By ROBERT PEAR
COLUMBUS, Miss. — Dorothy K. Barksdale, a 70-year-old seamstress, vividly remembers the day an insurance agent visited her home and signed her up for a private Medicare health plan.
“He put his foot inside my door and kept talking,” Ms. Barksdale said. “I told him that I don’t need any kind of […]
Posted on December 17th, 2007 by admin
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By BOB TEDESCHI
KMART made a generation of bargain hunters react like starving dogs to a ringing bell. Now Internet companies want to bring the blue-light special to the cellphone — only this time, the bells are text messages telling shoppers that Valentino clutches, Christian Dior sunglasses and other luxury items are selling at more […]
Posted on December 17th, 2007 by admin
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By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM
Each day about 1,700 juniors at an East Coast college log on to Facebook.com to accumulate “friends,” compare movie preferences, share videos and exchange cybercocktails and kisses. Unwittingly, these students have become the subjects of academic research.
To study how personal tastes, habits and values affect the formation of social relationships (and how […]
Posted on December 17th, 2007 by admin
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By JOHN MARKOFF
REDMOND, Wash. — When he was chief executive of Intel in the 1990s, Andrew S. Grove would often talk about the “software spiral” — the interplay between ever-faster microprocessor chips and software that required ever more computing power.
The potential speed of chips is still climbing, but now the software they run is […]
Posted on December 17th, 2007 by admin
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By MICHAEL BARBARO
Sales of women’s clothing, a traditional pillar of the holiday shopping season, are unusually bleak so far this year, according to a major credit card company, an ominous sign for the retail industry.
From high-end dresses to bargain coats, spending on women’s apparel dropped nearly 6 percent during the first half of the […]
Posted on December 17th, 2007 by admin
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National Oilwell Varco, a maker of oil and gas drilling equipment, said Monday it will acquire Grant Prideco for about $7.4 billion in cash and stock, creating a new company with an estimated market value of $32 billion.
The deal, the second major merger to be announced Monday, may herald a long-awaited return of deal making. […]
Posted on December 17th, 2007 by admin
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