Where will B&W be in 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 .... years

Tom Phillips wrote:

Gregory Blank wrote:

In article ,
Tom Phillips wrote:

"But just so you are a little more informed, digital sensors do "not"
require a shutter. The shutter is a pulse to the sensor substrate that,
in lay terms, opens the pixels to collect light, then closes them. The
pulse width determines the shutter speed. The camera shutter basically
does nothing...The shutter noise coming out of 99% of the digital cameras
is a .wav file sent to a speaker in the camera."

I am not saying its required mind you ;-)


But people like to think (be fooled) that they're
using a real camera instead of a scanner and doing
real photography. A pretty effective strategy too,
those .wav file sound effects. It must be a real
camera if you have an authentic shutter sound effect


Not all film camears have shutters, either.

bob wrote:

Tom Phillips wrote:
they are made to look and feel like film cameras when
in fact they could have any number of forms, don't have
shutters (instead you hear a "sound effect"),

They do have shutters. Some of them have a silly sound effect too.

Yeah, and a transvestite with boob job is still
a man...

and other
than a lens have nothing else in common with film cameras.

They also have a light sensitive receptor that records the light falling
on it.

Wrong. It is physically impossible for a digital
sensor to record anything. It doesn't record, it
converts photoelectrons into digital signals.
Nothing is ever recorded. There is no latent image;
no image at all. Nada. zip. Better go back and
retake your college physics (with a different
professor.)

[history lesson deleted]

No doubt, since it shows you don't know
what your talking about...

In article ,
Tom Phillips wrote:
bob wrote:
I don't know if he's biased or just sloppy. I've got files on my PC at
work that I created more than a decade ago.

O come on. 10 years? What is that, besides 10 years?
Most people DO suffer data loss. Other than you, I
don't know anyone who hasn't.

I have plenty of stuff that has been on-line since 1989.

Given the prices of storage and bandwidth, it is quite possible that in the
future, people will keep lots of data on on-line digital storage.

(A simple solution: a box with a harddisk and a network connection. A backup
program that copies data to the box. During the night the box encrypts
data and sends it over the Internet to a 'digital vault'. The biggest problem
is key-escrow.)


--
That was it. Done. The faulty Monk was turned out into the desert where it
could believe what it liked, including the idea that it had been hard done
by. It was allowed to keep its horse, since horses were so cheap to make.
-- Douglas Adams in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Tom Phillips wrote:

Any given digital storage media doens't need to be archival, due to the
ability to make perfect copies.


Copies are meaningless if the media doesn't last or
if you have no device to read it.

I can't read my 5.25 inch floppies. I don't have a drive, and even if I
did, I discarded the discs the better part of a decade ago. I can still
read the files though. As long as the content of the files remains
important to me, I will keep them readable.

Is your position that there will be *no* digital media nor digital
devices? It's certainly possible, but the other extreme is possible too:
in 1000 years they might find my floppies in the landfill and be able to
read the data from them. We have no way of knowing what technology will
look like in 1000 years.



If you're going to postulate color
negatives that are important enough to be dark-cold stored (frozen?) for
thousands of years, it's equally plausable that the same people who
maintain the refridgeration units could maintain digital files.


No. Because film is it's own media. Nothing else is
required to read it. Digital files require both long
lasting media and stable devices to access and read
that media, both of which are lacking.

Maybe or maybe not (lacking in 1000 years). But if it's that important I
can make a 3 color separation of a print of the file (on film) and store
that in your freezer too.

Read the NY
Times article and think about what you're saying. The
people quoted there aren't dummies as you might imply
-- they're the people responsible for public archives
concerned about digital's short lived nature.

I read it. It's kind of ironic that the article questioning whether
digital files will be readable in a decade was printed in a newspaper
that has an online archive of articles dating back to 1851 (before the
Civil War). I guess they've solved the problem for themselves, eh?



snip...


"...no one has figured out how to preserve these electronic
materials for the next decade, much less for the ages.

I don't know if he's biased or just sloppy. I've got files on my PC at
work that I created more than a decade ago.


O come on. 10 years? What is that, besides 10 years?
Most people DO suffer data loss. Other than you, I
don't know anyone who hasn't.

READ THE QUOTE you provided! He says "next decade." What's he think? I
have data from 10 years ago but I'm not going to be able to keep it for
another 5?

You think the Social Security Administration keeps all it's records on
film? I don't think so. How about the IRS? Or your bank? If you don't
know anyone who's not lost data, you must not know many people who are
responsible for company data. The only reason to loose it is being
careless. People in companies do *abandon* data, but that's another
issue entirely.


no such thing as "bulletproof" solutions and the
average person who puts their family photo history
on digital media will lose it.

The average person who stores his family photo history in a box of
negatives in the basement will loose them too. The only photo history
the average person has a chance of making last are good quality prints.
Why will a box of the average person's negatives not be kept around for
1000 years? Because somewhere along the line a person like my wife will
become part of the chain of custody and she will toss them. But she'll
keep the prints (and complain that they're faded).

But there are organizations that cannot afford to loose data, and they
do have bulletproof systems.


Ah, the appeal to conformity as proof of actuality.
In logic that's called a fallacy.

Right then, you can be right in your logical thoughts, while I will be
right in the thoughts of the world at large.

Bob

bob wrote:


Is your position that there will be *no* digital media nor digital
devices?

Yeah bob, whatever you _think_ I'm saying that
I never said must be what I'm saying...

You may have unlimited time to continue a
circular debate. I don't.

snip

In article ,
"John Costello" wrote:

Wow! Your question has certainly released a deluge of non-answers.

It was no time at all before the old digital vs. chemical debate erupted;
and your question didn't mention anything about a 1000 years from now, or
whether or not processes would be archival.

My own opinion is that black and white, in whatever physical form, will be
alive and well over the modest time span you mention. And not because of
its medium or archivality(is that a word?), but because it is an abstraction
as an art form. A well known photograph of the simple pepper by Edward
Weston is still admired, while if it was a color photograph of the same
subject, it would just be a picture of a pepper! It is the abstractness,
not the medium that matters.

John

I think 1,000 years from now, time travel will be quite probable

Therefore photographs and all forms of media as we know them
now will no longer be needed because one will be able to see
anything one wishes. Just gave myself a spinal shiver thinking,..I have
been here before,before,before,before before,before before,before
before,before,before,before before,before before,before before,before
before,before,before,before before,before before,before before,before
before,before before,before before,before before,before before,before
before,before,before,before before,before before,before before,before

--
LF Website @ http://members.verizon.net/~gregoryblank

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President,
or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong,
is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable
to the American public."--Theodore Roosevelt, May 7, 1918

Tom Phillips wrote:


Yeah, and a transvestite with boob job is still
a man...


You might debate whether he's a man or not, but he's a human being for sure.


and other
than a lens have nothing else in common with film cameras.

They also have a light sensitive receptor that records the light falling
on it.


Wrong. It is physically impossible for a digital
sensor to record anything. It doesn't record, it
converts photoelectrons into digital signals.
Nothing is ever recorded.

That last bit is pretty interesting. So if "nothing is ever recorded",
then how is the image conjured up at a later point in time.

There is no latent image;
no image at all. Nada. zip. Better go back and
retake your college physics (with a different
professor.)


[history lesson deleted]


No doubt, since it shows you don't know
what your talking about...

Actually it just wasn't relavent to what we were talking about. If you
had quoted from texts on linguistics or anthropology it might have been.

Bob

Philip Homburg wrote:


I have plenty of stuff that has been on-line since 1989.


Google has rec.photo going back to 1987... Good thing no one's told
google they can't store things for a decade!!!

Bob

Tom Phillips wrote:

bob wrote:



Is your position that there will be *no* digital media nor digital
devices?


Yeah bob, whatever you _think_ I'm saying that
I never said must be what I'm saying...

Don't say I didn't try to understand.

You may have unlimited time to continue a
circular debate. I don't.

I see you never did address the issue of digital images printed on
silver halide paper. Too hard to reconcile that with your world view I
suppose.

Thanks for sticking with it as long as you did though.

Bob

Tom Phillips wrote:

Clearly, the ability to adequately differentiate
in the abstract is lacking around here...

And here all along I thought it was the ability to generalize that was
lacking.

;-)

Bob