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Re: [Phys-l] Video Encyclopedia of Physics Demos (ownership)



Hi all-
Sorry, Hugh, but when you buy a licensed product, such as software, and agree to the license terms (which, in many cases, you must do to open the software) you are bound by the license terms. Copyright ownership is protected by federal criminal statutes, as well as by the possibility of suit by the copyright owner.
I have been in a law firm that contacted the fbi to bring criminal proceedings against a company that violated the copyright of one of our clients.
regards,
Jack



On Wed, 18 Oct 2006, Hugh Haskell wrote:

At 10:06 -0400 10/18/06, Bob LaMontagne wrote:

The DVD is very klutzy. It requires sitting through a lengthy introduction
about the Video Encyclopedia itself before running a demo. There is no way
around this. Trying to get to the next demo that you want to use is very
convoluted and doesn't always work so you have to start over and replay the
introduction. I have found a way to "hack" the video and embed the
individual demos into my Power Point. I know it's not legal and the company
that bought the rights to sell the DVD version was not pleased when I told
them how I did it, but I feel that once I bought the product I own it and
can use it in a manner most convenient for me. I would certainly not
encourage others to do the same. I really think the people who produce the
DVD should make it more user friendly - the unwieldy interface has to be
hurting sales.

I agree that laser disks had lots of cool navigational features, but
DVDs are not devoid of that capability, at least when used with a
computer rather than a basic vanilla DVD player. I use DVDs for this
purpose a lot, and all I need to do is run the DVD before I want to
use it and bookmark any part I want to show. The bookmarks are stored
in the computer and when I play the DVD, I can select any bookmark at
any time and the player jumps to the point I have marked. I give them
names that are descriptive of what is on the clip I want and it is
easy to find them almost instantly. I haven't used the Encyclopedia
of Demos DVDs but I would imagine that one could go through any given
DVD in advance and bookmark the beginning of each demo, giving it a
suitable name, and then whenever you play it back on the same
computer, you can go directly to the place you desire without having
to go through any unnecessary preliminaries.

Unfortunately, laser disks seem to be going the way of the dinosaurs,
so getting conversant with the way one can do that on DVDs seems to
be worth the effort.

I also assume that, if one knows where the bookmarks are stored in
the computer, you can transfer them to any other computer so you
don't have to recreate them for every computer they will be used on.
I don't know where they are stored on my computer, so I haven't tried
that.

Hugh


--
"Trust me. I have a lot of experience at this."
General Custer's unremembered message to his men,
just before leading them into the Little Big Horn Valley