COMM Report #36
February 7, 2003

Lots of news this week, and the return of COMM product reviews!!

1- New COMMA

With Kumba's departure from the Communications Office, we needed a new botmaster COMMA, and having recently vacated the position of LO, FA AbsoluteK offered his services to become our new botmaster general. The addition of AbK to the office is very important, because with him he brings his EH veteran knowledge, his servers, and his all-around know-how of the web to make the COMM office able to do so much more than before. Needless to say, AbK may be doing a lot more than running bots as a COMMA. But speaking of bots, there's a...

2- New COMM bot!

OK, maybe he's not THAT new, but nevertheless, since Kumba left our office, we also had to find a new COMM bot to regulate IRC. Well we have that new bot, and it goees by the name "dasb0t". You can find it in all the channels that DeathFyre had previously occupied. dasb0t's official EH homepage is http://dasb0t.emperorshammer.ca/

3- New site, new location

Thanks once again to FA AbK, the COMM Office has a new location, and a new look! Using the fabulous PHPNuke proogram, AbK was able to make a new sharp-looking office page for us, and is also hosting it on his own server. The new location is http://www.theholo.net (sorry to anyone I told it was comm.emperorshammer.ca, that's changed already :P). By the end of this weekend, the site will be complete, although I'd say it's about 95% ported over from the old site already!

4- X list updated

There's been a good bit of command turnover lately, and the X access list has been appropriately updated. There were a few new CO's appointed this weekend, so as soon as these new CS appointees email me their X logins, they will also get access!

5- And now, return of the reviews!

This week FA AbsoluteK reveiws Eudora for us...

One of the most popular, perhaps the most important aspects of the Internet is email. Some people prefer webmail accounts such as those offered by Hotmail or Yahoo, but those are often littered with advertisements and spam so people like myself prefer to use an email program on my own computer. There are many different email programs available for use on a computer such as Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, Netscape Messenger which all offer many features. Myself, I use Eudora. Why Eudora you might ask? Well its due in part to security concerns with Outlook, and also in part to the fact that I have multiple email accounts, and am a member of many mailing lists.


Eudora was made for people who get lots of email (to quote the Eudora site), and as such has enhanced filters for sorting and/or flagging emails. For example I have a filter in Eudora that moves incoming mail from the Corporate Division mailing list into a folder called "Corporate Division". This allows me to not only keep better track of my CD mail by keeping it all in one place, but to also enable me to read emails which are subjectively all similar at the same time (so as to keep my mind going on the same track, without jumping all over the place).


Being of a security conscious mind set, I also like the fact that Eudora supports the SSL-POP protocol. Normally when you use a pop email account, your account information such as your user name and password are sent across the Internet to the mail server in plain text. That means anybody can read your password. Using SSL-POP, I'm able to keep my information secret. Another security advantage in using Eudora, is the fact that most email virii are written for Outlook, making it even harder for your computer to succumb to evil script kiddies. Eudora also warns users about the dangers of running attachments with out first checking them for malicious code.


Every now and then people will write emails that might possible be offensive, so Eudora has a feature called 'Mood Watch'. What this does, is it flags emails that may be offensive with red peppers. Thereby allowing you (hopefully) to respond in a more calm, prepared manner.


Some of the other features offered by Eudora include ESP (Eudora Sharing Protocol), which allows you to sync files with family, friends or coworkers, and email usage statistics which offer an insight into your day to day habits. Eudora also offers full support for HTML email, fast searches through thousands of emails, migration from other email clients such as Outlook, colour coded labels (for sorting emails), multiple email accounts, multiple signatures and inline spell checking.


It would be impossible to go over ever single feature in Eudora, so I would encourage anybody with a POP/IMAP email account to check out Eudora for themselves. You can download it at http://www.eudora.com for either MS Windows 95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP, or for the MacOS (8.6-9.x, and OS X).

-Submitted by COMMA/FA AbsoluteK

That's all for this week, thanks for reading!

Admiral Motti, Communications Officer
COMM/AD Motti/CS-8/SSSD Sovereign
SSx2/BS/PC/MoT-1rh/MoC-2BoC-2SoC-1GoC/OV-5E {IWATS-SM/1}
COMM Office: http://www.theholo.net