A rare excellent FA from /. : The Space Review: The dozen space weapons myths.

Its value is not strictly limited to the topic at hand or the expertise of the writer, rather, it illuminates common stupidities of the conspiratorial types, particularly the more anti-American.

I came across this company, OHARARP LLC, while checking the hackaday RSS feed. They have some neat products, but I bet they could be done far cheaper at home.  Besides, if you are the kind of person who wants a Nixie clock, buying one preassembled – and for the hardercore, out of existing schematics – is probably out of the question.

A rare excellent FA from /. : The Space Review: The dozen space weapons myths.

Its value is not strictly limited to the topic at hand or the expertise of the writer, rather, it illuminates common stupidities of the conspiratorial types, particularly the more anti-American.

‘Cause Tuxedo has come to town.

So, a couple of friends and I are in the process of putting together a business – and trying to do it the right way.  In addition to management duties, the bulk of the IT tasks falls to me – from overseeing DB and web design, to network management.  For part of the network, specifically the computers used for order placement, I have been strongly considering thin clients.  In fact, thanks to the magic of craigslist, I picked up a old Sun Ray machine today for $30 from an ex-Sun employee.  Still, there are many protocols and many thin clients out there – and while I rather like the Sun Rays, deciding between the various solutions is, well, a pain.

Then I found this.

Thin client computing whitepapers. Very nice.

One thing I had considered – using a solution like Thinstation – is out.  The real cost savings in thin client implementations is not the cheaper terminals – server costs will make up for it – but the ease of manageability (reducing man-hours expended) and reliability from using 15W appliances.

Still, this weekend will be spent installing Linux or Solaris 10, and then Sun Ray Software 4 and making a small version of a potential order system. Not nice, but better to work out the kinks now rather than when paying for a commerical lease and waiting for deployment to finish so we can start taking in money.