Cookeville TN Linux Users Group

This is a topic that’s brought up time and time again, but on Linux it is somewhat ridiculous. The only two browsers you really have a choice with that are functional enough for everyday use. Firefox and Opera.

I realize there is Epiphany, Galeon, Arora, etc. However, they don’t provide certain features that just over time get quite irritating. As a minimalist, I prefer a browser that is light on resources, but still has full functionality and supports things such as flash.

Firefox uses the XULrunner engine, which is basically some knock-off HTML Markup-language to draw its interface. Whether you like it or not it is leaky leaky on the memory. If anything Opera is fairly annoying to browse through all the options, and its dependency on QT isn’t something I’m fond of either since I prefer XFCE.

Arora is somewhat useful, but it doesn’t really even have auto-complete or any of the small features we have grown accustomed to over the years. There is Midori, but it is still a little unstable at the moment seeing it is less than a year or two into maturity.

So I have to ask, why is it when it comes to choice of browsers, Linux gets the “beaten down doom stick”? It’s almost tempting to write my own cross-compatible browser, that is if I had any experience in that field, ha. I sure hope the choices broaden out eventually. There’s always room for one more browser in my book.

~
Justin C. Kinnaird
Programmer

If there’s one thing that’s been bothering me lately it is how hardware for computers keeps advancing, but the requirements for a lot of programs goes up with it.

A fine example of this is KDE 4, one of our lovely Desktop Enviornments on Linux. It’s requirements were always relatively a tad higher than Gnome or XFCE, but it seems anymore it won’t even function correctly without an aftermarket Nvidia graphics card and a nice 2GB 400mhz stick of DDR ram at minimum.

That’s great and all, but I guess they are forgetting about all the poor people who can’t afford a new computer that can handle the new tech.

Originally I thought the purpose of hardware advancing was so those nice applications could perform better, not for them to require that much more memory/cpu. Either way, I’m really hoping my favorite apps don’t follow suite on this one.

It’s saddening to see operating systems requiring much more than 256 MB R.A.M. for the core system, let alone the huge 1 GB that microsoft stamps on its newest Windows 7. I’m just glad we have choice over here on Linux.

Until next time, cheers.

Justin C. Kinnaird

You know, 4 years ago I would have thought Local Sales Network was really going somewhere. No so these days.

As of lately, the site has completely gone to hell. For starters, almost all the “big boys” with their premier ads have pulled out. The only ones buying banner ads are NON-LOCAL businesses. Then again, how could you even contact them? The contact system has been broken for over 2 years. And to make things worse, using the contact form on the site has never resulting in any response.

But what is even worse is this: nobody is buying anything on that site anymore. And I mean nobody. The only responses you get from listings on there these days are people wanting to trade crap like horses and used tires. And while I don’t mind a good set of used tires for a used car – what on earth gives some of these people the idea that I would even WANT a horse?!

Of coarse, my favorite are the ones that contact you all day long to see how much they can talk you down on your asking price – yet have absolutely no desire to actually buy anything. They are simply curious to see if you would have been willing to take a lower price. I cannot cound how many times I have responded with “how much are you willing to pay for it?” and was answered “oh, well – I don’t really need it – just curious”. WTF?

You know, I own mycookietown.com – perhaps I should create my own classifieds site on that domain….

…one that filters out useless trolls and actually responds to the inquires of those willing to spend money.

- Dean

Gone are the days of the mom-and-pop computer repair shops that can actually turn a *good* profit.

It seems like almost yesterday, I can recall loading over 100 used Pentium III and Pentium 4 computers [with monitors] on my trailer for less than $400. These were working units! That’s not the case these days.

I have been keeping an eye on GovDeals and Nashville e-Bid the past year now… Wow. It amazes me, yet makes sense why most “mom and pop” computer repair and sales shops struggle so bad. Recently, I saw a lot (two pallets actually) of used Dell P4 desktops [34 computers total] go for over $1500. The listing clearly stated: most are non-functional.

Now take 34 computers. If you were to get half them working – lets say more than half – that’s 20 total. That’s $75 you have into each computer – and you STILL have to test, re-load, and clean the computer. Lets say your time to do all this is only worth $25 (you sure could not pay me $25 to test, re-install, and clean a computer)… Now you have $100 into this computer. So are you going to sell it for $150 and make a $50 profit? Remember you still have overhead: lights, phones, Internet, etc. Where are you making your money?

Perhaps you will sell the computer for $200-$250. Now you have another issue… Is it really worth that? Of coarse, you can GET that much out of it, but are you truly providing your customer with good value? Good advertising, and sales tactics may sell that computer, but in today’s economy, customer retention is far more important than “just selling the merchandise”. Put simply: a Dell P4 2.0ghz w/ 512 megs ram and 40gb hard drive is **not** worth a dime over $150-$175ish.

Remember: when you make a bad impression towards a customer, you change his/her image of ALL small computer repair businesses!

Back in the day, small shops actually got along. Hell, the owners of several PC repair businesses could actually get together on a weekend, have a cookout, and play a couple good games of pool or golf. Unlike the “I am jealous of all the other repair shops” mentality that clouds the industry today, we would use this time together to find out who was wholesaling what, for how much, and where. We actually worked together in order to ensure we ALL got good deals on the stuff – rather than mindlessly bidding against each other and going out of our way to cut every one’s throat.

I have seen dozens of shops come and go over the years – myself included. Everyone needs to work together on this, otherwise the only ones left will be the Geek Squad…

Heres a handy function for processing URLs – I generally use it (and a PHP version) for cases where I run a lot through a central mod_rewrite controller:

sub real_url_path {
	my $url = shift;
	my @url_parts = split '/', $url;
	my @real_path_parts;
	for my $part (@url_parts) {
		print "part is: $part \n";
		if($part eq '.') {
			next;
		} elsif($part eq '..' || $part eq '...') {
			pop @real_path_parts;
		} elsif($part ne '') {
			push @real_path_parts, $part;
		}
	}
	my $real_path = '/' . join '/', @real_path_parts;
	if(substr($url,-1,1) eq '/' && length($real_path) > 2 ) {
		$real_path .= '/';
	}
	return $real_path;
}

This sub will remove all references to “../” corrently (/path/../foo/bar becomes /foo/bar).