One in a Million?

I was watching some author being interviewed on PBS yesterday and he was talking about Microsoft's new development center in China. He mentioned how Microsoft went to every prestigious university in the country and offered people IQ tests. They did thousands of them. Then they hired the top 200 regardless of their discipline(s) of study, moved them to the new campus and told them to do something useful. Which incidentally is Google style hiring. Get a bunch of intelligent people together and have them talk and hang out, and cool stuff gets done (an idea initially written about by William Gipson in a short story in Burning Chrome called New Rose Hotel...huh apparently the entire book is available on line by following the links.)

In any case, I digress, the author made an interesting point that being one in a million in China doesn't mean much. There are at least a thousand people as able as you willing to take you spot. Crazy.

And now I will go read Cyberpunk.