Re: [OT] [HIST] Paymasters of 2183

On Tue, 2 Oct 2001 21:20:32 -0400, "Thomas Barclay"
<kaladorn@fox.nstn.ca>
wrote:

>Also, what useful way is there to pay soldiers 
>like this? 

Digital cash.

A friend of mine has been working for quite a few years on digital cash
for
the Royal Bank of Canada (via Mondex). There are issues, but mostly
cultural.
The technical issues are mostly (I repeat, "mostly") worked out.

In the future, it would make sense for it all to be digital,
particularly
since you're talking about long distances in terms of time to travel.
So, the
funds would probably be moved to the ship's "vault", which is probably
just a
portion of the computer network. The interesting thing is that if the
ship is
destroyed, the electronic funds could be returned to the bank issuing
them.
There are ways of doing this now with Mondex. 

Allan Goodall		       awg@sympatico.ca
Goodall's Grotto:  http://www.vex.net/~agoodall

"Now, see, if you combine different colours of light,
 you get white! Try that with Play-Doh and you get
 brown! How come?" - Alan Moore & Kevin Nolan, 
   "Jack B. Quick, Boy Inventor"