Re: FreeNET?

[Mitchell Spector <mitch2gs@hotmail.com>]

"julian814" <julian814@hotmail.com> wrote:

>All right, maybe it's just a blurb in my addled mind, but back in the
>glory days of the Apple // and the beginnings of the internet, there
>used to be what they called FreeNET nodes, where people could dial in
>and get on the internet for the price of the call. I even seem to
>remember there being such a node in State College at one time, although
>the connection was at a pitiful 300 bps. Anyone else know what I'm
>talking about?

    There _still_ are some Freenet operating in Canada and the States.
Typically they were free dial-up accounts offering text-based access to 
a shell account (or a limited menu system running atop one) but these 
days most now offer PPP connection in addition to that.

    In Canada we have the Toronto Freenet, National Capital Freenet
(Ottawa) and Vancouver Freenet. Interested in finding out if your area
has a Freenet? http://www.freedomlist.com/ (click on "freenet" or
"free"; they've actually mixed some into the wrong category).

    Around 1999 there was a short period where there were free ISP's,
which differed in that they ran off advertising revenue instead of user
donations, and then collapsed after the so-called "dot.com" crash
(i.e. Freewwweb, 1Nation Online, OnFree, Juno, DotNow, etc, etc). 
They've all mostly disappeared, I think NetZero is all that's left but
shifted from free to merely a low-cost ISP.

Mitchell Spector