[muglo] Re: Explorer Default page (+ some OT)

>Well,
>(1) So?? I presume you mean that Netscape is 56 Meg, Safari & Mail 39
>Meg? Hardly a logical reason, but has some merit if memory is an issue.

I was wondering where you got your numbers I saw that you added Mail to 
Safari (a not-so-useful comparison b/c of over head). A *slightly* better 
comparison would be either FireFox 28.9 data (29.9 MB on disk) or Camino 
18.2 MB of data (18.8 MB on disk) vs. Safari 9.4 MB of data (14.6 MB on 
disk). However, this isn't entirely right b/c FireFox and Camino are not 
simply Mozilla/Netscape stripped of the mailer and composer functions but 
different apps.

Thus, where it counts (browsing... Netscape is known as a *browser*, not an 
e-mailer or a HTML composer), the others are _at least_ twice as large as 
Safari (disk size is not a relevant comparison since it tells you nothing of 
its RAM foot print or coding efficiency).

The other place where Safari (and KDE) have a much more solid base (for the 
future) are in the size of their underlying code. KDE (the display engine) 
is a fraction of the size vs. what Mozilla requires to display HTML with a 
nearly identical web support. This smaller size may allow it to evolve 
faster than Mozilla, especially given that Apple has a vested interest in 
making sure that Safari does play with web sites that normally IE only 
supports. It'll be interesting to see which display engine ends up dominant 
in the end. KDE, Mozilla or IE (I predict IE will have to go "open source" 
in the future).

Thus, in the browser component alone Mozilla et al. (i.e. Netscrash) are 
much more bloated. In the "suite" Netscrash vs. *anything* else (except 
Mozilla) is _hyper_ bloated.

>(2) I could add, What is?, but you'll reply, so I wont. Just, So?
((2) not a Macintosh application (GUI is non-Mac);)

So I'll reply anyway ;-). We are Mac users and are used to the Mac GUI. The 
Netscape GUI extensions are not value added (and the fact that I haven't 
seen them copied in 6+ years points to their relative ineffectiveness) so 
there's no point to learning them.

>(5) I've never even noticed a speed problem, but then speed of operation
>is not & never has been an important issue for me.

Opening up takes a dog's age which is why I never got used to using it on OS 
X (its GUI isn't good enough to warrant me waiting for it to open up... I'd 
rather use Camino which does everything Netscrash does but with a _far_ 
better and Mac-like GUI)

>(6) Never noticed & the "Tabs" reference doesn't mean a thing to me.

I'd encourage you to check it out. I started out as a skeptic but within 
minutes of using them was converted.

>Eric, you are entitled to your opinion, but like your comments about Uk
>food, schools, students and language, which show a lack of historical
>and real life knowledge, your comments show a distinct bias against
>anything you personally dislike and you are very opinionated.

I'm very curious how living in a country does not count as "real life 
knowledge", and, as for historical knowledge, how can you comment on that 
without knowing what I know and have learned?

Contemporary English cuisine *sucks*. There's no denying this. Even the 
English recognise that home-grown dishes are pretty much tasteless. I 
haven't found much to commend the English cuisine to _anyone_ (unless they 
like white bread, plain veggies, meat, meat, meat, meat, meat, pot pies, 
lard and dairy). The fact that the English (or was it British?) are the most 
overweight country in the world (per capita; see Economist Dec (2nd or 3rd 
week?), 2003) suggests to me also that the contemporary English (British?) 
diet is as poor as the home-grown meals. HISTORICALLY (knowledge you 
criticised me for lacking) the English cuisine was a lot more creative and 
resembled a middle-eastern cuisine with spices and herbs. The argument I 
heard for the decline and fall of the old English cuisine was that the 
Victorian era middle class women looked down on cooking and adopted (for 
then) "fast food" in the form of easily baked pies and such.

When you look at the English supermarkets they're incredibly diverse in the 
foods you can get (better than the Dutch) but there's still a sizeable 
section of dairy, meat and lard. The one thing I will miss to some extent is 
the range of *good* and *healthy* fast food available here. Loblaws is a 
higher class store than the chains here (Morrisons, Tesco, Safeway (to 
become Morrisons), Sainsburys... though, they are adopting Loblaws style 
stores) but cannot compete with the overwhelming diversity of foods (though, 
selection of things like veggie burgers and soya products is *much* better 
in Canada). Plus, there's only so much diversity you can make use of. They 
have 10 different brands of peanut butter but they're all the same! (PS I do 
eat the "fake" (i.e. sugared) PB better here because they don't use 
hydrogenated vegetable oil in it). However, where all this selection goes I 
do not know since they're still porkers (though, that may be attributable to 
a love-affair with cars and alcoholism).

But, before you blow a gasket because I'm criticising English cuisine, I 
must point out that I have a very low opinion of other northern European 
cuisines with which I'm familiar (though, the Dutch and Germans do have 
homegrown desserts that are quite good which sadly can't be said for the 
English). The French too aren't great, but they do do magical things with 
bread and pastry. You have to get down to the Italians before you get to 
truly magical European cuisine. It seems that as you go further south, the 
eating gets better!!! (I'm curious as to how bad Finnish eating is... they 
do have one of the world's worst (if not _the_ worst) dairy diet + heart 
attacks). Plus, home-grown non-aboriginal (don't know any Native food) 
Canadian cuisine is pretty much horrible too (my theory is that that was b/c 
it was inspired by the British/French so that may not be so surprising).

As for schools (my apologies for the length but I've spent a *lot* of time 
over the past 6 months trying to figure out what's wrong with them... when 
us Canuks, Yanks and "Roos" get together here that's the favourite topic of 
conversation (sometimes the natives join in and are by far the most viscious 
about their country and countrymen)... plus ridiculing how English women 
dress and everyone is an alcoholic are the other highlights of our 
bitch-fests :) :) :) ): highschools are in a dismal mess.

This is a mess caused by political/philosophical meddling and now that I 
know more about it, a significant portion of it can be laid at Thatcher's 
feet and more recently Tony Blair (he didn't start it but his gov't hasn't 
done anything to fix it other than make things worse). Twenty years later, 
the free-market vision of schooling has served only the make the publicly 
funded system a nightmare. I was biased against it before I came because of 
conversations I'd had with a few English expats in Canada (one even was the 
daughter of two state school teachers who spent a lot of money to send her 
and her sister to private school b/c they though the system was so bad, and 
another was a uni prof whose sister taught in the state schools and thought 
they were a farce), and, am even more biased against them now by what my 
partner and I have experience in the schools here.

Tee, I suspect that English public school is a very different beast from 
what you experienced as a child. I've now been in four different systems in 
my life (Colonial (Nigeria), Dutch, Canadian and now English) and I have to 
say that philosophically and in execution the English is by far the worst!!! 
I never felt like the other three let me down, but I would _never_ send my 
child to a state school here (unless it were a top school).

English schools are hampered by a few things:
1. standardised testing which allows _no_ subjective evaluation of students;
2. predominance of "comprehensive" schools (more below) vs. "grammar" 
schools;
3. hyper-standardised curriculum;
4. obsession with league tables WHICH HARMS STUDENTS!!!;
5. too many courses*;

* not necessarily a bad thing... just a stupid idea for teacher job 
satisfaction which in turn means better effort in teaching

1. If you (student) can't take tests or handle that pressure, you're ****ed. 
Also, encouragement is difficult to provide if students don't hand in things 
that get _real_ marks like essays, lab reports, short stories, etc.;

2. Ontario does have "comprehensives" in principle but our kids are 
_streamed_ within them. Here they aren't often streamed and the bright kids 
are pulled down by the not-so-bright ones and the n-s-b ones are frustrated 
b/c they are unable to perform so they turn off. With streamed classes you 
have kids with similar ability levels together which means, as a teacher, 
you can teach them and not have some kids tuned out b/c it's too hard or too 
easy. The argument is that teachers should do a better job of catering to 
these different level chlidren and the n-s-b ones will get pulled up, but in 
practice that is not the case;

3. Little freedom as a teacher to teach stuff which you know well and can 
impart a passion for to your students. In principle good b/c each kid knows 
at least a basis, but bad in practice b/c it reduces education to a simple 
formula. Education is about learning how to learn and building individuals 
(which you can't do if everyone is "standardised"), not just learning 
facts!;

4. League tables allow parents to shop around for the best schools -- the 
free market philosophy of education. Theoretically good. In practice (to get 
up in the league tables), energy goes into the students who can perform in 
ways which can be measured on league tables. The borderline students get 
coaching to bump up their performance (the latter is probably the same in 
Canada ;) but the poor ones who just aren't going to perform anyway are all 
but *ignored*. They get stuffed into large classes with the junior teachers, 
unless they're behavioural problems in which case they are in smaller 
classes to keep them from becoming criminals. Of course, free market 
requires choice which doesn't exist because of geographical constraints so 
it's a pointless exercise as 20 years of failure in England show (along with 
the highest ever support for private ("public") schools);

5. Oodles of classes (one teacher I know teaches 13 different groups of 
children with only two classes semi-duplicated). You don't get to know the 
kids (or they you) and it limits what can be done. I'm not totally down on 
this aspect of the system -- just the way it's executed.

I'm not sure which system I like best -- the Dutch system or the Canadian 
one. I'm leaning towards the Dutch one but the Canadian one isn't bad either 
-- there's certainly room for the Dutch system in the Canadian one. The 
Dutch stream their teens into schools of differing ability: Academic (three 
types of schools), college-bound, and vocational. It's essentially the 
English system but with better execution. Streaming in theory is a bad thing 
but in practice IT WORKS!!! In the Netherlands I had a *similar* time table 
as kids do here but it was far more intelligent in design. Class times were 
varied between 50 minutes and 70 minutes depending on subject (PE vs. math 
vs. science, etc) and school days were shorter, depending on year -- more 
responsiblity was given to you (of course, I was in an academic school so i 
don't know how it was in others).

Anyway, I don't even remember what mailing list this is going out to anymore 
;). The conclusion I draw from my experience and research here is that in 
theory the English high school system is great (it has much to commend it), 
but in practice it is anything but.

PS I've tried to ignore the typical/cynical/sensational gov't bashing 
critiques and get to the meat of any valid criticisms (not based on 
political affiliation) as I've been learning about this system and its rocky 
history. So, yes, I have indeed made an effort to become educated on its 
history, both in the recent and distant past.

>We as a Group, Muglo, appreciate you involvement in our community, but
>you often go a bit far.
>TTFN,
>TeeC

You may argue so perhaps because you disagree with my opinions ;) (though, 
this e-mail is quite lengthy so perhaps I am going too _far_ ;P ;P ;P). I 
suspect there are a number of reasons you and I disagree (different 
generations, backgrounds, political stripes, attitudes, allegiance to the UK 
(I have none save my historical ties to Scotland through my surname)... of 
course, I prefer to have allegiance to _no_ country. I am human first, and 
Canadian-Dutch second!!).

Anyway, I really have to do some prep for tomorrow now.

Eric.

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