links for 2008-02-19

Upside down tabs? But why? The tab is associated with the page URL rather than the content of the page - odd, odd, odd.

"Back in the 20s the American company Westinghouse tried to create early robots. They showed at the 1939 World’s Fair a prototype of two curious characters: a tall humanoid robot called Elektro and - above all - a robotic dog named Sparko".

"Imagine exploring millions and millions of news pages and other documents to find information about events that are scheduled to happen in the future, to help predict the future". Interesting data-mining patent from Yahoo!

...or maybe not. Some people suggest the results Colin saw are more to do with the way *he* was spoofing *his* user agent when browsing than any attempt to make del.icio.us bookmarks a search free zone.

"The question came up about how many bits there are in a byte, and how many bytes make a word. Now, you might look at that and think '...thats easy, everyone knows how many...' but do they?"

"An explosion destroyed completely the police chief's car, as well as a nearby motor-bike, parked outside his house, at Nea Chora (Chania, Crete). According to the police, the explosion took part around 1.35 in the night". I probably heard that.