You mean the time when "programming" meant "transcribing equations into wiring and/or short binary sequences", and was considered a menial task, its perceived importance and prestige paling in comparison with the "actually difficult job" of designing the computer hardware? That sort of reminded me of this. Also, Washington Post claims: "In 1967, when Cosmo’s “The Computer Girls” article ran, 11 percent of computer science majors were women. In the late 1970s, the percentage of women in the field approached and exceeded the same figure we are applauding today: 25 percent. The portion of women earning computer science degrees continued to rise steadily, reaching its peak — 37 percent — in 1984." So no, apparently, never a majority, but still reasonable figures unless you're a proponent of worker quota.

Teachers? Nurses? Really? ("Before the 40's" isn't really an accurate enough temporal datum.)

It could also make gravimetric measurements. And it absolutely has to use INS. But then again, unless it's an SSBN, even at war, occasionally sticking out the electronic mast to get a GPS fix doesn't seem to be a problem. After all, a fast attack submarine has to communicate from time to time, and it can get a navigational fix whenever it's forced to stick out the mast for reasons of communication. On open sea, an error of a mile a day seems to be good enough when traveling underwater for most purposes.

If you define "trouble" as the cost of hardware, I'd argue that I've outlined a route that is as trouble-free as possible, since it doesn't require anything fancy (in terms of manufacturing costs - a high-precision inertial platform would be an example of "fancy" in this sense).

I was actually looking forward, towards automated cars. But then again, those will have situational awareness requirements so high that deriving the motion data from CV might be a necessary option anyway (at least in urban settings - in open landscapes, that might fail, but then again, there would be a good GPS signal to rely on instead).

Cars don't fly. As long as you have traction, measuring distance shouldn't be a problem (especially if you supplement wheel axle sensors with an optical device similar to modern computer mice, to compensate for the tire pressure, and integrate the data). Unlike with airplanes and ICBMs, you shouldn't need precise acceleration from the accelerometers, vehicle orientation along the three axes is what you need. Direct distance measurements obviate the need for double integration (but are impossible in subs, airplanes, and spacecrafts, unlike in cars).

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

To paraphrase: Some things would be unwieldy to program in a GUI or other oddball paradigm that would make you happy.

Some things are difficult. Combat pilot, brain surgeon, coder. Dedicate yourself and you can excel. If not, you need to do something else, rather that complain that something that interests you is difficult.

Get dedicated. LEARN. Focus and fight. Struggle and lose. Lose again. And again. Eventually win.

It's worth it, I promise you.

That must have been before 1999, because it sure hasn't been the case since I've started reading /.. Slashdot has had some pretty good qualities, but editorial competence was never one of them.

I've wonder how they can afford to hire someone to reimplement Slashdot (badly), but for some reason they can't come up with someone whose job it is to proofread the stories being posted. It's not like all that much content is posted in a day -- it wouldn't even be a full-time job to have somebody read the summary, make sure it makes sense, check the links, and ensure that the summary actually matches the article.

People visit Slashdot for the content. That includes both the stories and the comments. The commenting community is already very strong; the links and summaries are the weak point in Slashdot's content. If they want to increase their audience, the solution is to improve that -- not to gut the comment system.

Yesterday, entire threads were getting hit with "offtopic" mods at exactly the same time. It was obviously the work of the "editors." Normal moderators don't work in concert like that.

The post that timothy made, though, has at least made me decide to stop trashing the comment threads for the time being. I figure that they can have a little time to get their act together and determine that the classic slashdot interface won't be going away. Might as well give them until after the boycott from 10-17 Feb. But after that -- if they're still hell-bent on screwing up the site, might as well assist in helping Slashdot completely implode.

Unless there's an A. C. Clarke interview in the issue, of course. ;-) (OK, nobody buys Playboy for the article anymore, point taken.)

I believe their market research team identified an opportunity to expand the (currently underrepresented) Creationist demographic.

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