satukubik

Summer is coming! My favorite IDE will release its newest version in three weeks. This time it will be released with code name ‘Ganymede’.

Here are the things that I like in the next release:

1. SVN client. The client is more integrated and more Eclipse-like since it enters Eclipse incubation.
   
2. Ruby support as part of DLTK.
3. Cleaner update page.
   
   
4. The Eclipse Compiler for Java now takes advantage of multiple CPUs. This will be only one thing, it will be faster!
5. Full JavaScript support with customizable formatter and templates.
   
   
6. Old Eclipse’s project can’t use classes that is located in the external place. You have to either wrap it as jar or copy it to the project
   
7. Formatting now can be done only to the edited lines. This is very useful sometimes when editing someone else work. And better yet, you can undo the formatting in one step. Before undoing format is a headache since the cursor can move awkwardly to random position.
   

What still missing from this release are:

1. Visual Editor. I miss this editor. Mantisse and other editors are just sucks in my opinion. Visual Editor is the smartest GUI editor concept I’ve ever found. Too bad that its development is just stucked.
2. Eclipse needs decent UML editor, unfortunately IBM still doesn’t want to open source its Rational product.
3. Project templating. Sometime I want to store a project configuration to be able to create the same project with different name. It will be nice if Eclipse support this in the future.

A while back ago, I posted an article from McKinsey about eight business technology to watch.

In the end of the article I appended my own principle, “Don’t be evil”. I added this since I believe that companies that try to do good think will not collapse because of what they does.

Now I want to share my new knowledge about one company that does more-than-what-customers-expect. The name of the company is Zappos. Its main business is selling shoes using Internet. If Amazon is for books, then Zappos is doing more for shoes.

Zappos is a company that really put service before anything for its customer. The tagline in its home page reflects this, “We are a service company that happens to sell”. And yes, they really show this. What they do is really selling the service. You can get good shoes in many stores but not many stores sell good service. Not only they give what you can expect from an online company, they actually give more… This is kind of attitude that is NOT really expected by its customers. But who doesn’t like nice surprise? A bunch of positive testimonials shows how such attitude is missed by many people.

Its standard service is already astonishing. 4-5 days FREE delivery. Amazon (U.S) can only promise free delivery when you don’t mind to wait for more that 1 weeks. Friendly return procedure and customers even got UPS mail tags in the delivery package for FREE return shipping. We need to look hard for such service in other companies. In my experience, even if a company guaranteed easy return procedure, customers need to pay for the return shipping. I remember that there are several exceptions, but not many.

And have you found other company that asked its customers when they don’t receive your return package? Zappos is doing that. Along with that, its friendly customer service upgraded the service and gave the customer personalized service that can only be found when you’re an important customer. I don’t think customer who bought 7 pairs shoes and returned 5 of them has ever found this kind of service somewhere else. Shame German companies! Their evil-written-in-tiny-weenie-bity-and-hard-to-understand-contract-agreement trapped many foreigners and even Germans themselves.

Which companies are still providing direct phone number in the web site and actually processing each call by an operator? Zappos puts its hotline in each page of its web site and the hotline is connected directly by human. Oh no… Apple doesn’t do this. Not Paypal, eBay, or Amazon. Heck, even U.S. General Consulate in Germany processes its interview schedule with machine. Most of the time you just have to redial several times before actually speaking with a human.

And who else pays bonus for a worker when they quit? I really can’t comment this fact and how ingenious is the Zappos management.

So… 68% just mean nothing.. you know…

This is what is called creative… Surely some of us had trouble with cable when charging our device. This solution is so elegant!

from LifeHacker

They who ever learnt programming algorithm must understand this funny comic strip.

Travelling Salesman Problem

From: xkcd

Super kagak nyambung. Tapi Detik gitu loh… dah biasa Hopeless.

The latest layer update in Google Earth adds street names in many countries. And yes… that’s including Indonesia. That’s simply amazing… now you can virtually travel around the city without any afraid being lost (so long you are connected to internet of course… and oh… and the speed should be fast enough for a Google Earth).

The information is still not perfect. The information is only available for big cities in Java island (and small mistakes still appear here and there). I can’t see the street name in other islands yet. But still, this is so great.

When I first read the phrase in TopCoder forum, I thought it must be a typo from “algorithm match”.

Without further text, here is algorithm march:

Hari Kamis minggu lalu, TopCoder mengadakan babak kualifikasi ke-I algoritma untuk TopCoder Open 2008 yang akan diadakan bulan Mei yang akan datang. Lumayan alhamdulillah masih bisa lolos. Mudah-mudahan masih bisa dapet kaos meskipun kelihatannya cukup sulit.

Yang menarik dari babak kualifikasi ini adalah soalnya. Terutama soal paling mudahnya yang bernilai 250. Soalnya diberi nama “Monsters and bunnies” jadi kalau di-Indonesia-kan kira-kira jadi “monster dan kelinci”. Problem statementnya kira-kira seperti ini (lengkapnya bisa diperoleh di sini):

Di sebuah kota, ada tiga jenis makhluk hidup. Kamu, x ekor monster dan y ekor kelinci. Jika monster bertemu kelinci, monster agak membunuh kelinci. Jika monster bertemu monster, mereka akan bertarung hingga keduanya mati. Jika moster bertemu kamu, kamu akan dibunuh juga oleh monster. Jika kamu dan kelinci bertemu, kamu bisa memilih untuk membunuh kelinci tersebut atau tidak.

Pertanyaannya: Jika x dan y diberikan, berapa probabilitas kamu untuk hidup?

Bingung? Tidak usah bingung. Ini persoalan cetek sebenarnya… asal tahu triknya Jawaban akhirnya 1/(x+1) jika x genap dan 0 untuk kasus lain.

Nah loh… kok bisa pertanyaan probabilitas yang kelihatannya rumit itu jawabannya jadi sederhana? Disinilah menariknya soal ini. Banyak koder yang menyangka bahwa faktor kelinci harus diperhitungkan dalam menentukan hasil akhir. Ini juga didukung dengan contoh-contoh soal yang kelihatannya seperti menjebak para koder.

Bila dilihat dari contoh soal, jelas bahwa jika x = 0 maka probabilitas kamu tetap hidup adalah 1 karena kelinci tidak dapat membunuh kamu dan sudah pasti kamu akan tetap hidup. Sebaliknya jika jumlah monster ganjil, maka kamu sudah pasti mati karena biar bagaimanapun kamu berusaha dan biar bagaimanapun jumlah kelinci, bakal ada satu monster yang akhirnya membunuh kamu. Yang menarik baru jika jumlah monster genap, karena kamu masih punya kesempatan hidup. Masalahnya adalah berapa besar kesempatan itu? Jawaban akhirnya seperti yang telah dikemukakan diatas hanya dipengaruhi oleh jumlah monster.

Hal ini seperti menimbulkan kontroversi di antara para peserta kualifikasi. Well, biasanya soal-soal TopCoder jarang yang tricky seperti ini, atau kalaupun ada biasanya nilainya lebih besar alias tingkat kesulitannya lebih tinggi. Banyak di antara peserta yang tidak sadar bahwa jumlah kelinci tidak berpengaruh terhadap hasil akhir. Dan karena ini soal ini soal paling mudah, mereka lebih konsentrasi untuk menjawab dua soal lain yang lebih sulit.

Kontes algoritma di TopCoder menarik karena selain babak koding, juga ada babak challenge di mana kita bisa melihat jawaban peserta lain dan men-challenge jawaban peserta lain tersebut. 50 poin tambahan akan diperoleh jika challenge berhasil dan -25 jika challenge gagal.

Dengan soal yang sedikit ‘nakal’ seperti itu, babak challenge jadi benar-benar luar biasa. Banyak koder yang berhasil men-challenge jawaban koder lain. Tentunya mereka yang men-challenge sebagian besar adalah mereka yang sadar bahwa kelinci sama sekali tidak berpengaruh terhadap hasil akhir. Hasilnya benar-benar menakjubkan… prosentase keakuratan jawaban soal yang seharusnya paling mudah ini menjadi dibawah 40%.

Dan itu tidak selesai sampai disana. Diskusi terus berlanjut. Salah satu yang tersadar bahwa kelinci tidak berpengaruh hanya bisa mengumpat tertahan, ‘Stupid irrelevant bunnies’. Yang masih belum yakin terus mendebat dengan berbagai cara dan meminta pembuktian matematika. Singkatnya buat saya, problem ini benar-benar problem 250 paling menarik yang pernah saya lihat. Atau malah benar-benar problem paling menarik yang pernah saya lihat.

Penulis soal ini sampai harus menulis editorial yang cukup panjang untuk soal ini. FYI, biasanya untuk soal termudah editorialnya hanya berkisar 5 sampai 10 baris. Tapi kali ini, sang penulis benar-benar mengeksplorasi semua kemungkinan jawaban dari yang paling mudah seperti disampaikan di atas, sampai mereka yang berniat mengaplikasikan dynamis programming untuk soal ini.

Begitu serunya perdebatan, sampai hari ini pun masih banyak bermunculan anekdot-anekdot lucu di forum TopCoder (mungkin ini juga kenapa saya suka dengan TopCoder. Selera humor mereka benar-benar luar biasa). Mungkin sayangnya untuk benar-benar mengerti letak kelucuan anekdot tersebut, kita harus cukup aktif mengikuti forum.

Beberapa thread yang paling menarik:

Thread ini dibuat untuk mengumumkan keberhasilan TopCoder melobi pemerintah US supaya peserta dari negara-negara seperti Iran (yang diembargo US) bisa ikut bertanding di TCO.

So now that TopCoder is involved in international politics when are we going to start seeing diplomatic contests where TopCoder members compete to solve the world’s political problems?

Well, we already saw that it’s surprisingly hard to solve the world’s monsters and bunnies problem.

Judul thread ini adalah You know you are a TopCoder when …. Isinya adalah ciri-ciri apa saja yang membuat kamu bisa merasa bahwa kamu adalah TopCoder sejati. Macam-macam isinya, ada yang berkorban besar untuk ikut SRM (Single Round Match/ kompetisi mingguan TopCoder), tentang nama-nama besar di TopCoder, dan sebagainya. Setelah persoalan kelinci dan monster ini, ada post baru:

(You know you are a TopCoder when) … you are not surprised by the fact that a couple of very intelligent people are discussing if you should kill the bunnies.

(You know you are a TopCoder when) … you and another TopCoder get into a loud and animated discussion about killing bunnies in a lab full of astonished people who have no idea what you’re talking about.

Hehehe.. sepertinya memang problem yang satu ini tidak akan bisa dilupakan dengan mudah oleh komunitas TopCoder.

Last time I post about the mac software promotions. One of them is MacHeist. I wrote that the promotion is run from 9th January 2008 and today is just two days from the closing.

So what do they offer? I must say that the bundle is amazing, they include 14 softwares (well, it’s currently 13, but I believe it will be 14 in a very near future). Not all will be useful for everybody but I’m pretty sure you can make use at least 4 of them.

The price is $49 for applications that have original value of $498.60. This is the complete list of the softwares:

1. TaskPaper, a simple GTD application
2. Wingnuts 2, a great-simple flight game
3. Speed Download, a download manager
4. Awaken, an all-round timer for your computer
5. iStopMotion, to create movie from your list of pictures
6. Cha-Ching. a money manager
7. CoverSutra, an iTunes controller
8. 1password, a password management
9. Tiki Magic Mini Golf, a golf game
10. AppZapper, an uninstaller for your mac
11. CSSEdit, an intuitive CSS editor
12. Pixelmator, yet another image editor
13. Snapz Pro X, a screen capturer
14. VectorDesigner, a vector image creator application (still locked for a a while)

I use 1password, Appzapper and SpeedDownload now for everyday computing and use some others occasionally. And they work great… I earn every dollar that I spent…

There is two applications given as bonus if you refer someone else to buy the bundle. So if you are agree that this is a great deal and will buy one, please use my referral link to buy the bundle. Thank you And hurry up…

UPDATE: thanks to everybody who buy from me…