And the winners are...

First a big JavaRanch thank you to Kent and Erich for being here this week! We hope you had a good time and you'll come back and visit us!
This week's winners are:
Badri Viswanathan
HS Thomas
Lasse Koskela
Matthew Phillips
Send me your snail mail address (tom@javaranch.com) and I will see that a copy of the book gets out to you.

Congrats Lasse and special congrats to HS Thomas.

Congrats guys and special thanks to Kent and Erich!

Thanks. Congrats to the other winners. I look forward to reading it.

Thanks to Kent and Erich and Thomas for the opportunity for asking questions, and the authors for answering in depth. I see one of my posts got lucky. Thanks to all participants for asking very interesting questions.
Eclipse rules! It's not just the effect you get when you stack your computer books in front of the monitor.
regards

Thank you! I'm already itching to see all the things I did wrong with my playground plugin

It's not just the effect you get when you stack your computer books in front of the monitor.

So that's what you do on weekends

I leave a little hole to post to JR often. (MD usually

).
regards

Let me just return the kisses and say thanks for the opportunity for communicating with all of you.
Here are some concluding remarks:
* about asking questions on eclipse - if you have more questions on eclipse than please don't hesitate to use the newsgroups on www.eclipse.org. In this newsgroups you not only get answers from Kent and me but from the entire Eclipse community. In particular if you ask your question wisely and show that you have invested into a problem then you will get a good answer.
* on reading the book - if you read the book and get stuck on the interlude in chapter 12 then please read on. This chapter is the "black-belt-chapter" in the book. Kent and I rewrote this chapter multiple times, but the problem we describe is in the same complexity range as meta-level programming (testing a JUnit flavor with JUnit involving running 3 Java VMs). The complexity level drops aftwards again and it will be an easy read with what I hope interesting topics.
--erich

Thanks for the heads-up, Erich

How interesting! By my reckoning, that's the eighth book that Lasse Koskela has won this year. Apart from this one, his record is:

one on JDBC

two on EJB

one on AspectJ

two on JSP

and one on Web Services

Now in this discussion, Thomas Paul states:

Winners are selected by random. I have a program that selects every post since Tuesday and picks 10 posts randomly. I then pick the first four posts that meet the criteria (on topic post from someone with a valid name).

Please enlighten me, but I get the feeling that something is going on behind the scenes that I am unaware of.
Good Luck,
Avi.
[ November 16, 2003: Message edited by: Avi Abrami ]

Originally posted by Avi Abrami:
Please enlighten me, but I get the feeling that something is going on behind the scenes that I am unaware of.

Your feelings are incorrect. Do you really think I care that much about who wins a $40 book that I would cheat? The program simply picks winners randomly. The more you post the better your chance to win. All I do is reject anyone whose name does not follow the JavaRanch naming standard or whose post is obviously off topic.
Lasse posted 12 times. There were about 60 topics for the week. Assuming an average of 5 posts a topic that gives Lasse a 12 in 300 (about 1 in 25 chance) for each book. That's about a 1 in 6 chance of winning a book. If you want to win then post on topic questions for the author.
[ November 16, 2003: Message edited by: Thomas Paul ]

If you want to win then post on topic questions for the author.

You mean to say other topics are not considered?

Originally posted by Pradeep Bhat:
You mean to say other topics are not considered?

As long as it is on topic for the forum or the author then the post can win. For example, although this week's other promotion was in the servlet forum you could still win with a question on JSPs because the book was about servlets and JSPs. However, posts such as, "I want to win a book" are ineligible to win.

I am thinking of instituing a new rule: anyone who questions my honesty in picking winners is permanently banned from winning a book.

Originally posted by Avi Abrami:
Please enlighten me, but I get the feeling that something is going on behind the scenes that I am unaware of.

I would also add that Avi did not have a single qualifying post in this week's promotion.

Indeed. He didn't have a single post, qualifying or not, in this forum during (or before or since) the promotion, except for this one, complaining about the promotion.
You know the old joke about the poor schnook who prays every day for God to let him win the lottery, and he never wins. And one day he says, "God, I'm a good person, I go to Temple every Friday night, I give tsedakah, I perform all the mitvahs I can, and all I ever ask you for is this one thing -- why can't you ever let me win the lottery?"
And a loud voice from the heavens says "Throw me a bone, here, you could maybe for once buy a ticket?"

How would the computer know that people like Lasse answer almost every post in the Ranch, and always with something of value ? Life does seem fair sometimes.
But then the rest of us may not win anything.

regards

Originally posted by HS Thomas:
..
But then the rest of us may not win anything.
regards

you've just won...

So if you ask lots of good questions or post lots of good answers, you will have a good chance to win a book.

Originally posted by Avi Abrami:
How interesting! By my reckoning, that's the eighth book that Lasse Koskela has won this year. Apart from this one, his record is:

one on JDBC
two on EJB
one on AspectJ
two on JSP
and one on Web Services

Now in this discussion, Thomas Paul states:

Please enlighten me, but I get the feeling that something is going on behind the scenes that I am unaware of.
Good Luck,
Avi.
[ November 16, 2003: Message edited by: Avi Abrami ]

Hey thanks for tallying the books Lasse has one! Do mine, do mine. I have won 6 books this year!!
Lasse, you are going down. I am going to catch you. Tom said sexual favors aren't going to work anymore.

Excellent! I'm so glad that my post initiated such a lively debate. And thankyou so much, Thomas, for clearing up the issue of how book winners are chosen. I'm sure most of the forum participants now understand what they need to do in order to have (ever so small) a chance of winning a book.
Good Luck,
Avi.

By the way, Avi won a book in April... "Java Performance Tuning". Apparently, he thinks that he should win books even if he doesn't participate in the promotion. :roll:

Originally posted by Avi Abrami:
How interesting! By my reckoning, that's the eighth book that Lasse Koskela has won this year.

And your reckoning is off. That is the 10th book Lasse has won this year. Pradeep Bhat has won 8 so far. You have to be in it to win it.
[ November 17, 2003: Message edited by: Thomas Paul ]

Originally posted by Avi Abrami:
I'm sure most of the forum participants now understand what they need to do in order to have (ever so small) a chance of winning a book.

1) JavaRanch could stop giving books away for free.
2) Odds of winning partially depend on how many total pertinent posts there are during the time of the promotion.
3) This is not a contest to see who can post the most, but the more you post, the better your chances are.
[ November 17, 2003: Message edited by: Marilyn de Queiroz ]

Congratulations to

Badri Viswanathan

HS Thomas

Lasse Koskela

Matthew Phillips

Thanks for handling all the multitudinous details, Thomas

Originally posted by Marilyn de Queiroz:

1) JavaRanch could stop giving books away for free.
[ November 17, 2003: Message edited by: Marilyn de Queiroz ]

I request you not to stop book promotion. Please continue it.

Originally posted by Pradeep Bhat:
I request you not to stop book promotion. Please continue it.

Don't worry, Pradeep, I am not going to let a few jerks ruin the fun for everyone. I just get annoyed because some people don't seem to realize how much hard work it is to set these promotions up.

Little side note: In the two years before I took over the book promotions I won only one book. Look at my number of posts. You would have thought I would have been cleaning up!

Don't worry, Pradeep, I am not going to let a few jerks ruin the fun for everyone. I just get annoyed because some people don't seem to realize how much hard work it is to set these promotions up.

Thanks Thomas!

You are doing a great job.

he thinks that he should win books even if he doesn't participate in the promotion

Thomas,
For the record, I don't use Eclipse and I don't participate in this forum (until now, I guess :-). This thread just happened (somehow) to catch my eye, and when I saw that Lasse had won another book, it seemed strange to me, because I was under the apparent misconception that the fair thing to do would be to try to award books to people who qualify (i.e. whose posts are selected by your random program) but have not yet won any books. I see now that my idea of fairness is not shared by you, and that's fine by me. If you choose to run the promotions this way, that's your choice. So, like I said before, thankyou for clarifying the situation, and I'm sure that the forum participants understand now what they can do to try and give themselves some chance of winning a book.
Good Luck,
Avi.