Back in 00, Grab.com ran a <a
href="http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,39319,00.html">$1 billion
contest</a>. Basically, the odds of winning were one in (77 choose 7), and out
of the several million entrants, surprisingly, no one won ;). Given that
randomness is hard to generate, I wonder what the distribution and density of
guesses were like. For example, Perl's PRNG is biased to the low side (you'll
get more occurrences of lower half numbers than upper half numbers). My
conjecture is that humans will likewise generate more numbers in the lower half
of 1 .. 77, as there are more numerologically significant numbers in the lower
half than in the upper half. So I wrote grab.com, and hopefully, they'll write
me back.

<p>
Less hopefully, SARS has edged up to a 5% mortality rate, but happily the
infection continues to grow only at a linear rate.
<center><img src=../pics/sars-20030419.png></center>

<p>
You are the assassin of your own success.

<p>