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In my last blog post about smartphones, I urged the universe at large to help maintain a variety of ecosystems, to help foster competition and originality amongst vendors – and the same day I hit publish, WebOS was killed. Apparently the universe hates me. Since then, a few things have changed. My main phone since [...]

It’s seeming increasingly likely that reports regarding the future of Banshee, Tomboy, and the rest of the Mono stack in the default Ubuntu desktop install are accurate. Ubuntu 12.04 will likely be the first Ubuntu release since 5.10 not to ship with any Mono apps in the default install – ending a run of 12 [...]

A very popular refrain on tech sites is that the high street cannot support multiple competing phone ecosystems. It’s a reasonable position to take. Do phone stores want to train their employees on six or seven different OSes? Do consumers understand the differences, and should they need to? Do app developers want to rewrite their [...]

Not for the first time, I’ve seen the suggestion in the echo chamber that Mono packages should be moved from Debian into the non-free repository, which is not formally part of Debian. The reason, as it so often is, is patents – specifically this time, the searing risk posed to Debian and its users that [...]

This is a reproduction of a message I sent to Amazon.co.uk tonight, after their Black Friday sales system went to hell on me, and I found their response to the problem less than enlightening. I’m reproducing the message here, as a warning to all. On a related note, links to my Amazon wishlist are gone. [...]

There are corners of the Internest where foolish people congregate, and invent stories. These foolish stories are then read as gospel by trusting people, and reposted, until the original made-up source is concealed from view. As an attempt to stem this flow of disinformation, here are some commonly held – but incorrect – beliefs about [...]

I’m making a few changes to my online interactions. Chicken Little Remix will no longer be updated. There will be no 10.04 from me. I will no longer be visiting certain websites, under any circumstances, courtesy of 127.0.0.1 entries in /etc/hosts. This includes sites such as Ubuntu Forums, some blogs, and some “news” sites. I [...]

For those who aren’t clinically dead, you may have heard of the “BBC”. The BBC are the state-ish-funded TV network in the UK, and the country’s biggest broadcaster, alongside three other major “terrestrial” broadcasters who make their content widely available without payment – ITV, Channel 4, and Five. These broadcasters also make some or all [...]

There seems to be a remarkable number of ways for people to define “Free Software” to themselves. Richard Stallman has four freedoms. Debian has ten guidelines. The OSI has ten guidelines too (but they’re different). These are all fairly detailed, and to someone who doesn’t understand the idea, take a while to explain. There are [...]

The “Mono War” is unproductive. For some, I’m sure this comes as a startling realization, and for others, it’s stating the obvious. However, the point needs to be reiterated – the “Mono War” as-is serves no practical purpose. From my diamond-encrusted Microsoft-supplied throne, here is what I see when I survey the “War”: Immovable, entrenched, [...]