Techmeme: If VLC can ship a free DVD player, why can't Microsoft? (Ed Bott/ZDNet)

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May 6, 2012, 8:35 PM

Top News

Paul Tassi / Forbes:

Draw Something Loses 5M Users a Month After Zynga Purchase — We may be seeing the beginnings of a lesson as to why it's not always the best idea to buy your competition outright. Mobile giant Zynga's game development philosophy has always been, “If you can' beat 'em, buy 'em,” …

More: Don't Mind Me, Techi.com, GigaOM, Jailbreak | iOS, The Huffington Post, Geekosystem, PC Magazine, Pulse2 Technology …, The Atlantic Wire and CNET. Tweets: @yongfook

Emil Protalinski / ZDNet:

Apple security blunder exposes Lion login passwords in clear text — Summary: With the latest Lion security update, Mac OS X 10.7.3, Apple has accidentally turned on a debug log file outside of the encrypted area that stores the user's password in clear text.

More: The Register, Apple Support Communities, Naked Security, Cryptome, CNET, Neowin, News on ZDNet Australia, Spyware Sucks, Slashdot, CNET and Engadget

Ed Bott / ZDNet:

If VLC can ship a free DVD player, why can't Microsoft? — Summary: Microsoft's decision to remove support for playing DVD movies in Windows 8 has caused some confusion. If the VLC media player can provide DVD support for free, why can't Microsoft? For starters, Microsoft isn't French.

More: MSDN Blogs, International Business Times, Engadget, PC Magazine, Softpedia News and Neowin. Tweets: @qthrul

Casey Johnston / Ars Technica:

Leave only footprints: how Google's ethical ignorance gets it in trouble — “According to a well written and thorough article in the Virginia Journal of Law & Technology, what we've been saying for over three years has been determined to be true: WarDriving is not a crime.”

Tweets: @csoghoian

Eric Slivka / MacRumors:

Apple Seeks to Gain Control of iPhone5.com Domain — While there has been much debate about whether Apple will refer to the next-generation iPhone as “iPhone 5”, “iPhone 6”, simply “iPhone”, or something else entirely, Fusible notes that Apple has filed a claim with the World Intellectual …

More: AppleInsider, VentureBeat, Examiner, Business Insider, App Advice, Apple Bitch, iClarified, iDownloadBlog.com and Fusible.com

Sam Byford / The Verge:

Real-time Facebook ‘likes’ displayed on Brazilian fashion retailer's clothes racks — Fashion retailer C&A may be a fading brand in much of Europe, but its Brazilian arm is doing what it can to stay on the pulse of social media. A new initiative called Fashion Like allows people …

More: VentureBeat and Springwise

Ernesto / TorrentFreak:

BitTorrent Set To Rebrand Itself As Gyre? — A few days ago the latest uTorrent alpha release saw the light. — Among other things, the new version aims to make downloads even faster for users with high bandwidth connections. — But there was something else quite unique about the release.

More: PC Magazine

Kim Zetter / Wired:

Everyone Has Been Hacked. Now What? — The attackers chose their moment well. — On Apr. 7, 2011, five days before Microsoft patched a critical zero-day vulnerability in Internet Explorer that had been publicly disclosed three months earlier on a security mailing list …

Tweets: @e_kaspersky

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Pair vs. Pair: Pair The App Is Getting Sued By Pair Networks, The Hosting Company — It was less than a week ago that Tenthbit, the developers of the buzzy, new social-networking-app-for-couples (or other partners) Pair, picked up a $4.2 million seed round, money the founders said would be used …

Tweets: @joshconstine and @ingridlunden

Kim-Mai Cutler / TechCrunch:

Under New JOBS Act, More IPO Prospects Consider Filing Confidentially — SolarCity, the cleantech company backed by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, filed for an IPO this past week. But there's hardly been a peep about it compared to most offerings. — That's because under …

More: VatorNews

Joel Rosenblatt / Bloomberg:

Apple Must Face Lawsuit Over IPhone Data Collection Claims — Apple Inc. must face a lawsuit over claims it collected data from customers' iPhones while they used applications approved by the company, a judge ruled. — U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California …

More: AllThingsD, The Verge and MacNN

Kara Swisher / AllThingsD:

They Shoot Yahoo CEOs, Don't They? But Not Without a Really Smoking Gun and a Much Stronger Board. — Earlier today, Yahoo's persistent thorn, activist shareholder Dan Loeb of Third Point poison-penned another letter to the board of the Silicon Valley Internet company …

More: Forbes, AllThingsD, paidContent, Tech and China, TNL.net, Techi.com, Globe and Mail, Mashable!, AllThingsD, Business Insider, Neowin and PC Magazine

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