Four Seasons Hotel Inc. is going private after a huge deal with Bill Gates and Saudi Prince al-Waleed bin Talal becoming the major shareholders. The Toronto based hotel was created in the red light district of Toronto in 1961 by Isadore Sharp. Over its 45 year history the company has evolved and grown to now include over 70 properties in 31 countries around the world. The deal by the pair to purchase the shares is worth $3.7-billion USD. Isadore Sharp will remain as CEO and hold on to 10% of the companies shares while Gates and the Prince will each split the remaining 90% in half. Mr. Sharp reiterated that the purchase will not affect the direction or vision of the hotel and business should proceed as usual.
University meeting dissolves into drunken chaos at Lake Louise
Drunken and drug-fueled debauchery at the Chateau Lake Louise this past weekend forced RCMP and government inspectors to crash a party involving students from six universities across Western Canada.
I would really like to hear some of the students side of things. This sounds like a very strange situation that kind of got out of control. It’s good to see that Regina is represented but hopefully we weren’t the ones instigating everything. The Western Business Games sure sounds like an event with some good history now. I wonder if for next year there will be an increased demand in Admin students to attend?
To summarize the events, it sounds like a lot of the events for the Games involved drinking. When you have that many people and a lot of drinking bad stuff is bound to happen. The only reported injury was a 32 year old apparently jumping two floors off a railing. His condition is currently unknown. The police also found drugs in 4 of the guests rooms and brought out police dogs to sniff around the hotel. Reports also indicate that students were walking in bathing suits and g-strings around the hotel with open alcohol.
Overall, I’d say its a rather normal weekend for most of these people. Its university and these kids just want to have a good time.
**Update 4:20pm** The Calgary Herald has revised their article to state that the University of Regina was not involved despite a group of students claiming to be from the Univeristy of Regina. Funny, why would students claim to be from a univeristy and not actually go there. I believe the University of Regina is just trying to make sure their name is not tarnished by the actions of a group of students.
Kinross Down – Bema Up after Acquisition News
Kinross Gold Corporation (KGC, K.TO) announced Monday that they will aquire Bema Gold Corportation (BGO) for an all-stock $3.1 billion deal. Following this announcement Kinross stock was seen trading down 8.07% to 13.78 while Bema stock was up 11.11% to 6.00. Upon completition of the deal 61% of Kinross will be held by exisiting shareholders while the remaining 39% will be held by Bema shareholders. The deal was unanimously approved by both companies board of directors. The deal is still subject to all regulatory approvals, and a vote by Bema shareholders in mid-January before it will become official.
Sirius Jumps Above $4
SIRIUS Satellite Radio (NASDAQ: SIRI) stock has surged above the $4 mark in Monday morning trading up 7.45% to $4.04. This rise comes before Wednesday’s third quarter earning’s report. The rise is a quick reversal of previous alltime lows in the $3.60 – $3.70 region. In related news, XM Satellite Radio announced their third quarter earning’s report today. Their 3Q loss narrowed and their revenue increased 57%. The overall loss is $84 million or 32 cents per share. This is promising news for the satellite radio market, who have been in troubled times recently with lower than expected subscriptions. XM’s stock was up 16% so far today. Everyone should be expecting further movement after Wednesday’s announcement by SIRIUS.
Windows 3.11 is still alive, and ready to beat vista at anything!
from youtube: “One night i had this idea to install dos 6.22+windows 3.11. I’ve put some patches to windows 3.11, make 32bit tcp/ip working, install some new drivers for network, video card etc. and… it works. 16 bit windows 3.11 system can really work in 32/64 bits world. Check this video and say: we don’t need vista ;-)”
I haven’t used Windows 3.11 in such a long time. When I see a video of people still using such old software in today’s environment it really shows the longevity of well put together software. This should be something that developers should really focus on, not the fact people will use your software in the short term, but also, people using your software in the long term. By creating software that is stable, efficient, and adaptable; future systems should be able to maintain the functionality of the software and allow for a usable environment.
Poor Borat
Borat : Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan opened on Friday. Well it opened somewhere. It’s weekend gross from $26.4 million USD and could easily have been $10 more if it opened in Regina. The movie itself has been generating great reviews, and creating a lot of hype. Not a lot of movies get as much promotion as this movie had received, and then to not come to anywhere in Saskatchewan??, doesn’t make a lot of sense. I hope they will be rectifying this problem soon, or else people might just lose more interest in a show that looks so promising. A quote from one article states, “Despite much advance praise for “Borat,” distributor Fox scaled back its Friday opening to about 800 theaters because it is concerned that the movie wasn’t registering high enough in audience-awareness tracking.”
News is already out on the follow up to Borat, with a movie called Bruno. Universal won the rights to the movie for $42.5 million. This is a lot considering they don’t even know if Borat will be able to generate that much money.  This upcoming movie is starring a character called Bruno, and from what has been written, he will be interviewing people in the fashion industry and homophobes. That should be entertaining!
Rock Star Supernova Name Replacement Bassist
Rock Star Supernova have announced that former Black Crowes bassist Johnny Colt will be a temporary replacement for Jason Newstead. Jason Newstead was injured a couple weeks back when a bass head fell off his amp and injured his shoulder/arm. Tommy Lee and Gilby Clark seem to be happy with the selection, and they are familiar with Colt. Tommy even said that “he is the type of player that can plug in and immediately make his presence felt.” He will have a couple months to get some practice in before their first tour gig in Las Vegas on New Year’s Eve. The replacement is only temporary as Jason Newstead expects to be back in action in under 9 months.
Rock Star Supernova’s first album will be in stores November 21. The band had already recorded the material before the injury so the bass in the songs will be brought care of Jason Newstead.
Google search for “Worst band in the world” results in search for Creed
When you Google worst band in the world, it brings up results for the band “Creed”. Funny. I’m just glad that nothing I listen to is up there! I feel sorry for all those Creed fans though, sucks to have your musical taste.
ZUNE Windows XP Theme.
The new zune.net site has a pretty sweet xp theme. It is very reminiscent of the black royale theme. It is primarily black, with orange accents like an orange start button. I installed it and will probably stick with it for a bit.
Major Nelson on SIRIUS Satellite Radio
Major Nelson, writer on MajorNelson.com, was on SIRIUS Satellite Radio (NASDAQ: SIRI) on October 31, 2006. Major Nelson is well known to many Xbox fans as a creative source of all Xbox Live information. He works for Microsoft as the Xbox Live Director of Programming and he is the voice of Microsoft to gamers. He presents information in a blog style which creatively makes everything come as more personal to gamers. He runs the blog on his own time so you will see his opinion on different things and it isn’t the official word from Microsoft. Thus the information he gives is normally honest and insightful.
Fittingly, he was on a video game show, called “Level Up” on MAXIM channel 108. The show is on every Tuesday at 2pm ET and it should provide new users to video games with information but more hardcore gamers could be rather bored by it all.  In the future they hope to have live call in questions which should add a lot of depth to the program. As well, on each show they have special guests to keep everyone entertained.