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Remember what happened to all of those companies? [...]

NetZero is still around
You can still get paid to watch ads

and maybe more to the point, some modern companies are strongly defined by the ad-supported, free service model:
Google search, mail, etc
Facebook
Yelp
weather (weather.com, accuweather, etc)
and pretty much any website whose primary use isn't to conclude a financial transaction.

Good news!

http://www.netzero.net/dialup

From the article you linked: "Jeb Bush says illegal immigration is 'net zero'". Is he trying to say undocumented immigrants use a particular ISP?

But seriously, that's an interesting statistic. Does that refer to existing illegal immigrants going home or to U.S. citizens going to other countries illegally?

Or http://www.netzero.net/ ... not exactly as dramatic as "fuck you" though.

Plus if you focus on online purchases you don't have to setup retail channels

You do if the market for a $50 console largely overlaps the market for $15/mo Internet access.

http://www.netzero.net/free

Provides 10 hours of free dialup a month.

If you have a dial up modem, you can use http://account.netzero.net/s/landing?action=viewProduct&productId=free and get free dial up internet for 10 hours a month. But in reality you can have unlimited hours a month. Make a new account, more hours. That used to work, I dunno if it still does.

Where's the "sheeple" tag? How do I tag a /. article?

If there were a tag, it would be passing fad.

This is like Net Zero free internet. Wow Free internet!! Wohoo where do I sign up.

We all know the outcome. Too slow, too many disruptions, requires non-standard browser, etc. People talked about the advertisements just like the first cell phone calls were mostly "do you know where I am calling you from? I'm calling from my car phone!"

Don't be fooled by the early indicators. People rarely talk about the fact they are making a call from their car, or they are getting free internet. The commercials and freeloaders avoiding the commercials will soon place this in the same realm as Net Zero.

http://www.netzero.net/

Netzero is still here, but I would hardly call it a roaring sucess. I had to do a Google search to see if they were still here.
They are still here but they make no mention of the free advertising supported service. I think it is dead.

Netzero offers a free service for people willing to be connected to dialup less than 10 hours a month. I find it very useful for checking my email when I'm on the road.

I think it's funny that you would go ahead and encourage misconceptions in your post while your sig dispels one.

Or do you suggest that I pay $239.88 for a 12-month commitment to dial-up Internet access at home?

You're kidding, right? I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that it's been so long since you've had a dial-up connection that you don't realize that you have no fucking clue what you're talking about. Do you live in a cave? Mom's basement? Prison possibly? Netzero is still alive and kicking with a $9.95/month offer, with no commitment. There's also PeoplePC Online. Both of these are cheap dial-up.

$9.95 is a hell of a lot cheaper than the $239.88 misconception you were shouting about.

I think I just figured out how your estimate got to be so far off. You're still on AOL, aren't you?

Aero

http://www.netzero.net/
Click Join Now at the top right
Go to the bottom and click on the Free Internet

If you choose to sign up, it is in fine print at the bottom for free dialup. Here is a link: http://account.netzero.net/s/landing?action=viewPr oduct&productId=free

Netzero still offers its "free" dialup service-- its just limited to 10 HRS / month. Netzero free

Those days, and the business model that supplied them, are long gone... or perhaps not

T-Mobile, which apparently knew of the intrusions by July of last year, has not issued any public warning.

Q: If I were a customer and I found out that my identity has been stolen, could I sue T-Mobile for any damages since they knew of the problem, or perhaps for just having breakable security?

BTW, the Black Hat's email address (and online identity) is ethics@netzero.net and at one point was looking for work as a security administrator. Not a big surprise that he was interested in the field, but 'Ethics'!

• A ***Celeron*** 2.0
• 256 megs of ram (PC2100! Ack!)
• a LEXMARK printer (mucho ink cartrige price)
• 12 months of service at a ridiculous rate for dialup
• A mini tower (forget upgrades) and a mere 250W PSU

The browser release may be only part of the story. Netscape has also started advertising their own dialup internet service. Here's the website. This may be nothing more than a clever way to rebrand AOL, a service mark that's fallen on hard times, and compete with the likes of NetZero.

Ahem... They offer a free account with ads and a paid account that's inexpensive with no ads. Seems like a pretty good business model.

Or the defenders of the "free"internet

imagine the day when ISPs begin maximizing their profits by piping ad information into your machine.

If you can't support a website with ad revenue, or even an ISP , why would anybody think it would work for an entire OS?

Just a thought.

NetZero appears to be based in California.

It only took them what? 14? 15 days?
2000-12-13 03:40:50 NetZero joins Bad Patent Club (articles,patents) (rejected)
Check out their press release...http://www.netzero.net/about_us/20001207 patent.html
"In total, NetZero has more than 50 patents pending on technologies that help us offer innovative ways for advertisers to reach millions of NetZero users, while maintaining a high quality experience for those users."
Get that... FIFTY potential silly patents... well, I would say "hooray!" Netzero is going to wipe out advertising on the internet, but then the problem with that is that people will have to switch to a subscription model to make money. That is not good. 8(
Also from that press release:
"We believe this patent applies to the ad-delivery process used by many of our competitors for both targeted and untargeted advertisements and will provide NetZero with a significant competitive edge in this environment."
Get it straight, NetZero, most of your competitors bit the dust in the last month or two, and in doing so made it nearly impossible to log on to you, and also made things so hard on you, you had to CHANGE YOUR BUSINESS MODEL.
Remember CEOs of America: Competition is a good thing, Monopoly bad.
Now, everyone.. sing along.. it's a little ditty by Queen...

It only took them what? 14? 15 days?
2000-12-13 03:40:50 NetZero joins Bad Patent Club (articles,patents) (rejected)
Check out their press release...http://www.netzero.net/about_us/20001207 patent.html
"In total, NetZero has more than 50 patents pending on technologies that help us offer innovative ways for advertisers to reach millions of NetZero users, while maintaining a high quality experience for those users."
Get that... FIFTY potential silly patents... well, I would say "hooray!" Netzero is going to wipe out advertising on the internet, but then the problem with that is that people will have to switch to a subscription model to make money. That is not good. 8(
Also from that press release:
"We believe this patent applies to the ad-delivery process used by many of our competitors for both targeted and untargeted advertisements and will provide NetZero with a significant competitive edge in this environment."
Get it straight, NetZero, most of your competitors bit the dust in the last month or two, and in doing so made it nearly impossible to log on to you, and also made things so hard on you, you had to CHANGE YOUR BUSINESS MODEL.
Remember CEOs of America: Competition is a good thing, Monopoly bad.
Now, everyone.. sing along.. it's a little ditty by Queen...

NetZero does this...
--

I have an acount with a free ISP here in the states called netzero. Pretty handy when you're out of town and don't feel like paying serious long distance charges. Check out their local access numbers at access numbers. Sure they throw up a banner ad on your screen, but for what you get it's not a bad trade off.

I have an acount with a free ISP here in the states called netzero. Pretty handy when you're out of town and don't feel like paying serious long distance charges. Check out their local access numbers at access numbers. Sure they throw up a banner ad on your screen, but for what you get it's not a bad trade off.

Netzero and ALtaVista have free internet access.

I wouldn't touch AltaVista, no way. Their ISP, 1stUp.com, specifically reserves the right to sell their partners your name, address, e-mail, and just about everything else that they know or find out about you.

NetZero has worked well for me.

However, my current recommendation is FreeWWWeb. At the moment, they don't run ads or anything, so there's no software to download, no fooling about. Just configure your dialer and your server addresses, and away you go. They're the only free ISP in the US with an NNTP server (AFAIK). Because there's no software to download, you don't have to be running Windows, either. And, if you should happen to head into Canada, they even have access numbers there.

Why do bureaucracies do this kind of non-sense? If I give a school district an "obsolete" computer, why does it have to be insured for anything? It's replacement cost is $0. I gave it to them. I'll get them another if some kid takes it (I hope he uses it). In my experience (see this link) school districts come up with N+1 excuses for preventing technical people from helping, because (IMHO) they don't understand the tools you can provide, and therefore they cannot "manage" them.

I think a better approach is to give computers directly to disadvantaged familes -- screw the bureaucrats at school districts. And these machines come with a no-nonsense guarantee: if they break, bring back the pieces and we'll find you another one. No cost. No questions. No hassles. If only NetZero supported Linux ... we could offer full Internet capabilities over any phone line at no cost (a 14.4 or 28.8 modem and SLIP).

It's worth noting that the only successful "geeks in the streets" organizations don't support school districts, but rather smaller, more flexible organizations. Be proactive -- help those in need, not bloated, top heavy school districts.

I definitely agree. I might even be willing (God forbid) to use something like MSN if it was free. Probably not just on principle, though. :) But lots of other people wouldn't care.

Free is a powerful force. I'm using a "free" ISP right now (for the summer until I get back to Ethernet at college :) called NetZero. I can't complain too much, because it's completely free. I just have to ignore some ads. Easy enough. I wouldn't be surprised if these things undercut local ISPs and Linux (it only works in Windows becaues of the ad window) more than MSN would. Even MSN wouldn't be completely free (you'd have to sign up to buy stuff from MS according to the article).

So, a company who (in theory) doesn't really card that much about who wins the OS wars, is actually promoting Windows. They really don't have much of a stake in Windows, but they're promoting it, nonetheless. It those companies that are innocently promoting Windows over alternatives like Linux that will really hurt Linux.