My guess is that there are some local laws that make including Quebec either problematic, impractical, or even impossible. Keep in mind that any contest has to be in compliance with local laws. That means that sometimes, certain location will get left out due to "complications" due to their local laws.

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[soapbox] Backup good...no backup bad!! [/soap box]

It might be simple and it might not be. What might be simple to you, might not have been so simple to PCWorld. The point is that it is potentially naive to just scream at/blame PCWorld. The point is that frequently it is local government that might make things difficult for businesses to operate and as such you might want to toss some of the blame in other directions. While there might be perfectly good reasons for such local laws, they can also have unintended and possibly undesireable consequences. And if you live in Quebec, then you and your fellow Quebec'ers might have to choose between the benefits of those local laws and the businesses that they might chase away, whether intentionally or not. There are lots of trade offs in life.

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[soapbox] Backup good...no backup bad!! [/soap box]

That was not aggressive. I was merely trying to point out that it might not be as simple as you think it to be. Personally, I don't know. I was merely speculating as to why Quebec might have been excluded. Never said I was right and could in fact be way off point.

Now, if you would like me to be agressive, how about this...why not try actually reading what I said? I did not out right call you naive, but instead said:

"The point is that it is potentially naive to just scream at/blame PCWorld."

Note that you convienently glossed over the the word "potentially". I put it in there precisely because I DON'T know it all and it could turn out that it is in fact a rather simple thing that PCWorld could have done and thus, PCWorld deserves to be blamed. But, since I did not know, I tried to state that MAYBE you were oversimplifying things and PCWorld does not deserve all the blame.

But, then since you know it all (to quote you: "I most likely know a hell of a lot more about Canada/USA relations than you will ever learn."), I will bow to your infinite wisdom.

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[soapbox] Backup good...no backup bad!! [/soap box]

Never said nor meaned to imply that Quebec was singled out. In fact, my point was that there are frequently local laws or rules that result in some local areas not be included in contests due to complexities that companies don't want to deal with. It could be due to laws/rules that just outright forbid those types of contest or just due to such laws/rules making it impractical for the company running the contest to include that location. Impracticality could be due to just some impractical demand of that one locality or it could be there are a handful of localities that require different requirements and it is impractical to do those simple, yet diverse requirement for a bunch of different localities (i.e. bang for the buck, so to speak)...in otherwords, if you 95% of the locations can be included with the same rules and requirement, but the last 5% each have different seperate requirement, it might be impractical to meet a bunch of simple, yet diverse requirements for a bunch of different locations just to get that additional 5%. Simple requirements might become complex over all if you have bunch of them. Thus, it is entirely possible that it is very simple to meet Quebec's requirements and Puerto Rico's requirement (and anyone else's requirements who where excluded), but it might become impractical to meet all those requirements to include all those that were excluded. And it is also possible that some localities might require things that would put the contest in conflict with other localities rules, so a decision had to be made.

In the end, it is all speculation until someone at PCWorld comments...if they choose to.

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[soapbox] Backup good...no backup bad!! [/soap box]

You tend to run into similar types of "restrictions" in settlements for class action lawsuits...some states' laws are different enough that a settlement might not be permissible in that state. That is the joy of a patch work of federal,state, and provincial laws.

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[soapbox] Backup good...no backup bad!! [/soap box]

I do believe that the Gaming rules and the taxes make it hard for companies to comply with. This is not the first time Quebec has been left out of this kind of contest. Even Canadian contests exclude Quebec for these reasons.

FLASHORN.

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Patience is life.