response 447 of 480:

Feb 28 20:26 UTC 2007

I just spent about 20 minutes trying to sign up for a google account using
the lynx (latest) on my own computer.  I could not find a link to the image
you needed to type in to verify.  I downloaded the .wav file and tried typing
in the numbers I heard (against a ridiculously noisy background).  I mailed
asking them to email me to help.  Then I broke down and used Opera to sign
up.  I could access my account with lynx and it took 30 seconds from the
time I typed in the URL to read my mail.  Since I have lynx set to number al
links, I could type 10 for Compose, and 30 for send (or whatever they are).
It sent in a couple of seconds.  My ISP webmail can take 20 sec to delete
mails.  I have not tested google this way.  

I then tested access to pine.  If I am already at grex it takes about 2
seconds.  If I am not at grex, it took 10 sec to ssh here and enter my
password and type pine and i to see a list of my mails (less if I had fewer
mails in the inbox, more on a really slow day).  

I added another To: line to my .procmailrc to dump any mails to koresh,
and another couple lines to send any mail about pills or girlfriend to the
spam folder.

Lynx can handle https sites (you need a cert.pem).  

I then accessed my inbox with Opera.  46 seconds.  With Opera set to not
display any images (but I think it still downloads them).

The conclusion is that pine at grex is much faster to access via modem,
(2 sec if I am already at grex), lynx takes 30 sec, and opera takes 40 sec
(plus another 30-40 sec to load X and opera).  On my fastest computer.
Firefox or Mozilla take twice as long to load as Opera.  

Pine being faster than Google to access (with lynx or opera).

Fastmail.fm took 10 seconds to access with lynx (on my computer, in all
cases).  Probably less if I set lynx to access fastmail cookies.
Google took 30 sec with lynx.  Fastmail is getting 2 spams a day now.


Links indeed does not access gmail though the SSL part works.  (The links at
grex does SSL).

How would someone read google mail using pine at lynx?  

response 449 of 480:

Feb 28 20:50 UTC 2007

#445: I have a gmail account, but it only has POP and additionally makes
messages disappear from POP once read via that method.

#446: The difference seems to me to be that IMAP is intended for managing
mailboxes remotely, while POP seems intended for simple mail retrieval.
The first "definition" Google finds for "IMAP" is as follows: 

"(Internet Message Access Protocol) IMAP is gradually replacing POP as the main
protocol used by email clients in communicating with email servers. Using IMAP
an email client program can not only retrieve email but can also manipulate
message stored on the server, without having to actually retrieve the messages.
So messages can be deleted, have their status changed, multiple mail boxes can
be managed, etc."

I have now created a fastmail.fm account. Their "Pine" configuration entry is
overly confusing -- as keesan noted, it tells you what keystrokes to use in vi,
which is unforgiving, and likely some stray command keystrokes slipped in when
she used pico. The "I know how to set up SMTP/POP/IMAP myself ..." FAQ entry is
much more revealing. I'll enter detailed instructions when I get back to my
dorm room, where I have pine set up (I'm typing this from the computer science
Unix lab) and can substitute fastmail's IMAP server for Calvin's and post. That
will include both fastmail IMAP and Gmail POP; as Dan said in #445, Gmail
probably has better spam protection, and I add that it is entirely free unlike
fastmail which reserves some features for those who pay.

response 451 of 480:

Feb 28 21:25 UTC 2007

Regarding #449; It's true that IMAP is more featureful than POP.  But for the
simple commands that have been listed here (grabbing headers and deleting
messages without first retrieving them) POP has enough functionality.

response 453 of 480:

Feb 28 21:47 UTC 2007

Shucks; I just read the RFC's back in the day.

response 455 of 480:

Mar 1 00:44 UTC 2007

What I have there will open your inbox on both fastmail and Gmail. POP doesn't
support opening other folders, so I omitted that for Gmail. For Fastmail, as I
said, I looked at the "I know how to do this myself" (or something like that)
FAQ entry rather than the "Pine" entry (specifing vi and giving keystrokes is
like specifying "Reinstall Windows" as the first solution to a problem like "my
sound doesn't work", before even checking that the speakers are plugged in)
and it didn't say anything about the other options. Looking at that entry now,
I see some things that you *may* or may not want.

To be able to access folders other than your inbox on their servers, append the
following to the line beginning "folder-collections":
----
fm-folders {mail.messagingengine.com/user=<username@fastmail.fm>/ssl}INBOX.[]
----

(I called it "fm-folders" to make it fit on one screen line on this screen.
That's just a label; you can adjust that to whatever you like.)

I'm omitting the stuff they say about "user-domain" and "inbox-path" because
those would make you not be able to read local mail with Pine.

response 457 of 480:

Mar 5 19:49 UTC 2007

Three people have now asked for help setting up spamassassin. 

response 459 of 480:

Mar 9 20:05 UTC 2007

Keesan, just a tip: keeping a running scorecard of the requests you 
have received does not convince a single person of anything and simply 
adds to the noise. You set and arbitrary threshold of ten requests. 
When you cross that threshold, please let us know. 

That said, thank you for mentioning that user's concern. 

response 461 of 480:

Mar 10 00:00 UTC 2007

This last person only wanted to know how to set up a whitelist.

response 463 of 480:

Mar 10 02:59 UTC 2007

You can copy the one I set up for him and change the login name, and then
copy one three-line section over as many times as you have names to whitelist.
Email me.  It is an extremely simple filter, without spamassassin.  Sends mail
from your whitelist to your inbox and dumps the rest.  Or if you prefer the
rest can go to a spam filter and you can dump it yourself.  You choose.

response 465 of 480:

Mar 10 04:01 UTC 2007

Please call it a yeslist and quit the racial profiling.

response 467 of 480:

Mar 13 02:35 UTC 2007

For the past few days NO spam has reached me here at grex, where I can tune
my own spam filter.  About 60/day get dumped.  It is very easy to add filters
on identical content.  DOn't know why gmail does not do that.

response 469 of 480:

Mar 14 15:45 UTC 2007

So far six people asked for a spam filter.  Two reported that it is working.
One of them got 49 spams, of which 47 were caught by spamassassin, and the
two real mails were not.  96% with no false positives.  Using nothing but
spamassassin set to 2 points, with cyberspace whitelisted.