emeb2 - Slashdot User

Seinfeld's Good Samaritan Law Now Reality? 735

Posted by samzenpus on Friday January 29, 2010 @12:48AM from the not-that-there-is-anything-wrong-with-that dept.

e3m4n writes "The fictitious 'good samaritan' law from the final episode of Seinfeld (the one that landed them in jail for a year) appears to be headed toward reality for California residents after the house passed this bill. There are some differences, such as direct action is not required, but the concept of guilt by association for not doing the right thing is still on the face of the bill."

Dinosaur Feather Color Discovered 219

Posted by timothy on Wednesday January 27, 2010 @05:28PM from the horsefeathers-still-a-mystery dept.

anzha writes "Do you remember being a kid and told we'd never know what colors the dinosaurs were? For at least some, that's no longer true. Scientists working in the UK and China have closely examined the fossils of multiple theropods and actually found the colors and patterns that were present in the fossilized proto-feathers. So far, the answer is orange, black and white in banded and other patterns. The work also thoroughly thrashes the idea that fossils might not be feathers, but collagen fibers instead. If this holds up, Birds Are Dinosaurs. Period. And colorful!"

Comment Re:Why bother? (Score 2, Interesting) 479

by emeb2 on Wednesday January 21, 2009 @07:47PM (#26554063) Attached to: Most Hackable Coupon-Eligible DTV Converter?

And there's absolutely no DRM on OTA digital broadcasts. The industry tried to add some by asking the FCC to mandate a "broadcast flag", but that went nowhere. OTA signals are DRM-free - some *may* have the flag in a vain hope that the receiving hardware will respect it, but no currently-produced receiving hardware that I know of does. And I doubt any of the stations bother even inserting the flag anymore.

Is this really true? I've been reading the AVR Forums for the last few months and apparently there are a lot of situations where the Broadcast Flag is being set. You wouldn't think that this is a problem, except that a lot of the DVD recorders on the market today do honor the flag and will only record programs that have it set onto DVD-RAM media (since that's the only media which supports recordable content rights managment). This has caused a lot of DVD recorder owners heartburn when they try to use DVD+/-R/W media and the recorders refuse to write to it when they spot the broadcast flag set.

In fact one of the most annoying situations is when the main program _doesn't_ have the flag set, but one of the commercials _does_. Then the recorders will bail out partway through the session when they see the flag set on the commercial.

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