You could probably do it with the dial-up stuff, but that would be a pain. I would recommend having your friend set up an ftp server. http://www.ipswitch.com/ has a user friendly one, but its not the most secure thing in the world. You could also search for opensource ftp dameons at http://sourceforge.net. It really just depends on what you are trying to do....
If you have XP, since there wasn't any mention of an OS like we are able to deduce that over the brain waves, you can just send a "remote assistance" email and the other person just clicks the link to connect.
West of House
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.