There has been a lot of discussion lately about the importance of astrocytes. I didn't know that they are linked to certain neurological diseases. But at least for information processing they seem to be quite unimportant. There is a study that was published in Science where the researchers basically knocked out the signaling of all astrocytes in mice and the behaviour of the animals changed only marginally. A summary of this debate was published last year in an open access article in Nature: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101110/full/468160a.html

I can run a full GNU/Linux in a chroot on my phone _because_ Android is based on Linux. That could not be done as easily without the Linux kernel.

Android has had more powerful scripting for quite some time: http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/

Sorry, I just noticed that you can now distribute modified versions of TrueCrypt. They must have changed the license.

The problem is that TrueCrypt is not free software. It is open source but you don't have the freedom to distribute your own modified version. Therefore, there cannot be any community-driven development of TrueCrypt and - unless you can fix things that you don't like yourself - you are subject to the whim of the original developers of TrueCrypt.

A command line is more flexible than a GUI could ever be. It just has a steeper learning curve. Since computers are more mainstream these days GUIs are more prevalent. That doesn't decrease the value of command lines though.

The iPad has a built-in Javascript language interpreter and you could write Javascript code on the device itself. So you can program the device on the device. That said I hate the closed nature of iCrap products.

I guess the Cyanogenmod community is not a licensee. So as long as it doesn't affect these open distributions we can have diversity (by community distributions) and less fragmentation for typical consumers. That's a good thing.

They could also fork Android to build an alternative. That is the beauty of free software.

I think this is the right place for a question which I posted too late to another story. I am also a bit paranoid and don't like the idea of being trackable. For this reason I typically have my phone in airplane mode and turn off this mode when I expect phone calls or want to browse / check mails. I still do not really trust the proprietary firmware not to transmit any signals. I would really like to check whether it still transmits anything in airplane mode. Does anybody know an easy and inexpensive way of how to do that? Please don't propose any instructions involving tin foil.

With regard to this story, I think everyone should try to keep as much privacy as is acceptable for him/her. It always means not participating in some things like social networks or cell phones.

Thank you very much for your advice. This is exactly what I had in mind. A few points remain unclear though.

I can do that. I have high quality tin foil at home. But can the tin foil of the unit interfere with my tin foil hat?

For that I would have to leave my basement. This is none of my normal daily activities and not an option. Is there an alternative? I have two agents at my disposal: my mom and my cat.

I am a bit paranoid and don't like the idea of being trackable. For this reason I typically have my phone in airplane mode and turn off this mode when I expect phone calls or want to browse / check mails. I still do not fully trust the proprietary firmware not to transmit any signals. I would really like to check whether it still transmits anything in airplane mode. Does anybody know an easy and inexpensive way of how to do that?

The Android Privacy guard offers convenient gpg encrypted email for Android too: http://www.thialfihar.org/projects/apg/ It works together with the K9 email client. Also not the default email client but much better.

There is a fully free Android distribution called Replicant: http://replicant.us/

Then there is a free software repository for Android at http://f-droid.org/

Still this is really bad news for MeeGo. With at least two other strong competitors in the field, MeeGo actually needs all the support it can get. Instead the netbook UX was already canceled by Nokia and now MeeGo will definitely not be the premium system of the top notch smartphones. It is true that as free software MeeGo cannot really die but it can become insignificant. Without a critical mass working on the system MeeGo cannot be competitive in the long run. I was hoping that it would become a huge success because having the complete desktop ecosystem in your pocket can have nice advantages.