

Only in Germany: An API with opening hours  - Usul
http://evatr.bff-online.de/eVatR/xmlrpc/

======
jdietrich
It's not an altogether unreasonable approach to security. It doesn't sit
particularly well with geeks, but for complex systems with a high risk of
fraud there's a great deal of damage-limitation to be found in only processing
transactions when they can be manually monitored. Heuristic intrusion
detection is still relatively poor.

For a government-to-business service, the overwhelming majority of legitimate
transactions will occur during office hours and few people will be
significantly inconvenienced by closing overnight. The risk of an attacker
gaining even a few hours of brute-force insight is great, but the rewards from
operating 24/7 slight.

While I'd like to be able to do my Companies House filings at 4am, I'm more
keen to see my data protected.

~~~
veidr
Right. It'd be nice if everything was 24/7, but we have all manner of systems
here in Japan that are only open during certain business hours, and for that
matter in the US, too.

The online interface to the Delaware Division of Corporations, for example,
only processes certain filings during business hours.

Computer software can be pretty good at flagging activity that falls outside
certain parameters, but it still isn't generally good at figuring out what the
do about that.

~~~
bricestacey
You can't pay a car's excise tax in Massachusetts after 11pm. I can't think of
a valid reason for that.

~~~
marshray
Maybe they process batch transactions overnight. Maybe they want to reserve a
nightly maintenance window.

Or maybe it's an instance of the "12:01" effect where they're scared to do
anything too close to midnight. :-)

~~~
bricestacey
The "12:01" effect is likely part of it[0], but it could also be a daylights
saving time thing where they don't want to bother supporting it.

[0] In Boston proper, our street sweeping signs now say "12:01-2:00" or
"2:01-4:00".

~~~
lanstein
Street cleaning. So glad I don't have to worry about getting towed anymore.

------
ugh
As the examples mentioned here show, opening hours are not altogether uncommon
on the web.

Here is another example from Germany: Certain TV shows are deemed not
appropriate for kids of a certain age. This results in all broadcasters only
being allowed to show them on TV at certain times. If a TV show is, for
example, not appropriate for kids younger than twelve it can only be shown
between 8pm and 6am.

The consortium of public broadcasters puts much of their content online,
including TV shows with age limits. You can only watch those at certain times.
Here is an example:
[http://mediathek.daserste.de/sendungen_a-z/602916_tatort/746...](http://mediathek.daserste.de/sendungen_a-z/602916_tatort/7466516_-tatort
--im-abseits--in-voller-l-nge) (the video should be blocked for another four
hours and forty minutes after this link has been posted).

I’m not sure why the public broadcasters do that. The private broadcasters
don’t seem to but maybe they just don’t put any content with age limits
online.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Does Germany only have one time zone?

~~~
blumentopf
Yes, CET (UTC+1) and CEST (UTC+2) during summer.

~~~
ugh
In fact all of Western Europe, Southern Europe (minus Portugal, Greece and
Turkey), Northern Europe (minus the British Isles, the Baltic states and
Finland) and large parts of Eastern Europe (with the eastern border of Poland
as the easternmost point) are all in one time zone.

It’s still slightly funny that most kids in the world are theoretically able
to view the videos at non-approved times. Will nobody think of the (non-CET)
children!

~~~
ernesth
Not really, Teneriffe is in Spain, Curaçao is in the Netherlands, Kourou is in
France but they don't lie in CET.

~~~
ugh
Teneriffe, Curaçao and Kourou are, however, not part of Europe. There! ;-)

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mikle
Nope. not only in Germany. Here is Israel we have more than one site that
"close" for the Sabbath. It's moderately interesting to see how religion and
the internet co exist.

~~~
yuvadam
Yep. Some governmental institutions such as the Israeli Social Security have
their websites up during Sabbath (Saturday), but do not accept payments.

Supposedly, because just having the server up does not require any manual
labor, but accepting a payments constitutes trade, which is forbidden during
Sabbath.

(Nevermind the fact that an institution which entire purpose is to assist
those in need is the most non-accessible organization ever - from not having
accessible entrances to buildings, to their payments gateway which supports
_IE only_. Yes, IE is the ONLY browser officially supported).

~~~
ars
An Israeli site has a problem that US sites don't. Although a Jew can leave a
site running and even accept payments on the sabbath, that is only if non-jews
are the ones sending the payment. (Because non-jews are not required to
observe the sabbath.)

To accept a payment from a Jew on sabbath would definitely be wrong. So an
Israeli site, which can expect that Jews will use it, must shut down on the
Sabbath.

Leaving the site running, but not accepting money is probably the compromise
they made because a lot of Israelis are secular.

------
mrspeaker
My friend thought it would be novel to give his personal portfolio site
opening hours (with a nice "sorry we're closed!" notification). It was very
cool, except GoogleBot only came crawling in the middle of the night.

~~~
SocratesV
He could always check for the UserAgent :)

~~~
dualogy
Google doesn't like that I heard.

~~~
saalweachter
You could javascript a CLOSED sign as an overlay during certain hours. That
way the content is unchanged, and I think it even adds to the flair.

------
Usul
The last passage in english:

Important Note:

With this interface you can confirm the validity of a foreign tax
identification number (VAT) between 05:00 and 23:00 daily.

------
matthavener
Lots of large database sites have long-running reports. I could imagine a site
shutting down to freeze the database for a complicated report.

------
davidmat
Reminded me of the recently announced Free Wifi at Brussels Airport (Belgium),
"Open every Fri and Sat from 6 am till 8 pm"

<https://twitter.com/#!/BRUXX_be/status/81621976745127936>

------
nodata
So their SLA is between certain hours. Big deal.

I think Companies House in the UK also does office hours for some of their
databases.

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mfjordvald
Not really only in Germany. For instance Nordea Denmark closes its online bank
between 2 am and 5 am. Probably because they don't have staff at those times
to prevent scammers from transferring money out and people rarely need to use
banking during those hours.

As someone who sleeps weirdly it has annoyed me once or twice, though.

~~~
Kelpo
I think that's because they do the actual booking at that time and all of
their database operations. Nothing to do with scammers.

------
loevborg
Now at first I thought the API would return a shop's opening hours. That's not
trivial as it sounds in Germany because different lander have different laws
requiring shops to close, for instance, on Sundays and weekdays after 8 p.m.
That would be neat actually!

Maybe this is in fact an API that requires the manual intervention of a clerk?
Or perhaps they have a policiy to shut down the office computers after office
hours - in any case, a funny comment on Germany bureaucracy.

------
harshaw
In the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts we have government websites that
are only "open" (meaning, you can perform transactions) during certain hours.

Example:
[http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=elwdagencylanding&L=4&L0...](http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=elwdagencylanding&L=4&L0=Home&L1=Government&L2=Departments+and+Divisions+\(EOLWD\)&L3=DUA+QUEST&sid=Elwd)

~~~
lsb
At Tufts, the online course registration is open 9am-6pm.

------
roel_v
There is a Dutch extremist Christian newspaper whose site doesn't work on
Sunday.

~~~
hesselink
See also here:
[http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=nl&tl...](http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=nl&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.refdag.nl%2Fzondag)

------
fsniper
In Turkey we had governmental sites running in work-hours :) Nowadays there
are not any sites of this kind.

------
digamber_kamat
I dont think this is joke. Not all system are like Facebook and Twitter,
banking systems and many other complex and distributed systems will need to
have this compulsary daily downtime until we improve our communication
technologies by 10x everywhere.

------
c3o
The US Social Security online services are also suspended at night (see right
column, operating hours): <http://www.ssa.gov/onlineservices/>

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Mpdreamz
The netherlands' chamber of commerce API shuts down at night too, which is why
a free alternative had to be created (openkvk.nl) to proof there shouldnt be a
need for the shutdown.

------
hussong
The Delaware Division of Corporations' web app to file your annual report and
pay business entity tax is available between 8:00 am and 11:45 pm Eastern Time
daily. Go figure.

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wdr1
Not only in Germany. The Social Security online tools have "hours."

No, I'm not joking. I discovered this trying to estimate my mom's benefit late
one night.

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slifty
As of 2009 when I graduated, Carnegie Mellon's course registration and student
management web page shut down after 8:00 PM

Maybe these guys were CMU grads ;)

------
kitcar
The website for the department of the Ontario Gov't (Canada) which manages
corporate filings is also only open during business hours (8-4 Mon-Fri I
believe)

------
mrpollo
I've seen the same thing happen with 80% of the state sponsored services
online in Mexico, and i think this isn't for security, its pure bureaucracy.

------
stef25
I spent a few min reading this thread before I realised it's not an API that
provides opening hours of businesses across Germany.

------
ceejayoz
WordPress.com's support ticket page used to only be open from 9-5.

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ig1
Not only in Germany: <http://twitpic.com/3jz6fh>

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ignifero
To be fair, this might not even have to do with germany, as it queries other
countries' VAT registries online, many of which are down for maintainance many
hours a day. The weird thing is that, even though there is a system for VAT id
interconnectivity (VIES) , there is no central database of numbers.
[<http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/vies/>]

~~~
mhd
Do you have any information why these databases are down for such a long time,
every day? I can't see a really good technical reason for that right now.

~~~
ignifero
A combination of incompetence, byzantine bureaucracy, under qualified
personell, uncooperative subsystems and obscure security here in godforsaken
greece

------
leon_
reminds me of mbank.pl - a polish _internet only_ bank which accepts money
transfer orders only from 0800 - 1800 hours and not on weekends.

no, they don't save the order to execute it the next morning. they just print
an error message and you have to enter your transfer order during opening
hours.

~~~
rudepeklo
wow, I didn't know they do that. In Czech republic this functionality works
all the time, I wonder why they behave differently in these two countries.

~~~
leon_
oh no, it's only this one bank. online banking with other banks (haven't tried
them all - 3 accounts is enough _cough_ ) works as expected.

it's only ironic because mbank is an internet only bank :)

~~~
vetinari
Rudepeklo meant that mbank in Czech republic accepts transfer orders 24/7. I
can confirm, the interbank orders will wait till the interbank reconciliation
center opens, but internal transfers will be made immediately.

What's more interesting, mbank uses the same backend for pl, cz and sk. I know
that it works in cz and sk exactly the way it is supposed to do. Why is pl
exception?

