Google's algo quite often is BLIND Google ranks duplicate content very NICELY You can build links with NON-RELEVANT sites without any problems Pages with LOW PR can beat pages with HIGH PR You can get high ranks with OLD content
Google updates it’s Page Ranks every 3-4 months. If my guess is right, I think next PR update, (First PR Update of this year 2008) will come in End of January or First Week of February. So gear up linking strategies so that this year, you boost up your positions on Google.