Is a megapulse essentially equivalent to a megabyte?
Trying to figure out how many mp an electronic book (military manual, reference text, etc.) should take up on a datasoft chip.
Any suggestions?
Full Version: Datasoft size
If I'm remembering correctly there is no conversion between real life data storage units (byte, kilobyte, etc.) and a "megapulse." 1 Mp is about 60 images of unspecified quality (pg. 299? SR3). In the description of the opticam cyberware, 1 minute of video takes up 1 Mp. I can't think of any references to text and Mp amounts right now. Since datasofts don't give any comprehension ability they'd be a lot smaller compared to skillsofts. A minute of video is a lot of data (ignoring that 2060s compression will be better) so a book of "average" length (200~300 pages?) should easily fit on 1 Mp.
Pure text, you could probably fit a load of books onto one Mp. In my games, I'd probably put about 10 books/5,000 pages, with the odd picture for one Mp.
Of course, you could compare the Cubic Meter and Mp requirements of a mage's hermetic library.
And like Entropy Kid said, there's no conversion between (Mega)Pulses and RL data storage units. It simply can't be done, so don't even try. A lot of people have wasted a lot of time trying, and have managed to get absolutely nothing useful.
Of course, you could compare the Cubic Meter and Mp requirements of a mage's hermetic library.
And like Entropy Kid said, there's no conversion between (Mega)Pulses and RL data storage units. It simply can't be done, so don't even try. A lot of people have wasted a lot of time trying, and have managed to get absolutely nothing useful.
Especially since in the books Captain Chaos will occasionally delete 1.2 or .6 megapulses from people's posts. I don't think they're really verbose enough to take up three-fifths of a minute's worth of video with text.
~J
~J
I have always considered the vast amounts of data that seems to be used in normal postings, etc to consists of various meta-data and what not. Remember Johnny Mnemonic? He had years of data show-horned into his cranium, inside that data was viruses and other nasty things to protect it. I imagine SR paydata to be little to no different. Sure, you could have pure text taking up little space, but it's just raw text, no encodign, no data protection, no copyrighting, nothing, just absolute raw data.
As for an idea for the MP of a field manual, look at it like this, imagine the manual represents the background knowledge skill for fox-hole digging. it's a rating 3 skill, what the the mp neccesary for a rating 3 knowledge specialization, with an appropriate multiplier?
As for an idea for the MP of a field manual, look at it like this, imagine the manual represents the background knowledge skill for fox-hole digging. it's a rating 3 skill, what the the mp neccesary for a rating 3 knowledge specialization, with an appropriate multiplier?
| QUOTE (Kagetenshi) |
| Especially since in the books Captain Chaos will occasionally delete 1.2 or .6 megapulses from people's posts. I don't think they're really verbose enough to take up three-fifths of a minute's worth of video with text. ~J |
But when he's deleting a post, technically, he's deleting all the matrix coding that goes with it which is far more than just text.
| QUOTE (Nikoli) |
| As for an idea for the MP of a field manual, look at it like this, imagine the manual represents the background knowledge skill for fox-hole digging. |
Good idea. More likely, though, you could pack in a couple of dozen Field Manuals which cover knowledge skills such as "MOUT" or "Military Engineering" or "Unconventional Warfare" or "Strategic Operations", etc. Field Manuals would more often be in simple Datasoft format, because most soldiers wouldn't have Knowsofts, so a Size Multiplier of 1 would probably be best.
Then you can take a generic skill such as those I mentioned above, determine how well you want to cover the area (the more FMs, the better the rating and the more space it takes), and there you go.
| QUOTE (Reaver) | ||
But when he's deleting a post, technically, he's deleting all the matrix coding that goes with it which is far more than just text. |
Yeah, matrix posts include both visual (matrix iconography) and audio data... its just that you cant really duplicate those things in a book. (think of it as trying to view graphical websites with flash and music using a speakerless text-only browser).
| QUOTE (Nikoli) |
| As for an idea for the MP of a field manual, look at it like this, imagine the manual represents the background knowledge skill for fox-hole digging. it's a rating 3 skill, what the the mp neccesary for a rating 3 knowledge specialization, with an appropriate multiplier? |
Yes, that is a good way to look at it. However, the manual is just a reference text and bestows no comprehension on its own. It's not a knowsoft where you slot it and just *know* how to dig a good foxhole. You have to actually access the text and read that section of the manual on how to dig one. Now, for something as simple as a foxhole this isn't a big deal. There's really not much to it. But for more complex things (like military operations on urbanized terrain, as was mentioned), there's a hell of a lot more to it and you can't be reading it for useful pointers during a firefight.
For that reason, you can't really treat it as a rating 3 background knowledge skillsoft. If you were going to do that, why not just buy a knowsoft of it at rating 3? It'll take up the same amount of space and cost the same amount (not counting the cost of the knowsoft link or skillwires, of course). This is why the datasoft size thing is so damn confusing.
For the (unfortunately flawed) comparison between megabytes and megapulses, consider that you can fit over 100 military manuals (.PDFs) on a CDR. And .PDFs are pretty big because the whole page is an image (and can have selectable text superimposed over it). If they're in a format that's all text with just images for illustrations (html, for example), they are quite a bit smaller.
But yes, I suppose a multiplier of 1 would be as appropriate as possible.
It's probable that texts such as 2060s FMs, while definitely not Knowsofts, would have more intelligent search functions and lots more metadata that enables them, compared to PDFs. It is also likely that they'd be using a lot of the capabilities offered by the new formats, such as animations and sounds.
Just trying to make excuses why they might end up taking so much space.
Just trying to make excuses why they might end up taking so much space.
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