Internet Privacy Appliance on the Horizon

It looks like TOR is heading toward going mainstream. TOR is a software that bounces your internet requests through a network to heavily obscure where the request came from. It's not guaranteed anonymity but it goes a long way toward hiding the folks who use it.

If this router configuration ends up productized folks won't have to download and configure software on their computer to gain the provided privacy... it'll just happen automatically on their router.

So the downside? I have to believe internet performance when using the TOR network will be slower.

Happy, safe and prosperous New Year EVERYONE!

Organized Primary Mischief

Primaries make sense to me for non-partisan elections but this just seems like abuse of the system.

I wonder why the government holds partisan primaries at all... I'm sure there is an explanation (past party corruption seems likely.) Wouldn't it be cheaper for the taxpayers if each registered party picked their candidate internally and then just submitted their candidate for the ballot for a single election per partisan office?

The Majik Man

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal posts a link to an NFL video on Don Majkowski I just enjoyed. Thanks for the good times Don, the Cardiac Pack days were nerve wracking but a hell of a lot of fun.

Good Software Companies

Mark Garcia extends Joel Spolsky's suggested "company quiz" that has to do with rating the quality of a software development organization.

Mark's addition of "Do you fix bugs before implementing new features?" resonated with me. In every product I've ever worked on, the priority has always been on delivering new features rather than refactoring code and eliminating technical debt until the product is in pure maintenance mode. Manufacturing companies seem to understand striving for continuous incremental improvement thing, software companies seem to relatively more short sighted point of view.

Another question that would be useful from my perspective is the level of employee turnover and how employee success is measured.

Fox News Viewers

* 91 percent believe the stimulus legislation lost jobs
* 72 percent believe the health reform law will increase the deficit
* 72 percent believe the economy is getting worse
* 60 percent believe climate change is not occurring
* 49 percent believe income taxes have gone up
* 63 percent believe the stimulus legislation did not include any tax cuts
* 56 percent believe Obama initiated the GM/Chrysler bailout
* 38 percent believe that most Republicans opposed TARP
* 63 percent believe Obama was not born in the U.S. (or that it is unclear)


I'd love to get the raw data to see how much of this is spin and how much is reality.