Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons is better than I expected. It's not Bonfire of the Vanities or A Man in Full, but below-average Wolfe is still better than 90% of the stuff being passed off for literature nowadays, such as the execrable The Rule of Four which would never …

Long's Drugs uses a simple letter/number code to indicate on its price tags the wholesale cost for each item on sale. The code has been cracked [via]{style="FONT-STYLE: italic"} [Boing Boing]

The substitution at Long’s is CHARLESTON (where C = 1, H = 2, etc.). Wal-mart’s code is …

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[Back in 1997, Garry Kasparov played six rounds of chess against IBM's Deep Blue computer. Kasparov is, possibly, the greatest chess player of all time. He won one round, battled to a draw in three... [via]{style="font-style:italic"} [Alice and Bill.com]]{style=""}

Apparently there’s a new …

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[The Visual Studio 2005 November CTP (Community Technology Preview) drop is now available on MSDN.  This is actually the FIRST CTP of the Visual Studio 2005 Standard Edition (which I announced at VSLive! In Orlando back in September to round out the family of VS2005 products.  This contains support …

Fuhgeddabout desktop search, Microsoft's released improved ink recognition in Office.

There are a million people out there struggling with the Sims 2, which has stupid, customer-hostile blocks and guards against all sorts of CD-R software. The symptom is that when you run the program, it tells you to “insert the correct cd rom” (despite, obviously, having the correct cd-rom / dvd …

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[I ran across this article recently and quickly realized this is probably the best article about battery technology as it pertains to mobile devices I have seen in a long time.  The article explains the different battery technologies used in devices today and has some excellent tips on how …

::: {.Section1} Ever had one of those times when you bust your ass for [days]{style="font-style:italic"} getting a Webinar ready and then, when you go to link up to the site, it turns out their network is locked down too tight and there’s nothing anyone can do, even …

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[·]{style="; font-family:Symbol"}  AP: Oracle, PeopleSoft to merge in \$10.3B deal. The agreement, announced Monday, caps a rancorous Silicon Valley feud marked by churlish exchanges between the companies' management teams and colorful courtroom battles.  [Via]{style="font-style:italic"} [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

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[What this means for the software …

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[ Did I tell you the one where the guy from Microsoft calls Bjarne up at home and tells him that if he doesn't make the language left recursive look ahead 1 they wouldn't go ahead with a c++ compiler… [via]{style="font-style:italic"} [Stan Lippman's BLog]]{style=""}

[Uh… No …