[JA] Juno vs real Internet mail
- From: James E Henderson <jim.henderson@xxxxxxxx>
- To: jbh1492@xxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2002 13:10:44 -0400
JBH> The main protocols previously in use for "Internet mail," way,
> way back when I still had 'net access were SMTP, IMAP, and POP.
> When I hear someone say "real email" or "internet mail" I think of
> a MUA which can handle all three.
So, when we talk about who's really got Internet mail, the discussion
becomes rather fluid, with loose definitions further loosened by using
technical terms metaphorically, so we won't know what we're talking about
until we decide what the words will mean. For me, my vague familiarity
with this alphabet soup of standards makes it even looser. Heck, for
IMAP and MUA I lack even a vague familiarity.
JBH> I hope this reached exactly the right people and list,
> I did a reply all and added myself.
That will probably do it, except I dropped ms.dmouse who is sure to be
uninterested, now that the thread has veered sharply from its original
subject of bicycling in New York City parks. Forecast for tomorrow looks
better than today, so today I replaced the cardboard washer next to my
freewheel with a metal one, adjusted my derailleur, trued my wheel, and
wrote some uninformed blather about the difference between real and
unreal E-mail.
>JH>perhaps it also depends on whether I'm browsing the Web
> > at the same time I'm getting or sending my mail.
JBH> Usually "real" email can be sent right when you press the send
> button. Without dialing, without this, without that, using a live
> connection to the 'net. As far as I can tell. Hope this helps.
In that case, about 99% of the time I use Juno 4 or 5, it's not "real"
mail since the connection is only set up after I hit the send button,
while about 1% of the time, using the same software and the same service,
it's "real" because the modem was already online when I decided to get
and send mail. I guess one definition is as good as another as long as
everyone is happy with such odd results.
JBH> Your mailage may vary.
Oogh. Terror and horror.
JJ> I suspect that Juno does not use any standard mail protocols.
I am not at all confident this is so. Well, for Juno's mailer version
1.49 it probably is so. When the servers will stop serving that antique
version is a matter of speculation. Versions 4 and 5 I think use
standard mail protocols but cripple them at the server end so they don't
waste the company's money sending things the company doesn't want to pay
for. Version 6 I am just about sure uses standard protocols. Indeed
that last version doesn't include a mailer; you are expected to use MSOE
or other POP3 mailers already present on most computers.
JJ> Like AOL, users apparently have to download Juno's
> proprietary software, which does its own, proprietary thing.
The first part was true until last month. We had to use the proprietary
mailer, or else Juno's Web mail page as Ms Mouse and I do when we have
Web access but no modem. We can also install Juno 5 (and I think 4) on a
machine that has Internet access through a LAN card. It will swap mail
through that access, using Internet standard protocols.
Perhaps "real Internet mail" can be defined in such a way that using Juno
5 with a modem is not "real" while using it with a LAN card is. This of
course would sometimes conflict with the "right when you press the send
button" definition. It's all good fun until someone gets misled.
JJ>This is probably a necessary part of Juno's business plan, which
> makes money out of this somehow, even if it appears to be "free";
> presumably unwanted advertising figures in here somewhere.
Yes. Juno has both free riders like me and $10/month customers. The
company was founded on the principle that free mail could make a profit
by advertising, just as free television does. As far as I know, that
hasn't happened yet, but it doesn't lose much and paid users bring a
small profit. Meanwhile the parent company United Online has been
growing by buying the assets of dying ISPs like Blue Light. Maybe the
theory is that a lot of rotting corpses tied together can make a mighty
kicking chorus line.
Anyway it points toward a third possible definition by which Juno 4 and
5, no matter how connected and no matter what protocols they use, would
not be "real" while Juno 6 would be. This definition again will
sometimes conflict with one or both of the others. The more different
realities, the merrier.
JJ> Could somebody clarify what is "juno_accmail@xxxxxxxxxxxxx"
> which was a CC on this message; this is a closed list
Oops! I should have warned you, John. You can join at
http://www.junoaccmail.org I am including an attachment, plain ASCII
text, cannot carry viruses, that describes both Juno and Juno_accmail. A
later version will appear on the list.
-- Attached file included as plaintext by Ecartis --
-- File: jaccfaq.txt
I have been presenting this as a FAQ but it does not address advanced
technical issues of which I know little, like how to patch early Juno
versions to do BCC. The old FAQ does that kind of thing well, while
this more elementary catechism can serve better as a separate list of
Introductory Questions.
Eighth draft, middle Oct 2002
Question 7 has been totally rewritten because the answer changed.
Question 8 has been simplified. Question 11 now says how big the
mailbox is. ,Some questions have minor expansions or clarifications.
================================================================
Frequently Asked Questions about Juno and the Juno_accmail:
1 Who's Juno?
2 Who's the Juno_accmail Project?
3 What's the connection between the two?
4 What can Juno do for me?
5 How can Juno be any good if it's free?
6 Does "Offline" mean it's broken?
7 Can I use MS Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape Mail
and other industry standard mailing programs?
8 Do I have to use the offline mail program?
9 What do you mean, Web is limited on free Juno?
10 Is mail also limited?
11 What if I don't pick up my mail very day?
12 Can I get Juno on my Mac, Linux, OS/2, DOS machine, etc?
13 Can my antique 386/486 Personal Computer run Juno?
14 What does Juno's free Web require?
15 How can I get Juno?
16 How can I join Juno_accmail?
17 Will I get spammed?
18 Where did Juno come from?
19 Where did Juno_accmail come from?
===============================================================
1 Who's Juno?
No, not the Roman goddess of marriage. Juno Online Services
is a company trying to make money by providing free but limited
Internet services, by putting ads on your screen as television
stations do. They also hope you will come to enjoy the Web so
much, and dislike the ads and the limits so much, that you will
be willing to pay to use Juno without so many ads and limits.
Most users, however, continue to accept the limited free ride.
2 Who's Juno_accmail?
Juno_accmail is a bunch of amateurs who enjoy helping other
people make good use of Juno's services. We do this by
answering and discussing questions in a mailing list, and by
providing auxiliary programs that you can download for free.
3 What's the connection between the two?
None. One is a corporation; the other is a loose alliance of
amateurs. With no connection between the two, it's no use to
ask one of them to make the other be nicer to you or whatever.
You can gripe to Juno_Accmail all you want, but we can only
feel your pain and provide some free and possibly helpful
information and software. Information from this friendly
bunch of volunteers is always more plentiful, but sometimes
less reliable, than what the Juno company will tell you.
There are no Juno insiders at Juno_accmail, so you won't find
any secrets. Some Accmail participants however, have spent a
lot of brain power studying the company and its software, and
are willing to share their findings with anyone who asks.
Sometimes the company wishes we would provide less information,
and occasionally an insider points out a bit of unwise advice or
mistaken information. Usually they pay us no attention at all.
4 What can Juno do for me?
Juno provides World Wide Web and E-mail services, as AOL and
other Internet companies provide for their users. There are many
minor differences among Internet providers but the big difference
is that Juno is one of the few who are willing to provide free
service. Actually even Juno makes most of its money out of paid
users, but millions of us free riders are still tolerated.
Paid Juno users do not pay as much as the users of AOL and other
full-price services. Some families use a paid family account
for Web, and free accounts for each family member's mail.
5 How can Juno be any good if it's free?
Juno mail is quite good. It is reliable and it doesn't require
modern powerful hardware. Mail is a cheap service for the
company to provide, because you do your mail offline.
The Juno mail program shows advertisements in the top of the
window, and sometimes the company sends us advertising mail.
You could call it spam but it isn't a lot, and the company of
course doesn't like to call it that.
Free Web service by Juno is not so good, since Web is expensive
for the company to provide. You only get a limited number of
hours online each month. While you are online you get more
advertising, mostly in the form of an ad banner staying on the
screen while you are online and annoying browser windows popping
up over what you want to see. You're supposed to click on the
ads to get more information about the product being advertised.
If you pay for Juno, these annoyances are much lessened.
6 Does "offline" mean it's broken?
No, this isn't Star Trek. Online means your computer is connected
to Internet, tying up your phone line and many other communications
resources to exchange data constantly even when there's no new data.
Online time costs the company nickles per hour which most companies
recover by charging you a monthly fee. Being online also prevents
people from calling you. There's no need to be online while reading
and writing mail, however, so Juno works offline.
Juno's mail software calls the company, gets your incoming mail
(usually in less than a minute), releases the phone line, and shows
your mail. You use the built in editor to write your replies, if any.
When they are all done, you click on "Send Mail" so the software will
call to go online briefly again to send your replies.
7 Can I use MS Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape Mail and other
industry standard mailing programs?
Yes. In Sept 2002 the company opened its servers to exchange POP3
mail with other software at your end. Juno version 6, a modified
version of NetZero's user software, is distributed without a mailer.
Most users continue to prefer Juno's own little proprietary mailer
which is still included in Juno 5, but some appreciate the advanced
features of software from other sources.
8 Do I have to use the offline mail program?
You can read and write messages online at the company's Webmail site,
http://webmail.juno.com if you have Web access. The software for
this site was replaced in April 2002. Many users called it a real
improvement. Juno's offline mailer works nicely for millions of
free and paid users, who generally prefer it. Most Juno users only
use the Web mailer when they are away from home, for example at a
Web cafe, where they can only use software that's already there.
Anyone who actually prefers Web mail over Juno's pleasant offline
mailer should consider using another service than Juno for mail.
9 What do you mean, Web is limited on free Juno?
The advertising program slows down your computer while you are online,
especially if it's already a slow old computer. There is also a limit
on how many hours you can be online in a month. The company won't say
what the limit is, however. Probably it's something like ten or twenty
hours. Possibly it depends on what time of day you call and whether
you're in a big city, and perhaps on many factors unknown. Heavy users
who want to browse the Web almost every day, or for almost an hour per
day, are likely to be unhappy with free Juno. They will be better off
paying. Free service is for lightweights.
10 Is mail also limited?
Various versions of Juno's mail software have various limits. The
antique Version 1.49 has limits discussed below. Version 4 can display
MIME fonts, colors and inline pictures but its editor will not put them
into your messages as Version 5 will. The company may limit the length
of messages or how many hundreds of messages you send per day. Free
Juno is a consumer service, not intended for heavy or professional use.
The company adds a Juno advertisement to the end of any message from a
free Juno user that is not addressed to another Juno user. If it goes
both to a Juno address and non Juno ones, the ad is still omitted.
In May 2002 it was discovered that Juno 5 would only support up to
nine accounts on one computer. There are no reports on whether the
number of accounts is limited on other versions,
You should keep enough disk space free to allow proper processing
of messages. In Versions 1.49 and 4 that means as much space as the
size of the largest folder. Since the Inbox is a folder, this is one
of the reasons to clear messages from your Inbox after reading them.
In Version 5 you need twice as much free space as all your stored
messages put together. Some Juno 5 users have lost their old message
folders, perhaps because they didn't have enough disk space. Version
4 can only have a thousand messages per folder, including the Inbox.
None of this is a problem if you don't keep old messages, but some of
us are packrats.
11 What if I don't pick up my mail every day?
Incoming mail will accumulate in your "mailbox" at Juno's central
computers. If you are not heard from for several months, perhaps a
year or two, the company will delete your account and your unreceived
mail. If you accumulate two Megabytes of mail (hundreds of messages
of usual length, for example, or half a dozen especially long ones
with pictures attached) your mailbox will fill and reject all later
messages until you call and download your messages. Paid users get a
larger mailbox.
12 Can I get Juno on my Mac, Linux, OS/2, DOS machine, etc?
No. Juno's advertising feature requires MS-Windows 95 or later.
Since advertising is how the free Juno service makes money for the
company, you can't use another operating system. Of course, if your
Mac, OS/2 or other computer has something added that makes it able to
run Microsoft Windows applications, you can give Juno a try, and see
what happens. No charge for trying, since it's a free service.
13 Can my antique 386/486 Personal Computer with Win 3.1 run Juno?
An early version, Juno 1.49, can run under Windows 3.1x on a
386 or 486 with 4 Megs RAM. Theoretically, anyway. Actually
some people find it useful in 6 Megs, though processing sometimes
takes hours when a large amount of mail arrives. It's better
with 8 Megs, and can be downright quick with 16. Thousands still
use it happily but this antique version has mail only. No web.
Message size is limited to approximately 50 Kilobytes which is
less than ten thousand words. Juno 1.49 cannot handle attached
files or MIME coding. Messages that are written in HTML or RTF
formats will arrive with junk characters instead of the original
fonts, colors and pictures, though the words are usually still
readable. Some people count these inabilities as advantages,
since colors and pictures are used mostly for advertising while
attachments are the principal method of spreading viruses.
In past years large messages, including those that had pictures
or other big files attached, accumulated in your mailbox (see
question 11) and eventually clogged it. Starting in September
2002 the first 50 Kilobytes or so of a large message were sent
to you, and the rest of the message lost.
The company stopped supporting Version 1.49 officially in the
late 1990s and then stopped sending advertising for it to display.
Late in November of 2001 a glitch in the company's server computers
made Juno Version 1.49 stop working for a week or so. This can be
taken as cause for caution for the thousands who still prefer using
antiques. Some people, after all, prefer a high-wheel bicycle, for
classic chainless simplicity. They just have to be cautious.
14 What does Juno's free Web require?
MS-Windows 95 or later. Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 or later (any
version that came with Windows 98 or later will do). 28.8 KBPS modem
or faster. 486 or later, with 32 Megabytes RAM or more. 24 Megs can
sometimes work, but other times it grinds to a halt when free Juno
pops up a Web advertisement. Version 4 suffers somewhat less under
conditions of short memory and small disk space than Version 5 does.
You should expect no problems with most Pentium compatible computers
from the late 1990s or after. Of course with computers we sometimes
encounter problems we do not expect.
Even with hardware that can easily handle Juno Version 5, many of us
prefer the older Version 4, but not all tastes are this conservative.
15 How can I get Juno?
If you've already got Web service, click on http://www.juno.com and
sign up as a new user. It will show you how to download and install
the latest version of the software. You can also call 1-888-TRY-JUNO
to request a CD, but they are only interested in sending it to people
who will pay for the service. If you know someone who has a Juno CD,
you can use it or a copy of it. Copying is all right by the company.
The CD can also install MS Internet Explorer if you don't already
have it. If the Juno version on the CD is obsolete, it will upgrade
itself automatically when you connect.
A user of Juno 5 can click on the Help menu to see how to make an
installation floppy for you. The floppy will have a small program
to call Juno's computers and download the whole Juno program to you.
For Version 1.49, the floppy has the whole program. The obsolete
but still useful Juno versions 1.49 and 4.00.11 can be downloaded at:
http://www.junoaccmail.org/download.htm
Other versions were made, but company policy is to force them to
upgrade as soon as you go online, so insted of downloading them
you might as well get a version that works without updating.
All the installation programs have a lot of dumb questions for you to
answer, intended to help the company decide what to advertise to you.
Earlier versions have more dumb questions. Some users lack patience
to enter completely correct answers, but they still get accepted.
16 How can I join Juno_accmail?
To subscribe to the Juno_accmail Mailing List, send a message to:
ecartis@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
with "subscribe juno_accmail" in the subject or in the body. That
day or the next day, you will get a message that you are accepted.
The first message will be an introduction, telling how to receive
Digests if you like. It will also tell you how to quit with an
"unsubscribe juno_accmail" message if you get bored with it.
17 Will I get spammed?
Juno sends free users a few E-mails per month advertising something.
Most of us are not sensitive enough to mind. Those who mind, should
pay for Internet service. Juno won't sell your name to advertisers,
since the advertisers then wouldn't have to pay for future ads.
Accmail won't sell your name to advertisers, but the messages we send
to Accmail go to hundreds of people we don't know. Some people like
to use their personal account for personal business, such as family,
and keep a separate account for Accmail and other public discussions.
If advertising became a nuisance, you could abandon that account and
make up another name for another account for public discussions.
Juno doesn't charge for additional accounts or say whether there is
a limit on the number of accounts. Lots of people use half a dozen.
I'm Jim Henderson and use jim.henderson@xxxxxxxx for all purposes.
Yes, this free account gets some spam. Some of the spammers found
me because I gave my address at Web sites. Others, I don't know.
Juno Version 5 has a "Mail Assistant" spam filter, which has been
useful to people who study it carefully rather than simply click
on the "Block Sender" option which doesn't accomplish much.
18 Where did Juno come from?
On April 22, 1996, D E Shaw & Co, owned by David Shaw, organized
Juno Online Services to sell advertising by providing free E-mail
service. Dr Shaw used to be a professor at Columbia University
and a Vice President at Morgan Stanley. His company had made him
rich by hooking together the computers of stockbrokers. He hired
Charles Ardai as Juno's President, and sold Juno stock publicly
in March of 1999.
Entrepreneurs Ronald Burr, Stacy Haitsuka, Harold McKenzie and
Marwan Zebian, with venture-capital backing (largely from IdeaLab),
started NetZero late in 1996, providing free Web service. A bunch
of smaller competitors copied that idea the next year, and Juno
also started providing free Web. In 1998 Juno claimed to be the
fastest growing ISP, and the following year both Juno and NetZero
claimed to be the second biggest ISP after AOL. Briefly in 1999,
before the bubble burst, some competitors went so far as to offer
free DSL service and free computers so you could watch their ads.
In 2000 both companies gobbled up a bunch of smaller companies
that were mostly dying anyway because advertising rates declined.
Hoping for a non advertising revenue stream, Juno promoted a
screensaver scheme to use free riders' computers for major
computation projects. It wasn't heard from after spring, 2001.
The founders of NetZero left in mid-2001 to form Layer2Networks,
a business-network-services provider. After fighting in court
about patents, priorities and who was really bigger, Juno and
NZ merged in late 2001 to form a company called United Online.
The two services continued to be offered separately.
19 Where did Juno_accmail come from?
Wow, said a bunch of amateur Internet old-timers in 1996, free mail?
But only mail? No file transfers? How do we overcome that problem?
A few months after Juno started, these industrious people cooked up
the "Juno_accmail Project" to help people use E-mail and UUencoding
to send and receive files, including programs and Web pages. There
were already other accmail operations, for example at the University
of Maryland, for people who had E-mail but not Web or FTP service,
but this new one was set up with Juno users in mind. As it turned
out, the Juno_accmail Mailing List and www.junoaccmail.org Web site
that helped in this work could also help people with various aspects
of Juno's software and service.
In the late 1990s Juno and other companies started providing free Web
service. Mail users who wanted files and Web pages but didn't have
Web service became scarce, so the original purpose of accmails didn't
matter as much. However, without charging any money to users, the
Juno company could not afford to pay someone to talk on the phone to
free riders who had questions or difficulties using the software.
So, Juno_accmail's technical help continued to be relevant, and
nowadays it's mostly a help club.
To unsubscribe, send a message to ecartis@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with
"unsubscribe juno_accmail" in the body or subject.
OR visit //freelists.org
~*~
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