General

Identity theft insurance, the devil is in the details

Ryan M. Hurst — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:25:02 GMT

In the past I wrote a blog post on how one can protect themselves from How to protect yourself from (financially related) identity theft, one of the ways I talk about protecting yourself is via identity theft insurance. I still think this is a good strategy but ran across an article today titled “LifeLock fined $12 million over lack of life-locking ability“.

As I said in my last post the devil is in the details, as with all insurance policies you need to understand what promises are actually being made and who is it that will stand behind those promises…

The Lenovo X301 is way cool...

Ryan M. Hurst — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 05:12:05 GMT

Today my test lead let me snag one of the laptops we recently ordered for selfhost testing of some of our technologies.

My current laptop is a X61, only about a year old and its no slouch but boy this X301 is fast, and this screen its beautiful!

Its running a recent Windows 7 build and all I can say is WOW...

I am tempted to buy one for home use!

Back from Cartes, had a great time v2...

Ryan M. Hurst — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 00:47:06 GMT

Last year around this time I had the pleasure of heading to Paris for Cartes, it was a good trip and this year qualifies as the same.

I had a number of great partner meetings, saw a bunch of neat products, attended PC/SC and of course got to see Paris.

These trips take a lot out of you, very little time for sleep but a good time none-the less, I am glad to be home though.

Beef, it’s what’s for dinner

Ryan M. Hurst — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:10:45 GMT

After our Europe trip last year we really noticed the food quality difference between what we were eating back home and what we were eating while on vacation, that’s not to say the food was always better in Europe but we did, on average eat at better places that we might normally so to a certain degree it should be expected.

That being said in some cases, like with vegetables (Tomatoes in particular) they were definitely better all around in Europe, this is why we put up a greenhouse.

We have yet to get our first crop of vegetables (but it should come soon), in the mean time our friend Chris arranged for us to buy a 1/2 organic, grass fed Angus, which we split 3 ways (one part going to a nice lady named Linda).

Chris did most of the work, he ordered the steer (from a family friend), arranged for the butcher (recommended by the family friend), picked up the beef, and of course paid all the afore mentioned actors; for this I am thankful!

With that out of the way I would share how this worked out with my faithful readers, bellow is the excerpt from the spreadsheet we used to figure out who got what and how much each person paid.

For those that do not want to read the nitty gritty details, the net of all this is that we each got 126 lbs of good quality grass fed Angus beef for $2.53 a pound.

Total Pounds	378
Base Price Per Pound	$2.00
Butcher Fee	$200.00
Total Price Per Pound (incl. butcher)	$2.53
Total Price	$956.00
Participants	3
Price Per Participant	$318.67

	5	chuck	4	chuck	5	chuck
	1	cross rib	1	cross rib	1	cross rib
	1	arm roast	1	arm roast	1	arm roast
	2	rib steak	2	rib steak	2	rib steak
	1	rump roast	1	rump roast	1	rump roast
	2	tenderloin	2	tenderloin	3	tenderloin
	2	ny	3	ny	2	ny
	1	top round	1	top round	1	top round
	3	top sirloin	2	top sirloin	2	top sirloin
	1	short rib	2	short rib	1	short rib
	2	soup bone	2	soup bone	2	soup bone
	3	stew meats	2	stew meats	2	stew meats
	1	sirloin tip	1	sirloin tip	1	sirloin tip
	1	eye roast	1	eye roast	0	eye roast
	1	bottom round	0	bottom round	1	bottom round
	0	top round	1	top round	0	top round
	0	flank	0	flank	1	flank
	14	hamburger	14	hamburger	14	hamburger
Total Units	41		40		40

Was this a good deal? Really only time will tell (will we eat it all?, will we like the taste?, will we figure out how to cook the extra lean meat without ruining it?) but on paper this looks like a good deal, Safeway sells 80% lean ground beef at $1.29 a lb and 85% lean ground beef at $2.49 a lb while the NY Strips go for $11.99 a lb.

More over in theory the beef we get out of this exchange is of a higher quality, 1^st off its Angus and the marketers would have us believe that makes it a cut above the rest then it being organic (pasture raised, no antibiotics, grass fed, etc.) tells us the meat will be healthy, lean and as humane as can be.

When shopping at Whole Foods or PCC we can pay much more than what Safeway sells for; with that in mind I am going to say we did all right, I will let you know how it goes after towards the end of the summer to see if we would do it again.

Cem has a interesting post on LifeLock

Ryan M. Hurst — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 05:58:21 GMT

My friend Cem over at Random Oracle has written a interesting post on LifeLock, I have written about these Identity Theft insurance companies before here.

I am personally signed up with Debix, I recently financed a car and it was awkward to get the financing setup because of the approval process compared to what it would be otherwise, that's really the point though, isn't it?

In any event, I can say at least in my case, I can see how the Debix brokering of the fraud alert provides a level of protection that I think is worth having, though in name of full disclosure I did not have to pay for the service and I have not gone through the personal evaluation process to determine what the cash value to me is as of yet.

I guess the real proof of value comes in when you have to claim the insurance and you see how awkward that process is.

In general though as you can see in my prior post on this topic I am a fan of such programs being underwritten by a company you know and trust, and LifeLock is self insured .

That being said there are many types of Identity Theft, and these services don't help protect you from all of them, though they do help in the case of financially oriented threats.

Check out Cem's post though, its worth a read.

Did you ever wonder who contributes to Internet standards?

Ryan M. Hurst — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 05:25:52 GMT

I stopped by the Malt and Vine tonight and picked up some interesting dark beers (I am a huge fan of stouts, porters and dark ales), and while sitting here enjoying a Dogfish Head World Wide Stout I figured I would look at IETF statistics (I am a wild one!).

Jari Arkko runs a great website that tracks this, its worth checking out some of the more interesting charts he has are the affiliation chart, the historical affiliation and of course there is me.

The author stats dont show contributions to specifications where a individual or company is not listed as a explicit author, and there are general (unpublished?) rules around how many authors can/should be listed so contributors often are relegated to a un-tracked acknowledgement sections or no reference at all (one can check news group archives to find many of these folks, they do matter).

So, like all statistics take these numbers with a grain of salt; don't get me wrong they do provide value, with that being said some things are so exaggerated you can't help but notice.

For example, look at the author distribution for CISCO relative to their closest peer (its 2.5 times!!); this is no surprise to anyone who has participated in the IETF, its pretty common to go into a hum (a consensus process in the IETF) and see a room with a bunch of CISCO people in it.

Another interesting thing to notice is the number of authors in a given company, Microsoft has 65 (making them/us #5) while CISCO has 255 (They are #1 in participation); that's not to say that more authors is better or worse, like all things the devil is in the details.

A couple statistics I think would be interesting, probably more interesting IMHO, would be a historical trend of standard velocity (how long standards take to get completed in the IETF over time) another would be some metric that showed specification vs. deployment on the internet.

Well back to my beer.

U.S. versus European Gas Prices, is it apples to oranges?

Ryan M. Hurst — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 06:03:32 GMT

I just ran across a great blog post offering a comparison between U.S. and European Gas Prices, I talked about this a little in the past in my blog post on "Truth in advertising and the gas tax..." but Jason Morgan, the author of this particular blog post does a more complete break down of the overage price differential and finds that Europeans on average pay $0.95 LESS per gallon for gas (when you leave the taxes out).

He also interestingly points out that this difference, which works out to 26.7%, is almost exactly the same as the depreciation the U.S. Dollar has experienced against the Euro over the past five years (27%).

Every company should treat customers like TIVO...

Ryan M. Hurst — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 04:12:10 GMT

In 2000 TIVO ran a series of advertisements featuring Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott, as part of that series of ads they also ran a contest, 1st prize of which was to be the new TIVO, I already had one TIVO but it was such a great product I wanted another for the bedroom, 2nd prize was a Football signed by both Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott.

I seldom enter these online contests but the promise of a free TIVO was irresistible so I entered, believe it or not I won! Though not the TIVO I was hoping for, I got the football.

Being a bit of a football neophyte I had no idea that the football itself was quite the prize, truth be told, at the time I hardly knew who both Joe Montana and Ronnie Lott were .

After receiving the football I read about both players, both formidable, one story I remember reading was about Lott, he had broken a finger and was told he could not play the rest of the season, his answer? Cut the finger off I want to play.

In any event winning the football give me a basic interest and appreciation for the sport, we started making it a family event to watch the super bowl; the football was kept in its original box and put in a safe place for storage.

Well early this year we got a new safe and I wanted to go through all of our collectables and make sure they were all safely stored in it, this included the football and while doing that I realized I had no documentation for the authenticity for the football!

On a whim I figure I would see if I could get TIVO to send me a letter confirming I was in-fact the winner of this great collectable, to that end I did a bit of digging and saw Doug Bieter was/is VP of Marketing (atleast in 2002 according to CNET) so I sent him a email with my story and my request.

He was SUPER helpfull and put me in contact with Jennifer Swenson who was able to send me just what I needed.

I have to say I have always liked TIVO, they have made a great product, additionally they have done a great job nurturing a user community for their products all the while developing a solid brand.

Doug and Jennifer could have easily told me to bugger-off but they did not and in this day-and-age where customer service is commonly considered a oxy moron the fact that they did not tells you allot about them, TIVO and the sort of business they want to run.

Thanks Doug and Jennifer!

Verizon FIOS is coming to my little part of Woodinville...

Ryan M. Hurst — Wed, 28 May 2008 21:08:03 GMT

About two months ago I got a letter in the mail introducing me to my new COMCAST Concierge Representative, this person was to be my channel into 1st class customer support from COMCAST; this is important because if you have ever tried to purchase services from COMCAST or get them to support the services they have already sold you its a challenge at best, they know you don't have many options and treat you as such.

My COMCAST Concierge guy was nice, and helpful he even answered questions via e-mail; frankly I was impressed but its clear from the discussion he did not have the same sort of power DirecTV gives its escelation CSR folks.

That being said, while I was impressed with my experience to be honest the thing that exited me the most was that the fact that COMCAST gave little old me this level of care meant that competition was coming, the uncaring COMCAST machinery knew soon I would have choices!

About two weeks ago, I confirmed this; when I came into my neighborhood surveyors were there marking phone, gas and power lines with their neon paints, I asked one of them what services were coming in and they told me it was Verizon with FIOS.

Yesterday when I came home there were a dozen or more guys working to plumb the infrastructure through my neighborhood, none of the ones I could find spoke english, they all spoke Spanish and I really only know two spanish phrases:

Donde esta el bano (Where is the bathroom)?
Una cervesa por favor (One beer please).

And unfortunatley these two phrases were not going to help me here (though they have served me well in the past). In any event though I don't know when they will be done, or when it will be live, but I do think I have a reasonable chance of getting service from Verizon FIOS in the not so distant future which is just great.

Why do I care? Well for one I really don't like the way COMCAST has treated me in the past, its also more expensive than the comparable Verizon offerings, more over Verizon FIOS offers down speeds as high as 50Mbps and up speeds as high as 20Mbps; that just doesn't compare to my COMCAST BLAST 16Mbps down and 950Kbps up.

The big deal for me is the up speed given the telecommuting I do, but moving to a cheaper service that is faster overall doesnt hurt.

Only time will tell when I can switch, but I strongly suspect I will.

Back from jury duty...

Ryan M. Hurst — Wed, 28 May 2008 06:10:23 GMT

Jury duty was a interesting experience, this case had multiple charges of assault, then there was harassment and rape; in a way I was looking forward to this experience, the U.S. criminal judicial system uses a "jury of one's peers" as a means to help protect folks from a callous bureaucracy and when combined with the presumption of innocence (putting the burdon of proof on the prosecution) it helps ensure folks get a fair trial.

The down-side of all of this is that sometimes, and this was the case this time, a guilty man goes free for the wrong reasons.

In this case, by my count, there was seven key mistakes made by the state:

Poor jury selection, there were individuals whose natural biases were so strong the probability of the prosecution getting their man as it were went down considerably, I would have expected the prosecution to do a better job at ferreting these folks out.
Information overload, while the prosecution has a obligation to present all the relevant evidence they do not have a obligation to present all evidence, presentation of evidence that has no value to your story wastes everyone's time and costs you credibility with the jury.
Information deficiency, if you present a piece of evidence make sure you know why you are doing it, frame the evidence in a narrative or the defense will do it for you helping to create reasonable doubt.
Poor questioning of witnesses, when your own witness is on the stand do not ask them questions they do not know the answer too, it makes them look less credible.
Don't try to prove your right and your witness is wrong, if in the process of questioning your own witness if they say something inconsistent with what you said previously don't try too hard to prove your right, in the end the case depends on the credability of the witness, not you and proving your own witness was inconsistent doesn't help your case.
Poor police work, lost tapes, pictures of the wrong phone, a hair-band with probable value and no back story; these are the sorts of things acquittals are made of.
Give them choices, in this case many of the charges were dependent on the jury buying one thing (in this case the use of a weapon), there were other lesser charges that would not have have required this, include these lesser options so you can atleast get him on something.

Another thing this experience got me thinking about was the impact shows like CSI* and Law & Order* have had on the legal system, its clear folks now have un-realistic expectations how the police and prosecution work.

Back to the case I was on, I believe he was guilty (BTW, later we found out he had done this before), I also believe we as the jury could have convicted him, at least on some of the counts, but based on the above "mistakes" the guy got off (one of the charges was hung, so they could re-try).

Now IANAL, but the above just looks good old common sense to me; I wonder if they try to teach that in law school these days.

All I can say at this point is this experience did not sit too well with me, and I am glad to be back at work.