Those of us who are a little less biased, and have a chunk of common-sense, realise it simply isn't user-friendly enough to provoke a mass move from the much friendlier Microsoft Windows.

Like it or not, eye candy, special effects, translucent windows, etc, are inevitably going to attract 'normal' PC users.

Seriously, installing applications on Linux is awful. Don't flame me or berate me with examples of how easy it is - it's not.

Half the time it's full of trials, tribulations, problems, and manual hacks - this is simply not good enough for a simple non-technical user.

The Linux distributors could at least focus on supporting the major OEM product lines with installs that work correctly out of the box.

Torrent-tracking site TorrentFreak estimates more than a million users have downloaded the high-definition release of the Olympics opening ceremonies -- perhaps hoping to catch a glimpse of the fake fireworks, the lip-synching girl singer or the dreaded Blue Screen of Death.

Over the weekend, NBC aired its video on a 12-hour delay and tried futilely to scrub unauthorized clips from the internet.

In a statement, NBC said: "We're working with the International Olympic Committee and other companies to ensure the take-down of unauthorized content."

In a rare gesture of openness, Apple has revealed data about iPhone application sales and confirmed the existence of a "kill switch" to disable malicious applications.

Even more interesting, though, is the strangely open and forthcoming answer Jobs gave when asked about the remote kill switch for iPhone applications. He confirmed that it is indeed possible for Apple to reach into your phone from afar and disable malicious applications.

"Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull," he told the WSJ.

An insider working at an Internet provider in Italy told TorrentFreak that all the relevant large access ISPs in Italy have complied with the request to block the popular BitTorrent tracker, which was sent out yesterday.

In a response to the news, Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunder told TorrentFreak that they have already implemented countermeasures to make sure all Italians will be able to access their site.

"We're quite used to fascist countries not allowing freedom of speech. A lot of smaller nations that have dictators decide to block our site since we can help spread information that could be harmful to the dictators," Sunde wrote in a blog entry.

Sunde has his suspicions about the reason for the block, he told us: "It's quite funny that the country Italy is run by the biggest media mogul of them all. we're his competitors."

Two days ago we wrote about the "I Am Rich" iPhone application, which, for the staggering sum of $1,000, provided you with - get ready for it - a glowing red screen.

However, a vocal number of observers were shocked by what they saw as a dereliction of gatekeeper "duty" by Apple. Now, in response to the protests, Apple has removed the application without notifying or explaining to the developer why.

The company, which also develops the popular BitTorrent client uTorrent, had been struggling to make money from their download store, which is one of the causes of the layoffs.

There never was any real competition however, mainly because the movies are infected with Windows DRM.

BitTorrent's Ashwin Navin was a bit more outspoken about it. He said that DRM is "a time bomb waiting to happen," and that it will inspire people to pirate content. One thing we can be sure of, it didn't help to convert illegal downloaders to go legal.

German hackers have constructed a route around the great firewall of China. The Chaos Computer Club said its technology will help athletes and journalists travelling to Beijing for the Olympic Games to circumvent censorship.

Visitors to China are being offered USB sticks containing a browser that connects via the TOR proxy network.

Chaos Computer Club is offering the technology partly to offer an easy way around Chinese censorship restriction but also to make a political point much closer to home.

Microchipped passports designed to have watertight security can actually be cloned in a matter of minutes.

A computer researcher was able to clone the chips on two British passports. They then implanted digital images of Osama bin Laden and a suicide bomber. The tampered chips were then passed as real by passport reader software used by the United Nations agency that sets standards for the e-passports.

These tests flag up several interesting and somewhat alarming points: They undermine claims that 3,000 blank passports stolen last week are useless as they can't be cloned, they also raise questions on the £4 billion spent by the government on ID cards which use the same technology.

In one of the more colossal security blunders in a long time, an unencrypted laptop containing sensitive information for 33,000 travelers has been reported stolen from San Francisco International Airport.

Officials with Transportation Security Administration say the laptop was discovered missing from a locked room more than a week ago, but unbelievably, they weren't warned until Sunday.

As if the lack of encryption and a tardy warning weren't enough, the company's CEO, Steven Brill, dismissed the incident as a simple burglary of a laptop. "For it to be more than that, the thief would have to hack into two different passwords - and even then would not get what identity thieves want most - a Social Security number and/or credit card information."

The federal judge who presided over the nation's only peer-to-peer copyright-infringement trial announced from the bench here Monday that he is likely to declare a mistrial.

At issue is whether the RIAA needs to prove that copyrighted music offered by a defendant on a peer-to-peer network was actually downloaded by anyone.

The judge's decision, which he said would be issued "hopefully before the end of September," is likely to have wide-ranging implications in the RIAA's file-sharing litigation campaign -- 20,000 lawsuits and counting.