If you don't live in the US, this is a pretty common source of irritation: US companies charging crazy markups on products sold in Europe, Asia, Australia, South America, and the rest of the world. The Australian government has had enough of this practice, and started an inquiry into the matter. Yesterday (or today? Timezones confuse me) Apple, Microsoft, and Adobe had to answer questions in a public hearing.

Time for a correction - unlike what we linked to earlier, there's no official CyanogenMod position on whether or not they're going to support the Galaxy S4. "This morning, a comment from a CM collaborator on XDA was taken to be as an 'absolute' in regards to support of the S4. He offered the opinion of four TeamHacksung maintainers, their frustrations and lack of interest in supporting the S4. What's seemingly lost on those reading this is that his comments as an individual do not speak for CyanogenMod as an organization. As for the team's stance on the S4, there isn't one at this time, and most definitely won't be one before the device is sold at retail."

Oh no! Automatic updates for Ubuntu 10.04 Desktop stop in April (updates for 10.04 Server continue for two more years). Desktop users need to consider whether they'll upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, which will receive updates for both Desktop and Server through 2017. This handy chart diagrams the situation. You can directly upgrade 10.04 (and 11.10) to 12.04, as explained here. Canonical's policy is that you get at least 18 months of updates for both Desktop and Server, and -- starting with 12.04 LTS -- 5 years of support for both desktop and server for LTS (Long Term Support) editions.

Change platforms. Whenever you can. Ever since I got into computing, I've lived according to a very simple adage: change platforms all the time. For reasons I won't go into, the importance of this adage was reaffirmed today, and I figured I'd share it with you all - and hopefully, get a few of you to follow this adage as well.

"Google's Chrome and Android operating systems will remain separate products but could have more overlap, Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said, a week after the two came under a single boss." That's that, then.

Countries are starting to get into the patent business; countries like France and South Korea are setting up patent entities to protect domestic companies. "Intellectual Discovery presents itself as a defensive alliance: if a South Korean company finds itself targeted in a lawsuit, for instance, it can access the patents being compiled by Intellectual Discovery to hit back." I support this. If, say, a small Dutch company were to come under unfair patent aggression by bullies like Apple and Microsoft (quite likely these days), I damn well expect my government to protect them from it. If you can't fix the system, work with it. As simple as that.

"With the Samsung Galaxy S4 presumably coming soon, many are excited about the possibility of running a more stock Android-based experience, like CyanogenMod, on the hardware. It looks like that's going to be a slower transition than many were hoping, as the current Samsung CM maintainers have said that they have no plans to support the device." If you like custom ROMs, don't buy Samsung. As simple as that.

Nokia has gotten an injunction against HTC in Germany over a patent on a power-saving feature in Qualcomm chips (?!). Nokia's response illustrates why the company started its recent patent offensive: "Nokia is pleased with this decision, which confirms the quality of Nokia's patent portfolio." If nobody buys your phones and your business is failing spectacularly, you have to promote something else of value to paint yourself as an interesting acquisition target. Patents it is, then. If you can't compete, litigate. Update: HTC's statement is pretty damning.

Thorsten Heins, BlackBerry's CEO: "Apple did a fantastic job in bringing touch devices to market ... They did a fantastic job with the user interface, they are a design icon. There is a reason why they were so successful, and we actually have to admit this and respect that. History repeats itself again I guess ... the rate of innovation is so high in our industry that if you don't innovate at that speed you can be replaced pretty quickly. The user interface on the iPhone, with all due respect for what this invention was all about is now five years old." Ironic, perhaps, that this comes from a BlackBerry CEO, but that doesn't make him wrong - although I'm sure the usual suspects will claim that it does.

In an unexpected turn of events, we're seeing 'FUD' being spread about Microsoft, for once. Lots of articles on the web highlighting how the support lifecycle for Window Phone 7/8 and 8 is to end in July 2014, as if WP8 devices won't be getting any updates beyond that point. This already seemed unlikely early to me, and with my magical unicorn powers of, you know, common sense I already made the assumption that this only applies to versions 7.8 and 8.0 - not 8.5 or 9.0 or whatever the next version will be. WMPowerUser shares my unicorn powers: "On the other hand the OS support date is reset with any never version of the OS, so a Windows Phone 8.5 or 9 update in November 2013 would bring along its own 18 month of security updates. Microsoft has already promised all current Windows Phone 8 handsets will receive the next major version of the operating system."

Every year on World Consumer Rights Day (March 15), government-controlled China Central Television (CCTV) broadcasts a special report (in Chinese) damning companies for abusing Chinese consumers. This year the targets included Apple. Apple was accused of giving Chinese consumers worse service than customers in other countries, specifically of giving them replacements that included cases from their old phone, while customers in the UK would get a 100% new product.

Ubuntu has come under a decent amount of flack over the past few months, particularly over their decision to use the 'Dash Search' to return results from Amazon by default in their most recent release.

Apple's Phil Shiller has been trash-talking Android in the press these past few days - just as Samsung is about to launch its Galaxy S4. "Public, preemptive slamming of a competitor is far outside Apple's PR wheelhouse; it's a dramatic shift for a company used to making news rather than reacting to it. But why is it happening?" The Verge hits the nail on the head: "Cupertino's behavior this week is yet another symptom of Samsung's stratospheric rise in the smartphone market globally, a rise that challenges Apple and has outright stifled Android competitors like HTC and Sony."

Apple has released OS X 10.8.3. The biggest improvement is Windows 8 support in Boot Camp - although Windows 7 drivers seemed to work fine as well for running Windows 8 on Macs (or so I've read). You know how to get it.