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So yesterday I watched the Super Bowl. Honestly I was a bit disappointed. I was expecting much more offense. I was also expecting Mick Jagger not to be a jagoff and start spitting out expletives. In fact, I was so not expecting that, that I tried making a 15:1 bet that this year’s game would not require censorship (vis a vis last year’s Nipplegate). And yes, the Steelers won, but we all know that the true winners were the people of the city of Detroit. Good luck with that auto industry though.

In technology news, there is a new security issue with Winamp’s handling of playlist (pls) files, that is being exploited by malicious websites. The bug affects Winamp 5.12 and possibly earlier versions as well. More about the Winamp 5.12 security flaw can be found on Slashdot.

What was particularly interesting to me though was my experience in trying to upgrade to Winamp 5.13. Nullsoft is owned by AOL now, and I guess AOL has in its infinite wisdom decided to bundle Winamp with a copy of eMusic. As if I want or need that. Software bundling is a bad practice over the ‘net. It’s one thing to purchase a computer and have bundled software, because of course user’s want their system to be functional out of the box. However, on the internet, users unilaterally seem to want what they want, when they want it. The exception to this are the cases where users download programs not realizing their is bundled software included. This of course has led to the prevalence of spyware, malware, and junkware. So, to avoid the malware exploitation of Winamp 5.12, I have to reinstall the program I want (Winamp) along with the other crapware? Say it ain’t so…

Fortunately, though, Nullsoft is very nice about file naming conventions on their download server. From checking out the Winamp download page, there are a few options. The lite player is classic Winamp, the full version is the full version, and the bundle version comes with a promotional MP3 (whoop-de-doo). Calling this the “bundle” version is somewhat of a misnomer, since only the lite version does not include the eMusic software bundle.

By trying to download the full version, the user is redirected to a page that links to and automatically downloads the Winamp 5.13 installer. However, when I went to download the file, I was sorely disappointed to see that I was automatically directed to the full installer, bundled with eMusic. The original URL I was directed to was:

http://download.nullsoft.com/winamp/client/winamp513_full_emusic-7plus.exe

As I mentioned though, Nullsoft is nice enough to provide an alternate version, not linked from anywhere on their homepage. Let’s delete the section of the URL that reads “_emusic-7plus”, leaving the URL:

http://download.nullsoft.com/winamp/client/winamp513_full.exe

Surely enough, the file is then downloadable, without the eMusic garbage. Install with the desired options and garnish to taste. Download Winamp 5.13 without eMusic from Nullsoft

UPDATE 07/11/2006: Nullsoft is up to version 5.32, and they’re still bundling that eMusic garbage, and I’m still publishing instructions on downloading Winamp without eMusic.They’re still publishing the “full lite” version the way they published the others, with their standard naming scheme. The file is available at:http://download.nullsoft.com/winamp/client/winamp532_full.exe

Download Winamp 5.32 without eMusic from Nullsoft