Internet Communications While At Sea? 504
ubergamer1337 writes "Next semester I will be participating in a college study abroad program known as Semester at Sea. The gist of it is that over four months 600ish students sail around the world on a converted cruise ship, visiting diverse port cities while taking classes when we are between ports. Debates about its educational merit aside, my internet options while I will be at sea will be severely limited. We get just 100 minutes of internet access for the entire voyage, and once thats gone the only internet access we have is a university email address, which is limited to messages under a megabyte with no attachments. I have been pondering different ways to staying in contact with friends and family back at home without running to an internet cafe in every port, and I have already decided that I want to set up a blog that can be updated by email, but I wanted to ask the collective wisdom of Slashdot if anyone knows of any other ways to transmit more then just your standard message through email. Some things I would be particularity interested in being able to figure out would be a way to send photos (encode them as text?), and a way to get Wikipedia pages etc. emailed to me."
Cold Turkey? (Score:2, Funny)
I know some guy who went without email access for a whole month. Mind you, he ate his own head.
Still if you're not one of those types who defines himself by being "l33t" or a "gamer" you'll be ok.
Does nobody know about RFC1149? (Score:5, Funny)
What? Am I the only old-timer here? There's an RFC standard that fits this PERFECTLY
http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1149.txt [rfc-editor.org]
"1 April 1990: A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers"
Thomas Dzubin
Re:Amateur Radio? (Score:2, Funny)
You have plenty of time to get your general license, which should permit you to use airmail using an amateur radio. But you have to hurry, and come up with the $2500 for equipment.
Used to be... (Score:3, Funny)
Back when Chapman University ran it, we called it "The Love Boat," so immersion and deep involvement with fellow travelers, yes, the studies, not so much...
RFC 1149 (Score:3, Funny)
Unfortunately short of hanging a satellite dish out your cabin window there really isn't a way for you to get a TCP/IP uplink. RFC 1149 does specify a TCP connection modality which could be suitable to transmission of data over long distances at sea, but it was last implemented in 1991 and the engineers responsible were never able to get it to send more than a few hundred bytes of data. YMMV, but I think it's probably your best shot.
Re:RMS (Score:5, Funny)
My advice is to trade internet access for sex. These horny college-age girls will do anything for another hit off Facebook.
Re:Does nobody know about RFC1149? (Score:5, Funny)
Wasn't this discarded years ago because of the dropped packets problem?
Or was that packet droppings?
-Matt
Re:Slow connections! (Score:5, Funny)
An alternate suggestion would be to do everything yourself onboard, then release it all at once when you hit shore.
Ah, yes. The traditional way of sailors dealing with . . . things, since man first started traversing the waters.
Re:Cut the cord (Score:3, Funny)
The guy's username is "ubergamer1337". I don't rate his chances very highly.
Re:In port... (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe it's some sort of strategy. They want the students to like see the world rather than sitting in their cabins in underweat with the curtains shut trolling slashdot and IMing each other about how bored they are.
Or something.
Re:Message queuing (Score:4, Funny)
Oh come on, people have been using bottles in situations like this for ages and it worked out fine. If he's really starved for bandwidth he can just pop a thumbdrive in each one. I hear they come in 64MB flavour now.
OTOH if he *really* can't stand being offline while out at sea, what he needs isn't a tech solution. What he needs is professional help. That comes in a lab coat.
Or maybe he's just not ready to come out of the basement yet.
Re:Cut the cord (Score:1, Funny)
I have been pondering different ways to (strike: staying in contact with friends and family back at home) surf for porn without running to an internet cafe in every port, and I have already decided that I want to set up a (strike: blog) USENET autofetcher that can be updated by email, but I wanted to ask the collective wisdom of Slashdot if anyone knows of any other ways to transmit (strike: more then just your standard message) high quality videos and images through email. Some things I would be particularity interested in being able to figure out would be a way to send photos (encode them as text?), and a way to get (strike: Wikipedia pages) AVIs, MPGs etc. emailed to me.
Re:Missing the point? (Score:2, Funny)
Haha, yeah, those whacky French will eat anything that isn't fast enough to escape, won't they? Unlike us civilized folks here in America.
Oh, BTW, could you pass me the clam chowder, please?
Just cut one of those large cables/pipelines... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Cut the cord (Score:3, Funny)
"There is life outside the internet."
Unfortunately for most of us on Slashdot, that's simply not true ;)
Re:RMS (Score:5, Funny)
Also, you have some of your slashes wrong. They should be "/", not "|".
Re:RMS (Score:2, Funny)
postcards (Score:4, Funny)
I've heard tales of an ancient form of communication that used small slabs of tree fiber carried by occasionally tempermental human beings. You can use an antiquated stylus-like device, which instead of selecting icons or doing script recognition on touchscreens of today, they leave behind a quasi-permanent colored marking on the tree fiber substrate, and these glyphical markings can serve to contain the message you would like to send. These tree fiber substrates are capable of including graphic attachments on one side, and hte mesage on the opposite side of the slab. They are often pre-encoded with a selection of graphics to choose from, and sometimes you can create a substrate encoded with a graphic of your own creation using a device able to translate your digital imagery files into the pigmentious container format which is compatible with the wood fiber slab. You will likely need to include a second attachment to these messages, in the form of a second, but smaller slab of wood fiber, a kind of wood-fiber-slab tax which the occasionally tempermental human transporters require, without this second attachment file then you risk your message and other attachments being lost in a sort of delivery black hole. You may have to search for an acceptable terminal which is compatible with sending messages in this format, and these terminals may not always be available to you. But the ancients once used such laughable methods with great success, so it may be somewhat usable for you as well.
600 college kids on a boat for a semester? (Score:1, Funny)
I'd say your biggest concern will be how you will procure enough penicillin for that voyage.
Re:Sounds like fun (Score:5, Funny)
My wife and I love cruising
Wrong forum, buddy
Re:Cut the cord (Score:3, Funny)
There is life outside the internet.
Citation needed
Re:Use the opportunity properly (Score:3, Funny)
When I was stationed in Italy (in the north, about mid-way between Milan and Venice) our first night off post we stopped to get a "real" Italian pizza. Imagine our surprise when, after it came out of the over, the server proceeded to pour about 1/2 cup of olive oil over the whole thing. As if pizza weren't greasy enough!
Yeah, I wasn't particularly impressed with "real" Italian pizza. I definately like the Americanized version better. But I wouldn't call pizza hut "real" pizza either. When I think of real pizza I think of New York City pizzeria style -- thin crust, huge slices that you have to fold over to eat..... nothing like it.
On the other hand, every bite of pasta I ate during my three years in Italy was divine.
Yeah. And the antipastos. Absolutely loved them. Seems like all the Italians do is eat. Our hostess kept apologizing to us for "only" being able to make four antipastos when she made us dinner the first night. I was the only one in our group that was able to put away all of that food. I think she wanted to marry me by the time that trip was done ;)
Re:Used to be... (Score:1, Funny)
The Love Boat?
Does that mean you go on the ship with your girlfriend, have a fight that lasts the entire journey, and make up just as it ends?
They should have called that show The Hate Boat.
Re:Missing the point? (Score:3, Funny)
Isn't the point of something like "Semester at Sea" to immerse yourself in the program, and become involved deeply
No, the point is to learn to avoid that at all cost. ;-)
Quite literally
Re:Use the opportunity properly (Score:3, Funny)
Forget about the internet, email, wikipedia etc.They'll all still be there when you're done.
I dunno about that...
HTML will have been entirely replaced with Flash applications. E-mail will have been completely over-run with spam (rather than just totally, as things are now). All ISPs will employ traffic shaping to the point that downloading the latest Knoppix image will take forever. And if Jimmy Wales' recent plea is to be believed, Wikipedia will be gone, probably sold to Microsoft.
I was only gone for a little over a year, and I did note ALL these things when I got back online.