I see a lot of people posting, but very few people actually trying to address your problem.

The fact is when you're at sea you'll be away from any kind of reasonably priced internet service. It's just a fact. No land lines on the open ocean, and bi-directional sat service is expensive.

Cruising sailors / powerboaters are usually stuck with either paying insane amounts for some kind of real time bi-directional satlink (which is what the ship has) or spending a lot less for some sort of Store and Forward satellite system.

Another option open to cruisers is using HF radio and RTTY to send email around. Slow, but surprisingly reliable. That'd require either a marine HF, or a Ham Radio license, and the appropriate hardware.

None of those may be an option for you.

There is a product called Sailmail that might suit your needs. Essentially a little hand held device that has an accoustic coupler in it. Call into the server to send and receive your mail over any phone.

Ultimately, I'll give you one piece of advice. Namely: For waht you need, forget Slashdot. You'll get more people talking about how many seconds a day 100 minutes works out to. Try something like the user forums over on Cruising World or any of the other cruising / sailing forums.

Talk to people who actually know the subject matter at hand.

Cheers,
and enjoy the semester.
Bagheera

Mass transit is the answer - not just BART - REAL mass transit. I cannot stress enough that if one travels to Japan and sees for oneself how fucking cool and efficient the Japanese mass rail system is - billion dollar proposals like this would die at conception.

No. Sorry. Mass transit is part of the solution, but it is not the solution.

The problem lies in the inherent difference between mass transit and public transit and most people don't recognize the difference.

Mass transit focuses on getting mass number of people between various high density locations. These are your medium to heavy rail systems. For the Bay Area that's BART and CalTrain.

In places like Japan, where they have high population densities, it works great. There's a reason places like Tokyo, Moscow, New York, London, etc., can have fantastically efficient mass transit systems: they have the population density to deal with it.

Public transit on the other hand focuses on being a 'vehicle replacement' so people in lower density areas can actually give up their cars. This is taxies up through light rail. Fewer passengers, but more convenient and more versatile.

Bay Area geography doesn't really favor Mass Transit. It's why BART basically sucks for commuting. With the exception of MUNI linking well to BART, most of the Public to Mass links suck.

The whole electric car infrastructure is an expensive idea, and it talks to the whole "chicken and the egg" problem. Without infrastructure, electric cars are useless. Without electric cars, no one will build the infrastructure. This is actively solving the infrastructure problem ahead of the cars.

Is it a good idea? Ultimately, yes. Is it the right idea? That's a lot harder to say. A massive bay area wide fleet of on-demand bio-diesel fueled hybrid shuttle buses might be better. But who's to say? Cars are a part of US culture partially because of our geography. We live in suburbia, which is inherently tied in with car culture.

Unless your mass transit plan includes re-arranging US cities and how people live in this country, it will never be the solution.

Cheers,
Bagheera