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I was in Las Vegas last week to see the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show. (Officially, it's the International Consumer Electronics Show, but no one calls it "ICES.") I've been to CES just a few times before, but usually as the finish line of a marathon drive from Seattle, rather than a plane flight from Tennessee as it was this time around. I've also never arrived with an armload of video equipment, which brings its own hassles. (Did you notice our videos?) Following are a few thoughts about the experience.

I started my trip with a friendly rubdown from a TSA functionary in Knoxville, whose carefully narrated prodding ("Now I'm going to be touching the inside of your waistband ...") failed to scan the recesses of my brain for what evil may there lurk, or take much notice of the should-be-suspicious bundle of batteries and radio-equipped mics in an evil-looking hard-shelled case that smells of gun oil, but did take a while to poke through ("check out") my bag of unremarkable clothing, paper, and sundries. It is a nice bag, after all, and one must have priorities: I could have had cupcakes.

Rooms are typically cheap in Vegas; the city is still America's gambling mecca, but gambling has become so widespread elsewhere that the draw is weaker -- and there are all those hotel rooms looking for occupants. But because CES is the biggest event of the year, even overbuilt Vegas fills up and prices are high that week. So I stayed at the Sin City Hostel, which has a friendly staff, an eclectic clientele (of young international travelers, mostly), and some of the most uncomfortable beds I have ever slept on. On the other hand, it was a thousand bucks cheaper than I was quoted for a room that week at a decent mid-range hotel on the strip, and I have a high tolerance for unusual accommodation. Unless you're actually going to CES, and would rather have a reasonable, luxurious room than a hammock-shaped lump of foam, any other week is probably a smarter time to visit.

Things to note about CES:

It's huge.

CES takes up not just an enormous convention center, but spills over into hotels both nearby and not-especially nearby. Just to touch every booth, suite, and temporary meeting corral would probably take a full-time effort for the whole run of the show, and it might not even be possible (that would make an interesting video game!), especially since some of the dealers are in town for CES, but not officially part of the show as exhibitors. When I met with Steven Isaac of TouchFire, for instance, it was in the lobby of an adjacent hotel. "Nearby" in this case still means a walk of 20 minutes or more just to cross the convention center grounds; it can take nearly that long, too, to walk entrance-to-wall in any of the several large halls at the convention center.

And you'd want to walk all the way back, too. The flashy kiosks operated by companies like Samsung, Nokia, and Motorola tend to be right near the front of the exhibit halls ("them as has, gets"), but back in the low(er) rent districts toward the back of each hall is where a lot of the most interesting stuff collects. Some of these booths might not be that interesting in themselves, but it's fascinating to see the modest public face of companies that sell the bits (LEDs, copper wire, blank circuit boards) and services (custom molding, circuit board layout, high-end fabric embroidery) that underlie even seemingly simple goods. This is also the place to find interesting devices like a ring-mounted mouse, helmet- and google-mounted video cameras in great profusion, and a wireless silicone keyboard cleverly molded to fold into what looks almost like a translucent billfold.

For pure technological art, it's hard to beat the industrial sculpture of the High End audio world. But the show is too big: I didn't get a chance this year to see the biggest trove of that, which is at the Venetian rather than the convention center. $50,000 speakers, and amplifiers in the same range, aren't in my budget (see above re. Sin City Hostel), but if you want to see where Monster Cable and Best Buy get their ideas of how to price electronics, it's enlightening to ogle some of the beautiful components and then their price tags.

It's not just electronics.

In fact, it's not just "consumer" electronics, either, as that term is generally used. No mistake, the consumer end of things isn't neglected: there are plenty of TVs (one of the crowd draws this year was LG's super-thin OLED panel (video), which I didn't have time to properly appreciate), plenty of computers and accessories, and a fair number of white goods -- stoves, refrigerators, and washing machines, all of which are ever more "electronics" in their own right. And Yes, there are shipping containers' worth of MP3 players, cameras of all descriptions, blinking and hovering toys for all ages, robots, headphones, cell phones from the mundane to the exotic, and stacks of tablets from familiar names as well as unknowns (most of them Android, and a surprising number running Android 4.0). But much of the stuff on offer is aimed squarely at institutional buyers or business users. Fancy your own collapsible walk-through metal-detector, or some high-end eye-tracking technology? A $1300 pointing device? (Or, arguably more consumer-friendly, a $900 skateboard perfect for getting around a factory floor?) This is the show for you.

And lots of the goods on display are meant for end-users, but aren't electronics themselves. There are easily thousands, probably tens of thousands, of phone cases, not to mention USB drive casings, computer bags, tripods for cameras, stands for tablets, and other accoutrements. (You can even buy the world's fanciest piece of string.) I overheard a confident claim that there were more than a hundred vendors selling computer bags; I don't doubt it, but I haven't tried to count, and it's probably a fool's errand: not every company's entry in the massive show directory gives much of a clue just what they sell.

Speaking of selling: show rules (and, I was later told, Nevada tax rules) prohibit sales of goods on the show floor itself, but they go on just the same, ranging from furtive (sideways glances and handshake-with-money) to blatant (large, handwritten sign: "Show special! $499!"). For vendors who've made the trip to CES to show off their wares to potential buyers from companies like Fry's and Best Buy as well as smaller dealers, the inventory they've brought as samples can drop in value as soon as that chance is gone; I ended up with a few iPhone 4 cases that the vendor was trying to foist on anyone not bold enough to refuse. (I don't own an iPhone, and have no plans to. Anyone want a few cases with geometric designs in red and grey?)

Besides vendors, there are organizations on hand, too. I ran short of time, or I would have have a chance to ask the folks at the EFF what a nice bunch like them was doing at a place like this.

It lasts too long.

There are a few days of special events prior to CES proper, and then four days of crowded show floor. By the end of the show, vendors are drooping in the most popular booths, and looking a bit forlorn in the lonelier ones. Elevator pitches are down to the length of a short escalator ride, and grazing show-goers are weighed down by their masses of brochures, business cards and tchotchkes. The hub-bub is impossible to avoid even on the last day, and the crowd is crushing. Even with shoes that seemed comfortable going in, I developed blisters to impress the Devil on three toes and both heels, wore out a few pens, and considered commandeering a massage chair for an hour to beat down the ache in my shoulder from hauling around my camera bag and bulky laptop.

It goes too fast.

Even though seeing it all is an impossible task, and even with inevitably sore feet, the lure of novelty is strong. I saw hundreds of exhibitors I would have liked to return to at least briefly. I had just a few minutes to play with the very attractive Mirasol screens at the Qualcomm booth, for instance (shown off in a handful of small tablets that they insist are "e-readers that play music, display video and can browse the web" rather than "tablets"), and missed out on the chance to see the new OLPC tablet.

Being a newbie with the video camera and operating without a trusty servant, I lost some time fumbling with mics, batteries, cables, and a small tripod that I bought mostly as a grip. (Why bother with external mics? Because the roar of the crowd is overwhelming to the camera's built-in mics, and only partly defeated with a shotgun mic mounted on the camera.) By the final day of the show, I had the routine down a little better, but still caught on tape — or rather, in flash memory — only a fraction of the things that caught my eye. I'm lucky that my video conspirator Roblimo has a knack for finding and assembling the most watchable bits. Good news, if hardly impressive these days: my laptop running Linux Mint had no complaints importing files from my Panasonic HD camera for sending off to him a few thousand miles away in Florida for editing.

I stayed two more nights, foam-hammock and all, sorting through marketing goo and enjoying the neon and buffet offerings along the Las Vegas strip. Because I lucked out and reached a line at the Las Vegas airport that lets the miscreants through easily (no puffer machine or full-body scanner to refuse), my trip home didn't even offer a rub-down, only the chance to catch up on a few hours of sleep.

Roblimo writes "My phone is as stupid as a phone can be, but you can drop it or get it wet and it will still work. My cellular cost per month is about $4, on average. I've had a cellular phone longer than most people, and I assure you that a smart phone would not improve my life one bit. You, too, might find that you are just as happy with a stupid phone as with a smart one. If nothing else, you'll save money by dumbing down your phone." I stuck with a dumb phone for a long time, but I admit to loving the versatility of my Android phone, for all its imperfections.

Roblimo writes "Linus Torvalds and his bosses at OSDL have finally realized that the biggest problem getting businesses to adopt GNU/Linux is that most FOSS programmers wear sandals and have ponytails. They've teamed up to offer style tips for the IT set. NewsForge Reports on comments from OSDL CEO Stuart Cohen, saying that if OSDSU works as planned, the open source community 'can be as successful at delivering new products, bug-free and on time, as Microsoft is doing with Vista.'" NewsForge is part of the OSTG family, along with Slashdot.

As many of you know one of our own, Robin 'Roblimo' Miller, recently had his book "Point & Click OpenOffice.org" published. Below is an excerpt from the book. In addition to this teaser chapter you can also find related videos over at Newsforge and if your are so inclined you can also snag a copy direct from Robin. Chapter 4

OOo Draw Documents with Imagination

OOo Draw is a simple program, not really suited for professional graphics people. But it's good enough for at least 90% of the photo manipulation and drawing most of us do most of the time when we're preparing text documents, slide presentations, and other basic "ofce" jobs that graphics can enliven.

This chapter covers some of the simplest and most popular OOo Draw features. Chapter 7, "Draw: Not Your Father's Drawing Board," covers advanced Draw techniques and tricks, including some you wouldn't expect to nd in an Ofce program--especially one that's free.

Terri the Guard Dog is shown here taking a break from work. It's a passable picture, but for publication you would need to make it smaller and cut out most of the background. You open the photo the same way you open any other le with OOo--by selecting File > Open and highlighting the desired le.



You'll see that the photo opens as part of a slide or text page, not on its own.



OOo displays pictures as part of something else, not all by themselves. To isolate the image so that you can work with it, click it so that it grows little "handles" at its edges.





As long as you see those handles, you are working only on the material inside them. In this case, you will make the photo smaller so that it takes up less space on the printed page.

There are several ways you can do this. The most obvious is to put the cursor on one of the corner handles and move it toward the opposite corner while holding down the left mouse button. The only problem with this method is that it can distort the photo if you aren't careful.



This can be a fun "effect" if you do it on purpose, but this time you'll press Ctrl-Z or select Edit > Undo to take you back to where you were. Now you'll resize the photo correctly by right-clicking it and choosing Position and Size (the third menu choice from the top). You see the Position and Size dialog box.

We can do a number of things in this dialog box, but rst you'll make the photo smaller. You can decide what size you want, in inches or pixels. If you check the Keep Ratio box, the program automatically keeps the photo the right shape if you change either its horizontal or vertical dimension.



You can also ip or rotate photos with OOo Draw. There are several ways to do this. One is to use the Rotation tab in the Position and Size dialog box. Either click one of the preset sideways, upside-down, or 45-degree angle choices, or use the little window to the left of the "big" choices there to select your rotation angle in 15-degree increments. If that isn't enough choices, you can go to the menu at the top of the OOo window, choose Modify > Rotate, and use the corner handles on the picture to turn it. You can try various angles until you nd one you like.



You may think this looks silly. No problem; you can undo the change by pressing Ctrl-Z or by selecting Edit > Undo. You can place your dog at any angle you want.

Making (or Altering) Pictures with OOo Draw Drawing Tools

To create your own art, start with a blank drawing slate, which you get by selecting File > New. Then choose Drawing from the "What kind of new work?" choices that show up to the right of the main menu when the cursor is over (or to the right of) the word New. This gives you tools along the bottom of the work area in addition to the ones along the top that you got when you opened a Text Document window.



You see a number of icons, starting with a pointer at the left. Each drawing icon has a little down-pointing arrow next to it. Click the arrow next to the Callout icon--the one that looks like a cartoon speech balloon. You see a menu that gives you several different "cartoon balloon" styles.



Select a callout--or any other drawing shape tool--by clicking it. Then choose a point in your picture where you want to insert it, and click and hold down the left mouse button while you move the mouse diagonally until the shape is the size you want it.

Don't worry if you don't get the size or alignment exactly right or if you want to rotate your newly-added bit of art in one direction or the other. You can use the same Size and Rotation tools you used on Terri's picture. You can move it around by clicking it and moving the little cross that this action turns the cursor into. You can even change the shape of your shape with the little handles on the edge of the graphics square that contains it.



The rest of the shape icons work exactly the same as the callout one. You can move the mouse over each one and read the little text box that pops up. It will take you only a few seconds to try each one and see what it does. Mistakes are ne. If you don't save your work after you practice, no one will know you made them. So please experiment freely. All pixels (the little dots that make up pictures on the screen) created with OOo Draw are fully recyclable; no precious resources or landll space are used by your self-training sessions.

Adding Text to Drawings

The Text Draw icon needs additional explanation but is useful enough for nongraphics people to make its way into this chapter instead of being reserved for Chapter 7, which goes into advanced Draw tricks. To use this icon, click it, and then drag the little cross that the cursor becomes to where you want to type your text.



Type it in, alter the font and text size exactly the same way as when you're creating a text document, and you have text.

This example changes the callout size and shape to t around the text.

We've had several submissions this morning concerning a CoolTechZone article stating that Microsoft has purchased Opera, seemingly confirming the Dvorak article we reported on yesterday. However, roblimo has followed up with Opera and found that to be (so far), less than true. Opera PR person Berit Hanson told Slashdot by phone from Oslo, Norway, that "last week it was Google, this week it's Microsoft." She laughed and added, "If I was working for Microsoft I think I'd know it, but I'm still in Oslo, not Washington, still working for Opera." Which, of course, is not to say it won't happen ... it just hasn't happened yet.

Roblimo writes "Multiple sources close to and inside Novell have told us the company expects to lay off between 10% and 15% of all employees by the end of October. '...shareholders have suggested that Novell divest itself of its consulting group and GroupWise division, while at the same time instituting personnel cuts across the board to bring expenses more in line with revenues,' writes business columnist Lauren Rudd at NewsForge, who also notes that '[Novell's] NetWare revenue stream continues to deteriorate, declining by $36 million in fiscal 2004, excluding the impact of favorable foreign exchange rates.'" NewsForge is part of the same family of companies as Slashdot.

Roblimo writes "'The study, completed in early July, showed that U.K. employees working in the information technology industry are more valued than they think they are,' says a story at ITMJ.com, but it also says, 'According to the results of the survey, only 45% of IT workers feel valued at work, and 70% don't believe that their job reflects their true potential.' Not only that, but 'Seventy-five percent feel discriminated against because of their age; 43% say their bosses think they are too young, and 32% feel too old.' That leaves only 25% who believe they're the right age for their jobs, and only 30% who feel they're working to their true potential. Does this mean U.K. employers need to worry about a mass exodus from the I.T. field, or is this just normal griping?"

Roblimo writes "The LinuxFund Web site was down for several months, and the project has essentially been out of business since last year. But MBNA kept the LinuxFund MasterCard going, and kept depositing money in LinuxFund's account -- to the tune of $126,155.29 when NewsForge reporter Jay Lyman finally caught up with the current and former project leaders and found out what was going on -- namely nothing. So does anyone have an idea what to do with this money? Want to suggest an individual or group to take over LinuxFund and run it right?"

Roblimo writes "Firefox and Opera are the two most popular cross-platform Web browsers. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. Kris Shaffer tested them side-by-side on SUSE Linux 9.1, Mac OS X Panther, and Windows 2000, and decided that your choice may depend more on what you *do* with your browser than anything else, unless (as is the case for many of us) Opera is off the table from the start because it's not open source."

Roblimo writes "For years there's been fear that the Wine Project would get sued by Microsoft at some point, and this fear has kept IBM and other major free software-using companies from participating openly in it. Now the Software Freedom Law Center, headed by Columbia University law professor Eben Moglen, is offering free legal services to Wine (and other FOSS projects) to allay corporate fears and head off potential lawsuits."

Roblimo writes "Yes, SCO is evil and all that, but in between lawsuits it still puts out a product called UnixWare. NewsForge decided to review the latest version -- 7.1.4 -- just like we would any other Unix-based operating system. To ensure impartiality, we hired respected freelancer Logan G. Harbaugh, who wrote: 'On the server side, UnixWare Enterprise edition is more expensive for 150 users than either Windows 2003 Server Datacenter Edition, any of the Enterprise Linux distributions, or Solaris, with fewer available applications, fewer drivers for recent HBAs and other new hardware, and no currently available 64-bit version for either Opteron or Itanium processors.'"

Wikipedia is an excellent project, and Slashdot readers' questions for Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales were just as excellent -- as are Jimmy Wales' answers to 12 of the highest-moderated questions you submitted. 1) Donations - by southpolesammy
What's the current state of donations and what is the future of Wikipedia if fund raising without advertisements does not increase?

Jimmy Wales:
We are always in need of funds for hardware. I still cover the bandwidth and hosting charges, and will do so for the foreseeable future, but we rely on community donations for the hardware that we need to run the site.

Our growth rate continues to be staggering.

One of the reasons I was excited to be asked by Roblimo to do this interview is that the slashdot community in particular has been so generous to us in the past. This is an audience that understands the importance of what we're doing, the importance of spreading the idea of GNU-style freedom far beyond the free software community.

Anyone who would is interested in donating money to help, please visit the site to see how we use the money.

2) Advertising? - by obli
How has the word about wikipedia been spread? Has wikipedia actually paid a dime for all its publicity? I don't think I've seen any advertisement when I think about it.

Jimmy Wales:
No, we don't pay for publicity, never have and most likely never will; it hasn't been necessary, and I don't see that it will be necessary.

The key is that we're doing exciting and interesting things, showing what is possible to a community project running free software and working under a free license. Nowadays everyone knows that excellent software can be written using the principles of free licensing, and we're proving that the idea of sharing knowledge is powerful in other areas as well.

3) Complement or Competitor to Traditional Encycs by ewanrg
Was wondering if you view the Wikipedia as a competitor or an additional tool compared to a World Book or an Encyclopedia Britannica?

Jimmy Wales:
I would view them as a competitor, except that I think they will be crushed out of existence within 5 years.

Software is unique in that there are network externalities and various other mechanisms of "lock in" that make it hard for us to get people to switch to free alternatives. People are very comfortable with Microsoft products, and they fear that if they switch, they'll give up all the skills that they've learned (ctrl-alt-del!) and won't be able to share files with others.

But the things our community is producing are different. There's no cost to switching from an outdated old encyclopedia to Wikipedia -- just click and learn, and there you go. You can switch before your friends switch, but the knowledge you learn will be perfectly compatible.

4) Quality Control - by Raindance
First of all, the concept of a community-built encyclopedia, open to submissions and revisions from users, is wonderful. It's much like open-source, in fact, and Wikipedia certainly exemplifies how to reapply the OS model to other contexts.

However, the contexts of encyclopedias and software are different. Significantly so. I'm interested specifically in quality control- you know when code doesn't work when it doesn't compile or results in unexpected behavior.

In what ways can a Wiki article be bad, and how can one tell? Do you think QC is a large issue for Wikipedia, and do you have any plans to further integrate the community in the QC process (perhaps akin to the slashdot moderation/metamoderation system)?

Jimmy Wales:
Well, encyclopedia articles can be bad in a lot of obvious ways, and some subtle ways. Obvious ways include simply incorrect information, or grammatical errors, or strong bias. Subtle ways can include milder forms of bias, dull writing, etc.

Quality control is what a lot of our internal processes are all about. Every page on the site shows up on Special:Recentchanges, and individuals have 'watchlists' that they can (and do) use to keep an eye on particular articles.

I am currently working on a first draft proposal to the community for our "next phase" of review, which will involve getting serious about producing a "1.0 stable" release. The concept here is very analagous to that in the software world -- the existing site is always the cutting edge nightly build, which rocks of course, but we also need a stable release that's been reviewed and tested and found good.

I'll put out that draft in a couple of weeks, and get feedback and revisions from the community, and then we will hold a project-wide vote.

That process might involve some bits that are like the slashdot moderation/metamoderation system, but it's likely to be much more of an editing-oriented process than voting-oriented process.

5) How to balance coverage? - by mangu
Is there an effort to get articles written on specific missing topics? If one looks at a commercial encyclopedia, the full range of human knowledege is covered. On Wikipedia, OTOH, one finds several articles about slashdot trolls, for instance, while other (important) fields are still unwritten.

Jimmy Wales:
This is increasingly a solved problem. It is true that we have quite a bit of pertinent information about slashdot trolls, but we also have just about every important topic as well. Of course some areas are in greater need than others, and finding them and resolving them is an ongoing effort in the community.

I think you'd be pretty hard pressed anymore to find topics that are in Britannica that we don't cover at all. It's still not that hard, if you look around a bit, to find rare articles in Britannica that are better than our article on the same topic. But it's getting harder all the time.

So to answer your question directly, yes, there are constant efforts to get articles written on specific topics, and to flesh out areas that we haven't yet covered as well as we should.

6) The constant bickering... - by Rageon
How is (and how will) the constant bickering between differing sides of the more controversial issues (abortion, religion, etc...) be addressed? Do you expect any changes to the current system, in which it seems the same pages get edited by the same people back and forth every day?

Jimmy Wales:
In our community, we very strongly discourage that kind of bickering. One of the biggest social faux pas that one can commit is the dreaded "revert war". But humans are humans, and they will argue, and we have to understand that there will never be a process whereby we eliminate all of that.

7) Getting people involved - by Anonymous Coward
What methods have you found that work best for getting people not only involved in contributing, but also keeping them contributing to the Wiki?

Jimmy Wales:
Love. It isn't very popular in technical circles to say a lot of mushy stuff about love, but frankly it's a very very important part of what holds our project together.

I have always viewed the mission of Wikipedia to be much bigger than just creating a killer website. We're doing that of course, and having a lot of fun doing it, but a big part of what motivates us is our larger mission to affect the world in a positive way.

It is my intention to get a copy of Wikipedia to every single person on the planet in their own language. It is my intention that free textbooks from our wikibooks project will be used to revolutionize education in developing countries by radically cutting the cost of content.

Those kinds of big picture ideals make people very passionate about what we're doing. And it makes it possible for people to set aside a lot of personal differences and disputes of the kind that I talked about above, and just compromise to keep getting the work done.

I frequently counsel people who are getting frustrated about an edit war to think about someone who lives without clean drinking water, without any proper means of education, and how our work might someday help that person. It puts flamewars into some perspective, I think.

Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing.

8) Advertisers, Spammers, Search Engines, oh my! - by RomSteady
I like the concept of a wiki, but I'm a bit concerned about the current implementation.

Right now, we are seeing several instances where crawlers are disrupting wikis, spammers are embedding wiki links to their sites to boost their Google rankings, and advertisers are placing ads in wikis until someone goes through and nukes them.

Do you have any thoughts as to how wikis can be modified to prevent things like this in the future?

Jimmy Wales:
Sure, I think it's pretty simple to solve problems like that. One of the first tricks I would try is to parse the wiki text that someone inputs to see if it contains an external link. If so, then only in those cases, require an answer to a captcha.

Second step, keep editing wide open for everyone, but restrict the ability to post external links to people who are trusted by that community. Make it really easy for trusted users to extend the zone of trust, because you want to encourage participation.

Basically what I think works in a wikis is to trust people to do the right thing, and trust them as much as you can possibly stand it, until it hurts your head and makes you scared for what they're going to break. Because that is what works.

People are not fundamentally bad. It only takes the smallest of correctives to take care of that tiny minority that wants to disrupt the community.

9) Webservices ? Data Formats ? - by sh0rtie
Ever thought of offering alternative data access services other than HTML ? examples of other successful community driven sites such as IMDB [imdb.com] can be queried via email (in a structured way) and a huge number of applications are now built upon these capabilities alone, ever thought of offering up the data in alternative formats (XML/SOAP/TELNET/TXT etc etc) so clever programmers can create applications that could utilise the data in new and interesting ways ?

Jimmy Wales:
Yes, yes, yes. I am 100% all for it. Join wikitech-l, the technical mailing list, and ask about specifics, and we'd be thrilled to have more developers volunteering to help us get those kinds of things implemented quickly and correctly.

10) China and Wiki - by Stargoat
How do you feel about China's blocking of Wiki, and what effect, if any, do you think it'll have on the service that Wikipedia can and cannot provide to both the Chinese and the world community?

Jimmy Wales:
The block in China only lasted for a couple of days, until some administrators in the Chinese-language wikipedia appealed the ban.

My thinking on that is two-fold. First, it's a huge embarassment for the censors if they block Wikipedia, because we are none of the things that they claim to want to censor. Censoring Wikipedia is an admission that it is unbiased factual information itself that frightens you. We are not political propaganda, we are not online gambling, we are not pr0n. We are an encyclopedia.

Second, I consider it a moral imperative for our overall mission that we will not bend our principles of freedom, of the freedom of speech, of a commitment to inclusiveness and neutrality, to meet any possible demands of any government anywhere. We are a _free_ encyclopedia, with all that entails.

11) One area Wikipedia seems to lack - by wcrowe
Other encyclopedias cite sources for their work. Wikipedia does not seem to have a facility for this, and I have yet to see sources cited in any of the articles. Am I correct in my assumptions? Why aren't sources cited? It would add credibility to the project.

Jimmy Wales:
I think you're mistaken. We do cite sources, about as much as most encyclopedias, I think. But I do agree with you that more sources is good, and there's no question that as we move forward towards a 1.0 stable release, one of our goals will be to provide more articles with more extensive information about "where to learn more", i.e. cite original research, etc., as much as we can.

12) Money issues - by Achoi77
Considering the fact that wikipedia has gotten bigger than ever, are there any real potential fears that the lack of a steady cash flow may cause the whole project to collapse? Has any (and what kind of) unfavorable contingency plans been considered (like ads) and outright rejected, only to be reconsidered again at a later time?

Jimmy Wales:
Wikipedia has gotten bigger than ever, and keeping us in enough servers to keep performance where we want it is a topic constantly on our minds.

But at the same time, I have every confidence that we'll be just fine. The thing is: everyone loves Wikipedia. When I asked the world for $20,000 last January, we raised nearly $50,000 in less than a week.

We are currently investigating the possibility of grants, and we are also asking you, here, today, to consider visiting the project to find out how you can help, if that's something you're comfortable with doing.

The question of advertising is discussed sometimes, but not really in the context of "will we need to accept ads to survive". The answer to that is clearly "no".

The discussion about advertising is really more a question that asks: with this kind of traffic, and the kind of growth we are seeing, how much good could we do as a charitable institution if we decided to accept advertising. It would be very lucrative for the Wikimedia Foundation if the community decided to do it, because our cost structure is extremely extremely low compared to any traditional website.

That money could be used to fund books and media centers in the developing world. Some of it could be used to purchase additional hardware, some could be used to support the development of free software that we use in our mission. The question that we may have to ask ourselves, from the comfort of our relatively wealthy Internet-connected world, is whether our discomfort and distaste for advertising intruding on the purity of Wikipedia is more important than that mission.

But it's more complex than that, even, because in large part, our success so far is due to the purity of what we're doing. We might find that accepting ad money would cut us off from possible grant money. It's a complex question.

But it is not a question that has to be answered for our continuing survival. We can keep going as we are now, with your help of course. :-)

Know someone *other than your favorite political candidate* who'd make a great Slashdot interview guest? Please email Roblimo with the person's name and contact information.

Roblimo writes "A two-year-old internal HP memo has just surfaced that talks about how 'Microsoft could attack Open Source Software for patent infringements against OEMs, Linux distributors, and least likely open source developers. They are specifically upset about Samba, Apache and Sendmail.' NewsForge has the story, including the memo's full text, a response from Eben Moglen (who says the memo's author misinterprets part of the GPL), and a statement from HP saying they love open source, really they do, even though 'Microsoft continues to be one of HP's strongest partners.'"

Roblimo writes "A study by accounting and consulting giant PriceWaterhouseCoopers claims Canada could lose up to 75,000 IT jobs by 2010 to offshore outsourcing, but could also *gain* 165,000 jobs through U.S. outsourcing contracts. The trick is, according to this story at IT Manager's Journal, that while Indian, Chinese, and Russian programmers may cost 80% less than U.S. programmers, the time zone, language, legal, and other problems involved with sending work half way around the world can eat up much of the labor savings, while Canadian programmers are nearby, speak English with nearly American accents, have a similar culture and legal system, and get paid 40% less than U.S. programmers. Might be time to think about moving North, eh?"

Roblimo writes "Not all parents want their children exposed to everything on the Internet, especially porn. So far, virtually all home-level Net filtering software has been for Windows. This tutorial on NewsForge, by Joe Bolin, shows Linux-using parents how to set up Web filtering for *their* children -- and shows them how to customize filters to fit their own tastes and beliefs instead of relying on a commercial software company's ideas of 'good' and 'bad,' too."

Roblimo writes "A Baystar Capital spokesperson has finally admitted, directly and on the record to NewsForge reporter Chris Preimesberger, that they believe SCO's only viable asset is the potential proceeds of lawsuits against Linux users and vendors. 'We're looking for the best return we can, and we think the focus should be on IP licensing (and enforcement),' said BayStar spokesman Bob McGrath."

Roblimo writes "SUSE 9.1 won't be out until May, but Joe Barr got access to a 'secret' beta download and tried it out. He liked some of what he saw, and found things he didn't like, too, but is willing to overlook some of the negatives because, he points out, 'This is a beta. Bugs are expected. Work will be done before it goes gold.' The review's at Linux.com." Linux.com and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.

Roblimo writes "If you're using Microsoft Office and considering a switch to (free) OpenOffice.org, Microsoft would like you to read their Open Office Competitive Guide first, in which they tell you how much better/faster/cheaper MS Office is than OOo. Taran Rampepersad, an IT consultant in Trinidad, believes this "Competitive Guide" is nothing but FUD, so he wrote a detailed rebuttal to it -- and released his article under the FDL so you can feel free to republish his piece or share it with anyone you like, however you like." A followup to this story. Newsforge and Slashdot are both part of OSDN.

Robin 'Roblimo' Miller (of NewsForge and sometimes Slashdot) spent five days in Saudi Arabia's capital, Riyadh, meeting with local Linux advocates and users, and wrote five articles while he was there. The article titles are Saudi Arabia: Linux advocates in white robes, Saudi Space Institute techies love their new Linux computer, Meet Saudi Arabia's most famous computer expert, Saudi open source conference opens minds, and Linux and open source opportunities in the Mideast. This is the first in-depth look ever at open source (and programming in general) in a conservative Islamic country. Roblimo concludes that under the robes, Saudi geeks are much like geeks everywhere, but from comments on the stories it looks like a lot of people don't agree.

After this Slashdot discussion about the relationship between BIOS biggie American Megatrends Inc. (AMI) and Palladium appeared, we got an email from AMI sales engineer (and former Linux.com contributor) Brian Richardson, who wrote, "I am a bit concerned that the information you provided misled your readers into thinking AMI was promoting Palladium or taking some sort of anti-open-source stance. This might be due to the fact that TCPA was mistakenly equated to Palladium, or questioning how Linux would run on a TCPA-enabled system ... or by the horde of angry Slashdot readers telling us they would never buy an AMI product because we were forcing standards on them." Brian offered himself up as (his words) a "Slashdot interview victim" to clear things up.(Update by RM: And, says Brian, he's happy to answer other BIOS questions as well.) So ask, already, and let's get things cleared up. (Usual Slashdot interview rules.)

Uncle Humph1 writes "There's an interesting article at NewsForge by Robin (Roblimo)Miller about Vint Cerf giving a presentation to NOVALUG about the Interplanetary Internet and having lunch with them afterward. An interesting read. One of the quotables by Vint with regard to security reads 'We're building in security from end to end,' he says, 'because we don't need headlines saying, '15-year-old takes over Mars.'" Here is some more information about the interplanetary Internet.

Moshe Bar is (pick one) 1. A Linux kernel developer; 2. A motorcycle enthusiast; 3. The primary openMosix maintainer; 4. A respected Linux device driver writer; 5. Author of several books and many articles about Linux; 6. Newly married. 7. A Talmudic scholar; 8. All of the above. The correct answer is 8, and since in addition to (or perhaps because of) all this Moshe is a popular guy, this interview is here by reader request. (Yes, we take interview requests; send them to robin@roblimo.com.) Ask Moshe whatever you wish, one question per post. We'll send him 10 of the highest moderated questions and post his answers as soon as he gets them back to us.

Deffexor writes "It appears that gobe (that famous software company that made the invaluable "office suite" for BeOS) has unveiled their v3.0 release of gobeProductive for Windows and Linux. ArsTechnica has an excellent review of why this is such an important "office suite". While gobeProductive isn't as full-featured as OfficeXP, it certainly does garner a whole lot of Bang-for-the-Buck (especially with the FamilyLicense). The author does a great job of summarizing the superiority of gobeProductive in his conclusion when he says,"This review, which is fifteen pages of graphics and text (in the word processor), along with 5 separate sheets chock full of information, only uses 7MB of RAM while running. Microsoft Word XP (WINWORD.EXE), sitting idle with nothing open, uses 11MB of RAM."" Of course, RAM usage doesn't matter as much these days, with the standard RAM installed being above 128 megs, but still good to know. Update by RM, 8:58 US EST: Only the Windows version of gobeProductive v3.0 seems to be available at this time.

Over at NewsForge (NewsForge is part of OSDN, as is Slashdot), Roblimo has posted his impressions of the long-awaited, much-ridiculed Red Flag Linux (English version). It may not be a big seller outside of the Chinese-speaking world (despite the available English-language install), but it's not a hoax, and it's available as an ISO for download. Update from Roblimo: I did not write the NewsForge Red Flag review. Matt Michie deserves all credit for this excellent work.

Yes, Mandrake 7.2 is ready for download. It hasn't been officially announced or spread to all the usual mirrors yet, but word crept out yesterday on mandrakeforum.com. Be patient if you can't get through at first; you know how these things go; and keep an eye on the official Mandrake site for further news. This release is nice advance over Mandrake 7.1 or 7.0, worth downloading and installing (if you're a Mandrake user) for KDE 2 and KDE Office alone, both of which are incorporated into it. I got a small head start and played with 7.2 a bit last night, and found both some neat stuff and a few small but interesting usability gaps.

The first thing I found myself wondering when I logged in as root was, "Where's my CD supermount icon?" It wasn't there in root. Only users see it. Yes, you can do the usual command line mount/unmount, but isn't the point of Mandrake to be as close to 100% pointy-clicky adminable as possible?

A new Linux user trying to install (say) StarOffice on Mandrake 7.2 from a CD is going to be doing a fair amount of needless head-scratching. It was frustrating to pop in a StarOffice CD as a user and try to install it, only to get a "KPACKAGE has to run as ROOT" error message, then to log in as root and not find an obvious, E-Z method of reading files from a CD. Whether this is the fault of KDE or Mandrake I do not know, but it is a needless bit of hassle.

Another thing that threw me and my friend Joe (who owns Amnet Computer and helped me with the test) was that not only was RealPlayer not included, let alone pre-installed as a Netscape plugin as it was on the previous Mandrake releases we have gotten used to using, but that no PDF reader was preset as a plugin. Mandrake has spoiled us in previous releases, we freely admit, but we wish they would keep us spoiled. It is not hard to install Netscape plugins, but we're busy people so the less time we take setting up a new system the happier we are.

CUPS, the new Common Unix Printing System, was dirt-simple to set up for the Epson Stylus Inkjets both Joe and I own -- as local printers. We were not able to get our printers running through our networks with CUPS. The GUI configuration tool looked simple, but apparently wasn't. Perhaps smarter people can get it to configure network printers, but someone used to Windows probably will probably give up on network printing with CUPS fairly rapidly.

KOffice has been well-described (and rightfully praised) elsewhere; it is a beautiful piece of work. All the Windows people who claim they can't switch to Linux because they need PowerPoint have just lost that excuse. I was able to make a nice-looking slide show in KPresenter after only a few moments of trial and error. Other KOffice components are just as slick, and the new KDE desktop is a thing of beauty, in my personal opinion far more attractive than the default Windows desktop.

The Mandrake 7.2 install itself was flawless; when we followed the defaults (which means about all you have to do is select a keyboard language, then click "yes" several times) and selected "all packages" we didn't have much more to do besides watch The Simpsons. We tested both a low-end desktop computer Joe had just assembled and my Sager (essentially generic) laptop, and had no problems with either of them. Even the laptop's sound and video autodetected correctly and started right up. The only grumble Joe had (in part because he likes to grumble) was that it's about time for Mandrake to start providing support for Winmodems whenever possible; the low-cost motherboard in the desktop we used for our test had a Winmodem built in, and Joe said it was one for which Linux support is now available.

All in all, this was about as fine and easy a newbie-level Linux install as you can get. Yes, we all know Mandrake's partition scheme is not as cool as the preferred Debian one, or even Red Hat's, but Mandrake isn't aimed at old Unix/Linux heads, and its default partitions seem to do the job just fine.

If you download and install Mandrake 7.2, I would appreciate it if you would either post your experience below or email me to let me know how it goes. A Mandrake developer is supposed to be at my house Wednesday to help figure out some problems we had installing and configuring the retail sale version of Mandrake 7.2 they sent me -- a level of service most users can't expect from any software vendor. But dealing with the "boxed set" (and the reason Mandrake is giving me this level of personal attention) is another story for another day, one I hope to have for you either late this week or early next week.

Roblimo pointed out an interesting piece by Grant Gross of NewsForge tying together some of the recent thoughts on Slashdot and elsewhere about preventing the creation of bad patents. Gross examines the idea of "antipatents" as formulated by Media.org co-founders Rebecca Hargrave and Carl Malamud. From the article: "'Antipatents are simple, a registration mechanism for your open-source inventions. ... Taking the time to document the antipatent prevents some clueless corporation from making it their property. Perhaps a handsome certificate, suitable for framing, can be sent with each antipatent for a modest fee.' Hargrave and Malamud also call for a formal way for the community at large to shout down 'clueless patents.'" Sounds good to me.