Roger Nelson

well, what is a fair price?
If it takes 5 bucks towards all the expenses involved in creating a product, and if its sold at 10 bucks. Is charging a profit of 100% fair?
I think demand/supply have been always a key factor in deciding the final price irrespective of whether the price is fair or not.
I guess there's no such thing as fair price

I believe when the price of product is open for haggling, it brings up a scenario where the Customer A was able to haggle down the price, while customer B ended up paying the asking price.
If customer A and B exchanges data, they would come to the common conclusion that the seller cannot be trusted on giving a fair price:-)
( No wonder car salesman are not a trusted lot :-) )

I guess fixed pricing looks more trustwothy, but it will only be able to give a fair price if seller is not a monopoly, or there is no price fixing by various sellers for mutual bebefit.

well , the problem itself seems a bit difficult to understand(Maybe easier for the mathematicans),
isnt there a "poincare conjecture" for the dummies?

Like relativity for the dummies:
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it seems like two hours that's relativity."

And does it have a practical application?

Originally posted by Jeroen T Wenting:
education. All the rest is wasted and only makes people more dependent on help instead of less.

well though I agree education being a critical part in being self reliant.

I still believe food and health should hold precedence over education since without food to suffice hunger an individual may commit crime.
So charities should provide the minimal food so that no one has to face starvation.
And secondly health care faclities for the poor helps them to stay healthy and capable to do work

Going through recent articles of the worlds wealthiest guys(Bill and warren buffet) giving back to the society a part of their wealth and energy make me wonder in what areas one should one spend their charity money to maximize the benefits to the less fortunate ones in the society.

If one tends to support charity, what would be the important areas one should privide charity for?:

Here are some thoughts on it based on priority:
1) Food providing charities( to make sure the poor have food to eat)
2) Health ( provide necessary health care to poor)
3) Education ( a long term plan to eleminate poverty)
4) religious organization( to propogate spiritualism and the benefits from it)

And ofcourse one should always keep some thing aside to promote "meaningless drivel" on javaranch

I guess the agents from the matrix will be paying you a visit sooner or later, get ready to fight

I guess its one of those areas where reasearch does not have all the answers but it still have sufficient evidence to suggest it would be wise to stay away from second hand smoke.

Personally I feel one should promote smoke free environments thereby keeping public places and home free from smoke.

what make me cringe is when I hear reasearch that highlights passing through a bunch of people smoking will start the process of cell mutation thereby making second hand smoke really evil.
Cmon passing trough traffic where you can smell fuel should be more dangerous.

I have noticed sometime back that the group of folks who have been smoking in front of our office building were asked to stop doing so in the front and use the back of the building for such purposes.
( It had more to do with keeping the entrances pleasant rather than second hand smoke)

I wouldnt be surprised if tomorrow someone shoots at them saying I have the right to kill you since you are slowly killing me.
just kidding!

I guess probably a bit of exagerration on second hand smoke is used to make more people quit smoking for an healthy life.

This article reports about the latest warnings against second hand smoke.

Though a lot of research and statistics clearly indicates the presence of cancer causing carcinogens and other bad effects of smoking, I have never came across research that says what causes it to affect people differently.

I mean I have seen chain smokers getting affected by throat cancers at the age of 40, at the same time I have seen other chain smokers living a healthy life at 70.

And I guess if a smoker goes to a doctor with health issues, its easier for the doc to convince him that all his problems are due to smoking, rather than focussing on probable other reasons.

Once upon a time .. long long ago ... It was a so long ago I just don't remember how I came across javaranch :-) , but I suspect it may have to do with SCJP exams

Here are some articles that discusses JSP , XSL and XML.
JSP_XML_XSL
JSP OR XSL

Personally I am not comfortable with xsl solely as a view ( in mvc architecture).
Find it to be difficult to do things with xsl compared to what a jsp can do, but if the view is pretty dumb and does not require mainipulating the data xsl should satisfy as view.

we can always do animal jokes hopefully there are no animals on javaranch that may get offended ( other than the moose :-) )

For example : ant - elephant jokes
===========================================================
An ant and an elephant went swimming. But instead of swimming together, they took turns getting into the pool. Both were never in the pool at the same time. Why?
They had only one pair of shorts.
===========================================================

Everyone enjoys a jokes as long its on the expense of someone else, but people react a bit differently when it turns on themselves.

The jokes on blondes would seem to be really unfair if one was a blonde, but some blondes may appreciate the humor behind it.

As always this article mulls over the java .Net war with some interesting views.
JAVA .NET comparision

I think when we search a keyword example "j_security_check" the default list of topics displayed are sorted by the oldest topic on the top.

I have couple of times gone through the topic on top and then realized that its really old.

It would be nice to have the latest topic on the top rather the oldest one as the default search results to avoid confusion.

Yes, in the current software world the only thing that is constant is change.
To me it seems like investing time in certain technologies or framework is similar to investing in stocks. ;-)

I remember the inital web applicastion days when servlets ruled and jsp was in it early days, we had decided not invest in jsp since it was not a proven technology. But later on JSP became huge( no doubt it had it own share of growing up to do - like model 1 and model 2 architecture).

Now we are working on a web application which was designed in early 2001 without struts. Now every once in a while I have a strong urge to redesign the whole application with struts, but just cant do it taking in to account the amount of efforts involved. So just have to live with the changing turf where sometimes you can move along with change or stay put with existing ones.

I believe the ability for a technology or framework to thrive depends on what value it offers, the ease in availabilty and use, who backs it in the commercial world.

Looking back java, servlets, jsp, struts was widely accepted.
while applets though appeared to be promising in browsers initally never lived up to its value proposition.

hmm it would be interesting to watch how JSF, AJAX moves along

I have rarely found a movie that was ever able to capture the essence of a well written novel having a good story line.
I preferred reading the Godfather rather than the movie, and I felt that the latest "pride and prejudice" did not do justice to the book.
I do realize that its tough to summarize a whole book in less than 2 hours.

I guess movies based on books having good special effects like Lord of the rings, jurrasic park are worth watching.

I believe there's no room for special effects in the "Da vinci code", and it would just sell because of the popularity of the book and ofcourse the controversy behind it. :-)

why do we have eight hours as the standard working hours per day followed by most of the organizations?
why not six or four( I would love that )