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Juno And Privacy
Karl Weiss writes: "Section 2.5 of the Juno Privacy Policy has some very interesting statements in it - you authorize them to download an app to track your usage and you can't do anything about it, you are to keep your computer on 24/7, or give them the right to make your computer call out at their desire, and they can install a screen saver on your computer with ads, and you can't get rid of it. Obviously this bothers me, but the real kicker as far as I'm concerned is that they will allow third parties to use the downloaded software. Does M$ looking for pirated software sound like a player? Or what happens if someone cracks the software? Does that open your hard drive data to anyone? As the senior network instructor at a large private computer school, I have advised faculity and staff to not use Juno due to these requirments." It looks like the few remaining free ISPs are searching for ways to make up advertising income during the dot-com meltdown, and the "solution" they've come up with is to make use of their users' computers to do distributed processing. Will Juno users realize what they are agreeing to?
"Does M$ looking for pirated software" M$? Sure, Slashdot can be taken serious.
LOL.
Distrubuted.Net for Dummies. SETI@home for the Stupid. Process Tree for Poseurs.
Annoying, Pedantic, Asshole.
There is no contradiction
This Post Was Brought To You By Kiss The Troll
.. because US citizens put up with it. Plain and simple.
Companies arrogantly push this sort of intrusive shit without so much as blinking only because people because they know they can (and will) get away with it. Please, educate the people. And get the government out of the hands of big business.
> And oh yeah, this time I won't make the mistake of installing linux on it!!
So you'll install FreeBSD ?
Wrong. Lots of people here use modems.
Again, how do you know?
There's a huge difference. Did you actually read the privacy policy? Only the last 2 points of the previous comments are being sarcastic. The policy really does say that Juno can download their software onto your computer, change your screensaver (which you aren't allowed to disable), and require you to run your computer 24 hrs/day (and not pay for the electricity, hope you don't live in CA).
there's no such thing as a free ISP.
Juno Countermeasure: "I guess we'll have to start running our stuff at a regular priority instead of just idle. Now your computer is slow all the time. Thank you for fucking with Juno, have a nice day."
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
If you could figure this out, then you could launch your vmware session, connect it to the free service, then minimize and go on. Of course, you have to give up all that ram running vmware.
So far, there appears to be no problem with his Juno Webmail access (well, besides the slowness of it all).
--
Gleepy the Hen. More intelligent than the average hen.
This brings up a good point.. Is there possibly a good time for "spam"? I think so. In this case, I would look at a mass email to *.juno would kind of be like spam civil disobedience.
Once I thought I was wrong...I was mistaken.
Advertisers don't care what's selling, but they care a whole lot about what's selling to WHO. Ie, is the person who bought product A likely to buy product B, too?
Ie, its all about DIRECTED marketing, not just marketing.
I don't intend to allow my children to keep a computer in their room. At this stage of the game, it is too dangerous. In the family room only, please, allowing overt monitoring of their activites online. Games et al will be handled with headphones, should the noise level get too high.
I darn sure don't want to get a call from the FBI because my son has tried to be 733t hax0r.
I guess the old TANSTAAFL, my personal motto for years, still holds.
Mike
The old curmudgeon
Hey,
I said I was old, didn't I? That meens I don't know how to do leet speek.
Bah.
Mike
I'm fairly sure it was Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". I have a copy around here somewhere, gotta read it again sometime.
I use Juno maybe 3 hours a week. I've whacked any ActiveX control, any service, and any process I don't recognize. I hibernate the machine 'cause I'm on dialup. There's no reason to keep it running [I do my surfing at work; where'd you think this post is coming from?] Nothing's happened so far.
If anything, I receive messages now and then that my usage pattern is just fine and dandy with them, and there are Stygian tortures awaiting those that abuse the service. I think these people will be getting the extra features.
Not worried about Microsfot; I work for them.
The party's over
Whine, Whine, Wine -- [hint, hint, wink, nudge, nudge, grin, grin, wink, wink]
The party's over
ianal, but i do know a bit about US contract law, and this particular clause would be found if you went to court. you cannot agree to a contract when you are not aware of the terms.
We need to spam them for their own good. We should also spam them with a make money at home email so they can afford a real ISP....
Dyslexics Untie!
At work we've just got mandatory setup for NT, desktop, screensaver colours, everything. This kinda messed with the guys doing spectrogram processing, 'coz the OpenGL, unturn-offable, screensaver sucks the cycles. Solution? Get an old mouse, glue the ball to a magnetic flea stirrer and leave it clamped in a stand over the revolving magnetic base; an always-moving mouse and the screensaver doesn't turn on! Just don't try this energy-friendly trick in California...
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
>There ought to be a law!! Get the FCC or someone to rule that ANY ISP must support ANY operating system, AND at the SAME price. (The one I use now has a much lower priced version than what I'm paying, but it's another damn Windoze-only ad-based version!)
>
So you say they ought to provide something for nothing, by law, eh?
Yeah, and they ought to pass a law that everyone should do 10+ hours of volunteer work at a local charity. Think of the good _that_ would do!
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
>One by one, we have watched free ISP services dry up and blow away. Now we are getting onerous usage agreements. Folks, I expect that this is the death knell for the free ISP.
>
The market works by the free exchange of goods and services, that are mutually beneficial. If one side doesn't like their part of the deal, they don't make it. The free ISP model is: the ISP gives you access and service; you give something. Supposedly, both parties benefit. Too bad for the ISPs, what they ask from users, the users have hated to give, or what they got from users wasn't worth anything. The only way to survive is to ask users to give something that's worth something to somebody, and the users don't hate giving it.
1) eyeballs looking at seizure-inducing banner ads? Didn't work, users hate it and it's not worth squat.
2) CPU cycles for distributed computation? I don't think it will work, I hate the idea of dialups in the middle of the night and who knows what info they're collecting?
What would you give that's worth something to the ISP, that most people don't hate to give? I'll tell you what: a small amount of cash (~$20/month), and that model is what is working, with ISPs you pay for.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
> don't know any major national ISP that allows the above. You can usually get local access if you know someone at an ISP, but you know that that friend leaving is likely to be the end of that option. I came across one DSL operator that offers all of the above and they don't operate in my area.
/.-ers doing this? Surely this is an untapped goldmine! Maybe we could do an IPO soon? Surely there are lots of investors whom we could show that our proposal is an unstoppable money maker!
How about a bunch of us
Better yet, let's get the government to make it happen. Why not get the government to do the dirty work (coercive taxes) of funding to let us do our noble task of wiring the world to the internet. That will vastly improve everyone's life, they can order water and food online using PayPal! (or a gov't version of PayPal, where they get welfare credits) And why should some redneck spend that money going bowling. What a loser sport! Better they "voluntarily" pay that money to my noble cause.
(OK, sorry for the ranting, why are so many people so ignorant of the market, is that why we have so many socialists and Marxists? For a real education in economics, go to http://www.mises.org)
BTW, the reason the service a few of us want (run services, big bandwidth [not related to big bands]) is so expensive is that it's a pain for companies to do that nationally for a small market. You _can_ get this (T1+), but you pay the bucks. You have to play to the market to make money, and we are a pitiable minority.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
I guess the absurdity of forced "volunteer" work escaped you...it's just a form of slavery.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Better yet.. sign it, and then violate the hell out of the motherfscker. Remove the screensaver. Turn your PC off if you want to. Whatever. Nothing bad will happen to you.
- Have a picture
This gives idiots a chance to use the Internet. Not necessarily a good thing but they generally just go to web-based chatrooms and play with the emoticons anyway. I doubt a person using Juno could figure out how to pirate software.
If you aren't part of the solution, there is good money to be made prolonging the problem
...and the server at work just blew up. But can your boss contact you? Nope, Juno is using the phone line without your knowledge. You sleep contently until the next night, when you worry about where you are working next.
and please actually get a clue about the service and stop accepting what people post here as gospel truth.
We are proud to be a member of the TRUSTe certification program. TRUSTe is an independent, non-profit initiative whose mission is to build Internet users' trust and confidence in the services they use by promoting TRUSTe's principles of fair information practices. In accordance with TRUSTe's principles, we disclose our information practices and have agreed to have TRUSTe review our practices for compliance.
When you see the TRUSTe mark, you can expect to be notified of:
What types of information are being collected about you
How you can update or correct such information
How the information will be used
With whom the information will be shared
We use the information our subscribers provide to personalize their Internet experience and to meet the needs of our advertisers. For example, while all our members see advertisements, they don't all have to see the same advertisements. If we know that a particular user loves to ski, we might show her an ad for winter vacations; a user who indicates that he has young children might see an ad for pre-school toys. By targeting content in this way, we can make it more likely that the marketing messages and offers on Juno are of interest to the people who see them, which serves both our subscribers' and our advertisers' interests. You agree that we may use Member Profile and other information you provide or relating to your use of the Service to, among other things, facilitate the distribution of information to you by others and administer the Site and maintain and improve the Service.
We also collect data to help us operate our services.
We will not intentionally monitor or disclose any private e-mail message or online communication, although we reserve the right to monitor accounts that are believed to be acting in violation of the Service Agreement, Guidelines for Acceptable Use, or any applicable law or regulation; to protect the integrity of our Service or the Internet community as a whole; or pursuant to request of governmental or legal authority.
In addition to the data you may provide through the Member Profile and other surveys, we may collect information relating to how you use the Service (including, for example, information relating to your frequency of use, navigational information such as the uniform resource locator (URL) of the Web pages you visit, configuration information such as the type of Web browser you are using, your Internet Protocol (IP) address, processor type and operating system, and information relating to the display of any advertisements transmitted to you).
We keep confidential any personal information that might identify you. Some of the information we collect from our users could identify them personally. Such "Identifier Information" includes a person's name, address, e-mail address, credit card number, and telephone number. We will not share any individual's personal Identifier Information with a third party without that individual's consent (except as required or requested by law, regulation or governmental authority -- it is Juno's policy to cooperate fully with legal authorities -- or as set forth in this Privacy Statement). We may disclose to advertisers or other third parties statistical information derived through the aggregation of information you provide or relating to your use of the Service with information associated with all or some subset of the other subscribers to the Service -- for example, we might inform an advertiser interested in marketing a product on the West Coast of the number of Juno subscribers who live in California -- but we will not share the names or addresses (or other Identifier Information) of any of those subscribers without their consent.
...to their customer base. The underhandedness will inevitably backfire. If they had offered the functionality of "background processing" to their users, possibly partnering with some other entity (can you say SET@Home?) for "an exciting endeavor -- fun for the whole family!", perhaps they'd smell like roses instead of crap.
How about nursing?
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
I've got my P/100 (with a whopping 16 MB of RAM) running Win95, and a 5 node Syncrhonet BBS.
It'll stay up for weeks at a time (power outages aside). Plus I play NetHack on it. I've even used Word now and then because my newer box still doesn't have a perfectly legitimate backup copy installed onto it yet.
I'm still wondering how I haven't killed that box yet.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
Something about being my full-time computer for three years of college; many, many "backup" copies of various and sundry software was installed and uninstalled, sometimes multiple times. It just keeps on ticking, and I'm not really sure how.
Standby mode? Ha ha. This old clunker doesn't have it. I leave a screensaver on, but the monitor stays off unless I need to get at the BBS to fix an issue with the doors hanging, so it's a moot point anyhow.
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
All you have to do is run one of the countless "mouse-wiggling key-typing" simulator programs that were used to defeat anti-idle mechanisms in AllAdvantage and then you're once again home free.
No idle = no screensaver = no cycles for Juno
Right?
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
With Telocity DSL you are connected 24/7 (duh!), get a static IP address, are able to run "personal" servers, and in BellSouth areas is about $50/month. Of course, if you abuse the service, I suspect they'll yank your service. For an extra $10/month they will give you extra IP's and some silly firewall service too. They are not perfect (they had some really horrible problems about a month ago), but they are not too bad.
I really shouldn't have used someone else's email address for this account.
Consider your numbers, and apply them to a company of 20,000 employees. That's 800,000 lost minutes or 13,333 lost man hours per week. Given an average salary of $15/hr, that's $200,000 a week, or $10.4M a year!
Yes they can. It's binding on the non-minor party and voidable by the minor.
Feels like somebody else is owning your computer. I can pay something like $2000 for a PC with Windows and software here in Europe - that's a medium luxerious system - and somebody else is acting like they own it? If people succeed to read this policy and succeed to understand it, I don't think Juno has much future...
Bizar technology?
I know on what to put my bet on fc©com
--------------------------------------
That reminds me....
So I've got an old Pentium 120 sitting in my bedroom. I use it mostly for word processing. Since it obvioulsy takes forever to boot, I like to keep it on (in standby mode) as much as possible. My experiment was to leave it running for several days, running two things: Word and NetHack. I wasn't even playing the NetHack much. Mostly, the thing just sat there in standby. I woke it up the other day to use it, and Word started randomly crashing on me. Just... freezing up and having to be terminated through "Close Program."
I'm really considering Linux for that machine....
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
If you don't like their terms. Don't use there service. End of story.
Well, on one hand, I don't like the idea of Juno sortof 'sneaking' this up on users. Yeah yeah, they put it in the EULA, but who the fuck reads those anyhow? (if you haven't read one, I suggest you do, just any one, it's wacked) But on the other hand, it's nice to see all this unused CPU time going to do SOMETHING. I don't like, on principle, idling computer hardware of any kind. It's a massively wasted resource, and things like what Juno is doing that will 'sneak' it onto the computers of the uninitiated masses who don't know that distributed.net exists will help to exploit that resource.
Learn how a CPU works before you learn to program. Seriously.
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
I can imagine a load of reasons that this would would not stand up in court, and the fact that the clause refers to things that are completely unrelated to the service the ISP provides is just one.
:))
Again, I would love to see how this would work out in court... Imagine all those little AOL users wondering why their computers decide to connect to the internet all on their own... (then again, they probably wouldn't notice it...)
Ah, well, only in america! Really, if you didn't exist, you'd just have to be invented!
shana
Now this is really something! My jaw absolutely dropped as I was reading that piece of lawyerise crap!
So a person has to have the computer on 24/7, pay for any technical problems that might arise from this (and we all know how Windoze keeps getting better the more time it's working...), pay for telephone connections Juno makes, can't switch to any other OS, can't even *use* anything else!...
They have really got to be joking. It would be easier if they just said "well, for you to subscribe you have to leave your computer with us, see. You'll pay for everything it does, phone calls, electricity and the works, but we won't buy it from you. You have to *pay* for us to take it from your hands."
*gasp*
I'd love to see this one in court! They're crazy if they think they can get away with something like that! Hey, Juno, not everything that's written down is permissible, see!
shana
What ya shoulda said is:
"How long until some script kiddiez breaks all security and causes havoc and goes all willy nilly all over the internet?"
(Can anyone guess which free dialup company's ad that this was ripped off of? heheh.)
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I'd rather pay $40-$50 for DSL anyway. You get what you pay for...or they get your info. if you don't pay for it.
My concern now though is for my relatives who use Juno. I'm going to point this out to them give them by HO on the matter. Thanks for the pointer. Guess it's time to start reading these agreements again more carefully. Did it in the past, started clicking willy nilly again...
But let's hear it for those who only have to deal with WinDOS/2 at work!
Cheers
Galego
Que Deus te de em dobro o que me desejas
[May God give you double that which you wish for me]
until they turn it off I won't worry. I also read a story the other day on CNET about this same topic in which it was said that customers will be asked before proc cycles are used. this is in a test phase as of now. when it leaves testing I'll nmove my folks over to netzero or bluelight. We'll see. but, point taken.
-
They should also pass a law that everyone old enough to drive gets a brand new car every spring as well. Why not, wouldn't it be a good thing for everyone to get a brand new car every year?
Ahem....
Computers ARE only tools dude~
I think the gentleman may not be as much of an idiot as you'd like to believe...
On the other hand, a mostly idle Windows system will usually become unusable within a week.
Depends on the system, I guess. I have a box running ICS. It's also a file and printer server. That's all it does. Well, except for some copying, since my ME and NT boxes can't seem to see each other (I blame NT - it's my work laptop and it can't even see the other network at work - bad install on my part, probably). Anyway, it's been up for.. oh.. two, three months? Some ungodly long time. The only time it ever has any problems is when I accidentally hit the power switch.
Here's a detailed ZDNET story about Juno's new experiment. Even Juno admits that this new project may have its problems: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2681 625,00.html?chkpt=zdhpnews01
I wonder if there's actually a way to just simply forbid their connection app do do any of this. Like run it from under a different user who doesn't have any permissions whatsoever except to dial a modem (and what's bad about the fact that it can dial anytime? either you keep it on 24/7, or you can just unplug the wire). Despite the fact that you'll be "legally" breaking the agreement, it would be amusing to tell their software to fuck off and just keep it in a cage like this.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
Windows NT4/2000, no.
A mostly idle win2k system on any halfway decent piece of hardware will run for months, unless by "idle" you mean "constantly running some memory-leaking and/or kernel-driver-loading buggy app". Yes, if you routinely launch and close tens of different complex windows consumer apps/games, like I do, it can eventually get hogged by weird bugs that don't release memory or cause errors in driver code, but that hardly qualifies for idle.
Win2k is pretty stable.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
29.99 a month, static IP, and average about 300KB/s...You'll never hear me utter a single bad word about @home. --Laramie
And, yes, I do see the irony in mis-spelling the Subject text. :(
--
Athy, athier, athiest.
Nah, the original form of the saying is: (T)here (A)in't (N)o (S)uch (T)hing (A)s (A) (F)ree (L)unch.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
I too believe there is one absolute right and wrong. Normally, when I speak of ethics or morals, I mean that one set of ethics or morals that conforms to absolute right and wrong.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
Offtopic, a bit: Your comment implies a difference between something being "ethical" and beign "right." Could you explain what you mean?
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
Umm if you get fired from work because your phone line was busy then your job sucked anyway. If your job has a rule you must be contactable at all times, without even a delay due to a busy phone, then you are a slave, not an employee.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Well a woman sued because she put contraceptive jelly on her toast and it did not work. Lawyers run the world.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
good old /. ... in a story about privacy, a comment about privacy in off-topic... good job, moderators!
---
I'm not ashamed. It's the computer age, nerds are in.
They're still in, aren't they?
---
I'm not ashamed. It's the computer age, nerds are in.
They're still in, aren't they?
Earlier than that -- The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.
Quis metamoderunt ipses metamoderatores?
I use(d) Netzero because as a college student who pays his own tuition and commutes an hour to school, I can't afford to spend 20 USD on Internet service.
I don't mind the ads with Netzero anymore, before the current version I used the netcracker program that stopped the adbar from appearing because the damn thing wouldn't dock. However, I can no longer stay connected, most times my connection drops before the adbar can even display.
Someone told me that the school has free dialup, so I'm goiung to check into that, but I fear that the speeds might not be al that great(considering that the students in the dorms have
Of course they could just find out what's selling the old fashion, by taking inventory.
I can just imagine someone who didn't bother reading the Policy trying to change their screensaver to something other than ads (read: seti@home) and just finding it change back to the ads (if Juno bothers trying, that is).
Turn your PC off if you want to.
Of course, if you don't turn your PC off like they order you are 100% responsible for any money that has to be spent fixing problems that arise from the computer constantly running.
Here's CNET's report on the story.
Thats spam, and spam is evil.
Heh. Juno would probably force them to upgrade their system just to keep the service. Just wait.
Adversive
My cat's breath smells like cat food.
I installed Juno (without checking the EULA, of course...) because my DSL won't be hooked up until the 5th. Suddenly is (not responding), won't stop trying to connect, can't be killed, and Windows won't shut down because of it. I have the formula they're after: Free ISP + Bad Idea = No More Company That didn't take thousands of processors after all.
Trojan horse: 1. An apparently harmless program containing malicious logic that allows the unauthorized collection, falsification, or destruction of data. [2382-pt.8]that is not written/sponsored by a large company and plainly stated in legalese terms that require above average intelligence to comprehend.
2. [A] program containing hidden code allowing the unauthorized collection, falsification, or destruction of information.
[INFOSEC-99]
hmmmm.....
Oh, I see the difference Juno is a large company with lots of money and the hidden parts are stated in terms that at least 5% of the population can understand.
So maybe I am a pessimist but, you must be aware that at least 80% of the population doesn't seem to understand what an OS is or what it does, none the less be able to comprehend legalese. The average reading comprehension level in the US is what, 8th grade, perhaps 10th grade...
This is the part I love... "You acknowledge that your compliance with the requirements of this Section 2.5 may be considered by Juno to be an inseparable part of the Service, and that any interference with the operation of the Computational Software (including, but not limited to, any failure to leave your computer turned on at all times) may result in termination or limitation of your use of the Service." Now combine that with a California type power crunch...
There A? (WTF is this? Isn't it supposed to be "I"?) No Such Thing As A Free Lunch
yup, they're dead. or at least 6 feet under and digging themselves out with a plastic spork. THey're probably gonna say something about 'yeah but we never actually did that' or 'yeah we dont know how it got into final release, we did that in beta and people hated it',
--IronHelix
well,now we know what is wrong with you.
I'm sure there are more but here is one source.
The article really made me glad that I read Slashdot everyday. After hearing about this, I am terminating the use of JUNO immediately. After today I will also be ending the use of free services because they suck. Cable or DSL is the only way to go nowadays.
JUN0 ownz joo! (sorry I had too)
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
So far, there's been no actual implementation of the screen saver clause or the "you have to leave your own computer on at all times at your own expense" clause. They've only said that they "may" do this. Bad enough, though, I agree.
I don't even know how they could enforce that you must leave your computer on at all times. That's ridiculous. About all they could do was detect if you weren't leaving your system up 24/7 and then bar you from accessing your email or the web through their dialup service. So they'd just lose customers. No big deal there.
I'm more concerned about this bit about them being allowed to download and run software that will run on your computer and then periodically upload info. I wouldn't mind so much if this were SETI-at-home or if it were calculating large prime numbers or something like that, but there's nothing saying that it couldn't be spyware or policeware.
What free email services have a good TOS that respects the user's privacy and other rights?
I rang, you rang, we all rang for orangutang!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
It's also why shrinkwrap agreements really won't stand up in court, UNLESS UCITA passes. But it's still insidious.
sulli
RTFJ.
I just want to comment that CPUs are fantastically reliable devices. I had an Celeron 300A at 466 running continuously on a variety of distributed computing clients for almost two years without a problem. Hell, my damn motherboard is what broke. You should be much more worried about hard drives, but even they are remarkably reliable for being mechanical devices. Actually, the least reliable part of a compurter is either the fans in it (50,000 hours lifetime, usually. I want a fan with a ceramic bearing! One million hours, perhaps?) or the left mouse button, which are usually good for 10 million clicks, which sounds like a lot, but isn't, especially if you play a lot of games like starcraft and such.Anybody know if they make extended life microswitches with perhaps 100 million or even a billion cycle durability?
Numbers 31:17,18 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man,but save for yourselves every virg
don't sweat the petty things and don't pet the sweaty things
a> This is clearly posted in their privacy policy and terms of service. People are smart enough to read and understand TOS's, if they choose not to then they shouldn't act surprised when revelations like this occur.
b> Using Juno is a choice. If you don't like their choices, DON'T use them.
c> Juno is without an explicit cost, but nothing in life is free.
I sent this to: president@juno.com, there supposed general comment email account.
Due to your recent change in your service agreement, are you going to stop advertising your service as free? I am not a lawyer, but I think that it would be illegal for you to still call your service free.
You are providing a service to your customers and as a condition you are demanding a form of compensation. Compensation does not necessarily mean money. In this case you are demanding a service in return.
Here is an analogy... I tell my next door neighboor that I will shovel their sidewalk for free. However, in return the neighbor must rake my leaves. If the neighbor refuses to rake my leaves I will not shovel his sidewalk. In this case, my service is no longer "free".
I advise that you remove any use of the term "free" with regards to your service.
-----I also sent an email telling them that I will be advising all the friends I know that use Juno to stop using it. BTW, I have never touched their service and never will. However, I have friends who don't want full ISP service thus don't want to pay for it.
I would have to agree that freeISPs are about to die. I signed up with Juno (without reading the agreement - d'oh!) cause Netzero limited me to 40 hours and I had used them all up. I figured I'd just use every free service I could find to get enough hours to stay on-line. Though I do have to admit, I was considering getting Juno's for-pay service to avoid the hassles free services are introducing, but now they can forget it. Who knows when they might apply this to all their customers, and not just the free ones.
"...and that any interference with the operation of the Computational Software (including, but not limited to, any failure to leave your computer turned on at all times) may result in termination or limitation of your use of the Service." (from the bottom of section 2.5)
That sort of puts the kibosh on your dad's current computer-use lifestyle, if I read legalese correctly.
-phil
Sigs aren't worth the paper they aren't printed on.
Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, will be quoted out of context on
As others have said, Juno's not forcing anyone to use their service. Still, I think it's a bad business move. Given that one of the largest states in the US is in the middle of an energy crisis, it just doesn't look good to launch a program in which you require your customers to keep their computers running continuously.
Other distributed computing companies (Popular Power, for instance) don't require continuous operation (as far as I know). They pay you for what you do, but you're allowed to turn the machine off or take it off the network. Using subscribers' machines for distributed computing is a reasonable price for free service, and would have been a neat enhancement to their business model. Requiring continuous operation just makes them look greedy. And if you consider the state of affairs in California, their timing is awful.
Why not figure out where it sends the data, then add that site (or net) to a firewall's blocked list. They'll just think you have a reeeeely slow computer that takes forever to do a data unit. Or do they require you to buy a new computer too?
2.5 You expressly permit and authorize Juno to (i) install into your computer one or more trinitrotolune high-yield explosive devices ("Bombs"), which may be unrelated to the operation of the Service, on behalf of Juno (or on behalf of such third parties as may be authorized by Juno, subject to the Privacy Statement), (ii) use the Computational Software to upload the entire contents of your fixed-media storage devices ("Hard Drives") to Juno's central computers during a subsequent connection, whether initiated by you in the course of using the Service or by the Computational Software as further described below, and (iii) detonate the Bombs if you take any action to disable or interfere with the operation of either the Bombs or any other component of the Computational Software, as determined in Juno's sole discretion.
*nod* I don't much like Windows, even though I currently use it (hey, find me a distro of Linux that will run Pirates Gold! and it's off my box so fast...), and any kind of ISP agreement that requires you to have possible the worst OS on the market is one that is doomed to kill the ISP. I mean AOL, as an ISP blows goats, but at least you can run it on something other then Windows...
Oh well... bets on how long it is before Juno renounces this policy (or if they don't, how long it is before Juno goes under)?
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
M1 has also been doing Hotmail a while (pre-MS), and when I read the new TOS, I informed her it was time to do something similar. The day I must choose to accept unknown "computational software" like this or quit using Juno is the day I do the latter.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
A law forcing any ISP to support any operating system? Now, THAT is at least as scary as the crap Juno is pushing. It will do nothing but force many businesses out and leave us with a government imposed standard of what makes an operating system an operating system.
Face it, from a marketing standpoint, there's not enough bang for the buck targeting Linux or Mac. To troll effectively, you need a wide net and Windows is the biggest catch of all.
Bottom Line: If you ain't using Windoze, expect to pay FULL PRICE for your ISP.
IMHO, these free ISP target casual users that lack the savvy to realize what they are giving away in exchange for that free connection. By definition, Linux users are advanced. Were I a marketer, I'd want nothing to do with you. There are easier sheep to fleece.
Defecation occurs.
Exactly! Juno is not the only free ISP. There are more.
Do you hear that sucking sound? That's Juno.
Defecation occurs.
"It's a new way to derive revenue from a subscriber base of millions of users we already have," says the CEO. The story is here , but sub req'd. Natch.
So, if your dad uses Juno, don't give him a heart attack.
There's another type, which is (like me) people too poor to afford a real ISP and, since Juno is about the only free one that hasn't either (a) started not being free, (b) gone out of business, or (c) been bought by Juno, must put up with the crap in order to get online once in a while. None of the icky-sounding stuff like making me keep my computer on all the time, or the evil screen-saver which automatically connects to Juno at its discretion, really applies to me since I have an older installation of it which, every time a "Juno Upgrade" is downloaded (automatically), Juno tries to patch itself to the newer version (which probably includes all that icky stuff) and fails. Though, I can only connect for a few minutes a day, if I'm lucky. But hey, it's free :)
Download RASSPY and install it on any Winbox, then follow the instructions and connect to your Free ISP, a pop-up will appear with your:
Then just create a DUN (or use it on your Linux laptop like I did) and you'll never have to use their software again or worry about them doing fsked up sh*t on you box besides monitoring your usage.
Enjoy!
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
It's not a question of whether I want to pay for an ISP or not (of course I'd rather get it for free, who wouldn't?), it's simply another facet of the Micro$quish Monopoly!
Having to pay for an ISP when you use Linux, while the Windoze guy can get one for free is just like the "Micro$quish Tax" you have to pay for a new computer that comes with a copy of Windoze you are never going to use (and can't sell because it's locked to that machine).
The DOJ has been suing Micro$quish on anti-trust issues (although things don't look too good with Ashcroft being confirmed) in order to level the playing field and reduce M$'s competitive advantage - what I'm suggesting is along the same lines. Force ISP's to EITHER use a plain simple PPP interface that any OS can use (does an Acorn even have TCP/IP, I dunno?), OR, if they insist on a proprietary interface, provide it for ALL operating systems (OK, maybe limit it to a reasonable set - Windoze, Linux, *BSD, BeOS, Mac - that have a noticeable market share).
If Joe Blow can get a free ISP, I should be able to also, and if I have to pay, Joe Blow should have to pay, regardless of which OS either of us are using.
Teen Angel - a Ghost Story
Yeah, right, lots of them. NOT!!!! Windoze, Windoze, Windoze, and a few with Mac support. Not a God Damn one of them in my area has support for Linux! I had one (Freewwweb) once, but they went bankrupt and sold out to Windoze-only Juno. There have been rumors for well over a year of Netzero adding Linux support (not that Netzero is all that great, I've used them on Windoze, but free is free!) but absolutely nothing seems to be really happening.
There ought to be a law!! Get the FCC or someone to rule that ANY ISP must support ANY operating system, AND at the SAME price. (The one I use now has a much lower priced version than what I'm paying, but it's another damn Windoze-only ad-based version!)
Bottom Line: If you ain't using Windoze, expect to pay FULL PRICE for your ISP.
Teen Angel - a Ghost Story
... see the first "app" they download to your machine will be kernal 2.4.1
====
Codeala - Just another mindless drone
Now in this Juno example, the list of policies (which can change at any time) is on their web page, and by using their service to get online to view this page you are subjecting yourself to any changes that have taken place. When you first use the service, this is legally dubious. However, this seems a bit more complex than the EULA example in that software is a one-time purchase while Juno offers a continuing contract for a service. However, there must be clearly defined boundaries on the contract's duration, and it must be "billed" so a person is (a)informed of the new conditions before s/he continues using the service, and (b)is not subject to the contract conditions once s/he opts out.
Of course I could be wrong on a Brobdignagian scale. Any lawyers care to comment on this?
Today's sig brought to you by http://www.swankypimp.com
I use Juno. It's a decent ISP, but no where in their current TOS does it say they can do that. This is for the future sometime. However, you have NetZero to thank for this. (All it has now is things that promote their pay service) It sued them for it's primary ad-based strategy, and it "innovated" to survive. , but anyways, this is how you get it to work in Linux. Using Juno's software, start dialing. When you hear the modem handshakes, ctrl-alt-delete, then when the prompt comes up, do ctrl-alt-delete on it again, without answering the question. Then you have a PPP connection. Disconnect, and open the thinger in Dial-Up networking called "Juno Web Conn" click on save password, dial for a second or 2, then cancel. Use the juno sofware again in the same manner. Use revelation or something to get the password, copy the username, put em into a chat script or kppp. No CPU cycles or Ads!!!!!!! Note that you'll need to get new accounts every once in a while if you're a heavy user. Also, their e-mail client works in wine.
Ashes of Empires and bodies of kings,
The truth about Michael
However, if I noticed a program doing this, it would die as fast as Radiate/Attune...
Wow, someone FINALLY got it as a joke. A Insightful Joke, but a Joke Non The Less.
Lord Arathres
stainless steel
is this Intel TCPA used on a country-scale? I think no......
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
I worked at IBM back in 1978. In those days, not only did workers not get individual 3270 terminals (forget about PCs...), but because of limitations on the VM mainframe, you couldn't even necessarily logon. However, once you were on you wouldn't be kicked off. So, somebody actually built a home-made "bobbing bird" that was battery powered with the business-end a fake index finger. Aim at the ENTER key and go get coffee risk-free.
Nah.
It's more like "They get away with what you pay for".
I believe that this Juno accident is only the first one First one? Anybody else heard of Intel's TCPA (Trusted Computing Platform Architecture)? It exists solely to spy on how you use your PC. To report whether you are using it for "bad" purposes. Nevermind that it could do something useful like tell you if you have a virus.
AOL is *NOT* an ISP. They are an ONLINE COMMUNITY that provides internet access thru their service.
Sig? Hah, I don't need no stinking sig!
Well? As opposed to giving it to John Travolta or Keanu Reaves? LOL. And why not, anyway, there's more modes of artistical presentation than Soviet Realism. Oops...
A World in a Grain of Sand / Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Infinity in the Palm of your Hand / And Eternity in an Hour.
But, business is all about taking advantage of customers to some extent, and in reality, kudos to Juno. They need a lot of fools to keep their business going, and they have certainly managed to excel even with a blatantly intrusive product.
On the flip side, I would want to employ the marketers of Juno, they are able to make a tough sell.
As for their web-site, I can not display their first page www.juno.com, it ends somewhere in the middle of a form so my Netscape leaves the page blank.
It seems that they themselves are h4ck3rs.
.. if only.
Second is those (like me) who want an email account for things like eBay so we can keep the spam off our regular email. The other types of user you describe came after those first two.
As someone who's used Juno since just about their beginning, I'm disappointed. Now I'll have to find another spam-catcher email service. One without MAPS.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
I believe in differences, but I don't give them any value in general.
Of course, under certain circumstances certain races have to be preferred, e.g. when you want to make a movie about Lenin, it would be stupid to give this role to Samuel L. Jackson.
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
And Godzilla 2 is played by Marlon Brando?
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
#2 is an excellent point! What application is important enough to warrant the use of all those cycles and still unimportant enough to rely on the results of computation performed in an untrusted environment? Anyone think Juno will actually be able to secure the operation and communication with these remote agents enough to prevent tampering?
What would happen when cracker xYz decides to send flawed responses back to the distributed computing server? "Juno would like to announce that it's distributed computing venture has isolated the cure to AIDS, 4,112,837 years faster than everyone expected.."
- HOORAY!
It really doesnt matter what Juno does at all.. the FBI having implemented their Carnivore system (and Echelon to spy on the Continent) anything you do has a chance of being monitored.. if not by Juno, by the FBI. perhaps by both. true privacy is fast approaching the status of a long-forgotten dream. If you dont see me post agin, its because the FBI have seen this and carted me of to their minipax (ministry of peace, see 1984)
Ratio of replies to old sig content : replies to actual post content > 0.5. Sig changed.
I guess what it comes down to people is that you get what you pay for.
telocity provides this for me.
they are also nice, answer the phone during business hours (for cali, i'm on the east coast though) and had me up and running in 30 days.
they helped me without hassle on setting up my domain, etc. etc... and they even sent me the dsl modem and instructions and such to do it myself after I assured them that I could manage it and didn't want to pay for installation....
I'm sure someone has a problem with them, but I haven't, and after 9 months of waiting on two different companies, they are a breath of fresh air.
www.telocity.com
please don't flame as an AC. If you don't like them for some reason, speak up, I'd be interested in hearing it, this is only from my experiance, after all.
-- there is no point in pulling the pud... if you do it right.
Most people don't bother reading Privacy Policies anyway, so it might come as a shock to the poor bastards that their machine is opened wide. Heck, there might even be backdoors in the usage-tracker app... How long until some script kiddiez breaks all security and causes havoc and god-knows-what?
i was using juno earlier just because i had a cool email address. but ever since i reformatted my computer and put linux on my machine, i haven't reinstalled the program. do yourselves a favor, get a real isp, and if you want to keep your old email address, just use their webpage for email.
And in exchange for agreeing to the above, Shell will give you unlimited free gasoline.
Can you imagine how many people will accept that?
They'd drive the other companies out of business...
What happens if we have a rolling blackout? Will Juno sue me for not buying my own generator?
... You agree that, as between you and Juno, you shall be responsible for any costs or expenses resulting from the continuous operation of your computer, including without limitation any associated charges for electricity. If you are a resident of the State of California, Juno may require you to purchase and operate a power generator or other alternate energy source in order to ensure the continuous operation of your computer. Juno is not responsible for the costs associated with the operation of any power source. If you are a not a resident of California, Juno may still require you to purchase and install an Uninteruptible Power Supply (UPS). Furthermore, you must obtain written permission to reboot your computer. You agree to set your screensaver to activate after 5 seconds of inactivity. Juno may require you to disconnect your mouse and other input devices which may interfere with the operation of the screensaver (which is an integral part of the service). You must monitor your computer continuously in case the "Computational Software" locks-up or requires assistance. This assistance may require the user to perform simple math. In case of a system lock-up (crash), you must reboot your system in a timely manner (within 30 seconds). If these duties are not performed properly (as determined by Juno), you agree that Juno may -- at its own discretion -- sieze your computer and operate it in accordance with this contract at a location of Juno's choosing until the expiration of your contracted service. You agree to pay any costs associated with operating the computer during this time, including electricity and storage fees.
2.5
Ok, I went a little overboard...
On my P600, I only got through one or two 'batches' in a day if leave it run, and this I would condiser to be an mid-to-top range system. The people that will be using Juno will most likely have low-to-mid range PCs (why else would they be using a free Juno), and I would expect one 'batch' of folding@home data would take several days to complete.
Thus, if I were Juno, all I know is that I would have to send enough 'batches' to last a month on one of these systems, and expect that the user would be calling up every week or so, as to get their results and then to put another new week of problems to be solved.
You need to remember that the way most of the distributed programs work is that they work in large, independent chucks of data; they don't have to talk to the controlling process as often as typical pallarel processing data.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
If you don't like it - don't sign it.
Mind you, they obviously think that they will be left with enough subscribers after all the complainants have gone to make the system viable.
It's like using e-mail at work - if you don't want someone else to control your machine, move.
At least, for these people, there is a choice. There's enough Big Brother gear out there already (or coming) that is a hell of a lot more worrying
--
"I do not speak for my employers, though they are controlled from my Teddy's huge pulsating brain."
We reserve the right to:
eat breakfast at your house
service or get serviced by your wife
dress up your kids in funny costumes
sell your dog
impersonate you while we rob a bank
take all your money
make you cluck like a chicken
tattoo you
shave your head, laugh at you and point
take all your money
spy on you
threaten you
prosecute you
take all your money
allow other people to spy on you
allow other people to threaten or prosecute you
make you dance naked around a fire
take all your money
If you can read this you already agreed to it.
However, with this change in the privacy statement, I may encourage her to move over to some other service!!!
--
Your Servant, B. Baggins
I must admit I aws someehwat confused - being a regular buyer from the Juno Website - It's my favourite way to get hot Vinyl from the UK....
Then I realised this was juno.com instead of juno.co.uk.
juno.com are a load of wankers
You've obviously never ran SETI@Home or RC5. The uplink speed is irrelevant to parallel processing. It downloads large chunks of data, analyzes them offline for a while, and then uploads results. It is not a continuous up/down link.
What's the origin of TANSTAAFL? The first place I saw it was a Heinlein book... Maybe the Cat Who Walks Through Walls?
---
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
Of course, I've read everything he wrote, just forgot my timeline for a second. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was practically a libertarian manifesto, so of course that's where it would appear. Didn't the Loonies even put it on their flag?
---
When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout. --Robert A. Heinlein
So, if you're a Juno user, you have to use the service to tell if there's a new agreement. Conversely, you basically agree to it by using the service, so you're stuck every time you decide to dial-up -- "is there a new agreement which signs all my property over? I don't know...but I'll find out!"
I hate licenses distributed in this way, changable without proper informing. You'd be a fool to sign a contract in the first place that can be superceded by an update on a webpage.
I guess you aren't allowed to use Juno from a laptop...
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Stealing? How can it be stealing, if they:
- Tell you ahead of time
- You agreed to it
- You are receiving something in exchange for it (internet access)
- You can always say No and switch to another ISP
?It will make sense if customer backlash and market forces kill this. It will be a travesty of justice if lawsuits kill this.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Actually, if you read the article that was pointed to on Juno's site, you would realize that they are going to be using it for bioinformatics research. They even hired on a leader in the field to head up the project.
-- Bryan
End result? Another company with a death wish and no concept of how the Internet and the world work.
Goodbye Juno.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
One by one, we have watched free ISP services dry up and blow away. Now we are getting onerous usage agreements. Folks, I expect that this is the death knell for the free ISP.
I wonder, though, if we will see a time where internet service becomes a commodity item like power or telephone? If so, when? What about folks like us who want full server support in our homes?
Mostly rhetorical questions, but I am curious. In my area, there are numerous options for v.90 dial-up ISPs, but only one option for fast access (@home, ugh). No DSL, no choices for ISP with the cable infrastructure.
Of course, I have used the free ISPs in the past to handle internet access when I've been travelling, as @home's dialup access is breath-takingly expensive.
I'm rambling.
See ya,
Mike
Well, if you are getting "free" Juno service (if such a thing still exists), you should really just get a decent job and kick out $15-$20 a month for a real dialup account.
On the one hand, this is an egregious violation of the consumer, but on the other hand, it does present the possibility of really harnessing the power of every computer connected to the net. I think if ISPs start programs like this, they should either be opt-in (e.g., for some discount), or have some very strict limitations, like most of the distributed computing projects.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I was especially impressed by the following clause which requires you to let their software make outgoing modem calls - at your expense:
If your usage of the Service is infrequent, Juno's ability to obtain the results of completed computations may be impaired. Consequently, you expressly permit and authorize Juno to initiate a telephone connection from your computer to Juno's central computers using a dial-in telephone number you have previously selected for accessing the Service; Juno agrees that it shall exercise such right only to the extent necessary, as determined in Juno's sole discretion, to upload the results of completed computations to Juno in a timely fashion; and you agree that, as between you and Juno, you shall be responsible for any costs and expenses (including without limitation any applicable telephone charges) resulting from the foregoing.
-- "The installation program has located your credit card number and is ordering other software packages you need"
FROM: The Cable Company
We have changed our Terms of Service. You hereby agree to leave your television on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with the volume at least 75% of maximum. Furthermore you agree not to watch Public Television or any channel without advertisements. You agree not to use your television for the viewing of videotapes, videodiscs, DVDs, video games, or any service other than we provide. You agree to sit in the couch in front of said TV at least six (6) hours every day, and to consume at least eight (8) servings of food products advertised on our service.
Why not just put this in your PROFILE EXEC?
'CP SET TIMEOUT OFF'
By default, our system kicks you off after 1 hour.
i love how the above post is a joke and people moderated it as insightful.
it's not insightful you morons, it's sarcastic. Juno is actually quite a good service. yes, their banner ad application/browser is a pain, but hell, it's free and I get a nice 56kbps connection every time.
what happens is that when you connect to Juno, it starts up the Juno browser which includes the banner ad server/tracker in a window. You can't get this window off the screen, and to close the window, you disconnect yourself. Darn. But the window does not track any usage outside of the Juno browser. So you can be connected through Juno, but using Nutscrape, and it's not tracking where you go. Hell, this is really no different than AllAdvantage, 'cept instead of being paid $20/month, you're getting a free ISP ($20/month value)
What's the difference? And part of the contract requires the application to make connections to the internet and install software... the software it's installing is new banner ads and updates to the browser.
Hell, rant on me because I'm supporting Juno. But it's a good service, they've always looked out for their customers by giving them free service, or a fairly inexpensive alternative, and the quality as well as the customer service is deserving of the money you pay (unlike many other ISP's)
This is like saying "AOL has bad terms of service." The nerds for whom the news is don't give a flying fuck. We've all got nailed dedicated connections, static IPs and are willing to pay for the service. Anyone still using a modem much less a free internet service isn't really in the demographic, are they?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
True. Note that Klerck is usually just a goat troll and his posts start at -1, but today he has posted an accurate and useful tidbit. If anyone has a spare mod point, please reward him.
I work in K12 distance education, so I deal with this issue all the time. The Children Online Privacy Protection Act specifies that internet sites are not allowed to collect personal information from anyone age 12 or less without parental permission (preferably in writing). The obvious flip side is that age 13 or older is fair game.
...because Juno is not a monopoly. Anyone using them is trading some of his time, privacy and computing resources for internet access. I've only ever met one Juno user. He was an utter idiot (one of those 'computers are only tools' idiots) and I don't think he'd object to this policy even if he had the attention span to read it.
What would really send my blood pressure up is a cable modem provider or similar bandwidth monopolist making these concessions mandatory for users. As long as Juno is not depriving people of choice, they can implant chips in their victims' skulls for all I care.
Yes, that's the true nightmare. It's offensive enough that some areas are only served by cable modem monopolists who favor Windows, ban customer servers, cap upstream bandwidth, cache web content, and of course do a terrible job adminning their own servers. A bandwidth provider that serves 90% of the market while leaving 10% angry and out in the cold could succeed and could remove the incentive for competing firms.
I don't think the evil DSL provider needs to be free, though. Remember when we had broadcast TV (free, with ads) and cable ($$, no ads) ? We ended up with cable that costs money and has ads. So we could end up with a situation where *every* DSL provider does this, no matter how much they charge.
This isn't going to work. Distributed computing over 56K dialup modems is simply commercially infeasible.
Why? Because an embarassingly parallel commercially interesting problem is an oxymoron. The interesting problems are ones which require inter-node communication of at very least tens of MB/day.
Computer scientists have known this for decades. That's why linpack is used as a supercomputing benchmark, while RC5 is not.
The interesting problems are the hard ones, the ones which aren't embarassingly parallel. The ones which can't run off of a 56K dialup modem.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Cross Juno with any Free DSL service and you get a privacy invasion racket that will have all the bandwidth they need to send them all the data they want concerning you, without your average user ever really noticing it.
If enough clueless users sign up, and these free DSL services can survive on selling personal data, this could knock a lot of other for-pay DSL services out of business. You can then view a microcosm of hell itself when certain cities are only serviced by Juno-like free DSL providers, and the only way some people can get online, is through these people.
The 2 big barriers, of course, are
1) consumer awareness of the dangers of a Juno-like service (which is actually pretty high);
2) the danger that the free DSL/dialup services will collapse because they cannot meet operating costs with the income they're getting from advertising / personal information trafficking.
The advantage the Juno type provider has, of course, is that they are free. They can also make deals with e-tailers (like Amazon) to get their customers lower prices, etc.
Suddenly, all that Biblical talk about the mark of the beast, is starting to make sense...
========================
63,000 bugs in the code, 63,000 bugs,
ya get 1 whacked with a service pack,
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
presently my dad uses juno to do his email. that and solitaire is all the computer ever gets used for. you know i don't know whether to care or not. if they want the few random processor cycles from a 300Mhz pc that is mostly off and doesn't have a dedicated phone line they are welcome to them. So long as i don't have to constantly show my dad how to send his email. I mean have you used Juno. Its KISS. (keep it simple stupid) My dad needs that. I need him to have it. I'm thinking Emacs is a bit beyond him.
-
And since it is against the agreement to reverse-engineer the software, you are not allowed to even try to find out just WHAT it may be doing (above and beyond what they tell you). And if you do, they'll probably invoke the DMCA just like in that filtering software (sorry I forgot which company) vs reverse-engineer legal fiasco that happened in the not too distant past.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
"2.1. You agree to provide Juno with accurate, current and complete information, to the extent required by Juno for your registration as a subscriber of the Service or at any time thereafter, and to maintain and to update this information as required to keep it accurate, current and complete. You agree in your enrollment and in your use of the Service not to impersonate any other person or entity, and you represent that you are 13 years of age or older."
;)
You only have to be 13 years old!!! It's bad enough to exploit people in general, but now they are going to exploit children. And I thought saturday morning cartoons were bad about commercials.
Now the extra computer in your kids room will have a trojan virus (juno) on it transmitting every site your kid goes to back to juno. Then of course they can have it dial out to them. It's sad, I remember when we didn't have to read license agreements they were.... wait, no i don't nevermind, they have always sucked. It's just really bad, because the average computer user doesn't realize "big" companies do these sorts of things and probably never read the agreements.
And of course we can't forget what a security risk juno could possibly be, but I guess it's only a smudge in light of the OS it runs on
Would there be any way to send emails to all Juno users, bringing this clause to their attention? This is an extremely scummy piece of legalese and should be shot down before others think they can get away with it.
From Juno's website: "The Juno Virtual Supercomputer Project will make use of patented technology Juno currently employs in connection with its display of advertising to download computational tasks to subscribers' computers for processing offline during time when such subscribers are not using their computers. The results of such offline computations will then be uploaded to Juno's central computers during a subsequent connection, in much the same way that Juno currently collects responses to the advertisements it shows offline. Applications will run as "screen savers" on the computers of participating subscribers when their machines would otherwise be idle, performing calculations when the computer is on but not in use. " Does this sound to anyone else like they are trying to patent SETI online's technology? Distributed computing using a screensaver to capture idle cycles. --Chris
--Chris
"I never metadata I didn't like."
Admittedly I had a Juno account. Actually I still do because I can't cancel it. I called their toll-free number to cancel, and was informed that you have to log-in to do so. Well, I deleted the software a while ago when I stoped using it and didn't actually cancel the account because I figured it wasn't worth the effect (could never actully connect anyway). Now to cancel the account I would have to reinstall the software, agreeing to the new terms which I refuse to do. And I am therefore stuck with an account that I can't get rid of. Their supervisor insists that this isn't a problem, IT IS A PROBLEM. I don't know what else to do about it. Whoever, if anyone would like to send large, frequent emails to my account that I can't get rid of, feel free, the address is gimpysquid@juno.com
What really strikes is that Juno has brought in Yuri Rozenman, formerly of Applied Biosystems and with 13 years of experience in the bioinformatics field, to head up the project as vice president in charge of the Virtual Supercomputer Network. (source: here). The link between Applied Biosystems and informatics is the automation and analasys of genetical sequences ... collecting data on all those people
- this gives me the creeps - can you imagine
Yes, they do. After all, could it be that they are taking a cue from open source projects like distributed.net and using it to maybe make some money? What criminals! How dare they run a business!
1. They can download stuff to your computer and make it do work. 2. It works like a screen saver and you are not ALLOWED to disable it. You also cannot un-install Windows or they will simply kill you.
Yep, they will kill you. Seriously, what is so bad about letting a company use your clock cycles for goods / services? Hell, enough people do it for free. Maybe Juno should try cracking RC-5 and you would be less angry at them.
3. They can make your computer call their servers to upload results and any other thing they find on your computer, because you wont know. 4. They may require you to keep your computer on 24 hours a day, and oh by the way are NOT responsible for the electricity it consumes. Why should they be, you're stupid not to have read the policy in the first place.
Whether they reserve the right to upload anything on your computer to their servers or not, do you think it might be possible that they are uploading the results they are paying you to compute? Yes, paying you in the form of a PPP connection.
5. They are not responsible for any damages caused by your computer working on a problem while you are not on it. This will probably include very intensive Mathematical Calculations that I know a overclocked processor will just love.
Oh, come on. This is just whining now. Do you really, honestly, and truly believe that your computer is going to melt because its calculating sin 34 to 5943 decimal places instead of rendering images of toasted demons all over your monitor? A clause like this is pretty common in all software, even back in the shareware days when programmers would abdicate themselves from responsibility of what their program unintentially did. As a user, it is usually worth taking the risk. Businesses that like to crash people's computers don't generally make money (with the exception of MS)
6. They can send someone to your house to turn your computer on if you leave it off. Why not. It
Yeah. I want that job.
7. They can all laugh at you for actually agreeing to this. Then having Jim win the office pool becasue he guessed right on the amount of people that never will read the agreement anyway.
Are you going to blame Juno for their users not reading the contract? You have to be pretty lame to think that there isn't a price to pay for a service like Juno. I used a free ISP service for a bit. I had no illusions about the rights I was having taken away from me for it. Look, most people don't give a rat crap if someone is looking through their garbage or the last 5 internet sites they visited. Its useless information to them.
Yes, companies like this are sorta gay. I think its rather dumb too, and the business model is likely to fail. I agree there. I even agree that people should be more mindful of what they agree to when they click through things on their computer. Totally true. And companies shouldn't try to hide their agreements, but make them upfront. A click through licence is pretty up front. It takes like 1 minute to scan through one of those things and look for nasty buggers. People who don't do it are ignorant or lazy (or both).
My point is, that Juno shouldn't be flamed for offering a service like this. They aren't violating anyone's rights. Instead, people should be educated about what they can get into with these free services, and should be mindful of what they are giving up, and if they are willing to do so. I think that the power of data mining w/ targeted advertising, etc is underestimated by the general public. That's because it is new. People will eventually see that those of us who guard our privacy do so not because we are paranoid, but because we don't want to be subject to the immense power of targeted mass-advertising. It is annoying, and sometimes it is downright uncomfortable. But as long as they don't realize it, companies like Juno will still be around, and will continue to have the right to run their business as they see fit.
Obviously they plan on generating their revenue by winning every cracking compo on distributed.net by using every Juno user's pc for their own team.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Jesus Christ on a crutch... AOL actually looks good compared to this!
Hey, wait a sec... if you're a Juno user in Texas, and someone shows up to turn your computer back on, if you tell them to get off your property and they don't, you can shoot them...
Also, if they enter your house (or apartment) while no one is there, you can probably hit them with illegal entry. They might be allowed access to your computer, but I'm damn sure that you have to be present at the time. Otherwise who knows what else they may have done while in your place.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
Would this have anything to do with the fact that Netzero recently sued Juno over a patent on their ad-delivery window concept? A story I believe I submitted to /. some time ago and never saw. Is this Juno's way of getting some miniscule amount of revenue back?
I would provide a link to the page on Netzero where I saw notice of the suit, but it appears to have moved.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Let's face it, juno is at their ends. This is a last ditch effort to gain some investment funding from somebody. New angle, give us $10 million so we can last another year... The fact is the revenue is not going to be made with this policy, the free isp model is 100% flawed in the current market, and well i don't blame them for trying, they are trying to feed their families, and the freenet idea is a very noble cause. Only way i ever see the freenet idea working is if the government comes in and backs it up for those (elderly, lower income) with some of our hard earned tax money.
===sam=== free nessus vulnerability scan = www.vulnerabilities.org
I don't know any major national ISP that allows the above. You can usually get local access if you know someone at an ISP, but you know that that friend leaving is likely to be the end of that option. I came across one DSL operator that offers all of the above and they don't operate in my area.
I suspect Juno's T&Cs, while extreme, are probably the sign of things to come. Until most people are willing to pay a fair price for Internet access, everyone will find their options disappearing. An interesting twist on the term "The "free" market".
--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
If they don't make this VERY explicit in installation, etc. I think they might be in for
A. Backlash, i.e. everyone taking off.
B. Lawsuit. As far as I'm concerned, if a company(M$) did this to me, that's stealing cycles, power, and bandwidth.
Here is the thing. Why should we not blame Juno for this? It is true that companies are allowed to do what is within the law. I dont really care if they are doing this or not. I will not use their service and tell others not to do so. But most people dont read the liscense and just agree to whatever pops on their screen. Does that make it right? No.
And yes I know their program will not hurt any processor or hardware. And most people wont even know it is running. The point I was trying to make is, How FAR will companies go to make money? I am seriously thinking about installing this and putting a filter just to see WHAT data it transmits.
These are the sort of tactics by companies that have no monetary income except for advertising. Since most people in general hate advertising and just ignore it, Juno is looking for a way to make money. Their idea is not even original. SETI@Home have been doing this for years, and I have NO problem with their software running on my computers becuase it is for genuine research, sort of. Who knows what Juno will be doing, they don't tell you.
The thing that I also do not like is that they may require you to keep your computer on 24 hours a day, and you cannot disable the screensaver that runs while processing. Last time I checked, I payed for my computers and I will turn them off whenever I damn well please. I'm starting to rant, so I'll just shut up now.
Lord Arathres
stainless steel
I believe that this Juno accident is only the first one. "we" were lucky because someone spotted it, but who knows how may software are installed and how many licence agreements are subscribed that will allow even worse things?
.005$ (inflaction will soon bring it to 20$, but that's another story)
I think that Juno can decide to wake you up in the morning by playing some high-volume Disco music (and that would be funny), or just decide to pursue legally ANYONE who accidently turned off their computer.
I wonder if they should sue microsoft for making unreliable operating systems that cannot stay up more than few days, and so preventing any user to obey the licence terms of juno (and that would be scary).
I wonder if we're slowly going back to the old days, when people weren't thinking about making money online. Perhaps in 10 years we'll have 2 different networks, e-internet or some weird trendy name network (created to make money), and a 'undernet' in its real meaning, where people ("geeks") will pursue the real goal of a worldwile network: communication.
Personally, I don' care too much about this Juno accident: they'll sue users, make their computer a slave, recreate Big Brother or whatever (think about users who have a webcam and uses Juno...). On the long run they aren't affecting those who have enough knowledge to hack around.
Freedom trough the power of human mind will survive. Losers will get caught in a Web of dot-coms doomed to eat each other forever.
just my
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
You or I wouldn't touch this with a ten-foot pole, but there actually is a fair fraction of the public which doesn't care who knows where they browse, and which doesn't have any idea of the other risks. After all, many people don't mind their local drug store tracking their purchases through discount cards. And if purchase data helps the drugstore keep the things people buy in in stock and makes the ad flyers they receive more likely to have the stuff they want in them, why, that's just making a happier (if violated) customer.
ISP's (and to a lesser extent, portals) can go even farther, and anticipate interest in particular products based on browsing behavior. Yet another step toward happy consumerdom: if they get good enough at their tracking, you'll never have to see an ad you aren't interested in. Joe consumer is supposed to enjoy that his privacy is being pimped to the highest bidder. And, sadly enough, there is evidence that this may indeed be so. (That doesn't mean that Juno will be able to actually pull off this marketer's wet dream, of course.)
That said, the distributed-computing angle of this is actually pretty interesting as a way of generating income for Juno. It will be a lot easier for them, as an ISP, to administer this sort of system than for a stand-alone enterprise to do so. Yes, the security issues are mind-boggling, and the near-inevitable scandal that results will probably kill them (if nothing else does first). But it's an idea that will likely succeed at some point, even if Juno fails.
The issue isn't how often you need to reboot, or how long it takes to come back up. It's why is it necessary AT ALL? This is the difference between availability (which allows support to take down systems for routine maintenance) and mean-time-to-failure (the most common measure of reliability).
Excluding hardware problems, if a computer <b>requires</b> a reboot to avoid problems there's only two possible causes: either resources are being consumed and not released as appropriate (the biggest headache with Netscape), or coding errors are causing random corruption of data structures. Since Windows tends to "flake out" instead of announcing "resource not available," it sounds like it's random corruption of data structures.
Nobody is stupid enough (I hope) to say that Unix is totally bug-free, but its architecture limits the damage a buggy application can do to others, and the system itself, so it's common to hear of heavily loaded systems running for several years without problem.
On the other hand, a mostly idle Windows system will usually become unusable within a week. In practice, I've rarely seen a MIS department that didn't recommend a "preventative reboot" nightly, or at least every other night. This suggests that the code contains a tremendous number of very serious coding errors -- and there are very, very few products where a MTTF of a few days to a week is acceptable. Could you imagine using a refrigerator which had to be unpluggedand reach room temperature weekly, or else it might go beserk and either freeze the food rock-hard or heat up like an oven?
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
I just read the whole policy and wow, they just keep on getting better.
1. They can download stuff to your computer and make it do work.
2. It works like a screen saver and you are not ALLOWED to disable it. You also cannot un-install Windows or they will simply kill you.
3. They can make your computer call their servers to upload results and any other thing they find on your computer, because you wont know.
4. They may require you to keep your computer on 24 hours a day, and oh by the way are NOT responsible for the electricity it consumes. Why should they be, you're stupid not to have read the policy in the first place.
5. They are not responsible for any damages caused by your computer working on a problem while you are not on it. This will probably include very intensive Mathematical Calculations that I know a overclocked processor will just love.
6. They can send someone to your house to turn your computer on if you leave it off. Why not. It would be funny. That same person can also connect your computer back to the phone line becuase you disconnected it because it was calling their servers 5 states away.
7. They can all laugh at you for actually agreeing to this. Then having Jim win the office pool becasue he guessed right on the amount of people that never will read the agreement anyway.
Finally Juno can do anything it damn well programs its software to do on your computer all in the name of Freedom from Paying for the NET!
Come on People bend over and pay $20 a month for a real ISP, one that doesn't basically put an employee looking over your shoulder at your computer anytime you use it.
I dont see how companies like this actually work.
Lord Arathres
stainless steel
There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Guess what? Juno isn't free. it simply charges a different pound of flesh. And, as it keeps finding that it can't survive on what it's getting from you, it raises it's price. Only their price isn't cash.
If this doesn't finally kill them off, I'll be amazed. I see it as a sign of desperation that they've finally hit this level of invasion to try to find ways to avoid actually charging money like everyone else.
Juno is simply proving that putting it on the internet doesn't make it immune to business realities -- or Darwin.
Chuq Von Rospach, Internet Gnome = When his IQ reaches 50, he should sell
..and they expect that of windows systems? Bwuhaha.
(sorry, couldn't resist)
--
The imp hits!
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
... to read the legalese in these User Agreements carefully. I don't know about anyone else, but I often just click "I agree" to avoid having to read through 20 pages of badly written pseudo-English that mostly looks like it's an extremely verbose version of a copyright symbol.
... what have I agreed to so far?! Call my lawyer!
I'm getting slightly nervous here
I actually proposed something like that in a department meeting held on April 1 back in 1980 (maybe 1981) so those who were running long simulations wouldn't get disconnected by the silly IBM terminal controller from the campus VM/CMS system. No keyboard activity for fifteen minutes and you got clobbered. (Tentative funding for the project was approved until initial project team discussions revealed that the only place where anyone could remember seeing one of the birds was at a Stuckey's on the Ohio turnpike and enthusiasm for the project waned quickly.)
--
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
You agree to the following:
1. Service
1.1. This contract is binding.
1.2. But not on us.
2. Your Obligations
2.1. You give us the right to know anything about you that takes our fancy.
2.2. Or about anyone else, for that matter.
2.3. You cough up any connection charges. Notice how we keep this separate from paragraph 2.5.
2.4. You agree to eat spam.
2.5. pH33r u5! w3 @re 1337 h4x0r5. We will make your PC dial our POPs. They might even be local calls. W3 0wn j00r 5cr33n 54v3r. We want your pr0n. We wish to use your computer in a distributed processing scheme for our company's purposes.
2.6. You acknowledge that the Service is provided only for personal use by you and members of your household, and not for corporate or excessive commercial use or for use by organizations or other groups of users. Unless they're us.
2.7. You may or not get your email, our distributed processing requirements notwithstanding. We cannot plan or manage our servers, so there's no telling how long your mail's going to sit on our server.
3. Content
3.1. We can't possibly take any responsibility for or action over norty stuff floating about on the net. Unless you put it there. Or tried to.
3.2. If you're stealing stuff, we don't even want to know about it.
3.3. Oh, and we own your IP, too.
4. Software License
4.1. We'll even let you use the software by which we own you.
4.2. Hell, we'll even let you inf^Hstall it on other peoples' PCs!
4.3. Until you try to exercise your fair use rights.
4.4. Or even export it.
4.5. Or work for the guv'mint.
4.6. We really do own you.
5. Fees
5.1. You even enjoy the privilege of paying for all of this.
5.2. And there's just so many fun ways to do it!
5.3. And for us to collect it.
5.4. And, what's more, we'll just do it for you!
5.5. But you still get to pay for non-free (beer) stuff.
6. No Warranties
6.1. No kidding.
6.2. No, really!
6.3. No warranties here.
6.4. None here, either, no siree!
7. Indemnification
Nor responsibility, either.
8. Termination
8.1. We can cut you off at any time we like. Anything you put on our servers can no longer be accessed by you. Not that you ever owned it, anyway.
8.2. If you don't like it, you can always leave. After you pay us.
9. Miscellaneous
9.1. Don't even think of trying to slime out of this contract.
9.2. Put your lawyers away. If any part of this agreement is held to be unenforceable, we're going to enforce it anyway. We have more money than you.
9.3. And bought the laws to protect us.
10. For Quebec Residents Only
Our legal staff can't speak French.
--
Athy, athier, athiest.
Will Juno users realize what they are agreeing to?
;-)
My experience with Juno users is that they have been of two types. The first type is people who were dislocated from their previous ISP, typically AOL or Compuserve by their parents, and installed Juno to be able to get back online without their parents knowledge. The second type is of people who have no clue what this "Internet" thing is they keep hearing about, and they sure as gosh darn heck don't wanna have to pay, so they use a free server, and really don't even use it.
Of course, I'm omitting the third type, which are skr1pt k1dd13s who want to think they are secure from tracking by using these free servers, but I don't really count them as people, but more as illiterate brutes
In the first case, the kids don't care how they get online as long as they can get back to their chat/message boards/surfing/porn, and in the second case, they are too baffled by legalese to ever realize whats going on. As for the skr1pt k1dd13s, heck, let Microsoft get them for hacking their servers and stealing their source code, its no skin off my back to see those brats busted.
I think the bigger question instead of "Do Juno users realize what they are agreeing to" is "Is this ethical? And more importantly, is this right?"
Information is the catalyst for revolution