Google disqualified me
Ok... so i m back to blogger's world. Actually i never left it, i read almost all blogs on smr's blogroll. But i had stopped writing myself.
So lets come to the topic. Google disqualified from Google India Code Jam for no reason(not exactly).
Actually i used three logins during the contest. Now, I don't know how they found out that. But I m frustrated because i didn't actually cheat. My original Topcoder ID is(or rather was, its deactivated now:( ) was sandy007smarty. I participated using this ID and submitted 1 question for 230.95 points. Then after some 3 hours or so , i used one of my friends ID to sign into the contest. But this time i just saw the questions of this set and didn't submit any code. Again after 1 hour or so i opened another ID and again didn't submit anything.
Now, google says(they mailed me) that its against their rule to use more than 1 login. And, therefore I m disqualified.
Now how did they found out that i was the one who used all 3 ids? I guess they extracted out my internal LAN IP because i opened all three logins from the same PC. But if they are smart enough to extract my internal IP, then don't they have the common sense to see that i didn't submit anything from other two IDs? Also the other two IDs I opened 3hrs after i submitted problems from my original id. So there is no case of cheating. Also what if some other person had participated from the same machine(its a lab PC, any1 can use) then we would both have been disqualified? This is not fair. And this is the case when they took almost 16 hrs to eliminate all cheaters and still couldn't eliminate all cheaters(there are ppl with score >249 out of 250) and falsely eliminated me.
I m not the only case. There is a guy from Dhaka who has solved around 1500 questions of ACM and is a acm tutor for his college, and google has disqalified him. See this link.Do u think a guy who solved 1500 ACM questions needs to cheat to get through the qualification round. Let me tell u that the 250 point question was really really easy(i did it in 7 mins). And the cut-off was 91, which means a guy who takes around 50-55 mins to solve such a easy question has also qualified.
Whatever, i m disqlaified and would take care that i don't do such stupid things next time.
PS: I mailed them and told them to check my past performance in Topcoder's SRMs and see that I could easily solve that question without any cheating. But their reply was negative.
Technorati: google, TopCoder, programming, contests, personal, life
7 comments:
abe turbo, is there no way you can tell them that you were using a lab pc (assuming you were) and ask them to reconsider your case again?
->ap0c4lyp53
Hard luck man.
I wish u the best of luck for future competitions.
@apocalypse
Now round 1(i got disqualified in qualifier round) is also over. So no point talking to them. I did mail them several times yesterday. But no use.
its alrite man...dun worry...u'll win the next codejam :)
Hard luck :( Better luck next time...
Why did you use more than 1 ID and login into the contest?
That is definitely cheating [whether you submitted solution or not].
Also why did you use friends login ID ?
* You are not supposed to have / use multiple accounts
* You are not supposed to use another persons ID , nor should you give your ID to anyone.
The above are not from any rulebook or from TC rules [though if you read the rules, these may be there]. These are simple "common sense".
As you know, also because of the very nature of the qualification round, any kind of small information of the problems can be used to ones advantage. It can be even something like "Hey if you get a problem related to rectangles when you login, DP is the way. I wont tell you how to do DP, but DP is the way" . Even this info can be used by a person to his advantage [ although one can say, I didnt tell him the solution or recurrence, he found it himself ... I just told it was DP if it is a "rectangle" related problem. ]
You now honestly revealed what happened. So most probably you didnt have any bad intentions.
Still you **knew** the rules . At least when you used your friends ID you *knew* it was wrong.
[ I think I saw sandy007smarty in some SRM room during a match and so I assume you are very familiar with TC and TC rules]
So the fact that they are not able to catch all cheaters probably, what happened to guy from Dhaka , etc all are out of point here.
... what you did is cheating.
Anonymous_in
I completely agree with you that What I did was cheating. But at that time I was not very familiar with TC rules. I did know that one should not use two logins but I never thought it will be taken so seriously.
I was frustrated because I was innocent in my own eyes. I had no bad intentions.(as you have already pointed out.) Also If I wanted to cheat(cheating in my sense and not according to TC rules) I could have done that very easily as fortunately or unfortunately I got the same set twice. But I didn't cheat.
Anyway I have already resolved not to do such stupid things again.
But still I think that TopCoder should have allowed me after I explained my case clearly and honestly to them by email.
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