but there were a few dozens. All equipped with the same
electronic key. They armoured car was impregnable the customer claimed.

But then of course one day someone found a way to remove the black box that
contained the electronic key from one of the armoured cars and open many of the
vaults in one night. How much was stolen was never published, my estimate is
somewhere between. 1 and 10 million. (Euro)

Inside job of course....

 RW> Those vaults are still in use today.

Same here, but after the theft they changed to a system of multiple keys. Not
after us having designed some additional equipment for the purpose... ;-)

Cheers, Michiel

--- GoldED+/W32-MSVC 1.1.5-b20060315
 * Origin: http://www.van.der.vlist.org (2:280/5555)