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Popular media player VLC has been pulled from Apple's App Store at the request of one of the program's original developers--in a move that's caused some hard feelings in the world of open-source software.

The situation involves a conflict between the General Public License, which governs VLC and many other open-source programs, and App Store policies.

"On January 7th, Apple removed VLC media player from its application store for iDevices," Remi Denis-Courmont, one of the developers of the desktop version of VLC, wrote in a blog post picked up by the Web site of the … Read more

Skype still operates in China, and the Chinese government has not indicated publicly that it intends to ban the service there.

Yet a week after media sources in China and in the West erroneously reported that China had begun blocking Skype, rumors continue to surface that the software, which enables users to make phone calls via the Internet, will be banned. At a time when Twitter overflows with posts about the controversy, CNET received a tip that China's government was testing ways to block Skype and that officials would announce a ban next week.

A spokesman for Skype declined … Read more

Last month marked the second anniversary since the Recording Industry Association of America, the trade group representing the four largest music labels, stopped filing copyright lawsuits against people suspected of illegal file sharing.

At the time, the RIAA said it would seek help in copyright enforcement efforts from Internet service providers, the Web's gatekeepers, which are uniquely positioned to act as copyright cops. Under a proposed RIAA plan, ISPs would first issue warning letters and gradually increase pressure on customers who illegally shared songs, and even suspend or permanently terminate service for repeat offenders. RIAA execs said then that … Read more

Net neutrality advocates in Washington have long insisted that eventual government regulations would be simple and easy to understand. Public Knowledge has called the Net neutrality concept "ridiculously simple," and Free Press said the rules would be "clear" and easy to understand.

The Federal Communications Commission finally released its long-expected regulations this afternoon, which it had previously approved on a 3-2 party line vote earlier this week, and they're not exactly "ridiculously" simple. The rules and the related explanations total a whopping 194 pages (PDF).

One new item that was not previously disclosed: … Read more

NASA and the White House are tops at using social media and the Web compared with a wide range of other public sector groups in the U.S., according to a study out today from the George Washington University School of Business and digital think tank L2.

Authored by George Washington University School of Business dean Doug Guthrie, New York University professor and L2 founder Scott Galloway, and experts from L2, the first annual Digital IQ Index for the Public Sector (PDF) measured the effectiveness of Web sites, digital marketing, social media, and mobile platform support among 100 different public … Read more

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar on Monday approved the Amargosa Farm Road Solar Project, the third major solar project to gain approval to be built on U.S. public lands.

The two 250-megawatt plants will be built by Solar Millennium, a German company that makes parabolic-shaped concentrated solar panels. Each plant will include a thermal energy storage system so that it can continue to supply electricity during cloud cover or at night for up to 4.5 hours per plant. Some of the solar-generated electricity will be explicitly directed toward powering buildings in Las Vegas, according to Solar Millennium.… Read more

It didn't take very long for 70 Holdings--and a similar site tied to a Los Angeles-based search-engine optimization company--to start spamming Google News again.

Last week, after CNET pointed out that a company called 70 Holdings Inc. was spamming Google News under the moniker of Red Label News, Google pulled that content from its site. However, over the weekend 70 Holdings popped back up using one of the 44 domains it owns to once again flood Google News with the same type of nearly empty stories tied to search-friendly keywords and advertising.

Brooke Crothers, our chip correspondent, spotted a … Read more

Hey, PBS! How do you expect to make any money if you give away your app?

I'm kidding, of course. I love free stuff, especially when it's awesome free stuff like PBS for iPad. The new app streams full-length episodes of shows like "Antiques Roadshow," "Carrier," "NOVA," and the much-ballyhooed new "Sherlock Holmes."

It also serves up "PBS NewsHour," "Austin City Limits" performances, and previews of nearly everything else in PBS' prime-time lineup. (Alas, previews are all you get of PBS Kids. If you want full-length episodes of, say, "Sesame Street" and "WordGirl," you'll have to pony up for them in the iTunes Store.) … Read more

Public-key cryptography is widely used to secure online transactions. The math behind the technology was devised by U.K. Government Communications Headquarters scientists in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The discovery was kept secret to avoid revealing how closely GCHQ was working with the U.S. National Security Agency at the time. The breakthrough by GCHQ scientists James Ellis, Clifford Cocks, and Matthew Williamson only came to light in 1997, when their work was declassified.

In public-key cryptography, data is encrypted using a widely distributed public key, and can be decrypted using a private key. Cocks, the GCHQ mathematician … Read more