Porn seekers have helped develop several fledgling markets. In the 70s, some of the earliest adopters of VCRs were people who wanted to watch porn in the privacy of their own home. These people went on to buy video cameras. In the 90s, they started using Usenet and the web to download stills. Their demand for streaming video opened up the market for high speed connections, chat rooms, web cams, and other tools. Now they've moved on to P2P. There are probably cases that predate the 70s, but I haven't thought about it much.
People who seek porn display many of the characteristics of early adopters, paving the way for technology adoption. Of course, the father of diffusion of innovations / technology adoption put his research to work in health education, a slightly more noble focus.:)
Analysts say the Canadian dollar may hit USD 1.00 by this time next year. This means Canadian companies have to start focusing on productivity, instead of cost advantages. A few people have pointed out that, if a devalued currency was the key to success, Brazil and Argentina would be on top of the world.
It's possible to say CBC Canada to distinguish the National Broadcasting Centre from the regional broadcasting centres (e.g. CBC Vancouver, CBC Ottawa). However, most people would just say CBC to refer to the national centre. As for CBC Quebec, I think SRC would refer to the main broadcaster and SRC Vancouver, SRC Ottawa, etc would be the preferred way to refer to regional divisions of Societe Radio Canada -- the French language CBC. CBC Quebec would perhaps be the CBC in Quebec City, if there is one.
I understand your sentiments. I'm a marketer who's very interested in how to support people during the buying cycle. I'm interested in determining stages of the buying cycle and the different needs of customers at each stage. I try to create tools that will help move prospective customers through these stages and eventually lead them to buy again and tell others to try the product.
I recognize that many people feel such marketing practices are scary or evil. However, the academic study (and real world testing) of these theories has applications for much more noble causes. For example, the technology adoption lifecycle, made famous by Crossing the Chasm, can actually be applied to social marketing -- helping people adopt safer or beneficial behaviours. In fact, the tech adoption lifecycle is actually based on the works of Jacques Ellul and Everett Rogers. These academics looked into ways to help farmers use hybrid corn seeds and techniques for encouraging women in Lesotho to use solar ovens (instead of dangerous fuel-based ovens that blew up). Because of funding of business applications for technology adoption, we now have more insights about helping people try all sorts of new things. For example, some challenges with AIDS education can be overcome by identifying where the individual is in the buying/trying cycle and then developing tools to help them move to the next stage. Tech marketers might call a key reference a "change agent", but, in an African village struck by AIDS, that "change agent" might be the local religious leader or a respected teacher. You could also use social marketing principles to encourage people with chronic diseases to take their medications or engage in beneficial behaviours -- or you could focus on public education programs that change the way people think about individuals who have diseases.
Since neuromarketing is a new concept, I'm not able to cite examples of noble applications. However, I suspect that you'll see the same sort of spill over that occurred with technology adoption and customer buying cycles. And some of the funding going toward helping neurologists study customers will help fund researchers whose real "sideline" interests are in less profitable areas.
Pricing at (e.g.) $19.95 has been an effective tactic for many companies, as it distracts the customer from the higher price point. But an even more effective technique is odd pricing, where the company prices things at $19.43 or $20.38. This makes many customers think that the company's prices more accurately reflect the real cost.
Another tactic is passive cross selling. This is where a retailer puts dissimilar products side-by-side because stats show that people will buy the item as an impulse buy. An oft-cited example is where Wal-Mart has put beer/snacks beside baby diapers. Studies showed that fathers were running to Wal-Mart to pick up diapers and that they would snap up beer/snacks, if those were close by. (I live in Canada, where we don't have beer in stores. However, last night at Safeway, I noticed that the toilet paper & paper towels are in the same aisle as the chips and pop.)
And those tactics don't rely on neuromarketing.
In English Canada, most business people use 1-2 page "resumes" (with or without accents). However, in government and academia, sometimes use lengthy CVs. As for French Canada, my experience with that workforce is only as a (former) federal government employee -- in the government, we used CVs.
People applying for jobs in the private sector, at least in English Canada, would be wise to use the shorter resume format. I've seen many outstanding CVs overlooked just because no one can be bothered to look past the first page or so. I have one friend from South Africa who has been in a (Canadian) job she hates for 4 years because she doesn't believe me when I say her CV will not get the attention of Canadian employers in a down-market. (She moved here during the boom, when HR managers would spend time reading a CV, if necessary.)
Content is very important, but it's important to communicate clearly. Writing was not really standardized until the late 1700s and 1800s, when the rise of inter-regional trade required writers to be very clear about what they meant.
I was surprised that the essay on essays seemed to suggest that there is only one type of academic essay. In high school and in university, I studied and practiced writing expository, descriptive, explanatory, illustrative, analytical, and argumentative/persuasive essays. Although English Literature discourse typically favours certain essay types, other forms are considered valid within certain contexts. All disciplines, professions, and communities favour discourses that support aims of their communities. But many forms of essays are valid -- even in English class.
You and Daniel Shefer have made it clear that you share connections. Shefer has stated that he contributed to the book in question, which further erodes potential for an unbiased review. Slashdot's book review policy says that a disclaimer must disclose any relationships -- Shefer says he attached such a disclaimer, but, if it was dropped, you should pursue Slashdot, not persons who question the author's relationship to the reviewer. (If you look further up the threads, you'll see I'm not the only person who suggested that Shefer was purposefully marketing your book.) Throughout your own postings to Slashdot, you typically include the name of your books or company URL, allowing you to promote your goods, which suggests you see the value of placing stories and comments on Slashdot. This does not mean that your book is without value or that Shefer's entire review is uncredible. However, there is the potential for bias, and it's important to point out possible relationships. See the Slashdot book review policy.
I should add that I didn't think co-op was worthless. I got a much better job than my friends when I graduated. I just hate it now (7 years later) when employers suggest that I was "slow" or "without focus" for taking 6 years to finish university and that my co-op shouldn't count as work experience. Of course, I never want to work for employers who think like that anyway, so perhaps it's better that they express these opinions!
For sure. I did co-op and also worked at career-related jobs during university, taking 2 years extra to finish my degree. When I graduated, I had more than 3 years of full-time work experience.
However, I now occasionally run into employers who say work experience earned prior to graduation doesn't count. I find this extremely offensive, since I was managing budgets, leading people, and meeting deadlines while others were drinking beer or flipping burgers. (Nothing wrong with either of those, but it is not career experience.) I refuse to disregard my pre-grad experience, since I was never guaranteed a co-op job, had to compete with large numbers of students for those jobs (many from other schools), and could have been fired or given a bad reference if I'd slacked off. I generally find that people who disregard internships/co-op never worked before they graduated.:)
This won't help with the car, but it may help someone who needs to get a credit card. Get a secured credit card, where you have to lock $600 into your bank account, in order to gain $500 worth of credit. (This means you keep $600 in your bank account at all times. Plus you need other money to pay credit card bills.) When I was in university, the bank wouldn't give me a credit card because I didn't have a job or a student loan. (Just a bank account plump with scholarships and summer job savings.) So I convinced them to let me have a secured credit card. As I proved my worthiness, I was able to get a line of credit when I graduated, allowing me to buy a car...which I paid off in under a year. Now the bank loves me.
Tip: if you are taking English lit, make a lot of your notes in the novels and poetry books. This will save you a ton of time during in-class exams and will even help you with term papers. For novels, I used to write topic headers on the blank pages at the front/back of the book, then note the pages with notes on them. This helped me ace my English degree.
I never said that you were paid by Chapman. I pointed out the relationship and that this appeared to be a placed piece. Given that you actually contributed to the book, it appears that you had reason to promote it and purchase a copy for yourself. Decling receipt of items of monetary value doesn't mean your review is without potential spin. I'm sorry to hear your disclaimer was dropped, because this entire thread would thus be unneccessary.
I'm not sure how you got 5 degrees. They both write for Pragmatic. And Chapman seems to know Shefer well enough to have contributed some one-liners to a "Top 10 List" on Shefer's site. This comes up in the Google link I posted.
Now, I can't be sure, but it sounds like Slashdot published a carefully placed success story. I work in marketing, and I can't say I blame Shefer or Chapman. But I've never seen such a blatant placement on Slashdot before.
Paid placement in search engines affects the way people think, too. For example, if you search for "moolatte + mulatto" in Google, you'll find that Dairy Queen has purchased the word combination, in order to thwart 95 sites/blogs that discuss the homophonic qualities of "Moolatte" and "mulatto". This is a pretty tame example, but imagine more and more companies start doing it. Although newspapers have always acted as gatekeepers, many people may not consider that search engines also act as gatekeepers. When I was in university, my professors expressed concern that the limited number of library indexing software makers would affect social constructs. However, they could not even imagine the implications of advertisers encroaching upon those indices, let alone the advent of paid placement in search engines.
At various points in the past, companies have claimed that women make better operators, typists, secretaries, event coordinators, human resource managers, communicators, etc. I wonder how much this has to do with the traditional talent pool. Given the limited career options traditionally open to women and the subsequent ghettoization of those roles, there was a massive female talent pool.
Because these women's jobs were seen as secondary incomes, they often accepted or were offered lower incomes (and sometimes less respect) than men would have demanded. This tended to deter men from entering the profession. So companies were faced with a huge pool of female applicants. Of those, it's not hard to choose the "best", and the remaining men (who obviously couldn't get higher paying, more respected jobs elsewhere) were perhaps not always the most talented.
In fact, I suspect this continues in positions like marketing, human resources, and communications. Since many women originally crossed over from secretarial positions (as opposed to men, who move from sales or other more respected positions), these roles have sometimes become ghettoized. When I was an intern in university, my boss said he only hired women because they were the best communicators. However, since men were traditionally given more guidance/mentorship for higher paying roles, I'm not sure it was always that the women were "better". The pools weren't the same size.
I have a background in marketing. While doing primary market research at a few firms, I discovered that clients often want to know they're hiring people with specific skillsets. Work experience and actual results are hard to explain to clients. However, all of them immediately twig to software architects who have bachelors or masters degrees, implementation consultants who have accounting designations or MCSE certification, and project managers who have MBAs. Venture capitalists and other investors also often look for such designations before putting money into a firm.
At some of the companies where I worked, we had to explain to our very qualified (but degreeless) software architects, implementation consultants, and project managers that they needed to get some sort of degree. (Some of them had them, but many were in their 40s and had come from the time when programming was more of a trade.)
A lot of companies use their employees' educational backgrounds as bragging rights. But it also seems it's important to the clients making the decision to purchase a major system. Many decision-makers and key influencers on the client side have no background in IT. So they don't understand work histories or results. Yet a degree gives them a strong signal...regardless of whether it's relevant or not.
I worked for a small biomedical engineering firm for a couple of months. (The company was full of illegal/borderline practices and made medical products, so I felt I could not stay.) After I quit, the president asked me to sign an NDA and non-compete. I told him to include it when he couriered my last cheque. When the cheque arrived, I told the courier to go, even though he insisted he was supposed to wait. I never sign anything without due diligence. I then ran to the bank and cashed the cheque. When the president and his assistant started calling/emailing, I said I was reviewing the contract. This bought me enough time for the cheque to clear. I had no incentive to sign the NDA/non-compete and the contracts were *backward looking*. How was I to know if I'd already violated a contract that did not previously exist?
I never signed the contracts. The president flipped. He threatened to contact the university where I was finishing my Executive MBA and have me expelled.
After I quit, a young engineer also quit and he pulled the same stunt with her. In her case, he threatened to have her blocked from ever doing a masters, since he "knew people" at the local universities. I told her he was full of hot air and that he could not force her to sign backward- (or forward-!) looking contracts. She stuck to her guns, although it took over a month for her to get her last paycheque.
The funny thing was that non-competes are rarely enforceable in Canada and the guy had no competitors in Canada. It's extremely unlikely that the engineer or I would ever work for one of his competitors, anyway!
In Canada, courts have been reluctant to enforce non-compete agreements. Like UK courts, Canadian courts typically consider non-competes to be restraint of trade. The Globe and Mail says that non-competes are rampant in Canada, although often not enforceable at law.
US law also seems to limit non-competes. One law firm has listed all sorts of complications, including the need for the employer to provide additional "consideration" (ie. money) if a non-compete is provided.
Both the pilot and the contest are 24. I suspect UBC's genetic engineering program started on the engineer when the contest was first announced....It has nothing to do with the chopper design and everything to do with the pilot.;-)
If I think back 4 or 5 years, I seem to recall that many media companies tossed URLs and email addresses into their shows and books, in an attempt to add an element of reality. For the most part, these companies never bothered to register or set up those accounts. However, on the TV show Felicity, character Noel Crane once mentioned his website, www.NoelCrane.com. Since I was near my computer, I punched in the URL. Up came a real website, designed to present Noel, Felicity's residence assistant, as a budding graphic designer -- and keeper of his dorm's calendar and photo collection. According to the WHOIS at the time, the site was owned by a media company in LA.
Out of curiousity, I just visited the site. Someone is still keeping up the pretense of Noel Crane, but has updated the site. The current WHOIS has it registered to a guy in Santa Monica...and, no, it's not Noel Crane or Scotty Foley.
Sometimes employers can get a little too hung up on the lasting through university part. A good friend of mine completed a BSc (Hons) in math and comp sci. He then completed an M.Math at the University of Waterloo, which is hardly an "easy" school. He decided that he wanted to work as a computer programmer, but felt that his real interests lay in a specialized computer science topic, so he went on to complete 2 years in a M.Sc program at another reputable Canadian university. Just as he was about to start his thesis, his advisor (and the only real expert in this particular area at the school) left to take a position at another university. At the same time, my friend received an *excellent* job offer from a very well known engineering firm. So my friend left before completing the M.Sc, since he already had a B.Sc and M.Math, and the core courses from the M.Sc would hold him in good stead.
About 4 years later, having worked his way up to a fairly senior level (given his age), he applied for a job at my company. The VP wouldn't give him a job, because he'd dropped out of his (second) masters program! The VP said that anyone who would drop out of a university program was sure to lack commitment. Of course, the VP had a 2-year tech diploma....And my friend has since gone on to much better things.
That being said, I still think that completing university provides a strong commitment/endurance signal...assuming the full context of a situation is given due consideration.:)
Oops. I moved away from Ottawa in late 1994, so I guess maybe I was remembering the court case and not the verdict. I had thought the company had re-emerged as Wool-Tyme: (Wool-Tyme
190 Colonnade Road, Nepean, ON). I am pretty sure that's the same location as for Wool-Mart. But maybe they were bought out or went bankrupt and a new company came in. Sorry.
Penguin probably monitors the web and book sites and will quickly write up some of its own reviews. They'll probably also enlist others to rate the reviews. Many publishers do this, in order to promote their wares or to balance negative reviews. If Penguin is savvy, it will also seek out blogs and post responses. Dairy Queen is doing this in response to the Moolatte/mulatto debate.
Slashdot Mirror
Porn seekers have helped develop several fledgling markets. In the 70s, some of the earliest adopters of VCRs were people who wanted to watch porn in the privacy of their own home. These people went on to buy video cameras. In the 90s, they started using Usenet and the web to download stills. Their demand for streaming video opened up the market for high speed connections, chat rooms, web cams, and other tools. Now they've moved on to P2P. There are probably cases that predate the 70s, but I haven't thought about it much. People who seek porn display many of the characteristics of early adopters, paving the way for technology adoption. Of course, the father of diffusion of innovations / technology adoption put his research to work in health education, a slightly more noble focus. :)
Analysts say the Canadian dollar may hit USD 1.00 by this time next year. This means Canadian companies have to start focusing on productivity, instead of cost advantages. A few people have pointed out that, if a devalued currency was the key to success, Brazil and Argentina would be on top of the world.
It's possible to say CBC Canada to distinguish the National Broadcasting Centre from the regional broadcasting centres (e.g. CBC Vancouver, CBC Ottawa). However, most people would just say CBC to refer to the national centre. As for CBC Quebec, I think SRC would refer to the main broadcaster and SRC Vancouver, SRC Ottawa, etc would be the preferred way to refer to regional divisions of Societe Radio Canada -- the French language CBC. CBC Quebec would perhaps be the CBC in Quebec City, if there is one.
I recognize that many people feel such marketing practices are scary or evil. However, the academic study (and real world testing) of these theories has applications for much more noble causes. For example, the technology adoption lifecycle, made famous by Crossing the Chasm, can actually be applied to social marketing -- helping people adopt safer or beneficial behaviours. In fact, the tech adoption lifecycle is actually based on the works of Jacques Ellul and Everett Rogers. These academics looked into ways to help farmers use hybrid corn seeds and techniques for encouraging women in Lesotho to use solar ovens (instead of dangerous fuel-based ovens that blew up). Because of funding of business applications for technology adoption, we now have more insights about helping people try all sorts of new things. For example, some challenges with AIDS education can be overcome by identifying where the individual is in the buying/trying cycle and then developing tools to help them move to the next stage. Tech marketers might call a key reference a "change agent", but, in an African village struck by AIDS, that "change agent" might be the local religious leader or a respected teacher. You could also use social marketing principles to encourage people with chronic diseases to take their medications or engage in beneficial behaviours -- or you could focus on public education programs that change the way people think about individuals who have diseases.
Since neuromarketing is a new concept, I'm not able to cite examples of noble applications. However, I suspect that you'll see the same sort of spill over that occurred with technology adoption and customer buying cycles. And some of the funding going toward helping neurologists study customers will help fund researchers whose real "sideline" interests are in less profitable areas.
Another tactic is passive cross selling. This is where a retailer puts dissimilar products side-by-side because stats show that people will buy the item as an impulse buy. An oft-cited example is where Wal-Mart has put beer/snacks beside baby diapers. Studies showed that fathers were running to Wal-Mart to pick up diapers and that they would snap up beer/snacks, if those were close by. (I live in Canada, where we don't have beer in stores. However, last night at Safeway, I noticed that the toilet paper & paper towels are in the same aisle as the chips and pop.) And those tactics don't rely on neuromarketing.
People applying for jobs in the private sector, at least in English Canada, would be wise to use the shorter resume format. I've seen many outstanding CVs overlooked just because no one can be bothered to look past the first page or so. I have one friend from South Africa who has been in a (Canadian) job she hates for 4 years because she doesn't believe me when I say her CV will not get the attention of Canadian employers in a down-market. (She moved here during the boom, when HR managers would spend time reading a CV, if necessary.)
I was surprised that the essay on essays seemed to suggest that there is only one type of academic essay. In high school and in university, I studied and practiced writing expository, descriptive, explanatory, illustrative, analytical, and argumentative/persuasive essays. Although English Literature discourse typically favours certain essay types, other forms are considered valid within certain contexts. All disciplines, professions, and communities favour discourses that support aims of their communities. But many forms of essays are valid -- even in English class.
You and Daniel Shefer have made it clear that you share connections. Shefer has stated that he contributed to the book in question, which further erodes potential for an unbiased review. Slashdot's book review policy says that a disclaimer must disclose any relationships -- Shefer says he attached such a disclaimer, but, if it was dropped, you should pursue Slashdot, not persons who question the author's relationship to the reviewer. (If you look further up the threads, you'll see I'm not the only person who suggested that Shefer was purposefully marketing your book.) Throughout your own postings to Slashdot, you typically include the name of your books or company URL, allowing you to promote your goods, which suggests you see the value of placing stories and comments on Slashdot. This does not mean that your book is without value or that Shefer's entire review is uncredible. However, there is the potential for bias, and it's important to point out possible relationships. See the Slashdot book review policy.
I should add that I didn't think co-op was worthless. I got a much better job than my friends when I graduated. I just hate it now (7 years later) when employers suggest that I was "slow" or "without focus" for taking 6 years to finish university and that my co-op shouldn't count as work experience. Of course, I never want to work for employers who think like that anyway, so perhaps it's better that they express these opinions!
However, I now occasionally run into employers who say work experience earned prior to graduation doesn't count. I find this extremely offensive, since I was managing budgets, leading people, and meeting deadlines while others were drinking beer or flipping burgers. (Nothing wrong with either of those, but it is not career experience.) I refuse to disregard my pre-grad experience, since I was never guaranteed a co-op job, had to compete with large numbers of students for those jobs (many from other schools), and could have been fired or given a bad reference if I'd slacked off. I generally find that people who disregard internships/co-op never worked before they graduated. :)
This won't help with the car, but it may help someone who needs to get a credit card. Get a secured credit card, where you have to lock $600 into your bank account, in order to gain $500 worth of credit. (This means you keep $600 in your bank account at all times. Plus you need other money to pay credit card bills.) When I was in university, the bank wouldn't give me a credit card because I didn't have a job or a student loan. (Just a bank account plump with scholarships and summer job savings.) So I convinced them to let me have a secured credit card. As I proved my worthiness, I was able to get a line of credit when I graduated, allowing me to buy a car...which I paid off in under a year. Now the bank loves me.
Tip: if you are taking English lit, make a lot of your notes in the novels and poetry books. This will save you a ton of time during in-class exams and will even help you with term papers. For novels, I used to write topic headers on the blank pages at the front/back of the book, then note the pages with notes on them. This helped me ace my English degree.
I never said that you were paid by Chapman. I pointed out the relationship and that this appeared to be a placed piece. Given that you actually contributed to the book, it appears that you had reason to promote it and purchase a copy for yourself. Decling receipt of items of monetary value doesn't mean your review is without potential spin. I'm sorry to hear your disclaimer was dropped, because this entire thread would thus be unneccessary.
I'm not sure how you got 5 degrees. They both write for Pragmatic. And Chapman seems to know Shefer well enough to have contributed some one-liners to a "Top 10 List" on Shefer's site. This comes up in the Google link I posted.
Now, I can't be sure, but it sounds like Slashdot published a carefully placed success story. I work in marketing, and I can't say I blame Shefer or Chapman. But I've never seen such a blatant placement on Slashdot before.
Paid placement in search engines affects the way people think, too. For example, if you search for "moolatte + mulatto" in Google, you'll find that Dairy Queen has purchased the word combination, in order to thwart 95 sites/blogs that discuss the homophonic qualities of "Moolatte" and "mulatto". This is a pretty tame example, but imagine more and more companies start doing it. Although newspapers have always acted as gatekeepers, many people may not consider that search engines also act as gatekeepers. When I was in university, my professors expressed concern that the limited number of library indexing software makers would affect social constructs. However, they could not even imagine the implications of advertisers encroaching upon those indices, let alone the advent of paid placement in search engines.
Because these women's jobs were seen as secondary incomes, they often accepted or were offered lower incomes (and sometimes less respect) than men would have demanded. This tended to deter men from entering the profession. So companies were faced with a huge pool of female applicants. Of those, it's not hard to choose the "best", and the remaining men (who obviously couldn't get higher paying, more respected jobs elsewhere) were perhaps not always the most talented.
In fact, I suspect this continues in positions like marketing, human resources, and communications. Since many women originally crossed over from secretarial positions (as opposed to men, who move from sales or other more respected positions), these roles have sometimes become ghettoized. When I was an intern in university, my boss said he only hired women because they were the best communicators. However, since men were traditionally given more guidance/mentorship for higher paying roles, I'm not sure it was always that the women were "better". The pools weren't the same size.
At some of the companies where I worked, we had to explain to our very qualified (but degreeless) software architects, implementation consultants, and project managers that they needed to get some sort of degree. (Some of them had them, but many were in their 40s and had come from the time when programming was more of a trade.)
A lot of companies use their employees' educational backgrounds as bragging rights. But it also seems it's important to the clients making the decision to purchase a major system. Many decision-makers and key influencers on the client side have no background in IT. So they don't understand work histories or results. Yet a degree gives them a strong signal...regardless of whether it's relevant or not.
I never signed the contracts. The president flipped. He threatened to contact the university where I was finishing my Executive MBA and have me expelled.
After I quit, a young engineer also quit and he pulled the same stunt with her. In her case, he threatened to have her blocked from ever doing a masters, since he "knew people" at the local universities. I told her he was full of hot air and that he could not force her to sign backward- (or forward-!) looking contracts. She stuck to her guns, although it took over a month for her to get her last paycheque.
The funny thing was that non-competes are rarely enforceable in Canada and the guy had no competitors in Canada. It's extremely unlikely that the engineer or I would ever work for one of his competitors, anyway!
US law also seems to limit non-competes. One law firm has listed all sorts of complications, including the need for the employer to provide additional "consideration" (ie. money) if a non-compete is provided.
Both the pilot and the contest are 24. I suspect UBC's genetic engineering program started on the engineer when the contest was first announced....It has nothing to do with the chopper design and everything to do with the pilot. ;-)
Out of curiousity, I just visited the site. Someone is still keeping up the pretense of Noel Crane, but has updated the site. The current WHOIS has it registered to a guy in Santa Monica...and, no, it's not Noel Crane or Scotty Foley.
Sometimes employers can get a little too hung up on the lasting through university part. A good friend of mine completed a BSc (Hons) in math and comp sci. He then completed an M.Math at the University of Waterloo, which is hardly an "easy" school. He decided that he wanted to work as a computer programmer, but felt that his real interests lay in a specialized computer science topic, so he went on to complete 2 years in a M.Sc program at another reputable Canadian university. Just as he was about to start his thesis, his advisor (and the only real expert in this particular area at the school) left to take a position at another university. At the same time, my friend received an *excellent* job offer from a very well known engineering firm. So my friend left before completing the M.Sc, since he already had a B.Sc and M.Math, and the core courses from the M.Sc would hold him in good stead. About 4 years later, having worked his way up to a fairly senior level (given his age), he applied for a job at my company. The VP wouldn't give him a job, because he'd dropped out of his (second) masters program! The VP said that anyone who would drop out of a university program was sure to lack commitment. Of course, the VP had a 2-year tech diploma....And my friend has since gone on to much better things. That being said, I still think that completing university provides a strong commitment/endurance signal...assuming the full context of a situation is given due consideration. :)
Oops. I moved away from Ottawa in late 1994, so I guess maybe I was remembering the court case and not the verdict. I had thought the company had re-emerged as Wool-Tyme: (Wool-Tyme 190 Colonnade Road, Nepean, ON). I am pretty sure that's the same location as for Wool-Mart. But maybe they were bought out or went bankrupt and a new company came in. Sorry.
Penguin probably monitors the web and book sites and will quickly write up some of its own reviews. They'll probably also enlist others to rate the reviews. Many publishers do this, in order to promote their wares or to balance negative reviews. If Penguin is savvy, it will also seek out blogs and post responses. Dairy Queen is doing this in response to the Moolatte/mulatto debate.