This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
No offense to Synjo Deonecros, but what (s)he's talking about here is a mathematical impossibility, assuming that the hundreds of MB of data was in any way meaningful (It's quite easy to compact a single character that's been written a couple of million times). (S)He is mistaken about something.
It could be a case of some sort of new storage mechanism, so that the data isn't compressed, or is compressed in conjunction with something that stores the data in a very small (physical) space that might look like a standard floppy. For example, some sort of optical storage. Alternately, it could be some sort of cataloguing that would allow a look-up to the "uncompressed" source, thus allowing a user to only store the small catalogue, and retrieve the "uncompressed" version over the network when needed.
But the reason that what is described is "practically unheard of" is that it doesn't exist, as described. I won't go into the mathematics here (as this is already getting too long), but it seems like we've got us a case of Reality Is Unrealistic.
Seth: Dude we are not a tech forum. But point taken, i'm gonna delete the example since it isn't really what we do anyway - seems pure speculation.
arromdee: Moved the Sinister Barrier example to I Want My Jetpack, since Blattnerphones were current technology at the time the story was written.
Red Shoe:
- One story from the Transformers comic had Optimus Prime's entire personality stored on one 5 1/4" disk!
But have you ever carried on a conversation with Optimus? He's not exactly known for having a complex personality.
