Nice story in today's Pittsburgh Tribune Review... with an interesting twist. they asked readers for their own input on advice....

I'm a little late on this, but here is a feature on the "50 Rules" from the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

Do you know Charles J. Sykes?

He's the guy who wrote in the mid-1990s a set of rules that began with "Life isn't fair, get used to it."

Then for the next several years he watched it travel the length and breadth of the Internet — with Microsoft zillionaire Bill Gates getting credit for writing it.

"It wasn't fair that Gates got the credit, but I learned to deal with that," Sykes said with a laugh. "But if he wants to send me some money, that would be fair."

A nice profile in the Washington Times:

Charles Sykes may be a smart guy who knows his way around a computer, but he's not a software mogul.

Why, then, do so many people think that Microsoft founder Bill Gates wrote a list of "Rules Kids Won't Learn In School" that Mr. Sykes first published more than a decade ago?

A successful columnist, author and Milwaukee radio talk-show host, Mr. Sykes mostly blames a number of Internet and individual e-mailers who circulated the list with the false attribution.

It was at first "flattering, but ultimately somewhat annoying," Mr. Sykes says about his list of rules being attributed to a computer genius with a fortune estimated at more than $50 billion.

Why Mr. Gates? Well, it might have been Mr. Sykes' rule No. 11 (in a list of 14) that said, "Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could."

The rules list "started popping up on thousands of Internet sites" and — despite debunking as an "urban legend" by Snopes.com and others — are still making the rounds.

He doesn't complain that this is unfair, however, perhaps because Rule No. 1 on his list is: "Life is not fair. Get used to it." ...