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Comment The Perfect Vehicle of Unaccountability (Score 0) 93

Wikimedia have in excess of a 100 million dollars in the bank, yet they do fundraising like the site is going offline tomorrow. They are absolutely unaccountable despite this huge war chest, because all work is done by "volunteers" and they have no editorial control. Sound familiar? There's a similar unaccountable mega corporation that did huge harm to democracies worldwide. This is a very disturbing trend as tech companies have this sense of entitlement to being above the law.

Comment Its already here: ZIPmagic DoubleSpace (Score 0) 437

Compress your disk with ZIPmagic DoubleSpace. It creates an impregnable disk image file at the root of your drive. The most malware can do after an attack is to encrypt apps and files created *after* your last compression operation. One-click System Refresh in ZIPmagic DoubleSpace will get you back to that state. A few clarifications: 1. This disk image is bootable, so after compressing your PC runs just as before - with more free room (and without deleting anything). Otherwise, ZIPmagic DoubleSpace wouldn't have been different than any other disk imaging tool. 2. I am associated with ZIPmagic DoubleSpace - but please, for goodness sake, do try the product out in at least a VM, before assuming it doesn't work (or that it is a malware of its own). Thank you!

Comment Same Problem as Developer (Score 0) 449

I've got the exact same problem as a software developer.

You'd think that when you're offering software _without_ a rent-to-use model, _without_ any online activation, and _without_ any other invasive/malware methods tied in, you might actually get somewhere. Especially if the software does something useful like transparent Windows disk compression, and does it in a single click, and does it safely, reversibly, etc.

Unfortunately, there's a vise, and its squeezing tighter and tighter at both ends as the years go on. On the one hand, you have the disrespecting giant companies, who are offering cloud services, and want to have all end-user data on their own systems. My software is guaranteed to create at least 5 GB of free space on any PC (thanks to the minimum compression savings you get on Windows system files), and that's the exact storage capacity cloud companies offer for free; so they're not happy about this development, and do their best to bury the software and cast suspicion on it.

On the other hand, you have the disrespected users, who will categorically deny to even evaluate your software (even on virtual machines!), and simply claim that what the software is alleged to do is impossible. Hey, I don't blame them - I'm sure they've been burnt, nay raped, by tons of malware previously. But what these poor users don't even realize is that this kind of attitude is exactly what plays into the hands of the companies that are disrespecting them in the first place. These poor users will sabotage all your grass roots efforts claiming you're advertising, ban and censor you everywhere they can; in a massive - shall we say cascade cleanup - of all mentions of your product, from all the few remaining places where the giant companies actually weren't able to get to you.

So this vicious cycle continues; as the years move on, software gets worse; this eventually ends up in a scenario where the market share independent software vendor has been quashed to hair's width; and everybody is wondering "what happened" to all those freedoms we used to have, how come we need to rent now!

Comment Re:WinRAR (Score 1) 129

7-Zip can be hard to use and install. ZIPmagic is 100% free for file compression, consumes the 7-Zip stack as well as supporting ZIPX for JPEG compression, and integrates with Windows Explorer for 100% transparent archive management (like ZIPfolders, but for 85+ archive types, including RAR and even the new RAR5 format). Things like drag/drop, copy/paste work seamlessly with ZIPmagic's archives-as-folders feature, transparently launching associated software and even updating the source archive when your changes are saved.

Comment Use ZIPmagic - 100% Free (As in Beer) Compression (Score 0) 129

Now is a great time to upgrade to ZIPmagic: www.zipmagic.co/features.html We give away our file compression for 100% free. Yet the product is professionally, fully supported because our core business is disk compression, which is paid. Take a look at the features list I've linked above, and let me know if, even leaving the WinRAR exploit aside, you can think of a reason to not switch? In addition to being 100% free and 100% supported, ZIPmagic completely outclasses traditional archivers such as WinZip and WinRAR. You get tools that WinZip charges $60+ for free with ZIPmagic. And the disk compression angle is one you will not find in any competing archiver at all. It just does not exist on Windows outside of ZIPmagic. Last but not least, I'd be very surprised if a vulnerability of this sort was ever uncovered in ZIPmagic. ZIPmagic's file compression is plug-in extensible and currently has two plug-ins, one based on the excellent open source 7-Zip stack, and the other based on the WinZip proprietary ZIPX format for JPEG compression which even 7-Zip cannot do. ZIPmagic also integrates with Windows Explorer, mounting all archives as regular folders like Windows's ZIPfolders, but does it for all archive types (even RAR, 7-Zip, and ZIPX) - in addition to featuring completely stand-alone archive management applications.

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