Monday, March 12, 2012

Processing may take up to 60 seconds?!?






Seriously?!? This was a simple ccard transaction for a storage unit! Admittedly, it only took about 20 seconds, but it was still long enough for me to push the button, read the text, exclaim "You've *GOT* to be *KIDDING* me!!", my 12 y/o son to ask "What?", me to respond "60 seconds to process a payment on line, " him to reply "That's stupid", me to launch snipping tool & grab a capture before it processed my payment.

Grrr.... Hey, I've got an idea, why don't they give me a unit free for the next 10 years in exchange for 25 hrs of performance testing/tuning (and that would *still* be less than my typical bill rate) so that other folks don't have to deal with this crap.


I mean, honestly, I get annoyed enough that I have to log in, fill out my c-card number, date, name, exp date, and billing address. Like, seriously, that's the best we can do? How 'bout just the c-card # and a retinal scan? I'd *happily* provide any/everyone on the planet with a high def image -- movie even -- of my eyeball if it meant that I could just pull up a site, look into my web cam, enter 16 digits ONCE (then at least give me the *option* to store it in some encrypted cookie on my local machine so I don't have to go get my wallet and type all those numbers in before my 25 second session expires next month), and click pay. I'd even live with that generating some super secret link to my email that I then had to click to complete the transaction.

I get that there are people who are against biometric identification, but I'm not one of them. The way I see it, if someone wants my fingerprint, all they have to do is follow me around and lift it off of something I touch -- if they want the pattern of blood vessels in my eyeball, I'm sure they could snap a picture without me noticing (or, heck, just install a really hi-def camera in place of a "normal" security camera) somewhere. DNA -- pick through my trash.

I'm sure it's no harder to get my pins & passwords... of course, there are plenty of folks with easier ones to get than me, but that's not the point. The point is that I know a little something about security, what it costs in terms of convenience, performance, and privacy & I'm saying that the degree of security that we most frequently encounter throughout our day annoys us far more than it would slow down someone honestly interested in ruining our day -- which, by the way, is exactly what having to dealing with pho-security and the reduced efficiency it causes (both in slower response times and extra effort on my part) does for me when after spending all of one of the few days I have at home trying to pay bills and stuff -- ruin my day.

But aside from the fact that I'd gladly volunteer to have a chip implanted in my wrist that I could scan & use as ID, Credit Card, etc...

60 seconds to process a c-card transaction?!? It didn't take that long back when vendors had to swipe your card through one of those slider machines with the carbon-copy receipt things! C'mon folks! This is the 21st century. If I wanted to spend a minute waiting to see if my c-card went through, I'd have driven to the store in the first place -- and don't try to tell me that's the best you can do... I wrote the book(s) on Performance Testing... I *know* better!




--
Scott Barber
Chief Technologist, PerfTestPlus, Inc.
Director, Computer Measurement Group
About.me

Co-Author, Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications
Author, Web Load Testing for Dummies
Contributing Author, Beautiful Testing, and How To Reduce the Cost of Testing

"If you can see it in your mind...
     you will find it in your life."

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