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A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

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Re: A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

#81

Post by dogma1138 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #53
dogma1138 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Future humans that knew about it, future humans that had to rediscover DNA, evolved intelligent racoons, Eloi, Morlocks, aliens take your pick. The idea is just to have some way to ensure that enough information survives in persistent forms, you can store "important" (for scientific advancement) stuff in various types of media which is progressively harder to access and gets more and more dense, and eventually store…

Obvious question: did it already happen? Did previous iteration of humans leave us some messages? Maybe the pre-Deluge civilization[0]? That would sort of explain why I sometimes look in a mirror and feel like the reflection was telling me something about cloud model being bad. s/. [0] - the story of Biblical Deluge tells that part of the reason God had to sink the planet is that because angels descended from heaven…

Not sure but Assassin Creed: Syndicate is around the corner so we'll probably find out the next part of the story.

Re: A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

#82

Post by rbcgerard »

NullCharacter wrote: post #12

If you had bought this picture for $2 later to find out it's worth $5,000,000, would you feel an obligation to share some of the proceeds with the shop from which it was purchased?

personally, i think it would depend on how much of an information advantage i had i.e.

1. oh that picture looks nice, i'll buy it, and then have it appraised thinking it might be worth a couple hundred bucks

2. Is that billy the kid? this could be really valuable, let me see if i can get it for a song

Re: A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

#83

Post by krapp »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #77
krapp wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hacker News has apparently destroyed my ability to tell...

I sometimes have a problem too. BTW. You mentioned Star Trek, actually that (IMO) pretty ridiculous episode with holographic messages hidden in DNA was on my mind when I wrote the original comment...

Star Trek is full of unfortunate, badly executed attempts at what should have been good ideas. Discovering that all the humanoid species in the galaxy are genetically related would be worthy of an entire season, and might actually make the setting a bit more plausible. But it was just sort of ham-handedly dealt with using silly treknobabble and then quickly forgotten about, because heaven forbid anyone take some science seriously on a science fiction tv show.

There was also a species that had a galaxy-wide empire and used portals instead of starships to get around that only got mentioned once or twice, despite apparently being able to move stars around. And the Dyson sphere could (should) have been it's own series.

Re: A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

#84

Post by guelo »

dogma1138 wrote: post #33
pgrote wrote: post #9

Of all the photos being taken right now, it's odd to think there probably won't be discoveries of old photos in junk shops in 2150.

That is actually a serious issue that many scientists including historians, anthropologists and archaeologists are actually trying to find ways around. Digital storage is far more fragile than many physical storage mediums, digital data in many cases might also be indistinguishable from random data in such cases where it have been heavily encoded, encrypted, or the mata-data was lost. Time capsules are now becoming m…

I wouldn't be surprised if we're still producing more paper photos than previous generations.

Re: A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

#85

Post by TeMPOraL »

dogma1138 wrote: post #81
TeMPOraL wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obvious question: did it already happen? Did previous iteration of humans leave us some messages? Maybe the pre-Deluge civilization[0]? That would sort of explain why I sometimes look in a mirror and feel like the reflection was telling me something about cloud model being bad. s/. [0] - the story of Biblical Deluge tells that part of the reason God had to sink the planet is that because angels descended from heaven…

Not sure but Assassin Creed: Syndicate is around the corner so we'll probably find out the next part of the story.

You're telling me this idea is actually explored in Assasin Creed? :o. I guess I need to finally start playing it.

Re: A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

#86

Post by TeMPOraL »

krapp wrote: post #83
TeMPOraL wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sometimes have a problem too. BTW. You mentioned Star Trek, actually that (IMO) pretty ridiculous episode with holographic messages hidden in DNA was on my mind when I wrote the original comment...

Star Trek is full of unfortunate, badly executed attempts at what should have been good ideas. Discovering that all the humanoid species in the galaxy are genetically related would be worthy of an entire season, and might actually make the setting a bit more plausible. But it was just sort of ham-handedly dealt with using silly treknobabble and then quickly forgotten about, because heaven forbid anyone take some scie…

I agree. But note that TNG is also one of the best if not the best sci-fi series ever made, science-wise, and it's responsible for bringing up a generation of scientists and engineers. This reflects rather sadly on the general state of science-fiction in TV, though.

The demise of Iconians always felt far-fetched to me. They had a portal network spanning a galaxy that could even be used to stage invasions at unexpecting opponents, and yet the whole empire collapsed down after a single supernova?

A TNG spin-off about the Dyson sphere would be uber-cool. I'd love that.

Re: A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

#87

Post by RexRollman »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #3
dalke wrote: post #2

Short version: the photograph is only the second verified image of Billy the Kid. Verification of it required an in-depth analysis, including finding where the picture was taken.

I wish the article had gone into more detail about what the verification process is like.

If you follow the link to the Kagins website, it says "Kevin Costner will narrate and produce the two-hour documentary for National Geographic Channel, covering Western Americana enthusiast Randy Guijarro’s odyssey to authenticate this unique photograph".

So details of the verification process are being withheld in order the make the documentary more appealing.

Re: A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

#89

Post by dragonwriter »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #50
valarauca1 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You tell archive.org how often to archive a URL. So its not really up to their volunteers but the general population.

There's a really bad problem with archive.org - that they retroactively apply robots.txt files. Simple: User-Agent: * Disallow: / And poof, here goes history. Guess how many companies care?

> Guess how many companies care?

Many. But, more in the way of actively and enthusiastically supporting the ability to wipe the archive this way than, you know, being concerned that it is a problem.

Re: A $2 photo from a California junk shop is the ‘holy grail of Western Americana’

#90

Post by P3R3 »

dogma1138 wrote: post #22
NullCharacter wrote: post #12

If you had bought this picture for $2 later to find out it's worth $5,000,000, would you feel an obligation to share some of the proceeds with the shop from which it was purchased?

If you buy a winning lottery ticket would you give part of your winnings to the store you bought it from?

Actually that is exactly what happens. The store gets about a $100,000 cut for powerball
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