I remeber reading an article once where someone wanted to visit a city where there was a 100% probability of having a white Christmas. If memory serves me right, Vancouver was less than 25%, Toronto was only 50%, and Ottawa/Montreal were around 65%. But every one of the cities in western Canada (east of the Rockies -- Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton, etc.) had a 100% probability of a white Christmas. Western Canada... the land of the block heaters.LOL Joh

Dave-- This is a great question. By the way... total web advertising dollars spent is going to exceed $5B this year, which is more than both TV and Radio saw in its first 5 years. And it is also still growing at a nice clip. But TV and radio are passive mediums which can mix passive advertising content with passive "entertainment." That model doesn't work on the web because the bandwidth and technology constraints don't allows totally "passive viewing" like you get on radio and TV. In the golden years of TV, you had a new medium, and 90 million attentive viewers tuning into 3 networks. Those are ideal conditions for growing a new "brand." But people who think they can grow a "brand" on a million channel, low bandwidth interactive medium like the Web are dreaming. Besides Yahoo (still a question mark), Amazon (fading fast), and eBay (never going to make big dollars)... no one has come close to building a big brand on the web through web advertising. We don't live in the age of the "Brand" anymore. That's yesterday's news. Today we live in the age of "Personality." It's the personality that is key today. Personality and positioning are the motherlode. So I think web dollars spent to make a personality, rather than build a brand, are dollars well spent. Oprah has a perfect 11-0 record on the last 11 books she has recommended in terms of making the NYT bestseller list. When information overload overwhelms us we look for a personality we can trust to help us make "decisions"... commercial and otherwise. A really interesting question would be has anyone spent web advertising dollars intelligently enough to build a commercially valuable "personality" on the web? I can't say that anyone comes to mind. Certaintly "personality" isn't the whole story in terms of commercially successful products in the IT world, but I think it is going to become more and more important in the years to come. The other thing that is holding back web advertising is that it doesn't have any home runs yet in terms of "making" an important commercial product. My point is that the home run will probably come through "personality" building and not "brand" building. Personality dovetails nicely with the "interactive" nature of the web. Time will tell... John

I agree that Kelly made a mistake changing her vote, and kicking off Sue. She should have been gunning for Richard, and making sure he was history. Kicking off Sue didn't help her, since she could probably have beaten Sue in the final vote. Kelly's mistake is that she took her eye of the ball, and went for revenge against Sue, instead of plotting to win. Once Rich was gone, Rudy was next, as long as he didn't win the final immunity challenge which was unlikely. With Sue and Kelly in the final, I liked Kelly's chances. But I still think it would have been interesting if Kelly quit the last immunity challenge immediately, and let Rich and Rudy battle it out. I think Rudy would have quit soon after, thinking that for sure Rich would boot Kelly, but we all know Rich wouldn't have, because he would have known he couldn't beat Rudy. So Rich would have booted Rudy, looked like a rat, and lost the final vote. So the bottom line is that Kelly's biggest mistake was winnning the last immunity challenge. She should have "stumbled" 5 minutes into it, before Rich figured out that if he won the immunity challenge it would cost him the game, whereby he immediately dropped out. When Kelly won the last immunity challenge she won the battle but lost the war. Lori

F Braem I heard the Mole was coming to North America. Big Brother is on here, but isn't that successful. Survivor was actually a very well thought out game that was quite addictive to watch in this round. If you like strategy and Game Theory it is fascinating. As more people figure out how to play the game it will be interesting to see how it develops. It turns that Kelly made a big mistake winning the last immunity challenge. She should have let go, and forced Rich to beat Rudy. Rich would have tossed Rudy, cheesed him off, and lost the final vote. The only other half decent player in the game was Sue, but she threatened Kelly, and it blew up in her face. Now I'm in Survivor withdrawal. LOL Lori

Chris Unbelievable... Rich won. Kelly wins the next immunity challenge--a quiz about the personal characteristics of the tribe members. As soon as Kelly wins, good bye Sue. Then its down to Rudy, Kelly, and Rich. The immunity challenge is to stand on a stop and keep touching a poll. Its fascinating because Richard is smart enough to know that he absolutely better not win the immunity challenge, because if he does he'll have to kick Kelly off and then lose to Rudy in the final vote. If he wins the challenge, and kicks Rudy off, betraying the alliance, he loses Rudy's vote in the final. He needs to have Kelly win the immunity challenge, because she will boot Rudy, figuring there is no way she can beat him in the final. So Richard quits the immunity challenge... Rudy quits after 4 hours... and Kelly wins her 5th straight immunity challenge. She boots Rudy and now it is down to the final two. But Kelly is not too smart, because she doesn't size up the jury very well. Kelly should have know that Rudy and Sue were going to Rich; she also should have known that she had Jenna, Colleen, and Gervase's vote. So she only needed Greg or Sean's vote... she should have been pandering to them during the final session. She didn't, and lost their vote, and came in second. Wow! Kelly did not have a singe vote against her in a single tribal council... plus... she won 5 straight immunity challenges... but still lost to Rich. Anyway... Rich certainly understood Game Theory a lot better than Kelly, which is why he won. Lori

That really depends on what kind of work you are doing, and how much legacy code you have. If you need maximum flexibility C++/MFC is still the way to go, but I don't know how much fresh Internet stuff is being started in pure VC++. MFC is is dying, but it should take a good 5 years to finish it off. Lor

I can't say that I've watched Big Brother, so I can't comment on that. But Survivor is actually a pretty interesting game. Like success in the office, you need both good strategy and good luck to win. Of course Game Theory discounts luck... I was kind of wondering if they filmed multiple endings, in case the winner's name had somehow been leaked out. The objective isn't just making the final two... that's a dead end strategy if you're there with someone who is better liked than you are. That's why Colleen had to go; no one would want to have to go against her in a 2 person vote. The ideal would be to be pitted against Richard, who is never going to win that final vote. So if it were me, Richard would be my best friend, and the guy I would team up with in the next couple of rounds. Anyway, don't get me going... still an interesting game Theory problem if you ask me. Lori

I can't believe that after ignoring this show for the first ten weeks, that I finally got sucked into it at the end. Anyone else willing to admit to watching? I studied at little bit of Game Theory at University, and I was fascinated by the application of Game Theory to this kind of environment, but then I just fell for the machavellian politics like everyone else. So who is going to win? My prediction, not that anyone cares... 1. If Kelly wins the Immunity Challenge... Sue beats Richard in the final vote, aftering tossing Rudy in the next to last Council. 2. If Kelly doesn't win the Immunity Challenge... then Rudy beats Richard after in the final vote, after they toss Sue in run up. I know... I've got too much free time on my hands. Lor