dzogchen - Slashdot User

When Smart People Make Bad Employees 491

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday January 05, 2011 @03:03PM from the boss's-favorite dept.

theodp writes "Writing for Forbes, CS-grad-turned-big-time-VC Ben Horowitz gives three examples of how the smartest people in a company can also be the worst employees: 1. The Heretic, who convincingly builds a case that the company is hopeless and run by a bunch of morons; 2. The Flake, who is brilliant but totally unreliable; 3. The Jerk, who is so belligerent in his communication style that people just stop talking when he is in the room. So, can an employee who fits one of these poisonous descriptions, but nonetheless can make a massive positive contribution to a company, ever be tolerated? Quoting John Madden's take on Terrell Owens, Horowitz gives a cautious yes: 'If you hold the bus for everyone on the team, then you'll be so late that you'll miss the game, so you can't do that. The bus must leave on time. However, sometimes you'll have a player that's so good that you hold the bus for him, but only him.' Ever work with a person who's so good that he/she gets his/her own set of rules? Ever been that person yourself?"

Microsoft Research Takes On Go 175

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday January 02, 2011 @04:28AM from the narrowing-the-possibilities dept.

mikejuk writes "Microsoft Research has used F# and AI to implement a consumer-quality game of Go — arguably the most difficult two-person game to implement. They have used an interesting approach to the problem of playing the game, which is a pragmatic cross between tree search with pruning and machine learning to spot moves with a 'good shape.' The whole lot has been packaged into an XNA-based game with a story."

Microsoft To Disable Autorun 429

Posted by timothy on Wednesday April 29, 2009 @05:28PM from the mounting-is-fine-but-opening-is-obnoxious dept.

jchrisos writes "Microsoft is planning to disable autorun in the next Release Candidate of Windows 7 and future updates to Windows XP and Vista. In order to maintain a 'balance between security and usability,' non-writable media will maintain its current behavior however. In any case, if it means no more autorun on flash drives, removable hard drives and network shares, that is definitely a step in the right direction. Will be interesting to see what malware creators do to get around this ..."

Submission + - Using Gym Rats' Body Power to Generate Electricity

Submitted by

Carl Bialik from WSJ

on Thursday March 01, 2007 @11:20AM

Carl Bialik from WSJ writes: "A Hong Kong health club is hoping that a car battery, some StairMasters and dozens of gym rats can help ease the world's energy problems. It is just one of a wave of projects that are trying to tap the power of the human body, the Wall Street Journal reports. From the article: 'The human power project at California Fitness was set in motion by Doug Woodring, a 41-year-old extreme-sports fanatic and renewable-energy entrepreneur, who pitched the experiment to the gym's management last May. "I've trained my whole life, and many megawatts have been wasted," says Mr. Woodring, who has worked out at the Hong Kong gym for years. "I wanted to do something with all that sweat." '"

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