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Comment Re:A Software Author's Perspective (Score 2) 397

Thanks. Unlike download.com / softonic.com, Brothersoft's copy seemed clean (once I found the download link that is! I think this site takes that trick to new heights).
BTW, I've never submitted my software to *any* of these (or any other) site - they just find it themselves. The large majority usually just linked back to my site however - or at least they did the last time a checked. That may be a practice that's changing, however...

Comment A Software Author's Perspective (Score 4, Insightful) 397

I just sent the following email to Download.com:

Please be advised that your your "CNET Download.com installer" is in violation of the terms of my software. Section 4a) permits distribution UNMODIFIED copies only. Additionally, section 4c) does not permit "bundling" with other software components.

Please remove my software from your site immediately, as the reputation of my application is now at risk.

Sincerely,

Steven Greenberg
Author, GSpot Codec Appliance

Comment Re:This is why we can't have anything nice (Score 1) 364

...they aren't bundling Android with their "monopoly" produce of search ...Google is not providing any additional incentives to handset makers who use Android ...Also, when you go to google.com, you don't have to use Andoid, and it's not pushed on you either...

If you're browser identifies your O/S as Android (e.g. "User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.0; en-us; Droid Build/ESD20) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17") they return a highly customized web page, with a strange little tab on the top and specialized little coffee cup & fork and knife icons. They don't customize the page like that for other O/S's, do they?

Comment A version that works. And a question. (Score 1) 176

As author of the popular GSpot app, I regularly deconstruct and analyze multimedia files. I've just now whipped together a small CLI app called "NIPPIN" that will recursively traverse an M4A file. It can be used for informational purposes only (and I've found that much of the "technical" info in this thread is wrong). Or you can create a "privatized" copy of your iTunes Plus file, that, unlike that "other" app, is "provably correct" (see web page).

Mine does it the right way; it doesn't "blank" any characters, it recalculates all atom lengths, and it recalculates the entire stco table as required. When the input files are the same songs downloaded from different accounts, the resulting output files all have identical MD5 hashes. Hell, even if you're not interested in privacy, it saves a minimum of 32KB per file - which adds up - that's like an extra 75 songs on a 30GB iPod.

And BTW - privacy may not concern some people, but to others it's very "real". Why else would the DMCA, of all things, protect against use of Personally Identifiable Data for copy protection mechanisms? Either the people who wrote the DMCA believe Personally Identifiable Data is a serious and "real" issue, or they put this provision in section 1201 of the DMCA to promote file sharing. Take your pick.

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