New Club DVD!

[1 Bravo 6]

O.K. so some of us sent Will contributions to his project. It MUST be obvious to everyone that Will has taken on a considerable amount of work just to get everything colated and categorized but I can't help wondering how much MONEY it's costing him in postage to return the items to their owners. Surely he's not expected to fork out his money as well as his time.

Perhaps we should consider making a donation to the Will's Postage Costs Charity Fund.

Rick.

:devious::devious:

[hls30.com]

Rick,

While I appreciate that thought, as you know-because you did it-

A few people-including Tomohawk-did just that!

I really did expect to cover return shipping because of the nature of the literature involved.

In the scheme of things, return shipping costs are not an issue.

There is still a bunch of work left-the menu infrastructure is where I am currently falling all over myself.

My plan is to have several collections of materials available-I expect there will be a few that want it all-like me-a few that want specific models(the manuals that came with the model car and the FSMs for that model-IE: 240Z), and a few that want only the technical updates(to support the manuals they already have) for their model, a few that want the supporting documents(Introducing the 240Z) for their model and one that isn't really interested in any of it, but wants it all anyway.

My goal is one menu for all(with the unavailable grayed out)versions so the every time the dvd is opened, every one knows what is available and from where. I also want everything indexed and completely searchable-and to compile the project into one large file to make it too much work for the unscrupulous to divide out the files and sell them on ebay-at the expense of supporting our club.

I want to be able to type air conditioning and get a list of the dated entries from the FSM, technical bulletins, supplemental manuals, owners manuals, factory literature, and select copywrite-exempted third party literature-in that order.

As a reminder, This club is the the only entity with a valid copywrite exclusion from Nissan and a few other companies for these printed materials.

Will

[Mr Camouflage]

I've been trying to figure out if 'Full House' is a bot.......no, really. His posts seldom make sense, and check out the sig.

No, I believe he's a web guy that does Search Engine Optimization (they are the snake oil salesmen of the internet), He makes random posts on popular websites with links in his signature to try to improve the page rankings of the sites he's promoting.

Will. What software are you using to create the DVD?

[ChrisA]

Those who donated get one free as promised-they are the ones who will pay the least(at least in terms of moolah!)

Will

I don't want special treatment. I'll gladly pay for the two copies I'd like to have.

As far as returning my materials Will, I believe I gave you instructions to use my United Parcel Service account number so it wouldn't cost you anything except getting it to the UPS pickup location.

But, I'd gladly send you some funds if needed to return my materials.

Bottom line, I'll wait as long as it takes for the DVD's.

Chris

[hls30.com]

I don't want special treatment. I'll gladly pay for the two copies I'd like to have.

As far as returning my materials Will, I believe I gave you instructions to use my United Parcel Service account number so it wouldn't cost you anything except getting it to the UPS pickup location.

But, I'd gladly send you some funds if needed to return my materials.

Bottom line, I'll wait as long as it takes for the DVD's.

Chris

Chris,

Yes you did, Thank You, and I will honor your wishes shortly. Special treatment would be your not accepting a copy for for your participation!-please accept my wishes on that one-you actively participated in the project, planned and arranged ahead for the return of your materials and have patiently been waiting...

Mr. Camouflage,

I have experimented with many, and expect to use several in conjunction currently I am working with AskSam (I worked with it on a project for the Ga. DNR years ago, and remembered even then it had some abilities I need in this one.)pdf995, and assorted compilers. I am open to suggestions!

Will

[ChrisA]

Chris,

Special treatment would be your not accepting a copy for for your participation!-please accept my wishes on that one-you actively participated in the project, planned and arranged ahead for the return of your materials and have patiently been waiting...

Will

Well....okay, twist my arm! But I would still pay for a second copy for my archives.

And again, I ain't in no hurry at all to get my stuff back. When it's done, it's done.

Thanks,

Chris

[Zak's Z]

I pulled my own manual apart, scanned it and mailed Will the cd. I would gladly kick in for sending materials back to others, Will shouldnt have to shoulder that responsibility as well as put the cd together. Regardless of how huw humble he's being about the whole thing, its ALOT of work.

[TomoHawk]

That last post was six months ago.... How goes it Will?

Will it all fit on ONE DVD? just wondering...

I'd probably put in my order now if it helps, or would you prefer a six-pack?

thxZ

[hls30.com]

It goes SLOW!

The scanning is done, but the indexing and menues are monsterous. I want to make the searches as thorough as possible across all of the documents, and that is proving a serious task for any software I have tried.

The most serious issue is to protect the data so that it remains exclusive to this club. The last thing I want is to have spent this much time and effort(by me and others) doing something to help the club and have it or parts of it end up on ebay lining the pockets of a lazy bastard, or posted on another website. This iteration of this content is for this club and the exclusive personal use of its members.

I am completely open to suggestions for menues and further copy protection.

As to the size. A healthy number of the scans were done in high resolution that really does not help viewing the documents, if I lower the resolution, they can all fit on a DVD, and be useable-even if printed.

Will

[Zak's Z]

There are a few ways you can copy protect stuff, but I would say keep it simple. Different file-types have different schemes built in such as Acrobat, Word, etc. You can also copy protect the entire DVD with one of several programs that sort of enclose everything into a container and its password protected / encrypted and access is for one session only. I've used that before and it tends to work but its kind of cumbersome and you have to either index everything like make a web or flash based interface if you have alot of documents, or just have a folder with everything in it.

If you are copy protecting documents to keep people from reselling them, does this site own the rights to them? If so could you watermark or copyright notice all documents?

I would assume users want access to their documents, printing, keeping a copy in the garage, etc. If you try to restrict access to documents they really would have to be embedded in another program.

What types of files are you talking about exactly, and maybe we can narrow it down?

[hls30.com]

Zak,

Right now everything in in acrobat, I am experimenting with indexing the files and compiling the files and the index into a companded executable that has to be keyed with a second bootable program that temporarily disables the screen capture/file manipulation abilities of Dos/windows, and forces clock speed down. It is not stable on overclocked machines, is horribly cumbersome, allows no printing, and would force Carl Beck to have A PC-the Mac/PC emulators don't stand a chance of running it...

This is not what I want for the project.

I have considered watermarking the pages-and will definitely-but...

Mike has a copywrite exemption for all printed documents involving the S30 series-so Nissan owns the rights, but we have license to use them.

I have also considered serializing the copies (both on the media and in the software), and forcing online registration/authentication each time the software is accessed-again, not what I want for the project-but it seems the best option at the moment as the process could be set up on the club server(s) and possibly be integrated into Vbulletin.

Will

[Zak's Z]

Hmm. Your first option does sound too cumbersome. Watermark or copyright pages sounds pretty good.

Your second option may be a problem where members need to access materials offline, like from a pda or computer in the garage or on the road somewhere. Printing would also be a necessity I think. If you require online authentication, why not just host it in a protected area online?? You could use .htaccess on the server with vbulletin and give users a unique user/password that can be logged.

Is it possible to just offer the pdf's with copyright protection? You can add a watermark, use security permissions, encrypt the documents and even use a public key right on the users machine. That way you can still have access to the document, but make it unattractive to be distributed due to having to also share a public key, passwords, etc. The document will scream classiczcars and be tied to a persons name.

Just offering up ideas here...