… then all you have to do is download and install Firefox 3 (download link is not provided on purpose, I do not want to feel guilty for directing people towards it).

I was pretty happy with Firefox 2 and I started using Firefox 3 only after a friend recommended it. I had some doubts, mainly when I was seeing the horrific address bar that Firefox 3 decided fit to implement. I have installed it, and after 3 days I wanted back to Firefox 2. My only beef (but a big one) with Firefox 3 is the address bar and the way it searches thru your browsing history and displays possible addresses you are trying to type. It is a great exercise in obfuscation, the new address bar manages to both hide away what you are typing (the font of the address bar is smaller than the font of the browsing history search results) and obfuscate the results of the browsing history search (bold-ing the hits of the word you type in the address bar causes further confusion as you are reading the results of the browsing history).

To make things even more confusing FF3 changed the way it searches the browsing history. Previously it was matching the address that you are typing against former URLs, now it tries to match the address that you are typing against URL, page titles, URL snippets, etc… in a pathetic attempt at mining your browsing history. In FF2 I used to be able to find my address with a few key-strokes, now my eye keeps scanning this list that FF3 dumps on the unsuspecting user:

I thought pretty seriously to go back to Firefox 2, but Firefox 2 will be discontinued in December. So I am stuck with this browser, let’s call it this way for lack of a better name. Frankly, I am waiting to run IE7 on my computer, it cannot be dumber than FF3.

Firefox 3 is to Firefox 2 what Vista is to XP. Period.

Later Edit Maybe I got too carried away, but what they have done to the address bar and to the address completion algorithm it is horrific. I really liked the way FF2 was displaying the addresses, it was clean, uncluttered and to the point. None like FF3’s address bar…

If you read literature on economic development you are probably familiar with the declining American high school graduation rate and its effects on inequality due to the differences in income between the educated and non-educated members of society. A person which has not graduated from high-school will have quite a lot of problems securing an income in an economy where the low-skilled, labor-intensive jobs have been moved to China.

One reason that I see for this problem is the current misalignment between early education providers (such as high schools) and labor market. High school’s main goal is creating “better” human beings, its mandate is more social than economic. However with the tilting of the labor market towards jobs which require education it appears that education providers should also find a way to respond to economic concerns about the students entering an educational establishment.

I would say that we need shift the way we think about education towards economic concerns and insert some incentives into the educational process that reflect these economic concerns.

I don’t have time to finish this post, I will probably re-visit it later.