Coming and Going
The ISPs get you both ways; they remind me of the Mafia and protection rackets. First they sell ad space to the advertisers, saying, "We can deliver X thousands, nay, Y millions of pairs of eyes to see this wonderful ad." Then they come to us, the end-user of the internet. Their offer to us is the opposite; "You can have access to the web for a low price. You will see a ton of ads. They will be very annoying, we will make sure of that. If you don't want to see all this junk, you can pay us more and we will make them all go away. If you pay us even more, we will speed up the service."
Okay, what provoked this whine? I have Juno, or as Nathan refers to it, my pseudo internet 'service' provider. (He questions the Internet part and I question the Service part.) I had to cancel my credit card, so Juno felt stiffed when they didn't get their money. So, even though I could get into the Internet from my husband's account for free - with lots of ads and pop-ups, of course - I couldn't access the Internet through my own account, not even the free version with lots of pop-ups. Plus, they are going to bill me for the period of time when I didn't have access! So, why don't I just leave them? Because it is $14.95 per month. I loaded AOL, thinking that might be a better deal, but it's $23.95. And I have had experience with them in the past. They are devilishly difficult to resign from. And they have as many or more pop-ups as Juno.
Okay, I'll stop whining and say some good things about the technology. $14.95 is an upgrade (voluntary on my part) to a 'better, faster, fewer ads Juno'. I chose to do that myself. I could have kept on paying $9.95. And I love on-line banking. (It really is secure, right Nae?) The Internet really is quite amazing, when I think about life just 10 years ago.