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Jane Hamsher (among others, like Atrios) decided today to stop directly linking to any Associated Press content, citing their increasingly narrow interpretation of Fair Use¹:

This is but one of the many conflicts that is going to arise between old a new media, whose rules and customs are dictated by differing economic and technological factors.

The AP will probably be slow to learn the lesson, because it will see no immediate impact if people like me won’t link to them any more because we don’t want to be sued. I mean in our world, how crazy is that? Like I’m going to sue Atrios for linking to me? That’s just insane.

[snip]

If I were running a major metropolitan daily, and I saw my advertising revenues shrinking and my newsroom personnel diminishing as the dead tree business died, and I knew how important it was to generate online traffic to keep the doors open, I’d be thinking … Reuters. McClatchy. Bloomberg. Anything but AP.

What goes largely unspoken is that for the major media, as a principle, Fair Use has been dead since roughly the time the DMCA was passed.

Like Jones, Rahn was an archaeologist, like him he fell foul of the Nazis and like him he was obsessed with finding the Holy Grail - the cup reputedly used to catch Christ’s blood when he was crucified. But whereas Jones rode the Grail-train to box-office glory, Rahn’s obsession ended up costing him his life.

Fascinating story in the Telegraph.  This is just sample of so many bizarre stories that could be told about Himmler and his minions.  It’s a rich vein of content, and I’m surprised more people haven’t tapped into it for fictional purposes.  Maybe because so much of it would seem over-the-top even when presented as factual historical narrative.

During a storm in the North Pacific in 1992, twelve 40-foot containers were washed off of a Chinese cargo ship.  One of them was filled with 29,000 plastic bath toys, or “Friendly Floatees”, which were released into the Pacific Ocean.  Two oceanographers tracked the toys and accurately predicted where and when they would begin washing ashore.

(via Strange Maps)

I, for one, welcome our new follicle-sucking surgical robot overlords:

A robot that can pluck and move individual hair follicles on a person’s head makes hair transplants look more natural than those performed by humans, a US company claims.

Oh, the wonders of modern medical science.  Don’t you just get a happy little tingle every time you see the words “robot” and “pluck” together in a sentence?  Neither do I.

Once the “harvest” is over, the patient sits up to let the robot implant the follicles into the top of their head.

Again, another word that is just sinister when paired with robot: “harvest”.  Shudder.

Japanese gravestone manufacturer Ishinokoe is partnering with an IT firm to add scannable barcodes to tombstones:

Behind doors on the tombstone that can be locked is a QR code — a square code read by mobile phones that can link to Web addresses. Grave visitors can use the code to access images and photographs of the person while they were alive.

I, for one, eagerly await the release of the “.dead” top-level domain.

(via BoingBoing)