As these become more common, achieving success with content alone becomes a sure-fire recipe for failure.
Adopting the CBS standard became a sure way of convincing the regulators of honourable intent.
The connoisseur of uncertainty has, to his consternation, become a sure thing.
It seems to have become a sure thing that before any trading session is over, some bank will have disclosed problems related to speculative debt.
In the same year, he married Brenda Raybould, who later became a sure interpreter of his work, attending him in his blindness and easing his difficult last years.
That the company could sell at such a high valuation in part reflected a general expansion of multiples in the bull market, but it also reflected investors' conviction that Microsoft had become a sure thing.
Weeks ago, when Senator John McCain became a sure thing on the Republican side and Senator Barack Obama emerged as the apparent Democratic front-runner, a Bloomberg candidacy faded from the improbable to a resounding New York fuhgedaboudit.
Since Taiwan elected Chen Shui-bian, a onetime supporter of independence, as president in March, being identified as a person who favors independence -- or who even seems to -- has become a sure way to derail one's prospects in China.
Looks like it has become a sure thing since: in an interview with The Street, Nvidia's GM of mobile Mike Rayfield fessed up that one of the big five manufacturers should launch a Tegra phone by the end of this year.
Oprah's Book Club launched quietly in 1996, and a nod soon became a sure shot to the bestseller list and a windfall for publishing as a whole.
Taking notes on the trespasses of anybody famous has become a sure-fire way to borrow glory and sell a lot of books in the bargain.
