Winners of the 'Google CodeJam 2004' Contest

astrab writes "The Argentinian programmer Sergio Sancho, 30, won the 'Google Code Jam 2004' programming contest, whose final was held yesterday in Google HQ (Mountain View, CA), and pocketed $10,000. According to Dirson, Sergio studies at UBA (University of Buenos Aires, Argentina) and works at the Research and Development Center which Core Security owns in Buenos Aires. More information also in the official Google Blog."

Comments

Direct link to the winners circle

[Dancin_Santa]

http://www.google.com/press/pressrel/codejamwinner s.html

Coolness. If there was any one company I would trust to "Do no evil", it would be Google.

Re:Direct link to the winners circle

[harves]

OK, I'm getting sick of this. From all the evidence I have seen, Google bows to political pressure just the same as any citizen. Give me an example where Google has tried to impose it's own opinion on people of the world? Where does it use it's brand power to impose it's political or self-serving commercial views (which would be evil)?

Bowing to politicial views of a country is not evil. Just because it has power in the world (as a trusted source of information and thus a fantastic propaganda machine) does not mean that the heads of Google should wield that power for any reason. Google should not be a 'knight in shining armour'.

Re:Not much info available

[SilentStrike]

He won the final match, so he got the $10k. It was just like an ordinary Topcoder Single Round Match (problems were written by TopCoder employees, not Google Employees). You can read more about TopCoder here.

I competed in the tournament and qualified (was about 160 out of 2500, first 500 made the cut) in the qualifications, but then lost in the first online round (280 out of 450 in round 1, needed to be 250).

The competitions on TopCoder are fun in general. If you want to hone your algorithm skills, I recommend you compete. And you can even put your referer as rrenaud when you sign up;).

Re:Working on Windows boxes?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it wasn't that bad. They had kindly installed emacs (both X and Gnu), and the applet is the same anyway.

Too bad windows doesn't come with perl though :-/

(oh, and Sergio is a nice guy. Good for him!)

Re:Thanks.

[xYoni69x]

Yes - Reid Barton is becoming a very recognizable name around contests of this sort. He participated in the IOI (International Olympiad in Informatics), the IMO (International Mathematics Olympiad), the Putnam (an American mathematics olympiad), and of course the Google Code Jam (and maybe others I missed - ACM?). In short: This guy owns you and me.

It's actually common for people to participate in both computer science and mathematics contests. Remember, the CS contests (IOI, ACM, GCJ) are about computer science, not just programming. (Obviously you have to know how to program, but that's not at all what you're being tested on.) The problems themselves are very mathematical, so the people who participate are usually pretty mathematical themselves.

Re:Not much info available

[Anonymous Coward]

The game space thing was a 6x6 version of 'peg solitaire', with a max of 12 moves. The problem size was chosen so that you can do it using brute force, but only if you search in both directions (from the start and goal state) simultaneously. If I had figured that out 5 minutes earlier, I would have won :-(

The two easy problems were:

- a[1]=b[1]=1, a[n] = either a[n-1] or b[n-1], b[n] = a[n-1]+b[n-1], given a pair of values figure out n.

- Build a magic square using the standard algorithm (see wikipedia), the only problem being that the square was 40000x40000.

Felicitaciones! But you better start running!

[chord.wav]

Over here in Argentina, isn't very healthy to have your name near that ammount of money in the frontpage of the newspapers.
With kidnaps beign in the top ten of modus operandies(?) prefered by delincuents, he should start applying for a (name a 1st world country) visa ASAP.
Professional tennis players had to ask the media not to mention the ammount of cash they won for that matter.

Does this count?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=16 20&ncid=1211&e=2&u=/sv/20041016/tc_sv/googlesdeskt opsearchisvaluableyetcreepy

Desktop Search does three things in particular that could compromise your privacy when someone else uses your computer:

First, the software keeps a copy of all your AOL Instant Messenger conversations. AIM, for many users, is like talking over the water cooler at work -- you say things you don't want preserved for posterity. Until now, AIM conversations with your buddies disappeared from your computer the moment you closed the discussion window. Desktop Search, however, makes a copy of AIM conversations and keeps them forever.

Second, the software keeps its own copy of all your Outlook and Outlook Express e-mail messages -- even after you delete them from within Outlook or Outlook Express. A confidential company memo, in other words, will still pop up during Google searches after you've emptied the Deleted Items folder in Outlook.

Third, the software keeps a copy of every Web page you visit and lists those pages in search results with the date and time of your visit. This even includes Web pages that are supposed to be secure from prying eyes, such as those run by online banking sites.

Re:Google Geography Lesson...

[Distinguished Hero]

Additional cash prizes went to the other top 50 finalists, who are working or studying in the United States and in 16 other countries, from Scandinavia to central Europe to Hong Kong, Korea, Australia and New Zealand.
I know we have the EC, but 'central Europe' is now a country? When did we get downgraded from a continent?

Scandinavia, Honk Kong and Korea aren't countries either...