Slashdot Mirror
Internet Communications While At Sea?
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."
As someone who provides satellite internet access to all manner of land- and sea-faring vessels I can offer special insight into how easy it is to rectify your problem.
All you have to do is quickly finish off that degree. But be quick because the US Navy's Officer Candidate School takes 12 weeks and you need to get in and out of that before that new semester starts. While that's going on you need to win over as many people on Congress as you can. Your best bet is to start an internet campaign before joining. Then when you get out you can have Congress rush through your appointment to admiral. Two-star at least.
It's that simple.
Once you've gotten through all that you're pretty much guaranteed a decent internet connection throughout your travels. Unless someone like me accidentally pulls a patch cable or something (which was an unfortunate accident and given the involved general's reaction not one I'm likely to repeat).
Direct away from face when opening.
Government officials have noticed that wildness permits and park attendance has been dropping the past couple decades. Travel costs and fees haven't increased on an income-adjustment basis. Plus with the increased interest in green and ecology you'd thing people would go there more. The most believable reason offered is that young people are so wired into phones, the network, games, etc. that they dont want to be off the grid for the time it takes to visit the backcountry.
Not sure but I do know that I'd like to kick this kid's arse. This guy's got the privilege of going on this exclusive, obscenely expensive paradise cruise for several months and he's got the nerve to ask for unlimited Internet access.
If he can afford this cruise then he can bloody well afford to hook himself up with and Iridium phone/data connection. Quite whining and leave us alone.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once