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Internet Communications While At Sea?

Posted by timothy on from the use-carrier-whales dept.

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."

4 of 504 comments (clear)

  1. Cut the cord by Mononoke · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Say goodbye to your friends/family when you depart. Tell them you will contact them in an emergency. Then stay off the computers and spend time creating relationships with others on the ship. You don't need constant contact with the folks back home. Don't use them as a crutch.

    Temporarily cutting off contact will be the best thing you ever do for yourself.

    --
    NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
  2. Unplug, get away by gatkinso · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Screw your email.

    Sounds like heaven.

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    I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
  3. Re:Limitations are in place for a reason by hansamurai · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It may be their intent, but this is Slashdot. He poses to us an intriguing and difficult problem and we solve it through various obtuse and technical solutions.

    --
    Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
  4. Use the opportunity properly by EmbeddedJanitor · · Score: 5, Insightful
    If you're going on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity like this then why waste the time doing internet stuff that you can do for the rest of your life.

    Use the opportunity wisely. Soak up the new experiences. DOn't be one of those fools that travel halfway around the world to sit in a McDonalds or an internet cafe.

    Forget about the internet, email, wikipedia etc.They'll all still be there when you're done.

    --
    Engineering is the art of compromise.