This is one upside to using trusted repositories with signed applications in the Linux Distribution model. It's not perfect but at least this kind of sadness doesn't happen. There's no good reason this couldn't be done for Windows as well; it's just that users are conditioned to download from assorted random sites to collect the apps they want.
Would be a good community project which would likely attract the kinds of people who use nmap anyway.
More to the point: if you pick the right distribution, there's at least a stated policy of not doing crap like this.
Debian has a social contract (http://www.debian.org/social_contract ), a constitution (http://www.debian.org/devel/constitution ), and a policy (http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/). Each of these serves to describe what the Debian Project does, and more importantly, doesn't do. The social contract clearly states "Our priorities are our users and free software". Software which violates this principle will, at the very least, generate rancorous debate, if not be pulled outright. Odds are very good that behavior such as that CBSi / CNET / Download.com has exhibited would NOT be tolerated.
This is among the key benefits of using Free Software (in the FSF sense). You aren't the enemy or product of your software vendor. You are the goal.
I've got very strong reasons for believing that the Microsoft Windows applications model is fundamentally and philosophically incompatible with this mode of operation.
The Mac world seems slightly better, but it's likewise got some serious conflicts of interest, though there's far less a record of useless OEM bundling (forbidden by Apple) and force / drive-by installs. Mostly due to Apple's very focused attention on the end-user experience, if not freedom.
I downloaded VLC to my netbook through apt-get and ran it from the terminal. When run from the terminal it was outputting errors like the below (not actual domains):
cannot reach 442g.com => skipping...
cannot reach muzak.com => skipping...
cannot reach 3g3.com => skipping...
cannot reach gewedw.com => skipping...
cannot reach ewfr.com => skipping...
I've always wondered why but never really looked into it.
Perhaps it is looking for details of your music/CD/DVD. There is an option for it automatically fetch such details as a list of tracks, artist, etc, to display.
Would be a good community project which would likely attract the kinds of people who use nmap anyway.