- Patch #150245 by webchick, bjaspan, ralf, Arancaytar et al: move the .schema files into .install files to prevent mistakes.

- Patch #144634 by chx: fixed critical bug that prevented language negotiation to work after/when drupal_goto() is called.

#117151 by profix898: the second part of our FilesMatch list contained complete file names which should be protected (eg. Tag), but should not match parts of the file names (eg. Tagging.txt)

#151634 by Ralf Stamm: protect .schema files from being read over the web, if .htaccess is parsed and adhered to

- Fix locations links in watchdog
- Fix repeated subdirectory in page cache CIDs

Per TDobes' comments:

* INSTALL.txt corrected to use 4.3.3, not 4.33.
* .htaccess: removed allow_call_time_pass_reference. two confirmations that a) the setting was wrong in the first place, b) there were no adverse affects for the incorrect setting, c) the PHP docs say it is deprecated.
* .htaccess: removed short_open_tag. Running grep -r "<? " * across the entire directory tree of both core and contributions only brought up contributions and no core. I agree that the fuller form is better. The following contributions will need to be updated: modules/edit_template/edit_template.module, sandbox/garym/themes/marvin_2k/templates/page.tpl.php, sandbox/killes/compare.php, sandbox/paolino/import/click.php, themes/spreadfirefox/block.tpl.php. For error's sake, I also did a manual verification for "<?" (no space) across core and came up against nothing in addition to the above contribs.

Per Goba's comments:

* .htaccess: Moved session.auto_start back.
* sites/default/settings.php: Removed track_vars.

Per mailing list comments:

* INSTALL.txt: Added text about the files/ directory, creating it, and permissions.
* INSTALL.txt: Added an example of why Drupal requires cron (the search.module) in an attempt to justify why a crontab is a good, nay, required step.

And my own further analities:

* .htaccess: cleaned up some whitespace valleys (i hate 'em, hate 'em!) and fixed a few stray colons.
* settings.php: minor whitespace error.

- Patch #17303 by tangent: moved the session settings into /sites/default/settings.php so that subsites can have better control over them. One of the advantages of the site specific settings.php file is that it will never get overwritten during upgrades and having these settings here should prove to be more friendly.

- Oops.

- Patch #10425 by ccourtne and walkah: added admin screens to maintain forums instead of forcing the user to add a taxonomy.

- Theme system changes.  Please consult http://drupal.org/node/view/9576 for details.

- Direct 404s to Drupal.  Suggested by Goba.

- Reworked 404 (page not found) handling.  Patch by walkah.  You can specify a
  custom 404 page in the administration page.  As a result, error.php could be
  removed.

- Added some Apache 2 specific instructions.

- Gerhard's uid 0 patches.  These patches bring various performance
  improvements.  Requires a database update.

- Set session.gc_maxlifetime to something more sensible than the default
  1440 seconds.

- Set some additional options to avoid installation pains.