134.4 kb
 

When trying to find downloads on Limewire Pro (who apparently never answer their online support line) I almost always get a response to the search words with a file that contains 134.4 kb. This is always some puerile ad for freemp3.com. Is this a legitimate use of the Limewire format? If not, why doesn't Limewire do something about it? At the very least it is a commercially sponsored mislabeling. Anyone else out there as annoyed at this as I am? (Or at the fact that Limewire online support appears to be a fiction. Has anyone actually been helped by them?)

The Bearshare forums are not the Limewire forums...

Anyway, if you look around the forums, you'll quickly notice that files of that size are to be avoided. If you've downloaded such files then it would be a good idea to scan your computer for malware.
You can also add into your list of things to beware the T3 or higher sources: these are the ones that most often host these kind of files (or worse) so it's better to think twice before dlding from a T3 source.

As a side note, an acceptable quality video file of a full movie has an average file size of 700MBs, a 3 min .mp3 would be around 3-4MB and, while programs vary in size, they should be larger than a few MBs.
Taking this into account, there is no way that you could find a video/audio file that would be less than 500KB (unless of course it's the in the crappiest quality possible and it's like a video-audio of a couple of secs.).

For almost any downld (except documents or images), I'd recommend ignoring all files less than 1 MB or 1,000 KB as there's viruses known to be around the 700-800 KB size. So don't get confused with file sizes. When you do a search using LW, double-click the size column of the results window & this will arrange files with largest at the top. See these links to get an idea: 1. autogenerated mp3 spam results, & also
2. WARNING: Viruses on network you should be aware of!

Thanks to LotR and merci to Murakame for your answers. I don't have any trouble identifying the files I described. Mainly, I was wondering why Limewire tolerates them. I appreciate the other tips, though, and will watch for them.

Are there any other Limewire Pro users out there who have tried to contact the so-called "online help" that they advertise to persuade the small subscription (donatioin, really) price? I have now tried five messages and the only answers I have received are five 'bots' containing my message and the statement that it has been sent to the "online assistance team' and I should expect a reply shortly. As far as I can tell, the "team" must reside in a black hole because no communication from them ever appears to emerge.

In all, it's a pretty good service and I didn't expect much more for my $18.88 than I got for nothing. I sent it primarily as a donation, but I do rather resent completely false advertising if, indeed, it is such. Anyone else out there with experience with them?

D: hehehe I am aware that they have their hands full at present. Whilst sometimes they can be slow to respond, they're not always like that. At present they are much slower than normal.

BTW apparently LW is working on a spam filter so with any luck we'll see it before too long. Exactly when they'll complete it though is anybody's guess.

Thanks, LotR. Glad to hear that they are apparently real. I solved the main problem, anyway and the other questions were minor. Incidentally, I just re-upped BearShare. I haven't used them in years. What donation do they ask to stop the spyware? (Which, of course, isn't all that hard to deal with, anyway.) And are there any other advantages to subscribing aside from being a nice guy and helping supprt them?

AFAIK there's 3 BS versions. I can't remember whether it's one or 2 of them doesn't have the ad stuff. Definitely BS Lite doesn't: http://www.filehippo.com/download_bearshare_lite/ Otherwise ask Zinny on the BS forum how to stop it.

134.4 file sizes coming up.
 

Almost all the time, when surching, a song title will come up with a file size of 134.4. This size file keeps popping up for all sorts of song results. Can I stop this from happeing?

It's not so much about "tolerating" as it is about "being able to do something about it". I think that if it was easy for them to filter these out some way or other, then they would already have (this problem is not new).
As it is, they seem to be cooking something to counter this as LOTR says so let's wait and see.

rodneyfox, read the rest of the thread. The answer to your question is there.