Perhaps, most of you know about the USACO competition, but maybe this
information will be new and useful for anybody here.

USACO is USA Computing Olympiad, and they organize many different
contests, education camps etc. They have Fall, Winter, Spring and
Summer contests every year, and lots of american teens who are going
to participate for taking part in IOI2002 are participating in USACO
contest for a good training.

You can email me and I will send you a letter I got from Rob Kolstad,
the main guy of USACO. You can also read all the information you need
at http://ace.delos.com/contestgate.

The most important things are here:

The contest is not of acm type. You read the problems, solve them,
test them at home and submit as many time as you want, but you DON'T
get the results immediately - the solutions will be judged after the
contest. The winter contest starts today and goes till tuesday (today
is Friday, 4th of January 2002). You should choose 3 hours in this
period of time and solve all the problems in these 3 hours, and they
should be without breaks(of course, you can leave Internet, but you
don't submit solutions after 3 hours from you started working).
 If you are a college or university student, you can participate only
as observer, but you will also compare your results with the other's.

I wish you all good luck (not only in this contest :). If anybody has
any questions about this contest, you can email Rob Kolstad:
kolstad@ace.delos.com