Rules of thumb for 2011: • If you are generating your content in a dynamic creation system, the encryption overhead of SSL is not going to matter. • SSL initi

Rules of thumb for 2011: • If you are generating your content in a dynamic creation system, the encryption overhead of SSL is not going to matter. • SSL initial session latency is highly variable based on packet round trip time of the user. Some people will be irritated, other's can't tell the difference.† ␄ † I suppose there is room in the world for a CDN-like entity that places anycasted SSL entry points in strategic locations (or topology sensitive DNS lookups), then uses a zero-turnaround at startup encryption protocol back to the "real" servers. (Say, HTTP over a VPN or something more clever, after all you are the client and the server, life is easy). You'd even beat straight HTTP since by keeping alive the HTTP link to the real servers you'd save the TCP SYN turnaround. 👍 ‡ Unrelated: The unicode committee has lost their mind. OS X Lion users will be seeing a flesh colored thumbs up symbol at the end of the previous paragraph. I suppose now that PILE_OF_POO and NAIL_POLISH are taken care of the committee will add everyone's avatars from all systems.