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Some would say not. In yesterday’s post, I made a reference to Abiotic Oil, a Russian-Ukrainian theory. Need I state that the US isn’t prone to accept any theories from the former USSR, even if the Cold War is long over¹ .

The best argument for the veracity of the theory is as follows:

The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins is by no means simply an academic proposition. After its first enunciation by N. A. Kudryavtsev in 1951, the modern theory was extensively debated and exhaustively tested. Significantly, the modern theory not only withstood all tests put to it, but also it settled many previously unresolved problems in petroleum science, such as that of the intrinsic component of optical activity observed in natural petroleum, and also it has demonstrated new patterns in petroleum, previously unrecognized, such as the paleontological and trace-element characteristics of reservoirs at different depths. Most importantly, the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins has played a central role in the transformation of Russia (then the U.S.S.R.) from being a “petroleum poor” entity in 1951 to the largest petroleum producing and exporting nation on Earth.²

The paper goes on to state;

In this article is described a project for exploration and production of petroleum in an area which had been previously condemned, according to the perspectives and reasoning of the old “biological-origin” hypothesis: the northern flank of the Dnieper-Donets Basin. This specific project has been chosen because it is a "pure" modern project: the geological area explored is one which had been extensively studied in the past and had been previously condemned as possessing no potential for petroleum production; the exploration techniques applied, from the initial work-up, through the well planning, to the production tests have been carried out in ways peculiar to such for abiogenic hydrocarbons in crystalline environments; and the scientific tests upon the petroleum produced were specifically designed to test the assumption that the oil and gas originated at great depth in the Earth.³

So, while they were developing the fields, they were also testing the theory. Note that, all the test wells were down at 3800-4400 meters, much deeper than normal wells.

The best validation of any theory is empirical success.

While I am more of a businessman/engineer than a scientist, a theory stops being only a theory when there is a wealth of empirical evidence to back it up.

During the first five years of exploration, in the early 1990’s, of the northern flank of the Dnieper-Donets Basin, a total number of 61 wells were drilled, of which 37 are commercially productive, an exploration success rate of 57%.²

Without the Abiotic theory and these fields, Russia would not be the top oil producer in the world.

PARIS: Russia is the biggest oil producer in the world, extracting 10.08 million barrels per day last year ahead of Saudi Arabia pumping 8.48 million barrels, IEA data published on Tuesday showed⁴.

I’d say that the jury is back, with a unanimous verdict for the abiotic theory of oil.⁵ .

1. In spite of Bush’s admiration of Putkin (hint: They’re both fascists) [↩]
2. The Drilling & Development of the Oil & Gas Fields in the Dnieper-Donetsk Basin [↩] [↩]
3. Emphasis, mine [↩]
4. IEA Data published in the Economic Times and more links available here [↩]
5. Note that all of this is consistent with a 20 year development timeline [↩]

Right up front, I believe that the answer to both questions is a resounding NO. The problem is the overall economy¹. They also make a good case for blaming a large part of this on US Sanctions. But the real reason is that long-term investments haven’t been happening. They are so far behind the eight-ball that it will take massive capital investments to increase the oil flow. In any case, it’s a complex set of issues.

The Saudis make a good case, and I have no reason to not believe them, that oil production actually exceeds demand, slightly². All the talking heads are mystified as to why this doesn’t drive prices down. But it isn’t current supply/demand that’s driving the markets right now. Instead, it’s future supply/demand coupled with a current flight to safety, by institutional investors³ .

Fundamental Issue: No new oil exploration

1. The average age for a geologist is 40 and there are very few new geologists entering the field. The days of Jed Clampet are long gone and you can’t find new oil without a team of geologists.
2. There hasn’t been any large-scale exploration in almost 20 years⁴.
3. It takes 10-15 years from the time a deposit is found until it is brought into production⁵
4. Oil is a mineral and can even be found in space. Unlike coal, it isn’t a fossil fuel. It’s rare but it’s not as limited as we thought⁶ .

The modern Russian-Ukrainian theory⁷ of deep, abiotic petroleum origins is by no means simply an academic proposition. After its first enunciation by N. A. Kudryavtsev in 1951, the modern theory was extensively debated and exhaustively tested. Significantly, the modern theory not only withstood all tests put to it, but also it settled many previously unresolved problems in petroleum science, such as that of the intrinsic component of optical activity observed in natural petroleum, and also it has demonstrated new patterns in petroleum, previously unrecognized, such as the paleontoogical and trace-element characteristics of reservoirs at different depths. Most importantly, the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of deep, abiotic petroleum origins has played a central role in the transformation of Russia (then the U.S.S.R.) from being a “petroleum poor” entity in 1951 to the largest petroleum producing and exporting nation on Earth.⁸ </p>

Fundamental Issue: Maximum extraction capacity

1. The Saudis have already stepped up production to maximum. Without major investment, they cannot do any more.
2. Given customers that want to divorce themselves from Arab Oil⁹ , why should they make the investment¹⁰ ?
3. All real analysis determine that real demand is actually slightly less than current production.
4. BTW, Petrochemical Engineers are as scarce as geologists.¹¹

Fundamental Issue: aging production infrastructure.

1. We, globally, are at close to our absolute peak of refinery capacity¹².
2. No new refineries have been constructed, in the US, in 30 years¹³ .
3. It takes 10-15 years to bring a refinery online, at full capacity¹⁴.

Fundamental Issue: Weakened economic market.

1. Currency markets are in chaos with the falling US Buck.
2. EU economy isn’t looking good
3. Emerging markets are weakening.
4. Banks have been weakened with the sub-prime debacle
5. Years of cheap and easy cash have inflated US and UK housing and Real Estate markets¹⁵ .
6. Oil and gold are the only steady gainers against the Falling Buck.

The Speculator’s, cornered!

What they are calling Speculators, aren’t¹⁶ . The real players driving prices beyond 140USD per barrel  are the large institutional investors looking for a safe place to put their money. They dare not use the banks while they’re still doing 30BUSD write downs, the NYSE is expected to drop below 10K before Christmas, Real Estate isn’t a good idea, and inflation is a serious issue. That only leaves oil and gold. Are speculators pumping the market into a bubble? I don’t think so. They look at all the issues above, and realize that oil is going up and staying there for, at least, the next 10 years. Oil and gold are the only safe places for money these days.

1. According to OPEC [↩]
2. stated a few weeks ago on CNBC [↩]
3. Mutual funds and fixed income, long-term investment houses. In case you don’t know this; these are the guys that manage the returns on your 401K. You can stop them but then don’t complain about lackluster returns. [↩]
4. I wrote about this a few years back [↩]
5. Remember the Alaska Pipeline, 10+ years to build and another 10 before we saw the first drops of oil. [↩]
6. We just have to work a lot harder to find and develop it, see Abiotic Oil, more references can be found in this list. [↩]
7. The fundamental problem is that it is a Russian-Ukrainian theory and some Cold War thinking still applies, in the US. [↩]
8. Russian confirmation is here. [↩]
9. Here is old George, getting the US into trouble again [↩]
10. Better to lend to US banks, at 11-12% [↩]
11. Worse,  with various oil industry retrenchments, in the past 30 years,  huge numbers of them went into another line of work. [↩]
12. even if we pumped more oil, we can’t refine it [↩]
13. Although many have been decommissioned [↩]
14. faster/cheaper to build a nuclear plant, maybe? [↩]
15. That balloon is now deflating [↩]
16. That’s just a political device [↩]

I dropped the Link Summaries feature last night. It looked like they were more of a nuisance than a benefit¹ .

1. The footnotes are still cool though [↩]

This comes from this article on the BBC, a consortium of twits. If you block port 25 then you have no mail. What they want is to block end-users from using port 25 and force them to use only the mail systems of their ISP. My systems don’t send spam but I will be treated like a spammer regardless. Sorry, I will not accept that. My ISP, BlueWin.CH, has proven themselves remarkably incompetent, over the years. There is also the contractual issue that our Internet access is unfiltered.

I got it, let’s isolate the UK from the Internet and let’s start with the BBC?

PS. Upon further research, I find that MAAWG has, as principle technical advisor, my old ICANN nemesis Dave Crocker. He first proposed this policy on the Network Solutions Domains Names lists, back in the late 90’s.¹

1. It’s too damned small a world we live in. Yes, I slammed him on it then, as well. [↩]

is unstable. It’s fine if you turn it off every day but leave it on all the time, like I do, and you will likely find it hung by morning.

Okay, this is only news if you’ve been living under a rock¹ someplace. On 19Jun08, the BBC ran this article.

My Reaction

Oh boy, I wonder how far they wandered this one from the standards? What’s this, a hole found already? I guess I’ll give this a pass until the birthing pangs are worked out … in a month or three.

In the meanwhile SG and I are using Firefox 2 on our Win2K machines, having replaced IE6, in that environment. This is now my recommendation since MS is no longer actively supporting that ancient browser. It’s too bad that IE7 will not run in a Win2K environment. At the moment, that is the preferred browser, under Windows greater than XP. Ergo, lacking the ability to run IE7 leads me to support Firefox, on Win2K clients and servers, in spite of how gruesomely fat and clunky it is. It is certain that IE6 has too many fatal vulnerabilities to be safe anymore, in any environment.

Even with Firefox 2, there are differences between them and neither are compliant with the supposed standard, the W3C. Specifically, CSS positioning from TOP differs between the two;

For Firefox, I do this, in the main CSS file

   1:  #p-cactions

   2:     {

   3:         position: absolute;

   4:         width: auto;

   5:         height: 2.5em;

   6:         float: right;

   7:         top: 210px;

   8:         left: 13.1em;

   9:         margin: 0;

  10:         white-space: nowrap;

  11:         width: 70%;

  12:         line-height: 1.1em;

  13:         overflow: visible;

  14:         background: none;

  15:         border-collapse: collapse;

  16:         padding-left: 0;

  17:         list-style: none;

  18:         font-size: 95%;

  19:     }

For IE7, I have to overload this CSS class with this, in the IE70.css file

   1:  #p-cactions {

   2:      z-index: 3;

   3:      top: 197px;

   4:  }

   5:   

Note in particular, line 7 in the top example and line 3 in the bottom example. It is the same predicate top but with different values. I derived the correct values heuristically. They have to do with the tabs being located a precise  distance from the top of the page, on this site.

IE7 is closest to the W3C standard. Note that closest does not mean in compliance with. Both of them are wrong.

As a web developer, I am fairly afraid of the gnits that Firefox 3 will bring to the party. Firefox is still Mozilla, which is still Nutscrape. They’ll be different from MS even if MS complied 100% with the standard. It is simply their nature.

PS. The formatting on this one looks a hell of a lot better on my Wordpress site.

1. or under a bridge, with no computer access. In which case, you still don’t care. [↩]

It’s been a busy few weeks. Currently, we are experiencing the Fete de Musique here in Nyon. There are bands playing everywhere and there is a Battle of the Bands competition as part of the music festival. Some of these guys are damned good, others are fairly tame. The French bands are real eye openers. It’s a different style and I don’t know why it never caught on in the US.

For various reasons, we had to push the wedding out to mid-august. I still don’t have the Final Decree from the last one, although it’s close. The judge changed his mind and now wants a notarized sheet of answers to some basic questions. Mostly, this is to authenticate me¹ . A quick trip to Geneva and we got that done and sent off.

Since I no longer have to travel to Houston, we can afford to bring my daughter out here. Jenny is already working her end of the deal and getting a US Passport. On that front, she had a bad turn last week. She had moved from Livermore to Oakland² and as a consequence, had her lovely Honda stolen. She is quite heartbroken over it. They found the corpse in a chop-shop. It was a special model of high performance Honda CVCC Si. The only good thing about it is that she had a car loan and they made her carry full insurance, as a part of the deal. Good thing, I say. At least, the loan is covered³ and they will cover the rest of the value so she can get another car. The reason she moved was that she couldn’t afford the housing, in the tri-valley, and the cost of fuel⁴ from Livermore to Hayward, where she works. With the theft, she has now chopped about a $K from her recurring monthly expenses. If she can get a cheaper car without incurring another similar car loan, she could be better off.

She’s my daughter and I worry about her. She has no family left in the SF Bay Area⁵ and life’s not treating her real well, at the moment. All I can do is to give her advice and the link to the autotrader . My ex-wife, who Jenny did develop some attachment to, isn’t speaking to either of us. But she’s in Houston anyway. Jenny can’t stand her bio-mother, who is still in Orange County, South California. Ergo, Jenny is feeling rather lonely right now. Short of winning the Euro Millions, there is nothing much that I can do.

There are some techie things which I will cover in another post.

1. Notaries are only witnesses to the signing of a document. That the signatories are who they say they are. They do not validate the document itself. [↩]
2. Lake Merrit District [↩]
3. She had about 6K left on it [↩]
4. $4.60+ per gal [↩]
5. My sister, a not-so-nice person, lives in Santa Barbara and my brother lives in Simi Valley. Both are hundreds of miles away. [↩]

After getting this laptop, getting MS-Office 2007, getting enough RAM to make it work¹ , and upgrading Vista default to Vista Ultimate, I am finally able to load an entire book into word. After all of that and the associated aggravation, it opens and loads in "Compatibility Mode". Actually, I was expecting that from when I made the MSO97 -> MSO2000 jump. The problem is that Compatibility Mode isn’t, compatible that is. Sure, you can edit in the older version but headings, footers, margins, and other crap become static. Adding new pages becomes a real problem when the page numbers in the headings have to auto-increment. Ergo, only minor changes will be allowed in the older version thereafter. Can we say "Micro-shafted"?

This wouldn’t be a problem with a final draft but I still expect to be working on this in both places. I guess I now find out if I can dual-install from the same CDs² . If not then I will only be able to work on the books using the laptop. How lame is that?

The bottom-line is that I now have to decide which version to work in, MSO2007 or MSO2000. I cannot install MSO2000 on Vista, that’s why I had to get MSO2007 in the first place. Now to find out if MSO2007 will install on Win2K. There are times when Microsux sux³ worse than usual.

1. laptop came with only 1GB [↩]
2. Assuming that it will even install on Win2K Advanced server [↩]
3. That sucking sound you hear is Microsux vacuuming all the cash from your wallet and bank accounts [↩]

In the Cafe again¹ . Yesterday they changed the access key to WAP, from open. Believe it or not, you actually have to enter the dashes! It’s four groups of characters separated by dashes and you have to enter everything. Anyway, I couldn’t login from here yesterday and had to come back today for social reasons, to be polite. I don’t want them to think that I’m mad at them. But they are about to close and have already cut me off from the coffee.

ciao-

1. Free WiFi and good coffee [↩]

It’s the Web Calendar Project. I’m still playing around with it but it’s one of the coolest projects I’ve seen. I’s fully iCal compliant and you don’t have to give your information¹ to Google. This is just in time for the Caselle-Net public site redesign.

1. soul [↩]

The new matching theme for the Wiki was a PITA but it’s done. Monobook has been converted with new graphics and code to the new styles. The original author made it as difficult as possible but I got it done It’s on my professional Website or I’d give the URL.

Now I have some other work to do. One side note, when I got here Vista ambushed me with the SP1 update. almost an hour later, I finally have my laptop back.

Y’all might want to look at this.

The US government seems to have forgotten its place. Yes, some of these are of good intentions but leave the doors wide open for serious abuse. In particular, the seizure provisions are very much of concern.

and that’ll relearn me about messing with things that aren’t broken. I was wrong.

It wasn’t enough to delete one of the gateway routes, it had to be the correct one. The one to keep is the one on the VPN’s NIC and not the  one on the LAN, contrary to what I thought yesterday. I missed the fact that the VPN uses IGMP, a form of dynamic routing.

I made the deletion last night. When we got here¹ , the test failed. I then left every thing here with Salegamine, walked back home, and corrected the routes. Everything is now copasetic again and I can browse my LAN once more.

1. The Café [↩]

This morning, I decided to fix a few loose ends. I should have left them loose. I can’t get to my internal servers again so, I’ll have to back out the changes. On another note, I did successfully move DBMS3¹ from the VPN² gateway to another box³ . Having done that, I came here to retest the VPN, with the result I just told y’all about. Quick lesson here; when there are two NICs⁴ installed in a host, only one of them needs a default route, preferably NOT the one assigned to the VPN. What I had yesterday was working fine⁵ and I know better than to fix what isn’t broken.

Salegamine salegamine. is working late tonight⁶ with no clue when she’ll be home. It’s schedule crunch time. Fortunately, they really like Reggae here.

ciao

1. I have four Database servers and DBMS3 is the main one. [↩]
2. Virtual Private Network [↩]
3. Osprey [↩]
4. Network Interface Cards aka LAN adapters [↩]
5. For various definitions of fine. [↩]
6. Programmer’s hours [↩]

This time to test my email. This morning, I had to move the hMailserver from the machine that is now the VPN Router and gateway. To do so, without losing anything, required transferring data from the VPN gate. This was far from easy since nothing worked from outside of the box. Fortunately, I could still get from that box to the others. Multi-megabytes later, it works fine.  That box does nothing other than VPN routing now.

This has been a real learning experience. MS feels that VPN end-points need to be ultra secure. For us, this is a bit of over-kill.

It has been a longish day here and I’m sloshing my way home in a bit. Some final testing and I’m shutting this notebook down. I might be back later though, but not from the cafè.

The recent reversion to the ban against gay marriage is not about God’s law, it’s about secular law¹ and they are not the same! The Muslims seem to be the worst at understanding this difference. However they are closely followed by Jews, Catholics, and Puritan Protestants (Calvinists).

The ruling "is a violation of God’s law," Siddiqi, an authority on Islamic law, said in an interview. "I hope all people of faith — Jews, Christians and Muslims — speak up against this." At Lake Avenue, a large and diverse church that is part of the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference, Waybright told worshipers that he did not want to be "self- righteous or condemn anyone." Still, he said, "it’s my responsibility . . . to keep pointing you to God’s way." The Bible, he noted, makes clear that marriage is between a man and a woman.

What the deists keep missing is that their God is not the only god that is worshipped and that our governments are supposed to include all citizens equally. As a Secularist, I reject Shria Law, Judaic Law, and Catholic law and neither the Bible or the Quoran are relevant¹ . Secular law is the law of the land and, in the US, the Constitution is the ONLY Secular law! If it conflicts with some jumped up deist’s version of law and morality then they can just suck it up and deal with it because, the first amendment promises no ascendency of ANY religion, even atheism² .

According to secular principles of freedom, the law should be as open as possible yet, be morally neutral, keep civic order, peace, punish the guilty, and protect the innocent. Any moral code that restricts more than that is individually chosen, by that individual, but shall not be forced on the rest of us. Any two or more people that want to congress as a family unit should be able to do so and it is no one else’s business if they do. Any group that avows stoning or the like for such people needs to be banned themselves because, that is definitely harming another. Offending another’s religious sensibilities does not cause any physical harm³ and psychological harm cannot be proven⁴ .

1. Western legal principles of freedom; As it harms no other, do as you will. [↩]
2. I’m bound to catch flak over that one [↩]
3. Okay, it makes it harder for them to indoctrinate/brainwash their kids. [↩]
4. Except to the feeble and weak minded. [↩]

—–
–> Sorry, due to spammers, I am only taking comments at LiveJournal, for now. Thank you, The Slamlander

1. Any overlapping is incidental [↩]

Cafè DifferenCiels has two meanings. It is a linguistic pun. Spoken out loud, to the English speaking ear, it sounds like Cafè Differentials, as in the Calculus term. As  student hangout, this makes sense. It also has meaning in its native French¹ as Ciels means skies, making the name to translate into English as Cafè Different Skies². This is also appropriate, for the eclectic sort of place that it is.

I had a panini jambon cuit for lunch, along with too many renversès.

1. Suisse Romande [↩]
2. Could also be taken as the cafè under different skies [↩]

Okay, that’s the old Rick Dees expression¹² . However, I’ve just had a major success; the VPN connection to my LAN mostly works!

After a slight problem with the WEP key at Cafe DifferenCiels, I was able to get to the Internet at 54Mbps.

Then I setup the Caselle-Net VPN connections and *whammo* it hooked up with PPTP, domain login, and everything. The only problem is that I hadn’t yet completed the routing to the Internet from Eagle. I was even able to use Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) to access Goshawk³.

However, I can drop the Caselle-Net connection and use the local routes from here. This may be better anyway. I still have a ways to go⁴ but this is the majority of it.

1. Actually, a mashup of two expressions, one of them from Young Frankenstein [↩]
2. I LOVE this footnote feature [↩]
3. Normally Goshawk and Eagle are hiding behind my NAT wall and not at all visible from the general Internet. [↩]
4. Complete the access to my SMTP server [↩]

I now have access to the internal databases. No email yet.

Default for Win2K VPNs are to lock everything down, you have to make specific policies to open them up again.

Technolorata

Hack placidly amidst the noisy printers and remember what prizes there may be in Science. As fast as possible get a good terminal on a good system.
Enter your data clearly but always encrypt your results. And listen to others, even the dull and ignorant, for they may be your customers. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, for they are sales reps.
If you compare your outputs with those of others, you may be surprised, for always there will be greater and lesser numbers than you have crunched.
Keep others interested in your career, and try not to fumble; it can be a real hassle and could change your fortunes in time.
Exercise system control in your experiments, for the world is full of bugs. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for linearity and everywhere papers are full of approximations. Strive for proportionality. Especially, do not faint when it occurs. Neither be cyclical about results; for in the face of all data analysis it is sure to be noticed.
Take with a grain of salt the anomalous data points. Gracefully pass them on to the youth at the next desk. Nurture some mutual funds to shield you in times of sudden layoffs. But do not distress yourself with imaginings

• the real bugs are enough to screw you badly. Murphy's Law runs the Universe


• and whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt B*n dS = 0.

Therefore, grab for a piece of the pie, with whatever proposals you can conceive of to try. With all the crashed disks, skewed data, and broken line printers, you can still have a beautiful secretary. Be linear. Strive to stay employed.

-- Technolorata, "Analog"

--
goshawk.NE.Caselle-NET:~
Mon May 19 07:45:33 [bash:Root:35]$>

Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
War is peace.

-- George Orwell

--
goshawk.NE.Caselle-NET:~ Sun May 18 07:41:21 [bash:Root:14]$>

After the post from Cafe DifferenCiels, I went back to setup the VPN system properly. Yes, I didn't have all the port forwarding. But I didn't have the VPN channels properly defined in RAS either.

Yesterday morning, I changed one of the settings and my terminal services session locked up, along with everything else. Okay, I plug keyboard and monitor into the box and have a look. The only NIC in the box is showing as "Dedicated" to the VPN router, not good. Win2K is isolated from the LAN, except for some critical services. This means that my only access is from the console. I've run into this one before. The problem is that the server is an old box with only a single PS2 plug and no USB ports. Win2K does not do serial mice worth a damn.

Lat night we went to Interdiscount in Geneva and picked up a USB card, USB mouse, and Logitech keyboard for the server. Well, I now have a full Swiss Romande keyboard on my main work area and the PC104 is now on the server.

Oh yeah, minor detail; This is the box that is running my Mail server. Ergo, no email until it's fixed.

Yet another minor detail, that box was also running my DynDNS client, which is now reinstantiated on the web server.

Ayia! That machine is also my main RDBMS container ... I am soooo doomed!

I wouldn't mind a bit of help from a Win2K jock here. How do I undedicate the NIC?

Sitting at the Cafe DifferenCiels and trying to get my VPN¹ to work. Basically, it doesn’t.

That’s an interesting name for a cafe, BTW. Yes, there are obviously students hanging out here, most of them about college age. There is free WiFi and it’s unlimited. There is unlimited coffee here too, but that’s not free

My LiveWriter emoticons aren’t available either.

Anyway, what I expected to take less than an hour is now working on hour 3. Big chunks of Vista’s VPN support are less than intuitive and I wound up disconnecting myself a few times. In the end, I have to verify the correct port numbers for Win2K VPN services and pinhole route them to Eagle’s Win2K RAS server.

Other news

I got most of the way towards setting up two new Websites and they are looking good. Both are still in Wordpress, which is turning out to be a decent low-ball CMS system. I’ve taken a quick peek at Serendipity but I’ll need to play with it a bit before I’m willing to deploy it.

What I’m going for with all my sites is a close integration between a blog² , forum software³ , and a Wiki⁴ . I have a lot of it functional but coordinating the styles is a PITA. Neither Mediawiki or BBPress are as good as WordPress for plug-n-play themes. This is actually a wonder since the BBPress developers are largely the same as the WordPress developers. One wonders why they couldn’t borrow code, or at least the theme architecture.

On the other hand, one doesn’t wonder at all, while looking at Mediawiki. MW Skins dive too deeply into the core code and there isn’t real good code separation between the functions and the appearance.

1. Microsoft’s LTTP to RAS solution [↩]
2. Currently WordPress [↩]
3. BBPress [↩]
4. Mediawiki [↩]

This may be long but it’s well worth watching.