Maybe it will, based on their site, they're making it as reliable as it's possible, with multiple power sources and timekeeping instruments. I don't think the costs or the knowledge will be an issue: by design, it's made to be maintainable with Bronze Age tech and its purpose and workings are to be as clear as possible to allow even a primitive civilization to take a look at it and figure out what goes where, and what does what.
But wouldn't it make more sense to produce some replacement parts in advance, instead of relying on future people to be both able and willing to produce such replacement pieces with the necessary precision (note that it is not enough to understand the basic principle; unless you are able to produce the part with sufficient precision, it will be basically worthless).
We have CT machines and we still can't figure out exactly what the Antikythera device did.
Well, Wikipedia has a quite detailed description for something which we don't have an idea of what it does. And that's for a device which is not complete, and no longer working.
Were you expecting the end of all human civilization and the rebirth there-of in the next 10 thousand years?
The more appropriate question is: Can you exclude the possibility? Ten thousand years ago, we were still in the stone age. There have been civilizations which appeared and collapsed since then. And there's always the possibility of a global thermonuclear war destroying our civilization (although honestly I wouldn't expect the clock to survive an atomic bomb).
Of course you'll have to find a way how people are supposed to see your orbital clock. Even people without the technology to listen to radio broadcasts. Maybe blinking signals?
However, instead of focusing on building a clock, I'd focus on how to pass our current knowledge into the future so it may survive a possible collapse and re-building of civilization. This is of course a much harder problem than building a long-living clock, but also much more worthwhile.
There are three points to consider:
First, the knowledge itself must be stored on a medium which is durable enough to survive thousands of years. That means, it must be stored on a medium which is both durable enough that natural degradation doesn't affect it too much so that the information is basically intact after thousands of years, and on the other hand should not be useful for any other purpose (because otherwise it will disappear by humans reusing it for other purposes) and/or be stored in a place inaccessible without sufficient technology (which would make access to it available only if a minimum standard of technology is achieved). One could even plan in several stages, to be found by increasingly difficult means, so for each stage, only the information they can grok at that stage is to be found. Each stage would explain where to find the next, and contain all information about how to reach it (e.g. if one repository is in the deap sea, the previous one would convey all knowledge about submarine building).
Second, the knowlege must be decodable by the future people. That is, one must find a way to tell them the language the knowledge is stored in. In other words, there must be a sort of language course involved. And in case some language of today is known then, but it's not the one the information is stored in, also maybe add a sort of Rosetta stones for different languages.
Finally, there's the problem on how to make them find the information. This is probably the hardest part. Here, maximal redundancy would be needed. Probably a combination of cult building, writing stories involving that repository (so it gets into common knowledge in a form which is more likely to be re-told to future generations) and artefacts pointing to it distributed all around the globe (like little burned clay medals helping in locating it, which are of course mentioned in all stories about the repository).
Indeed, there could be a multi-level approach with redundancy on all levels (e.g. the burned clay medals point to one [or better, several] of many local information centers which contain a bit more information about finding more central repositories, which ultimately point towards a list of maybe one main repository per continent, which then contains the actual information.
From what I've read earlier (I'm now too lazy to check if that information is still up to date) this clock is intended to be automatically synchronized to the sun. Which should rule out daylight saving, I think.
Possibly from 9pm to 3am the gym is used by geeks for LAN parties. Which would mean more need of air condition, due to the high concentration of overclocked computers...
Well, you see, there's only one Canterbury Cathedral left. They don't tell you, but there have been ten of them, of which 9 have been demolished by earthquakes. They somehow managed to make everyone believe that those nine cathedrals did never exist. They even managed to erase all traces of those cathedrals, so even archaeologists won't ever find them. This shows you how powerful the nuclear lobby in the UK is.:-)
Don't forget Unlambda. After all, you have to know functional programming. Oh, and visual programming is all the hype, therefore you should also consider Piet.
However, whitespace is easily changed by non-programming-aware software (heck, even Slashdot's <ecode> doesn't always perfectly preserve whitespace!), while accidental changing of non-whitespace is much more rare (at least as long as it is in the ASCII range).
Maybe that's because too many people thing CS is programming. IMHO you should learn programming before learning CS. Just like you learn calculating before you learn proper math.
I'm pretty sure he meant something else: Companies who are not in the top 200 (but possibly close) suing for unfair disadvantage because they don't get the business from those people, while the marginally larger competitors still get it, giving them a competitive advantage. After all, it's not the non-top 200 company who did anything wrong.
I'm pretty sure even in your autonomous car, you'd be required to supervise it and act accordingly as soon as you notice some unusual situation. Probably you'd also have to absolve some mandatory manual-driving hours per year in order to make sure that you still can control the car.
Of course, you could combine both systems. After all, if you are unlucky, the car in front of you is so dirty that you don't get a clear laser return signal (or maybe the owner intentionally prevented laser reflection in order to prevent the police from measuring his speed with lasers). If you rely on the condition of other people's cars, you better don't rely on just one type of information (indeed, I'd also add a system estimating the front car's distance from camera image, just in case the other types of estimation fail).
Whoever downmoderated my post should have the courage to speak their mind on reasons for downmoderating my post, based on errors in technical information in computing
Nice trick. Of course, would he do so, his moderation would be undone (and all other moderations which he did on any other post on this story, too). Thus Slashdot actively discourages anyone explaining his moderation (unless he actually wants to undo it because it was an accident, but then even then he is discouraged from doing so if he's moderated any other post under the same story, because that one would be undone, too).
A monopoly isn't a requirement for an anti-competitive lawsuit
But Microsoft being a de-facto monopoly on the desktop operating system market was the reason why bundling Internet Explorer was considered anti-competitive.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe it will, based on their site, they're making it as reliable as it's possible, with multiple power sources and timekeeping instruments. I don't think the costs or the knowledge will be an issue: by design, it's made to be maintainable with Bronze Age tech and its purpose and workings are to be as clear as possible to allow even a primitive civilization to take a look at it and figure out what goes where, and what does what.
But wouldn't it make more sense to produce some replacement parts in advance, instead of relying on future people to be both able and willing to produce such replacement pieces with the necessary precision (note that it is not enough to understand the basic principle; unless you are able to produce the part with sufficient precision, it will be basically worthless).
We have CT machines and we still can't figure out exactly what the Antikythera device did.
Well, Wikipedia has a quite detailed description for something which we don't have an idea of what it does. And that's for a device which is not complete, and no longer working.
The more appropriate question is: Can you exclude the possibility? Ten thousand years ago, we were still in the stone age. There have been civilizations which appeared and collapsed since then. And there's always the possibility of a global thermonuclear war destroying our civilization (although honestly I wouldn't expect the clock to survive an atomic bomb).
Of course you'll have to find a way how people are supposed to see your orbital clock. Even people without the technology to listen to radio broadcasts. Maybe blinking signals?
However, instead of focusing on building a clock, I'd focus on how to pass our current knowledge into the future so it may survive a possible collapse and re-building of civilization. This is of course a much harder problem than building a long-living clock, but also much more worthwhile.
There are three points to consider:
Indeed, there could be a multi-level approach with redundancy on all levels (e.g. the burned clay medals point to one [or better, several] of many local information centers which contain a bit more information about finding more central repositories, which ultimately point towards a list of maybe one main repository per continent, which then contains the actual information.
From what I've read earlier (I'm now too lazy to check if that information is still up to date) this clock is intended to be automatically synchronized to the sun. Which should rule out daylight saving, I think.
While I've never heard about Google Health elsewhere, I definitively have seen it mentioned several times on Slashdot.
What does GLDSCZTMAC mean?
Of course in most of the world there is no am or pm at all, and the time would be given as 21:00 to 3:00, leaving little room for misunderstanding.
Possibly from 9pm to 3am the gym is used by geeks for LAN parties. Which would mean more need of air condition, due to the high concentration of overclocked computers ...
Well, you see, there's only one Canterbury Cathedral left. They don't tell you, but there have been ten of them, of which 9 have been demolished by earthquakes. They somehow managed to make everyone believe that those nine cathedrals did never exist. They even managed to erase all traces of those cathedrals, so even archaeologists won't ever find them. This shows you how powerful the nuclear lobby in the UK is. :-)
So where can I buy my nuclear powered UK stick?
Don't forget Unlambda. After all, you have to know functional programming.
Oh, and visual programming is all the hype, therefore you should also consider Piet.
However, whitespace is easily changed by non-programming-aware software (heck, even Slashdot's <ecode> doesn't always perfectly preserve whitespace!), while accidental changing of non-whitespace is much more rare (at least as long as it is in the ASCII range).
Maybe that's because too many people thing CS is programming.
IMHO you should learn programming before learning CS. Just like you learn calculating before you learn proper math.
Hint: The next step is outlawing encryption on home connections.
No, they will not outlaw encryption. They will just restrict it to encryption which they can easily break.
You seriously are paying $100 a month for broadband? If I had to pay that much for it, I'd still be on dial-up now.
Does it also work in reverse? It would be hilarious if the RIAA and MPAA were disconnected because too many people complained about them :-)
I'm pretty sure he meant something else: Companies who are not in the top 200 (but possibly close) suing for unfair disadvantage because they don't get the business from those people, while the marginally larger competitors still get it, giving them a competitive advantage. After all, it's not the non-top 200 company who did anything wrong.
I'm pretty sure even in your autonomous car, you'd be required to supervise it and act accordingly as soon as you notice some unusual situation. Probably you'd also have to absolve some mandatory manual-driving hours per year in order to make sure that you still can control the car.
Of course, you could combine both systems. After all, if you are unlucky, the car in front of you is so dirty that you don't get a clear laser return signal (or maybe the owner intentionally prevented laser reflection in order to prevent the police from measuring his speed with lasers). If you rely on the condition of other people's cars, you better don't rely on just one type of information (indeed, I'd also add a system estimating the front car's distance from camera image, just in case the other types of estimation fail).
Nice trick. Of course, would he do so, his moderation would be undone (and all other moderations which he did on any other post on this story, too). Thus Slashdot actively discourages anyone explaining his moderation (unless he actually wants to undo it because it was an accident, but then even then he is discouraged from doing so if he's moderated any other post under the same story, because that one would be undone, too).
Well, they could standardize a set of, say, 5 shapes.
But Microsoft being a de-facto monopoly on the desktop operating system market was the reason why bundling Internet Explorer was considered anti-competitive.
How would bundling a TV with AppleTV and iTunes NOT be anti-competitive?
Does Apple have a monopoly or near-monopoly on TVs?