[Bell Historians] THE BELL NEWS INDEX CD

[Andrew Bull]

There's nothing to hack.

The DVD is not copy protected, and the bulk of it is made up of PDF files,
one for each page of the Bell News, that can be read by the freely
downloadable Acrobat reader. However, given the very small market for this
sort of thing, I would suggest that if we would all like to see more of the
same - like the Ringing World on DVD - we each buy our own copy instead of
distributing it cost-free. Otherwise future projects of this type will not
be seen as viable.

The compilers of the DVD have chosen to pull together all the thousands of
PDFs, and link them with an index, using software designed to run web sites.
The front end of the Bell News DVD is handled by a freeware application
called DwebPro, that is designed to allow a website to run from a
stand-alone, distributable disk. As I have already outlined in a previous
post, it is perfectly possible to copy the contents of the DVD to the hard
disk and run it from there. The program does NOT require internet access; it
merely uses a web browse to access the files.

Alan - I'm sorry to hear that you are still having problems with the DVD,
and are obviously getting very frustrated with it. But to repeat what I have
said above, and in my off-list messages to you, the DVD DOES NOT require
internet access to run. From what you told me, I can only conclude that
there are some technical issues with your PC/system software, and that
something on your machine is preventing the DVD from running properly.

A number of list members who tried my little "hack" to get the DVD content
to run straight from hard disk have had no problems. I wonder if any other
purchasers of the DVD are still having problems?

Andrew Bull

-----Original Message-----
From: bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com [mailto:bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com]
On Behalf Of Roderic Bickerton
Sent: 23 February 2008 20:19
To: bellhistorians at yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [Bell Historians] THE BELL NEWS INDEX CD

One should always respect copyright, but in a case like this, it is really
tempting fore someone, with a little bit of technical know how, to hack the
thing and put it in the public domain.