Eric,

>>(Dien dobre ?)
> 	My family is polish, but you're approaching the limits of my
> understanding of slavic languages. :)  (isn't is spelled "dzien dobre"? or
> does that depend on the exact language?)

"Dobredien" is Russian, "dien dobre" is Polish, as far as I remember. 
Just a change in word order, but with many consequencies implied :)

> 	looks like at least some of the space savings is due to losing
> strings that are intended to remain.  Notice that the ipfilter id
> strings no longer show up in the "what" output.  Does the new kernel
> retain things like the embedded kernel config (strings /netbsd | grep _CFG_)
> or is that lost too?  If so, the size comparison isn't valid.

It's void, gone, vanished, disappeared, whisked away. A very good point. 
In fact:

# strings -10 /onetbsd | wc -c
   234174
# strings -10 /netbsd | wc -c
   181964

You would most probably be hired by Scotland Yard :)
Vincent