Consolidation Thread: Xboats in a System

[willtron3030]

This should probably be updated in light of current TL 7 data transfer costs...

I should think the data transfer cost is infinitesimal compared to the cost of moving that data across the stars.

Some author called the telegraph "The Victorian Internet". At some level I like thinking of XMail as "The Interstellar Telegraph".

 

[Drew]

"Xmail: Messages sent by xboat. Xmail carries information only; material objects may not be sent. The message is digitally coded; xmail costs Cr1O per 20 kilobits per parsec. The message may be sent using a standard Anglic character set (about Cr1O for a 500 word message) or a picture may be reproduced in facsimile (Cr20 for a 200 x 200 bit matrix). The message is printed out at its destination and delivered by a world's local mail system."
This should probably be updated in light of current TL 7 data transfer costs...

Thank you. Here is food for thought.

The entire computer section for all the Traveller series needs to be rewritten or updated. The Intel 8086 microprocessor delivered 4.77 MHz of power back when the first LBB was written. We went from 8KB on a 5.25" disk to 1 septillion bytes. Ship programs were built around loading one program at a time. How many of us currently have 3 or 4 programs already open on our computer as we read this response? Thinking how fast the first generation of quantum computers are running - multiply that by a million for speeds and data storage. I suspect that we haven't built in the concept of AI into the equation (a true NPC?)