Suit yourself :-) I spend 40h a week on my job, and if someone proposes a job doubling my salary, I will take that offer. But while I'm in this office, my performance depends heavily on feeling comfortable in my current environment. If you find all the time you need to master new subjects in your spare time, good for you. My spare time is mainly for my family, and I'm very happy I find enough challenges in my job so I don't need extensive hobbies for that.

For motivation while working on one position, this may be true, but salary and bonus are a high motivation to switch to another employer altogether.

They are speaking about healthy aged people, which probably excludes most physical damages or degenerating diseases. And no, intelligence can not be measured in a reasonable way. Practicing typical IQ test tasks will increase your achievements there while this "brain-jogging" does not improve your capabilities to solve differently structured problems.

I accept there is a correlation between test results and perceived IQ, but since the very definition of intelligence is already controversial (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence#Definitions) and tests are probably applied most of the time to measure younger people (career planning etc.), and also the time spent on a single test is very limited, it seems quite conceivable to me that some people might be good at solving more complex real live (common sense: display higher intelligence) while they suck at short tasks. From personal experience (older colleagues) I'd say there is a bias towards this type of people in older people.

Why was this modded down? Science of a Discworld is a book mainly dealing with the real science of our world from a fresh perspective, a book I would recommend to anyone interested in science on a bit broader scale, although it obviously can't go into the same depth as pure science books focused on single topics.

BTW: Not exactly the link I was looking for, but same topic: http://www.genetic-programming...

This article is from 1996, so I guess the same algorithm would be even faster now.

Old joke: What's the most dangerous hazard in a lab? A software developer who got hands on a soldering iron

Typical reply: What's the most dangerous hazard in SW development? An electrical engineer who gained access to the compiler.

(Both somewhat true, although both with exceptions.)

Not always true. I can't find the link right now, but in Science of the Discworld, Terry Pratchett references a work where a bandpass filter was designed using genetic algorithms, and used less elements while working better than straight forward designed circuits. What's more, there are some apparently void elements in the circuit, but still the circuit stops working when these elements are removed. I wasn't able to find the work in a hurry, but while looking for it I got the impression there seems to be a lot of work ongoing related to frequency filters and GA.

Can you send me a pre-version for review? I'm kind of specialist even having my own brain and all...

SailfishOS has an Android runtime, so Android apps should run on the device. They also plan to provide images compatible with standard Android hardware, claiming that e.g. in the Chinese market it is common for users to pimp their phones with custom roms. So, I might wait for first reviews on how well the compatibility-layer works, but if it works I wouldn't be concerned about lack of apps.

Actually, Tizen might be a reason for me to give them a shot. Unless I get a budget-friendly device with Sailfish OS first :-)

So, Samsung copies now WP UI? Not Apple anymore?

They intend to increase Sailfish market share by making the OS easily available for Android phones. I'd guess if you flash it to an Android device with support for 1700MHz, it should work. Actually I'm waiting for a list of cheap Android devices capable of running Sailfish.

Just to clarify: The SW documentation I had to write was for my job, not for my education. At the university I never had to use any MS product. Even in the nineties, some tools were available only for Linux, and Linux was encouraged.

At work, I was later able to switch release note generation from Word to LaTeX, which was much easier to script (extract change logs from the vcs, match with some extracts from the error database and test results etc, feed a database with release specific information [which bug was fixed in which release and merged to which branches]), and generate the final release notes as HTML and PDF.

In my pre-master time I had to write some SW documentation using Word. I guess there is a reason Word is named "Word" and not "Text" - that's why I wrote my master thesis with LaTeX as well (typing most of it in emacs), and I'm pretty certain it saved me a lot of work, even if it meant to invest a small bit up-front in learning.

Lawyers are supported like normal people, yes

A Shotgun should eliminate that risk...