I recently had to look for a decent, and hopefully free (as in beer), firewall for my sister's Windows machine. Given all the threats - apyware, worms, viruses - out there that any personal computer hooked up to the wide wide web, you definitely do not want to be running naked. I mean sans firewall.

I tried out ZoneAlarm, since its one of the software firewalls I hear the most about. Its a good product but the free version does not let Internet Connection Sharing (aka NAT) through. You have to purchase the full product for that feature.

After some googling, I found about Kerio Personal Firewall which is is not feature-crippled during the first 30 days. This makes it a lot easier to evaluate in your own setup. After 30 days you lose some features - ICS, pop-up/ad/script/cookie blocking, and remote administration but if you don't need those you are free to continue using the software.

To enable ICS to get through, simply check off the 'Gateway Mode' prereference. You'll also spend the usual time training it in what traffic to let in or out. The interface for doing so is well-designed and easy to use so its not really a pain.

Ginger and I are debugging a client site and we briefly discussed/complained about wireframes. To which, she helped me come to this conclusion:

Building solely from wireframes is like driving somewhere with only a picture of the house you're supposed to get to.

Tyler Cowen considers why soccer is not such a popular sport in the United States. He supposes that Americans prefer sports where they are the best in the world. Nick at transistion Game, supposes that there are tribal and geographical influences on the sports and team we prefer.

I'll add my two cents. American's prefer games where there is a constant, unrelenteless buildup towards a winner. Where at any moment its clear who is winning, either by the number of baskets scored, precise field positioning in football, or the myriad of stats available during a baseball game.

Soccer does not reward the "tell me who's winning right now" mentally because goals are comparatively rare. As the US showed against Mexico Wednesday night, you can thoroughly dominate an opponent and still walk away with a last-minute 1-0 win. The score of a soccer game actually tells you very little about how each team played. It takes watching a lot of games to learn what signs, nuances, and indicators to look for when assessing a team's performance. Other sports require less work and analysis, that may appeal more to the bulk of american fans who want to watch a game to be entertained with little effort.