Best Buy, you FAIL
Dec7
Dec 24th, 2008 9:48AM – received BestBuy password reset request in my e-mail inbox.
Dec 24th, 2008 10:03AM – received BestBuy purchase confirmation in my e-mail inbox for $156.74.
The problem? I was asleep and didn’t make this order! Sometime between 9:48AM and 10:03AM a Thomas Ng in Beaverton purchased a Sony Cybershot 8.1 MP camera over the phone and had it shipped to a Gabrielle Ng in Portland. I’m assuming that the Thomas in Beaverton waited a while for their password reset request to come to his e-mail inbox, and when it didn’t, he called up BestBuy for a phone order. So a BestBuy representative handled the phone order and changed MY account information and overwrote it with THEIR account information. The billing address, shipping address and even the credit card information was changed out this morning.
Okay, so if a customer calls and tries to place an order over the phone and also says that all of their billing information was different, wouldn’t the customer service guy get a little suspicious and deny the order?
Lucky for me, the order was billed to their Master Card, so I didn’t loose any money. I wonder how many other people this has happened to? Now that I have their CC information, what prevents me from racking up a bunch of purchases under their name? This is a huge security hole.
Best Buy, you FAIL.
Cost of text messaging vs E-mail.
Sep0
So I just got a text messaging plan after having a cell phone for the last 8 years. Being nerdy, I calculated the cost of texting vs just using internet e-mail. Let’s assume that there is no protocol overhead for e-mailing or texting and that what you only send is pure text.
My Comcast bill is approximately $55/month. Comcast recently announced that one can use a total aggregate bandwidth of 250GB per month before reaching their monthly limit. At this rate, the price per character is $2.05 x 10^-10 (that’s $2.05 billionth of a dollar per *character*… a very very small number.)
The math:
($55.00 month / 250GB) * (1GB / 2^30 bytes) = $0.000000000205 / byte.
(1 byte = one 8-bit ASCII character – e.g. A-Z, 0-9 and punctuation)
On the other hand, my text messaging service costs $5.00 / month. You get 400 *total* text messages, with 140 characters each. Lets assume that every text message that you send and receive is 140 characters long… even though the average text message is much shorter. At this rate, the price per character is $0.0000893.
The math:
($5.00 month / 400 messages) * (1 message / 140 bytes) = $0.0000893 / byte.
(1 byte = one 8-bit ASCII character – e.g. A-Z, 0-9 and punctuation)
So, if Comcast charges the same amount as your phone carrier for the same amount of service, it would cost you $23,971,286 per month.
The math:
($0.0000893 / byte) * (1 byte / [1/2^30] GB) * 250GB = $23,971,286.
Yes … almost $24 MILLION dollars a month.
Donate to the LAF; year round. Help join the fight!
Sep0
Help the fight against cancer. Donate to the Lance Armstrong Foundation today!
Cycling Log
Aug0
Updated! Latest entries at the bottom.
Just like last year, i’ll be keeping track of the miles that i bike this cycling season.
04/13/2008 – 30.95miles, 2hrs 03min, avg speed 15.04mph, max speed 26.52mph
04/14/2008 – 13.60miles, 0hrs 51min, avg speed 15.90mph, max speed 27.54mph
04/17/2008 – 14.22miles, 0hrs 53min, avg speed 16.05mph, max speed 27.27mph, avg cadence 82
04/25/2008 – 13.03miles, 0hrs 47min, avg speed 16.49mph, max speed 27.27mph, avg cadence 85
05/04/2008 – 6.7miles, 0hrs 29min, avg speed 13.44mph, max speed 23.17, avg cadence 69
05/05/2008 – 13.04miles, 0hrs 48min, avg speed 16.31mph, max speed 28.80, avg cadence 82
05/09/2008 – 31.9miles, 1hrs 56min, avg speed 16.53mph, max speed 28.35, avg cadence 85
05/10/2008 – 50.0miles, 3hrs 38min, avg speed 14.10mph, max speed 28.35, avg cadence 78
05/17/2008 – 100.0miles, 6hrs 47min, avg speed 14.76mph, max speed 35.59, avg cadence 77 – We completed “Reach the Beach” 2008!
05/24/2008 – ~9miles, mountain biking Brown’s Camp
05/30/2008 – 40.1miles, 2hrs 32min, avg speed 15.78mph, max speed 28.64, avg cadence 83
05/30/2008 – Signed up for the 100-mile LiveSTRONG ride for June 29th, 2008
05/31/2008 – 45.3miles, 3hrs 15min, avg speed 13.9mph, max speed 23.4, avg cadence 78 – Spring Water Corridor
06/01/2008 – 20.23miles, 1hr 23min, avg speed 14.55mph, max speed 25.8, avg cadence 83
06/15 – 6/20/2008 – 42.26miles, 2hrs 45min, avg speed 15.29mph, max speed 26.27, avg cadence 82 – Rode by bike to work every day this week.
06/21/2008 – 50.01miles, 3hr 17min, avg speed 15.19mph, max speed 26.76, avg cadence 85
06/22/2008 – 9.7miles, ~1hr 15min, mountain biking Powell Butte
06/24/2008 – 3.84miles, 15min, avg speed 15.77mph, max speed 24, avg cadence 91
06/29/2008 – 83.36miles, 5hrs 22min, avg speed 14.86mph, max speed 39.41, avg cadence 76 – LIVESTRONG Ride. Ran into mechanical problems at the end 
08/03/2008 – 20.23miles, 1hr 18min, avg speed 15.44mph, max speed 24.27, avg cadence 84
08/10/2008 – 42.97miles, 3hrs 32min, avg speed 12.12mph, max speed 36.02, avg cadence 71
08/22/2008 – 16.83miles, 1hr 7min, avg speed 14.96mph, max speed 25.80, avg cadence 81
08/24/2008 – 42.02miles, 3hrs 44min, avg speed 11.21mph, max speed 29.52 avg cadence 72
09/06/2008 – 6.75miles, 24minutes, avg speed 16.43, max speed 27.80, avg cadence 90 – REI & back.
09/19/2008 – 38.62miles, 2hrs 26minutes, avg speed 16.89, max speed 30.15, avg cadence 89.
09/20/2008 – 29.03miles, 2hrs 08minutes, avg speed 13.56, max speed 22.30, avg cadence 84.
Miles to-date: 773.65 miles