Wikimania 2006, a conference for Wikimedia and Wikipedia people, fans, and advocates, finished up today. I attended as a visitor, to just see the seminars and sessions and soak up enthusiasm about wikis in general.

A separate event held before Wikimania, the Wikimania Hacking Days, had many of MediaWiki and Wikipedia developers come to discuss future directions of the infrastructure and software architectural of Wikiedia. Even though it was held at the offices where I work, the OLPC, I did not attend any of the seminars or hacking sessions. Most were heavily focused on MediaWiki, which I can honestly say I do not like much: the Wiki syntax is awful, and it is slow (I think Wikipedia is the fastest MediaWiki-powered site I know of).

Some of the interesting stuff I liked at Wikimania:

• Chuck Smith’s Wiki Markup Mess poster detailed the many different types of Wiki markup in use, and put forth a “standard” Wiki markup to be adopted by all. I personally think this is the way standards should be made, that is, after-the-fact based on things that are already working in the wild. Interesting enough, ErfurtWiki, which I used on my old website, supports the syntax unification they were proposing.
• Lawrence Lessig’s Ethics of a Free Culture Movement talk was excellent. While the presentation he used was a little corny, it detracted nothing from his message: copyright law has stinted the culture of the last 100 yrs, and new laws are needed for the new culture of the next 100 yrs
• Markus Krötzsch’s Semantic MediaWiki extension, demonstrated as part of the Wikipedia and the Semantic Web panel, was very interesting to me. Lack of structure to information in wikis is a pet peeve with me; semantically tagging bits of information so they can be pulled out from articles with automated tools is just cool.

Wes makes a comment about DNS registrars’ DNS:

Boy, if they run a domain registrar their DNS servers should have better uptime than what I could achieve.

This isn’t necessarily true—why?

Domain registrars make money from domain name registration, plain and simple. Registering a domain name basically consists of adding an entry to some text file somewhere, hosted on a server that most registrars have absolutely nothing to do with. Registrars do not necessarily have any experience running systems like DNS.

DNS offered by registrars is a value-added service, one that makes them no money. It’s offered because everyone else offers it, and it helps sell domain names.

OK, that’s a lie. Registrars hosting DNS can make money, through what is known as “domain parking.” Domain parking lets you buy a domain without having a website or hosting for it; you can buy a domain and the registrar keeps it for you, for free! It’s very nice of them isn’t it? Until you notice that “parked” domains have pages full of advertising, making money for the registrar. The tricky thing here is that with most registars, the nameservers for parked domains and those that answer customer-supplied DNS records are different. Registrars can spend more money on the parked domains’ nameservers, those which essentially make them money, than other DNS servers, which don’t.

Because registrars can and do often host the DNS for millions of domain names, that means their systems are that much more loaded and susceptible to DoS attacks. Because registrars don’t make any money hosting your DNS, they just have to keep their DNS service (barely) working, it doesn’t have to be good.

I was talking to a friend today, who does not believe in god. She was making a remark that she did not like to eat with her Christian friends, because their saying grace made her feel awkward. She felt awkward because she would feel dishonest if she participated in their prayer.

There are two kinds of “active” non-believers, those who believe religion and issues of god are something are totally meaningless (could be atheists or agnostics), and those who vehemently opposed and offended by anything to do with religion (probably only atheists).

This feeling of “dishonesty” made no sense to me if you fit into one of the above two categories. If you are opposed and offended, you would find the prayer annoying. If you thought it was a bunch of meaningless ritual, then you are just reciting a bunch of nonsense, so there’s no reason to feel dishonest and not participate, as long as it was not offensive.

I’m not really sure if acting like this is offensive to Christians. I don’t mean going to church and acting like a believer; I’m talking about simple everyday things like saying a prayer before a meal. If you’re a Christian I’m interested in your opinion.

I like to think I am the former kind of non-believer, the one just sees it all as meaningless. The latter kind of non-believer, the one who finds religion offensive, are the kind that make the news. Consider the controversy over the removal of the phrase “under god” from the national anthem [of the USA]. My feeling is that it does not belong there: added not even a century ago, it is no way part of America’s history, and is a clear violation of the seperation of church and state. That said, I don’t really care to get it removed because of how much hassle it would be. Basically, I’m glad something is thinking and doing something about these things, but I’m glad I am not paying for it.