Yeah, that SOUNDS fast, but how many slashdot posts asking how many Library of Congresses it is would it transer in that time?
Why is this a "programming" challange?
on
Google Code Jam 2004
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I read through the various sample problems, and I see nothing at all resembling a "programming challenge". Sure there are algorithms that need to be written, but it's just that, algorithms and logic. Things you can write down on a sheet of paper in long hand. The only reason programming is involved in any way, shape, or form is because it's an easy way to test people's algorithms, not becuase it's a fundamental part of this "challenge".
I offer that a mathematician who has never in his life even SEEN or HEARD of a computer could solve these problems, all of them, without a line of code. How then can this be considered a "programming" challenge?
A REAL programming challenge would deal with the real problems that programmers face: memory leaks, error correction, fault tolerance, user interface design, maintainability, speed, scalability, efficient object model design, database schema design, etc.
It's unfortunate that people look at these contests and think, whoah, that dude must be some hot shit programmer to be able to solve that! But really, he could be a crap programmer (hell they offer VB.NET for gosh sakes!) and just took a whole lot of logic and calculus. That doesn't mean if you hire him he'll do a damn bit of good for your company. It doesn't mean that any project he works on will be in any way maintainable. In fact, more likely than not, any code he writes will be only understandable by him and will turn into a taboo "don't touch it becuase it'll break if you sneeze" mess that costs endless amounts of pain and money.
I wish for once I saw someone have the intelligence to put out a REAL *programming* challange. One that requires you to think about entire systems, about design and IMPLICATIONS of design, about the subtle balance between speed and stability, about the umpteen million things that divides the '1337 h4X0r who is brilliant but considers random crashes to be expected from the professional and vastly underappreciated programmer who's work is so rock solid that he doesn't need a pager for the weekends. THOSE are the people who should be getting the props.
I thought the kind of exercises used in these competitions were rather contrived and "hard" computer science problems... I am not sure the concepts developed could be easily applied to, say, developing a better desktop or interoperating better with proprietary applications/file formats.
You are right, and in fact, there is a good chance that any winners of this contest are more than likely not fit to work on "real" code, i.e. the stuff that keeps banks, pacemakers and ATMs working. Being fast is STRONG sign that the code you are creating is poorly thought out, riddled with bugs and memory leaks, or just plain broken. Coding most of these problems looks like pure algorithms work, stuff that you would never in a million years write yourself because usually there will be a library that can do it better and is fully tested.
Surely you can see the difficulties associated with such a system. First of all, you want the media companies to give you replacements on a $20 DVD or a $15 CD until the end of time? Really now. What should they do if the particular DVD you want replaced is rare and out-of-print? It's not like someone is recording this media on a CD burner, they actually use a master and stamp out copies. Should they stop everything and stamp ONE copy for you and FedEx it to the store for your $1.00 replacement? Sounds like a profitable business model.
Rare? Out of print? If it's all digital, they can afford to keep it backed up until the end of time for less than the cost of keeping the plumbing and lights working. There should NEVER be a such thing as "out of print". You should be able to download what you want, WHEN you want, not when it's re-released as a "special edition" 15 years after it's been promised to "never be sold again". There should never be a such thing as rare.
The fact that there IS rare and out of print music, dispite the fact that it's perfectly feasible and CHEAP to do so now, shows the hubris of the RIAA and is why they are going to be eaten alive by P2P and future technologies.
Rio doesn't get it, at least as far as consumers like me are concerned. I could get a player with more space, better spec and cooler whizbangs, but if it still looks like a turd dropped by the terminator robot, i don't want it. The ipod mini is awesome not becuase it's the absolute best, but because it's got the packaging that makes it feel really nice and spiffy to use, and I don't feel like a git when somone looks at what i'm carrying. even the normal ipod doesn't cut it for me. when will people stop using chrome on thier gadgets!?
For example, I could now see my Mom's name and phone number every time a telemarketer calls me. Now both my caller ID and Anonymous caller ID blocking is circumvented. Now I am totally unable to avoid the torrent of calls from telemarketers that has plagued my phone number for years.
Then it's time to start saying "yes". Yes I want your product, not just one, but 40,000 of them. I want to be a reseller. Keep them going as long as possible, get them all excited, and then gently lay the phone down next to the tv and go have dinner.
Of course, that's provided said person doesn't pass a law to protect people in his situation once they're discovered.
Dispite being ineligable to run for president due to not being old enough, I fully expect to win by a landslide this year on my one single campaign promise... 100% of the 2004 US treasury divided equally between all of the diebold stockholders, employees and thier respective family members and friends.
What about the "just got lucky" factor? It may take thousands of years to run through all of the available keyspace, but what if the second key that I try just happens to be the right one?
It might take thousands of years or it might take until tomorrow morning, or anything in between. But I don't see any way to absolutely guarantee that it won't be tomorrow morning; it seems just as likely as "thousands of years".
In that case, why decrypt it at all? If you just create random strings of digits eventually you are GUARANTEED to hit upon the entire halflife2 game, complete with patches, and including additional, SUPER AWESOME content, such as the level that seamlessly merges the entire DOOM3 game and has a character that looks identical to a naked natilie portman who speaks directly to you, in your own voice, perfectly, and then relives your early childhood in grainy 35mm footage before showing that you were, in fact, abducted by aliens.
Sure, it MIGHT take a hundred quadrillion billion zillion years, but you MIGHT hit upon it on your second try, right?
1) Don't carry anything valuable. They'll make you dump everything on a table, which they don't watch very well. For security staff, they're pretty slack about other people's stuff.
If they lose it, claim there "MAY BE" a bomb in it and watch how fast they get it back.
But illusions are not reality. Rep. John Lewis used to be tagged by the "security" issue. But he can bypass that if he registers as John R. Lewis. Which tells you how reliable that "security" measure is.
I understand your point, but I wonder, which of the two statements show us how reliable our securtity is: 1) That a man could change his name and get past security, or 2) That a MEMBER OF THE FUCKING CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES is considered a suicide hijacking threat?
Man these people are idiots to a degree that insults clinical "idiots" who can't tie thier own shoes...
As much as I hate cigarette smoke, I'm not sure I want robots running around yanking cigarettes from people's mouths. After all, letting someone smoke would clearly be a violation of the "harm through inaction " law of robotics.
But then again, if you did rip the butts from thier mouths, they might feel bad or depressed that they are not in control of thier own actions, thus harming them even more psycologically... Oh no! Paradox! Cannot compute.
REBOOTING...
ERROR 0x10: Cannot find device driver, defaulting to: KILL ALL HUMANS MODE
If a judge cannot hear both sides and understand the issue in ONE HOUR, then his capacity of intellect and reasoning are at best as good as a chicken. Get rid of em, send em packing home.
Yes, because it's SO easy, as a defendant, to just toss out a judge while you are on trial because he can't see it your way...
Try this: fill a sink or bathtub with water. Swirl the water, gently, with your hand, clockwise. Unplug the drain. Watch the rotation, write down the direction, clockwise or couterclockwise. Repeat, but swirl the water in the opposite direction, that is, counterclockwise. Watch the rotation direction as the water goes down the drain. Compare with your notes. Did you have to move to the opposite hemisphere to make the water rotate in the other direction?
Actually, I just tried that... and each time it swirled the SAME DIRECTION. The first time it just went down, and the second time it started swirling the way I started it, but soon it flipped and started going down the same way as the first... what gives?
I still can't go to the store and grab some Twinkies off the shelf and it be ok.
Can you go to the store and take a picture of a twinkie? If yes, then what if you had a camera that could make an exact molecule for molecule copy of the twinkie. In that case would you be wrong coping the twinkie and walking out? Are you THAT brainwashed yet?
"And if they loose, the each member of the class could provide a coupon to the RIAA for $5 off a CD..."
Considering that the case is all about the monetary worth of mp3s, they should have to share precisely $5 worth of mp3s with the RIAA.
Well, that is just about brilliant! Walk in to the court room and make the following case... If a copy of an MP3 is worth real money, and somebody is willing to pay $5 for an mp3 of me singing a song I just made up now (like, say, my brother will), then a DVD full of copied of that song seem like appropriate payment, don't you think? If the case is presented convincingly enough, I have a feeling the judge my agree with a wink and a nod and you'll end up being a hero.
No, and let me tell you why... At the moment they are only prosecuting people who they believe have copied thier music, or so they say, but imagine, just imagine, that one day they realize how easy it is to get people to cough up money when threatened and start to file suits against anyone, regardless of guilt.
Could YOU defend yourself if a multinational corporation decided to sue your for whatever? Even if you are GUARANTEED to win, you'd still end up paying tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. Even if you are GUARANTEED to win, you could eat months, even years, of your life in the court room. Do you have that much money under your mattress? Does your job let you take off years of time to prepare a case to defend yourself against false allegations? Does your wife/girlfriend mind being penniless, homeless, probably living with your parents, racking up debt on your credit cards, having the negative stigma of a long, drawn-out legal battl eover your head, for a couple of years while you sort this mess out becuase she knows eventually you'll win and then be free to retrain your skills, find a new job and start your life over from the bottom again?
Fight, but don't try to win... Don't even get a lawyer... But make sure you let the media know that you are going to martyr yourself. As soon as they make mention of how much money you have cost them, take out your wireless laptop and start your perl script to copying a single mp3 over and over again. Have a nice little running counter going on the screen of how much money you have taken from thier babies' mouths. Once you reach a number higher than the amount of money than they reported on thier taxes, or more money than the GDP, whichever, as the court why they are not being procecuted for tax evasion... after all, in a couple fo minutes, they will have just virtually lost more money than exists in teh nation. Then offer to plead guilt only if you are made to pay back the ENTIRE sum that you have stolen from them, all ten quadrillion billion dollars. Any judge with a sense of irony may just let you do it... File for bankruptcy and ride the media parade out the courtroom door.
This example serves to prove why corporations should finally be given the right to vote in elections, according to how much money they attribute to the economy.
I hope they DO pass that law... Considering how many corporations hide thier money in tax shelters and offshore our jobs, they'd be given negative votes...
Maybe I'm naive, but I think it's at least slightly possible that people in the government are trying to make it harder for thousands of people to be blown up.
Yes, you ARE naive. A perfect example is the CAPSII system of profiling suspects to search at the airport instead of a blanket random search. It's mathematically provable that the CAPS2 system is LESS secure and has a gaping fundamental loophole that terrorists can exploit that random sampling does not. But, to the ignorant, profiling SOUNDS much safer, since all the dark-skinned poor people can be pulled out of line and harassed, so it was enacted by the government.
And a personal anecdote: I was flying home from Japan once, and was searched 6 times during that adventure. The entire time I had a hermetically sealed biohazard box given to me by a hospital worker to put my home-made super-hot hot-sauce in, complete with all sorts of biohazard flowers and warnings that the content was amazingly dangerous. It wasn't some joke box, it was the real deal from a real AIDS hospital that a friend nursed at. This was looked at and passed over by not less than 15 different people who did not open it or even look twice.
They did take away my Korean chopsticks (made of metal, but not sharp or anything).
Your government is not trying to protect you at all. They ARE trying to offer you the slight illusion of protection and betting on the fact that the 9/11 events were a fluke.
I own my body, and it's my property to do with as I like in life or death
In theory your idea is reasonable, but the world is not always a nice foo-foo happy place. If organ sales could be made, you might see perfectly healthy people willing to committing suicide to sell thier organs to help thier families out in hard times. You might see people coerced into selling thier organs. You might see people killed by orgn thiefs who know ways of selling them. It would not be a good thing for society to let you do as you wish, and I'm all for a better society.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, that SOUNDS fast, but how many slashdot posts asking how many Library of Congresses it is would it transer in that time?
I read through the various sample problems, and I see nothing at all resembling a "programming challenge". Sure there are algorithms that need to be written, but it's just that, algorithms and logic. Things you can write down on a sheet of paper in long hand. The only reason programming is involved in any way, shape, or form is because it's an easy way to test people's algorithms, not becuase it's a fundamental part of this "challenge".
I offer that a mathematician who has never in his life even SEEN or HEARD of a computer could solve these problems, all of them, without a line of code. How then can this be considered a "programming" challenge?
A REAL programming challenge would deal with the real problems that programmers face: memory leaks, error correction, fault tolerance, user interface design, maintainability, speed, scalability, efficient object model design, database schema design, etc.
It's unfortunate that people look at these contests and think, whoah, that dude must be some hot shit programmer to be able to solve that! But really, he could be a crap programmer (hell they offer VB.NET for gosh sakes!) and just took a whole lot of logic and calculus. That doesn't mean if you hire him he'll do a damn bit of good for your company. It doesn't mean that any project he works on will be in any way maintainable. In fact, more likely than not, any code he writes will be only understandable by him and will turn into a taboo "don't touch it becuase it'll break if you sneeze" mess that costs endless amounts of pain and money.
I wish for once I saw someone have the intelligence to put out a REAL *programming* challange. One that requires you to think about entire systems, about design and IMPLICATIONS of design, about the subtle balance between speed and stability, about the umpteen million things that divides the '1337 h4X0r who is brilliant but considers random crashes to be expected from the professional and vastly underappreciated programmer who's work is so rock solid that he doesn't need a pager for the weekends. THOSE are the people who should be getting the props.
I thought the kind of exercises used in these competitions were rather contrived and "hard" computer science problems... I am not sure the concepts developed could be easily applied to, say, developing a better desktop or interoperating better with proprietary applications/file formats.
You are right, and in fact, there is a good chance that any winners of this contest are more than likely not fit to work on "real" code, i.e. the stuff that keeps banks, pacemakers and ATMs working. Being fast is STRONG sign that the code you are creating is poorly thought out, riddled with bugs and memory leaks, or just plain broken. Coding most of these problems looks like pure algorithms work, stuff that you would never in a million years write yourself because usually there will be a library that can do it better and is fully tested.
Surely you can see the difficulties associated with such a system. First of all, you want the media companies to give you replacements on a $20 DVD or a $15 CD until the end of time? Really now. What should they do if the particular DVD you want replaced is rare and out-of-print? It's not like someone is recording this media on a CD burner, they actually use a master and stamp out copies. Should they stop everything and stamp ONE copy for you and FedEx it to the store for your $1.00 replacement? Sounds like a profitable business model.
Rare? Out of print? If it's all digital, they can afford to keep it backed up until the end of time for less than the cost of keeping the plumbing and lights working. There should NEVER be a such thing as "out of print". You should be able to download what you want, WHEN you want, not when it's re-released as a "special edition" 15 years after it's been promised to "never be sold again". There should never be a such thing as rare.
The fact that there IS rare and out of print music, dispite the fact that it's perfectly feasible and CHEAP to do so now, shows the hubris of the RIAA and is why they are going to be eaten alive by P2P and future technologies.
You probably meant "duct" tape. Unless of course you were referring to that special tape huntsmen use to secure their birds to the wall for display...
Or I meant duck tape which is a perfectly valid, if somewhat COMPLETELY CORRECT, way to reffer to what the heathens call duct tape.
Rio doesn't get it, at least as far as consumers like me are concerned. I could get a player with more space, better spec and cooler whizbangs, but if it still looks like a turd dropped by the terminator robot, i don't want it. The ipod mini is awesome not becuase it's the absolute best, but because it's got the packaging that makes it feel really nice and spiffy to use, and I don't feel like a git when somone looks at what i'm carrying. even the normal ipod doesn't cut it for me. when will people stop using chrome on thier gadgets!?
For example, I could now see my Mom's name and phone number every time a telemarketer calls me. Now both my caller ID and Anonymous caller ID blocking is circumvented. Now I am totally unable to avoid the torrent of calls from telemarketers that has plagued my phone number for years.
Then it's time to start saying "yes". Yes I want your product, not just one, but 40,000 of them. I want to be a reseller. Keep them going as long as possible, get them all excited, and then gently lay the phone down next to the tv and go have dinner.
Of course, that's provided said person doesn't pass a law to protect people in his situation once they're discovered.
Dispite being ineligable to run for president due to not being old enough, I fully expect to win by a landslide this year on my one single campaign promise... 100% of the 2004 US treasury divided equally between all of the diebold stockholders, employees and thier respective family members and friends.
What about the "just got lucky" factor? It may take thousands of years to run through all of the available keyspace, but what if the second key that I try just happens to be the right one?
It might take thousands of years or it might take until tomorrow morning, or anything in between. But I don't see any way to absolutely guarantee that it won't be tomorrow morning; it seems just as likely as "thousands of years".
In that case, why decrypt it at all? If you just create random strings of digits eventually you are GUARANTEED to hit upon the entire halflife2 game, complete with patches, and including additional, SUPER AWESOME content, such as the level that seamlessly merges the entire DOOM3 game and has a character that looks identical to a naked natilie portman who speaks directly to you, in your own voice, perfectly, and then relives your early childhood in grainy 35mm footage before showing that you were, in fact, abducted by aliens.
Sure, it MIGHT take a hundred quadrillion billion zillion years, but you MIGHT hit upon it on your second try, right?
These kids will back off fast when they realize that the stuff they say online can find its way back to mom and dad.
You were never a kid were you? THis is called being a tattle tale and it makes the punishment WORSE.
2:1, even money.
The downloader now has in his posession something he obtained without legitimately paying for. That's stealing.
Let me see if I can teach you why you are wrong:
The girl killed that rapist when he tried to sexually molest her. That's murder.
The man told a dirty joke at work. That's rape.
You see yet?
Calling things what they aren't doesn't make them true.
1) Don't carry anything valuable. They'll make you dump everything on a table, which they don't watch very well. For security staff, they're pretty slack about other people's stuff.
If they lose it, claim there "MAY BE" a bomb in it and watch how fast they get it back.
But illusions are not reality. Rep. John Lewis used to be tagged by the "security" issue. But he can bypass that if he registers as John R. Lewis. Which tells you how reliable that "security" measure is.
I understand your point, but I wonder, which of the two statements show us how reliable our securtity is: 1) That a man could change his name and get past security, or 2) That a MEMBER OF THE FUCKING CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES is considered a suicide hijacking threat?
Man these people are idiots to a degree that insults clinical "idiots" who can't tie thier own shoes...
As much as I hate cigarette smoke, I'm not sure I want robots running around yanking cigarettes from people's mouths. After all, letting someone smoke would clearly be a violation of the "harm through inaction " law of robotics.
...
But then again, if you did rip the butts from thier mouths, they might feel bad or depressed that they are not in control of thier own actions, thus harming them even more psycologically... Oh no! Paradox! Cannot compute.
REBOOTING
ERROR 0x10: Cannot find device driver, defaulting to: KILL ALL HUMANS MODE
System Ready.
If a judge cannot hear both sides and understand the issue in ONE HOUR, then his capacity of intellect and reasoning are at best as good as a chicken. Get rid of em, send em packing home.
Yes, because it's SO easy, as a defendant, to just toss out a judge while you are on trial because he can't see it your way...
Try this: fill a sink or bathtub with water. Swirl the water, gently, with your hand, clockwise. Unplug the drain. Watch the rotation, write down the direction, clockwise or couterclockwise. Repeat, but swirl the water in the opposite direction, that is, counterclockwise. Watch the rotation direction as the water goes down the drain. Compare with your notes. Did you have to move to the opposite hemisphere to make the water rotate in the other direction?
Actually, I just tried that... and each time it swirled the SAME DIRECTION. The first time it just went down, and the second time it started swirling the way I started it, but soon it flipped and started going down the same way as the first... what gives?
I still can't go to the store and grab some Twinkies off the shelf and it be ok.
Can you go to the store and take a picture of a twinkie? If yes, then what if you had a camera that could make an exact molecule for molecule copy of the twinkie. In that case would you be wrong coping the twinkie and walking out? Are you THAT brainwashed yet?
"And if they loose, the each member of the class could provide a coupon to the RIAA for $5 off a CD..."
Considering that the case is all about the monetary worth of mp3s, they should have to share precisely $5 worth of mp3s with the RIAA.
Well, that is just about brilliant! Walk in to the court room and make the following case... If a copy of an MP3 is worth real money, and somebody is willing to pay $5 for an mp3 of me singing a song I just made up now (like, say, my brother will), then a DVD full of copied of that song seem like appropriate payment, don't you think? If the case is presented convincingly enough, I have a feeling the judge my agree with a wink and a nod and you'll end up being a hero.
Tyranny? Are you out of your mind?
No, and let me tell you why... At the moment they are only prosecuting people who they believe have copied thier music, or so they say, but imagine, just imagine, that one day they realize how easy it is to get people to cough up money when threatened and start to file suits against anyone, regardless of guilt.
Could YOU defend yourself if a multinational corporation decided to sue your for whatever? Even if you are GUARANTEED to win, you'd still end up paying tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. Even if you are GUARANTEED to win, you could eat months, even years, of your life in the court room. Do you have that much money under your mattress? Does your job let you take off years of time to prepare a case to defend yourself against false allegations? Does your wife/girlfriend mind being penniless, homeless, probably living with your parents, racking up debt on your credit cards, having the negative stigma of a long, drawn-out legal battl eover your head, for a couple of years while you sort this mess out becuase she knows eventually you'll win and then be free to retrain your skills, find a new job and start your life over from the bottom again?
Tyranny comes in many forms.
Fight, but don't try to win... Don't even get a lawyer... But make sure you let the media know that you are going to martyr yourself. As soon as they make mention of how much money you have cost them, take out your wireless laptop and start your perl script to copying a single mp3 over and over again. Have a nice little running counter going on the screen of how much money you have taken from thier babies' mouths. Once you reach a number higher than the amount of money than they reported on thier taxes, or more money than the GDP, whichever, as the court why they are not being procecuted for tax evasion... after all, in a couple fo minutes, they will have just virtually lost more money than exists in teh nation. Then offer to plead guilt only if you are made to pay back the ENTIRE sum that you have stolen from them, all ten quadrillion billion dollars. Any judge with a sense of irony may just let you do it... File for bankruptcy and ride the media parade out the courtroom door.
This example serves to prove why corporations should finally be given the right to vote in elections, according to how much money they attribute to the economy.
I hope they DO pass that law... Considering how many corporations hide thier money in tax shelters and offshore our jobs, they'd be given negative votes...
Yes. In the case of the knives, just the edge is ceramic. The whole blade being ceramic would be very cool, but expensive, and prone to shattering.
That's odd, I have a fully ceramic, and damn sharp, blade in my kitchen right now... cost me $30.
Maybe I'm naive, but I think it's at least slightly possible that people in the government are trying to make it harder for thousands of people to be blown up.
Yes, you ARE naive. A perfect example is the CAPSII system of profiling suspects to search at the airport instead of a blanket random search. It's mathematically provable that the CAPS2 system is LESS secure and has a gaping fundamental loophole that terrorists can exploit that random sampling does not. But, to the ignorant, profiling SOUNDS much safer, since all the dark-skinned poor people can be pulled out of line and harassed, so it was enacted by the government.
(For mor information go look here)
And a personal anecdote: I was flying home from Japan once, and was searched 6 times during that adventure. The entire time I had a hermetically sealed biohazard box given to me by a hospital worker to put my home-made super-hot hot-sauce in, complete with all sorts of biohazard flowers and warnings that the content was amazingly dangerous. It wasn't some joke box, it was the real deal from a real AIDS hospital that a friend nursed at. This was looked at and passed over by not less than 15 different people who did not open it or even look twice.
They did take away my Korean chopsticks (made of metal, but not sharp or anything).
Your government is not trying to protect you at all. They ARE trying to offer you the slight illusion of protection and betting on the fact that the 9/11 events were a fluke.
I own my body, and it's my property to do with as I like in life or death
In theory your idea is reasonable, but the world is not always a nice foo-foo happy place. If organ sales could be made, you might see perfectly healthy people willing to committing suicide to sell thier organs to help thier families out in hard times. You might see people coerced into selling thier organs. You might see people killed by orgn thiefs who know ways of selling them. It would not be a good thing for society to let you do as you wish, and I'm all for a better society.