Modern Vespa

We are off to Amsterdam at the weekend and it would be a shame to go all that way and not do something Vespa/Scooter related so could anyone suggest any dealers or clothing outlets we could visit ?

Thanks in advance

Bill X

Your best bet in Amsterdam itself would be to go to Andiamo Vespa, the only 'official' Vespa dealer in the city. They are on the Van Baerlestraat opposite Museumplein, near the Concertgebouw, and pretty easy to find. They have a website at http://www.andiamovespa.nl

It's a nice shop with a good selection of scoots and clothes, albeit fairly small inside - just bought my first Vespa there yesterday

There are also various other scooter shops around the city, but most of them are a bit out of town. You might want to look at http://www.beumer-de-jong.nl/ http://www.scooter-city.nl or http://www.scooterzuid.nl. I have never been to any of them though, other than browse their websites.....

Let me know if you need any other tips

Simon that's brilliant work. I can't thank you enough.

Arriving Saturday afternoon and should be there for a couple of days so plenty of time to go looking for that.

Thanks again.

Bill X

For what it's worth, my anti-virus software (avast) detected a trojan when I opened that URL.

Mine seemed fine so far.......waiting for it to crash though.

Bill X

As did mine!

False negatives I suspect, looks fine from here.

yup me too... no problems on a mac

I wouldn't count on it. My software blocks the loading of the trojan, but continues to load the rest of the components. The site looks fine after it's loaded, but something was left out; I'm sure it would seem fine regardless.

And your software determines the trojan is what, exactly?

HTML:IFrame-KT (copy/pasted directly from the avast message)

I suspect it's something akin to what's discussed here:
http://www.diovo.com/2009/03/hidden-iframe-injection-attacks/

Edit: added link to injection discussion

A quick googling suggests you haven't installed a hosts file, and are getting doubleclick (or somesuch) useless advert frames presented to you.

http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm

I don't think short-circuiting the DNS process would accomplish anything in this case, since the trojan is loading from the primary site (i.e. www.andiamovespa.nl). Their server is corrupted.

I think it's a false negative. I checked the source of the website and I don't see any iframe tags. The only script they are calling is one from google-analytics, which is basically a stats tool. Additionally sites such as http://www.siteadvisor.com rate the site to be safe.

The following may also be relevant http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/07/avast_false_positive/

Excellent information!

The false positive they're discussing resulted from a signature file that was distributed December 3, but was corrected in the next file update. Both of these events occurred prior to my detecting the trojan (by the way, I have the latest update, which still detects it).

I don't know enough about HTML to comment on your earlier analysis of what the code is trying to do. But whatever is going on, it seems to be quite benign.

It's been 2 years this March since I have been to Amsterdam and miss not being able to go this year too. www.JamInTheDam.com

Hope you have fun, a stop by Rookies is well worth it, they are down near Ledensplien. A show at the Milkway is a blast, no cigarette smoking inside, but you are allowed to smoke other things that don't have tobacco in them. Weird law, but love it.

Wayne B

I posted the tojan issue to the avast support forum. The early consensus seems to be that it may well be a positive infection, and the site's webmaster should look into it. If anybody can communicate in Dutch, it might be useful to pass this link along to them:

http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=51941.0

My system flagged it because it was in Dutch. But did not find any other prob's. Did a Google translate and all is calm.

"because" it was in Dutch, or "when" it was in Dutch?

I speak Dutch, because I'm Dutch.

There's nothing wrong with the Andiamo Vespa website.

That link doesn't say anything other than there might be an infection, but I'll mention it to the owners tomorrow when I stop by.

I don't see where data.js is being called from in their home page though, it must be linked from one of the other pages. However in my experience these things are often false positives, and I personally don't rate Avast that highly

I don't think anybody's saying the site is infected, just that it should be investigated. If it turns out that the site is OK, somebody should tell avast they have a false positive.

I just wanted something about Vespa's in Amsterdam that's all.

Bill X

One has to be concerned about viruses in Amsterdam

That sounds like a false postitive Bill.

Oh and is it false positive or false negative or does it just depent on what side of the trojan you are on?

Bill, I suggest you ride your bicycle. It is Amsterdam after all....

In the words of Freddie Mercury ......

Actually part of the reason I'm going there is to buy a new bicycle.

Thanks to all the above.

Trojans. God I remember them.

Bill X

if you add the word 'identification' to the phrase it becomes clear. If an app falsely identifies something as malware/spam/whatever, then that is a false positive. A false negative is when the spam/whatever is let through.

An AV should have no false negatives (you don't want the chance of infection), anti-spam should have no false positives (you don't want to lose wanted email).

makes sense

how about this sold in many a fine coffee shop

ill be round in a bit xman

No thanks not my thing.

Bill X

So what sort of bicycle are you picking up? That's another hobby of mine

I'm looking for a used folding bike around the 100 Euro mark.

It has to be a folder for reasons that I won't go into here but if I like this one I'll buy better one later on in the year.

Mission Impossible ?

100EUR is a bit on the low side, I would have thought, but a quick search on Marktplaats (a local trading site that belongs to eBay) did pull up the following new folding bike http://link.marktplaats.nl/243149334

You can also search yourself and find others on the site - the word to search for is vouwfiets, and there are a number of good second hand ones between 100 and 200EUR. Batavus make some nice ones, Brompton make the best, but they are probably cheaper in the UK......

Yes I know its a good starting point but I'm not going to blow lots of Euro's on something I may not use in a couple of months so bargin basement it is for the time being.

I saw some lovely Bromptons at the weekend and they are what I would aspire to either that or a Giant Folder.

Thank you for your help so far.

Bill X

Bill

I think you should snoop around the sailing community. Sailors love folding bikes because they don't take up much space onboard, and they provide mobility when you get where you're going. It's the end of the sailing season now; so, you might have some luck.

Good advice Fogie. Thanks alot. I'm not actually on a mission to get one but lets face it if you are going to look for a bike Amsterdam is a pretty good place to start.

There are thousands and thousands.

One reason that I'm getting a folder is that I want to take it home in the Ka.

Bill X

The trojan problem has disappeared from the Amsterdam vespa site, even though the avast signature file has not changed. A Dutch poster to the avast forum suggested that they were in the midst of cleaning up their code. If it wasn't before, it's certainly a dead issue now.