This is from the Google Analytics report for the past month on my blog. I had noticed that recently Google Chrome is begin used more often among my blog viewers. But this month it has passed Internet Explorer, now taking the second place after Firefox:
My audience, however, is largely biased. Looking at the worldwide market-share here, as of May 2010, IE is leading the game, with Firefox and Chrome following it with a rather large gap.
At any rate, regardless of whether it’s the second or the third, Chrome is definitely gaining ground in the browser market.
From Wikipedia on Pac-man’s kill screen:
Pac-Man has a famous kill screen, often referred to as the Pac-Man Bomb Screen. The game’s level counter was a single 8-bit byte, and could therefore store only 256 distinct values (0–255). Reaching the 256th level causes a counter that is used while drawing the fruit to overflow to zero, causing 256 fruits and seven blank spaces to be drawn.
May 21st, 2010 in
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Being an Iranian makes your life a lot harder when it comes to programming contests. I remember once I won a 50$ price in one of the TopCoder contests (I think it was TCCC’06, third round). I was not eligible to get the price (axis of evil stuff) and thus I donated the money to a charity in the US.
It’s been long since I last participated in a programming contest. I basically lost all my enthusiasm at the last ACM/ICPC in Tehran 2007 Regional. Anyhow, a few days ago I received an email as a message to UT’s ACM group announcing that Google Code Jam is back. A few hours later a friend replied the message reminding us that:
“Nationals and residents of Burma (Myanmar), Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria, and other persons and entities restricted by U.S. export controls and sanctions programs are not eligible to participate in the Contest.” — Code Jam 2008 Terms
I remember that in the old days (a couple of years ago), it used to be only “residents” and not “nationals”. We could also “participate” but were not eligible to get the “price”:
“Cash prizes will not be paid to residents of Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan, or Syria.” — Code Jam 2004 Terms
I didn’t have any intention to participate, but even if I could do something about my nationality, there would still be a big problem:
“The Contest is void in Quebec” — Code Jam 2008 Terms
Apparently there is only one place on the face of the earth that people don’t like to hold a contest in and I happen to be residing in it: Quebec. It is not illegal to have a contest here, but apparently the people who hold the contest have to go through heck a lot of trouble. So people basically don’t want to go for the trouble and thus void the contest in Quebec.
If there was one place on earth bad for programming contests, I should be there. Reminds me of Murphy’s law.
