كنت ومازلت متضايقا من العقوبات الاقتصادية والتقنية المفروضة على سوريا. وربما كانت أحد أشكالها التي عايشتها مباشرة هو عدم تمكني من تحميل بعض برامج غووغل أثناء قضائي لعطلة الصيف هناك. ولكنني في النهاية مغترب عن الوطن، لذلك لن يكون حديثي عن انعكاسات ونتائج هذه العقوبات بمدى قوة ومعاناة حديث أهل سوريا أنفسهم.

لكن حديثي هنا سيكون عن موقفين شخصيين شَـكّـلت فيهما الجنسية السورية لحامليها في بلاد الاغتراب عائقا منعهم من الإستفادة من بعض الفرص والمزايا.

الموقف الأول حدث مع أحد الأصدقاء الذين رغبوا بالمشاركة في مسابقة مختصة بمجال البرمجة تطلقها غووغل كل عام. في صفحة الشروط، تم ذكر أن حاملي جنسيات دول محور الشر (كما هو متعارف عليه) لا يمكنهم المشاركة بالمسابقة. وبعد الأخذ والرد مع القائمين على المسابقة، وافقوا على مشاركته بشرط تمثيله للبلد التي يملك فيها إقامة دائمة. بمعنى أنه لن يمثل وطنه الأم سوريا.

الموقف الثاني حصل البارحة. سأعود ان شاء الله الى مقاعد الدراسة من جديد للحصول على درجة الماجستير في علوم الحاسب الآلي. وقد تم قبولي في جامعة الملك عبدالله للعلوم والتقنية التي ذاع صيتها في أنحاء العالم بسبب خطتها الطموحة والمنافسة جدا. وقد تم تخصيص ميزانية ضخمة جدا للجامعة تقارب 10 مليار دولار سيصرف جزء كبير منها لتجهيز المعامل والحصول على التقنيات المتقدمة. ومنذ فترة، اشترت الجامعة أحد أسرع الحواسب فائقة السرعة supercomputer وأطلقت عليه اسم: شاهين.

بالصدفة البحتة، اخبرنا أحد الدكاترة أن حاملي الجنسية السورية لن يستطيعوا استخدام شاهين ! وبعد سؤال أحد كبار مسؤولي الجامعة، أكد لنا الخبر رسميا وعزا الأمر الى الشروط الخاصة بنقل وتصدير التقنيات المتطورة، وبيّن لنا أن الجامعة لا دخل لها بهذا الأمر، فالقضية سياسية بامتياز وهي مرتبطة بالعلاقات الأميركية-السورية والحظر التقني المفروض على الأخيرة.

تذكرت احدى السهرات التي جمعتني ببعض الأصدقاء ممن يحلمون بالحصول على جنسية أجنبية كون جنسيتهم السورية كانت عائقا لهم في المطارات وفي مناطق ومواطن أخرى. أذكر أنني سألتهم: هل من يحملون الجنسية الكندية مثلا يهمهم الوضع الاقتصادي في كندا ومسألة الأحزاب والعملية السياسية؟ هل سيهمهم معرفة تاريخ السكان الأصليين لكندا؟ هل (وهو الأهم) سيحسون بنشوة الانتماء لهذه الأرض! لا أعتقد.

وأتذكر جيدا أنني قلت لهم: الأوطان ليست سلعا ووسائل توظف لتحقيق غايات مادية، إن نحن كنا قد اغتلنا كثيرا من المفاهيم والقيم بحجة مجاراة ما يتطلبه العصر، فلنبقي مفهوم الوطن قائما، فكما قيل دوما: لا وطن بدون إنسان، ولا إنسان بدون وطن. “الوطن” هو ليس اسم نحمله في جواز سفر لنستفيد من مزاياه. إن الوطن “ليس مجرد كلمة نسجلها في بطاقاتنا ، إنه أرض و انتماء ، دار و كرم ، مدرسة و جيران ، أقارب و معارف ، خدمات صحة و تعليم ، وظيفة ثابتة و معاش عند التقاعد ، الوطن رئيس يتكلم باسمك و سفارة ترعى مصالحك و رجل أمن يسهر على حمايتك ، فهل لديك أيٌ من هذه الأشياء ؟” كما عرّفته الكاتبة الفلسطينية سحر الرملاوي في الرواية الرائعة “لاجئة” على لسان إحدى شخصيات الرواية.

والآن بعد مواجهتي لهذين الموقفين، هل عليّ أن أغير رأيي تجاه قضية الجنسية؟ ما رأيكم.

وائل

Next month is what hardcore programmers would be looking for.  Coming september, Google Code Jam 2009 starts. It’s a  3 to 4 months long event. Programmers interested in Google Code Jam, should register and set the timing for the online competition. You can also go through previous years problems to just get the feel of the level of competition. Finals will be held on November 13 at Google Headquaters California.

Registration will be closed after September 3.

For more information and registration log on to

http://code.google.com/codejam/contest/

CodeChef Meetup

Codechef meetup is happening in Bangalore on August 29th 2009. Its open to all. There are five agenda for the event out of which two topics which get the highest votes will be covered.

For more details -

http://www.codechef.com/meetups/AUG09/

Someone pointed me to the practice problems for Google Code Jam and I couldn’t help but indulge.  I answered the first two problems, but I particularly found the 2nd puzzle (Always Turn Left) blog-worthy.  I have to be honest, it did take me a while to come up with a solid algorithm, but after that, coding it wasn’t very difficult.

It was quite hard for me to resist the urge of writing object oriented code, but I was able to somehow.

Here’s a few points about this puzzle:

1.  Given the two traversal paths, you will be able to visit every room in the perfect maze.

2.  It is better to keep track of the doors rather than the walls.  Since some moves won’t give you information about the walls.  Moving left for instance won’t tell you whether there is a wall to your right.

3. If you look closely at the character table for the output, you’ll notice that it can be represented as bits.

So on with the solution.  First some representation:

You can represent each direction as a short in powers of two:

private const short North   = 0x0001;
private const short South   = 0x0002;
private const short West    = 0x0004;
private const short East    = 0x0008;

I also defined a struct representing the coordinates of the rooms:

public struct Coordinates
{
    public int X;
    public int Y;

     public Coordinates( int x, int y )
     {
        X = x;
        Y = y;
     }
}

Now to the most important part of the solution.  I was inclined at first to represent the maze as a matrix.  The problem with that approach is the entrance could be from any column, thus messing up your representation.  To get around that problem, I represented the maze as a dictionary, where the key are the coordinates and the value is the door representation:

private Dictionary<Coordinates, short> _rooms = 
                                      new Dictionary<Coordinates,short>();

So for each room we visit, we are going to keep track of the coordinates and add/update the door we entered from in the value.  That’s pretty much it.  After traversing the two input paths, we would have visited each room and we would have marked all the doors. We also need to keep track of the minimum and maximum values for the x and y coordinates so we can infer the positions of the rooms in the maze using the first room as a reference point.

Here’s the main part of the solution:

public string DescribeMaze()
{
    //remove first step
    char[] firstRun     = _pathFromEntrance.Substring( 1 ).ToCharArray();
    char[] secondRun    = _pathFromExit.Substring( 1 ).ToCharArray();

    //set from which direction we came from and where we're going
    short from      = North;
    short facing    = South;
    Coordinates xy  = new Coordinates( 0, 0 ); //set first room as reference

    //Move through the maze from entrance to exit
    for( int i = 0; i < firstRun.Length; i++ )
    {
       move( firstRun[i], ref from, ref facing, ref xy, i == firstRun.Length - 1 );
    }

     //turn around
     short temp  = facing;
     facing      = from;
     from        = temp;

     //Now move through the maze from exit to entrance.  This will visit all unexplored rooms from firstRun
     for( int i = 0; i < secondRun.Length; i++ )
     {
        move( secondRun[i], ref from, ref facing, ref xy, i == secondRun.Length - 1 );
     }

     return this.ToString();
}

move() either updates the direction or adds the door to our data in case we are moving forward.

//do something, either move to the next room or change directions
private void move( char turn, ref short from, ref short facing, ref Coordinates xy, bool lastMove )
{
     switch( turn )
     {
        case 'L':
           faceLeft( ref facing ); break;
        case 'R':
           faceRight( ref facing ); break;
        case 'W':
           if( !_rooms.ContainsKey( xy ) )
               rooms.Add( xy, from ); //save new room
           else
               _rooms[xy] |= from; //add the door we entered from to the existing room
           moveForward( facing, ref from, ref xy, lastMove );
           break;
     }
}

faceLeft() and faceRight() are trivial. We simply switch directions:

//facing left merely changes your direction
private void faceLeft( ref short facing )
{
    switch( facing )
    {
       case South:
           facing = East;
           break;
       case North:
           facing = West;
           break;
       case East:
           facing = North;
           break;
        case West:
           facing = South;
           break;
    }
}

//facing right merely changes your direction
private void faceRight( ref short facing )
{
     switch( facing )
     {
        case South:
            facing = West;
            break;
        case North:
            facing = East;
            break;
         case East:
            facing = South;
             break;
         case West:
             facing = North;
             break;
     }
}

moveForward() involves some more logic. We keep track of the direction we came from and if we’re not stepping out of the maze, we update our coordinates. This is where we keep track of the minimum and maximum coordinates as well:

//step into the next room
private void moveForward( short facing, ref short from, ref Coordinates xy, bool lastMove )
{
    //put a door to where we are going
    _rooms[xy] |= facing;

    //now we change our previous direction
    switch( facing )
    {
       case South:
            from = North;
            break;
       case North:
            from = South;
            break;
       case East:
            from = West;
            break;
       case West:
            from = East;
            break;
    }

    //if we are stepping out of the maze, don't update the coordinates anymore
    if( lastMove )
        return;

    //update our current position
    switch( facing )
    {
        case South:
            xy.Y++;
            break;
        case North:
             xy.Y--;
             break;
        case East:
             xy.X++;
             break;
         case West:
             xy.X--;
             break;
    }

    //keep track of min/max distances
     if( xy.X > MaxX )
         MaxX = xy.X;
     if( xy.X < MinX )
         MinX = xy.X;
     if( xy.Y > MaxY )
         MaxY = xy.Y;
     if( xy.Y < MinY )
         MinY = xy.Y;
}

And finally, here’s how we transform our dictionary into a two dimensional array representation of the maze:

public override string ToString()
{
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

    int startRoomX = Math.Abs( MinX );
    int startRoomY = 0;

    //get number of rows and columns
    int C = Math.Abs( MinX ) + Math.Abs( MaxX ) + 1;
    int R = Math.Abs( MinY ) + Math.Abs( MaxY ) + 1;

    char[,] output = new char[C, R];

    foreach( KeyValuePair<Coordinates, short> pair in _rooms )
    {
        output[startRoomX + pair.Key.X, startRoomY + pair.Key.Y] = hexVals[ pair.Value - 1 ];
    }

    for( int i = 0; i < R; i++ )
    {
        for( int j = 0; j < C; j++ )
        {
            sb.Append( output[j, i] );
        }
        sb.AppendLine();
    }

    return sb.ToString();
}

That’s it!

I enjoy solving  Google Code Jam so here is the round 2 Problem:

So if I knew Python before I could easily get C-small. So here is my first complete program in Python solving the small C.

import decimal as dc

def f(t):
if t == 0: return dc.Decimal(1)
if t == 1: return dc.Decimal(3) + dc.Decimal(5).sqrt()
return (dc.Decimal(3) + dc.Decimal(5).sqrt()) * f(t-1)

dc.getcontext().prec = 1000
IN = open("file.in", "r")
OUT = open("file.out", "w")
line = '0'
line = IN.readline()
counter = int(line)
i = 1
while i <= counter:
line = IN.readline()
s = 'Case #' + str(i) + ':' + ' %03d' % (int(f(int(line))%1000))+'\n'
OUT.write(s)
i = i + 1

IN.close()
OUT.close()
print "done"

GCJ Sub Round 1A will start in less than 5 minutes. I hope I will make it in top 800. If not I will have one more chance! Later!

////+++Later Edit++++////

So sub-round 1A is over. And guess what? I made it in top 840 (as required for advancing). My results weren’t that great, but important was to be in top 840. I don’t know exactly how many competed in this sub-round, but I know  there were almost 4000 competitors registered at it and only 2394 managed to have non-zero score.

Ok, so here you can find the problems: click here

So let me tell you what I did in contest. So for problem A if you read it you have to minimize sum(x[i], y[i]) i = 0…n where x and y are the two given vectors, and being allowed to permute any of the vector.

For small input I coded quickly a solution with next_permutation as n was very small. But for Large input obvious this solution won’t work. That’s why I did a greedy which worked just fine. The minimal sum was given if you sorted the first vector in decreasing order and the second vector in increasing order. A small thing to be careful was that the sum would not fit on int, so long long was preffered.

For second problem that I read was C because it had a short statement. If you read C you will see that this is a math problem. So if you calculate (3 + sqrt(5)) ^ n is equal with X + Y * sqrt(5). Where X is always calculated modulo 1000 and Y would fit on Long Long. But it looks like still it looses precision. So I failed doing the small-input. Then I tried to find a good precision calculator online, and I decided to use Google Calculator for small (as n <= 30.) But guess what still I failed. After that I just gave up and read problem B. BTW: the solution was based on the fact that (3 + sqrt(5))^N + (3-sqrt(5))^N is an integer and (3-sqrt(5))^N < 1. (I won’t give more details )

For problem B, I saw the obvious solution (brute force in 2 ^ N, as N <= 10). But for large input I though only a max flow will solve it. But looks like a greedy would work, because there is a small detail in statement telling that a malted shake could be in a list of favorite of a person maxim one time.

For those that will participate in Sub-Round 1B and C, I wish good luck. See you in 2nd Round.

Hope you all know about Google Code Jam if not. visit http://code.google.com.

Qualifications Round is over for more then a week now. And I was one of the ~6400 competitors who advanced.  Next round which is Online Round 1 consists of 3 sub-rounds from which I am allowed to participate in maximum 2. From this round only ~2400 people will remain in the game (~800 from each sub-round), so 4000 competitors will have to wait one more year. Wish me luck because I want to remain in competition.

The first sub-round will start in about 16 hours and 45 minutes from now! I will get back after the rounds and I will post out some results. Also please leave a comment if you are a contestant too, let me know if you advanced or not Other than that more posts will be coming soon!

.vladut

Terlambat adalah kebiasaan saya. Sejujurnya, saya sangat menyesal telah menanam kebiasaan ini sedari dulu. Rencana saya mengikuti google code jam gagal lantaran tidak menyimak peraturan dan jadwalnya. Parahnya lagi, saya baru menyadari keterlambatan ini setelah menyelesaikan soal pertama.

Pasalnya, pada form pendaftaran di awal saya diberikan pilihan waktu untuk menyelesaikan Round I, dan saya menetapkan tanggal 26 Juli. Ya artinya masih 1 minggu lagi. Namun, hari ini saya terkejut karena baru tahu ada babak Qualification sebelum Round I. Sungguh kesalahan yang tidak dapat dimaafkan oleh Google, karena saya baru mengetahui bahwa babak Qualification berakhir 2 hari yang lalu setelah hari ini sempat menyelesaikan 1 soal. Itu pun saya sadar karena score saya tidak bertambah setelah menyelesaikan soal tersebut.

Dibalik kegagalan, ambil hikmahnya saja

Tapi saya sudah terlalu kenyang dengan hikmah.. hiks.. hiks..

It’s been a month or so since I last posted, so i thought I’d make a small personal update (something I do once every so often) to show I’m not gone, nor have I forgotten about the site or the extension

So here’s what’s new:
1. New (Awesome) Girlfriend (Picture of us here)

2. Re-kindled my interest in Photoshop, Digital Art, and Photo-manipulation. Refer to the picture of Diana and myself (above) and the piece of digital art, myThoughts, below.

myThoughts by ~lazyrussian on deviantART

3. I passed the Google Code Jam Qualifying Round

6059th place! (lol) – Hey, that’s not bad for programming in C++, a language that I picked up 2 weeks ago. Ok, ok, my girlfriend helped me a bunch too – she’s real good at this stuff. I registered under the following moniker: Glorious.Lovemaker

4. New Hobby: Geocaching (http://www.geocaching.com)

In the process of creating a website to chronicle my hides and finds. I’ll post it here once it’s complete – it’s almost done (90%).

5. Almost done a NEW Firefox Extension

Well. technically I’m updating an extension that was not updated for Firefox 3.0 and adding a feature. I started it a few weeks ago, but became quite pre-occupied with work and fun, that I had to drop it. I’ll try to get back to it this weekend, because this one will be HUGE if I get it working properly.

I won’t mention what it is until I finish it, if I finish it.

6. Learned a bit of Ajax

I’ll try to update Email This! with some AJAX code before the summer ends, and the craziness of grad school begins.

Alright, that’s all for now.

Keep on Emailin’…This! :p

The competition is named ‘Google Code Jam’

‘Do you enjoy solving tough problems and grappling with technical challenges? Then enter Google Code Jam!’The caption defined by google, for the same.

‘Google Code Jam is a coding competition in which professional and student programmers are asked to solve complex algorithmic challenges in a limited amount of time. The contest is all-inclusive: Google Code Jam lets you program in the coding language and development environment of your choice.’                      

If you have a coding creativity, show it here.. The  last date for Registeration.July17. Hurryyyy

Hurry!!!!

And Ofcourse, Yep! guys, I have tried this one. Its really tough and challenging. Read the Question carefully. It’s a time limited competition. For each correct solution, you will get a minimum of 5 points. The most exciting thing: The highest score so far is 15.[hard but not out of reach] Its your time, buddy… Race thru the Road of programming, and be a winner .

Key Dates.

More details available at  code.google.com/codejam.

Yep guys, I have tried this one. Its really tough and challenging. Read the Question carefully. It’s a time limited competition. For each correct solution, you will get a minimum of 5 points. The most exciting thing: The highest score so far is 15. Its your time, buddy… Race thru the Road of programming, and be a winner .

Finally, it is time for the qualification round!!

It was only recently that i found out what the event actually was -

“Google Code Jam is a coding competition in which professional and student programmers are asked to solve complex algorithmic challenges in a limited amount of time. The contest is all-inclusive: Google Code Jam lets you program in the coding language and development environment of your choice.” – (Scary!!)

Well…I had actually heard of this before, but until some time ago, I was always of the opinion that it makes sense to take part only in contests that you stand a chance of winning. Then I happened to join TopCoder…it was there I realized that it would be almost impossible for a person like me to actually “win” anything. However I gave it a shot and found out how much fun one could have by just competing, and so I decided to give a try to GCJ…

visit Google Code Jam for more info, Qualification starts
4:30 AM (IST) on July 17th

All the best

Danilo Barros Andrade
danilo@blogdacomunicacao.com.br

O maior desafio do mundo de programação está com as inscrições abertas até 17 de julho. Organizado pela Google, o evento consiste na resolução de quatro problemas de algoritmos no menor tempo possível. Os 500 participantes que se saírem melhor no desafio ganharão uma viagem para Belo Horizonte, MG, onde participarão das semifinais. Destes, os 100 melhores estarão na final, que acontecerá na sede do Google, em Mountain View, EUA.

O primeiro colocado no concurso levará 10 mil dólares. O segundo, 5 mil dólares. O terceiro, 4,5 mil dólares. Ocupantes da 4ª à 10ª colocação receberão, cada um, 1,5 mil dólares. Quem ficar entre a 11ª e a 30ª posição leva 1 mil dólares. Participantes que ficarem entre o 31º e o 50º lugar ganham 750 dólares. Da 51ª posição à 75º, o prêmio é de 500 dólares. Por fim, os finalistas que ficarem entre a 76ª e a 100ª levam para casa 250 dólares. Vale lembrar, todavia, que os primeiros colocados terão grandes chances de se tornarem funcionários do Google.

Se você manja de programação e se considera um fera. Participe. Para se inscrever basta acessar o link abaixo.

http://code.google.com/codejam.

Em 2006, mais de 21 mil competidores de mais de 100 países participaram do Google Code Jam, e o russo Petr Mitrichev foi o grande vencedor.

Brasil
O número de brasileiros teve um aumento  de mais de 280% em relação ao mesmo período das inscrições do último Code Jam (2006).

Já pensou? Ter seu nome gravado nos melhores sites do mundo, ganhar um dinheirinho e ainda correr o risco de ser funcionário da empresa mais valiosa do mundo? É uma boa, não?

Fonte: Google Brasil/ IDG Now/ Google Discovery/Under Google

Ayer llegó a mis ojos este sitio.. http://code.google.com/codejam/ donde Google presenta un desafío a los programadores del mundo entero.

Google Code Jam es una competencia donde tanto estudiantes como profesionales de cualquier país son enfrentados ante un complejo desafío algorítmico que tendrán que resolver en un tiempo estipulado por la competición. Pueden resolverlo en cualquier lenguaje, en cualquier plataforma.

Google Code Jam comienza en Julio y continúa en Agosto, se compite en rondas online contra otros competidores del mundo. Los mejores 500 pasarán a una segunda fase donde tendrán que competir desde las mismísimas oficinas de Google (oficinas locales a la región del competidor). Los mejores 100 competiran en las oficinas de Google en Mountain View, California el viernes 14 de Febrero.

Pueden consultar las reglas y demases en el sitio que les pasé más arriba

SUERTE PARA LOS COMPETIDORES!!

Anuncios >> balanzas / tarot / posicionamiento google tarot

Google Code Jam is back.
We are excited to bring you
our newest coding challenge. Check out our new location – code.google.com/codejam. There, you can learn more about the contest and register to compete for more than $80,000 in cash prizes against programmers from around the world.

View previous Code Jam Information.

Sebelumnya saya mohon maaf karena 2 kali ngeblog dalam kurun waktu sangat dekat, saya lagi narsis nih.

Walaupun sering gagal dalam kompetisi, akhir-akhir ini saya kembali suka ngikutin salah satu diantaranya dan malah berencana mengikuti beberapa yang lain. Selain masalah recognition, juga mengisi waktu senggang yang sangat membosankan di Kuwait.

makan, tidur, chattig, makan, chatting, tidur, chatting, kyana, sonaa….
BOSAAAAAN!!

Tentang Google Code Jam
Ini adalah sebuah kompetisi yang cukup besar yang mempertemukan programmer dengan programmer lainnya dalam menyelesaikan soal-soal yang tidak terlalu mudah dan mesti diselesaikan gak pake lama. Bukan cuma buat professional programmer, student pun boleh ikutan.
Mengenai bahasa pemrograman, terserah. Saya sendiri memilih untuk menyelesaikannya pakai C#. karena saya cuma bisa itu doang selain sedikit mengerti c, c++, vb.net, java, nasm, avr, prolog dan php.

Registrasi akan ditutup tgl 16 juli, berarti bentar lagi. kalau tertarik mending buruan deh, sebelum kehabisan *kayak iklan jaman gw kecil*. Setelah daftar, anda bisa langsung latihan soal. saya udah kerjain satu soal, habis itu males

Target saya gak terlalu tinggi, cuma berharap 100 besar.

Google Code Jam adalah kompetisi coding bagi programmer professional dan pelajar. Pada kompetisi itu peserta diminta untuk memperbaiki algoritma yang kompleks pada waktu yang terbatas. Peserta bebas memilih bahasa pemrograman yang disukai.

Artikel selengkapnya bisa Anda temukan di: –>Google Code Jam: Kompetisi coding bagi programmer profesional dan pelajar

Competitions for Business Plans or other events like Science competitions that supposedly try to make it fun for people basically to compete & win something actually have some other intent behind these that the competitors sometimes don’t know about.  The VC’s and Angel Investors who want to find fresh business plans like to see what floats to the top.  Science focused or other Corporations who need the scientists will sponsor the science competitions in hopes of finding their future producers for their companies.  And Google is no exception — they really know how to play in this arena.

Case in point:

I don’t keep up with the developer world, but I accidentally saw a post about how they were going to sponsor an event called the “Google Code Jam.”  The first thought in my mind was “hmmmmmmm, these guys are really good.  they’re going to convince some of the best developers (especially the ones that are competitive) to travel to some event & prove how good they are and WHAM! A job offer or follow up emails from their recruiters will be in the top finishers of the event.”  They’ll continue their dominance in the online world by getting the best — especially since they got incredible benefits to boot to lure those developers anyway…perhaps something Microsoft needs to do?