I don't know why all airports don't offer something like 15 minutes of Wifi for watching an ad.
Nothing drives me more nuts than being offering Wifi for $10 a day and only needing to check my email for a minute or two.
Detroit (IIRC) made me do that. I was fine with it.
Phoneix had free totally open WiFi in the US Airways terminal. I was pretty surprised.
I could have used this just the other day. I was all set to actually pay, and then it tried to make me install software. I decided just to hack on some code offline instead.
If you have a Nokia or a Blackberry you can use them as modem. I have used a BB to get connected plenty of times and the connection is fast enough to read HN and post comments.
I'm really hoping for some airline to offer WiFi at all of its gates, only to its own passengers. You could use your confirmation number and first/last name to login. If Southwest did this I'd fly with them even more than I do today.