Google AI Challenge, Fall 2011 edition

It is this time of the year again. Google has set up its Fall 2011 Artificial Intelligence (AI) challenge.

The goal is to protect your ant hill and gather food while destroying the enemy's hills.

There are starter packages for 25 languages, including Perl, for Windows and Linux environments.

The contest closes on December 18th. Submit your best efforts to move Perl up the rankings!

Here is the ranking table for Perl, there were 35 entries at the moment this post was written with a best position of 198th by grand_sbor.

Google AI Challenge, Fall 2011 edition

It is this time of the year again. Google has set up its Fall 2011 Artificial Intelligence (AI) challenge.

The goal is to protect your ant hill and gather food while destroying the enemy's hills.

There are starter packages for 25 languages, including Perl, for Windows and Linux environments.

The contest closes on December 18th. Submit your best efforts to move Perl up the rankings!

Here is the ranking table for Perl, there were 35 entries at the moment this post was written with a best position of 198th by grand_sbor.

Google AI Challenge: move Perl up the charts!

If you get snowed in this week-end, here's a fun way to pass the time: enter the Google AI challenge!
Organized by the University of Waterloo (Canada) and sponsored by Google, this challenge lets you compete in a game of Tron against other people's algorithms from a wide selection of programming languages.
Sadly, Perl is not widely represented and the highest Perl score is at the 176th rank as of this Friday night.
The contest ends on the 26th of this month. Who will care to test their Perl skills?

Google AI Challenge: move Perl up the charts!

If you get snowed in this week-end, here's a fun way to pass the time: enter the Google AI challenge!
Organized by the University of Waterloo (Canada) and sponsored by Google, this challenge lets you compete in a game of Tron against other people's algorithms from a wide selection of programming languages.
Sadly, Perl is not widely represented and the highest Perl score is at the 176th rank as of this Friday night.
The contest ends on the 26th of this month. Who will care to test their Perl skills?

New colors

That white background was just frying my eye balls out, especially late at night!
Let it not be said that I don't take care of my readers' health. It is not Blackle yet but it is an improvement for sensitive eyes (I think... except if my new choice of colors makes you sick...).

New colors

That white background was just frying my eye balls out, especially late at night!
Let it not be said that I don't take care of my readers' health. It is not Blackle yet but it is an improvement for sensitive eyes (I think... except if my new choice of colors makes you sick...).

RankSearch - The end already?

A friend at work informed me that the script that I have in mind for RankSearch might violate Google's Terms of Service.
I did some research and it looks like he's right. From Google's ToS:

Automated queries

Google's Terms of Service do not allow the sending of automated queries of any sort to our system without express permission in advance from Google. Sending automated queries absorbs resources and includes using any software (such as WebPosition Gold™) to send automated queries to Google to determine how a website or webpage ranks in Google search results for various queries.

What's your take on that? If RankSearch is implemented as a sequence of http queries, will it violate the ToS? This could get DamienLearnsPerl banned (I would get my life back!).
On the other hand, the amount of queries would be really low...
I looked for an email address to contact Google to ask the question but couldn't find any. Will look again tomorrow.

French expression of the day
"Chat échaudé craint l'eau froide": once bitten, twice shy (litterally: scalded cat fears cold water)

Next posts:

• More about CPAN
• Our first Perl program - Part III: Launch a HTTP request
  
• How to install Google Analytics on your Blogger blog
• Our first Perl program - Part IV: Read results from a HTML page
• Perl help resources
• Our first Perl program - Part V: Result analysis
• POD
  
• Our first Perl program - Part VI: Add a GUI interface

RankSearch - The end already?

A friend at work informed me that the script that I have in mind for RankSearch might violate Google's Terms of Service.
I did some research and it looks like he's right. From Google's ToS:

Automated queries

Google's Terms of Service do not allow the sending of automated queries of any sort to our system without express permission in advance from Google. Sending automated queries absorbs resources and includes using any software (such as WebPosition Gold™) to send automated queries to Google to determine how a website or webpage ranks in Google search results for various queries.

What's your take on that? If RankSearch is implemented as a sequence of http queries, will it violate the ToS? This could get DamienLearnsPerl banned (I would get my life back!).
On the other hand, the amount of queries would be really low...
I looked for an email address to contact Google to ask the question but couldn't find any. Will look again tomorrow.

French expression of the day
"Chat échaudé craint l'eau froide": once bitten, twice shy (litterally: scalded cat fears cold water)

Next posts:

• More about CPAN
• Our first Perl program - Part III: Launch a HTTP request
  
• How to install Google Analytics on your Blogger blog
• Our first Perl program - Part IV: Read results from a HTML page
• Perl help resources
• Our first Perl program - Part V: Result analysis
• POD
  
• Our first Perl program - Part VI: Add a GUI interface