Once he got to the showroom, he says it took just half an hour, "with small talk, " to close the deal.

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The summit also produced several other pledges, such as one to allow the cross-listing of small firms' shares, that will remain just talk for now.

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Each node contained a small processor, a sensor and a low-powered radio with just enough power to talk to adjacent nodes and the network was just smart enough to reconfigure itself to reroute data whenever one node got damaged.

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A. student at Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business, says she would have liked more than just a few days to adjust, as she struggled to join in classroom exchanges and conduct small talk with recruiters.

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There are, I promise you, at least as many small businesses out there, if you talk to them, who will say, I just got my bill from my health insurance and it went up 40 percent.

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