Communications Office Report #6
February 20, 2004
Admiral Turtle Jerrar

Between school, the Corps of Cadets (inspection last weekend, all this week, and white collar inspection this morning - basically, constant cleaning), and actual Army duties, I've been insanely busy the last two weeks. As such, I was unable to get a report out last week. This report serves as reports #5 and #6.

I've been able to squeeze some ELS work into my busy schedule, especially today. ELS is now slated for a 2.0 version jump, which I hope to have available (schedule-permitting) next week. Major changes include:

- Greatly enhanced redundancy, 2.x will support a pool of master servers so that you will always be able to login to an ELS-enabled web site, even if one or more master servers are down.

- Improved security. ELS logins will now be handled directly by the master server (as opposed to ELS-enabled sites passing along usernames and passwords for verification), which eliminates any possible man-in-the-middle attacks and now makes it possible for any site in the Emperor's Hammer to use ELS functionality to enhance their web site.

- Additional data available. 2.x will include multiple new data fields.

- Improvements in ease of use. ELS 2.x client code will now include multiple scripts, including pre-made example scripts to demonstrate ELS functionality on your own site. ELS is truly a plug and play solution to user authentication issues!

The new login method was completed today, and is currently in use on www.ehnet.org in a test stage.

The next project on my list (probably following the launch of ELS 2.0) will be to fix the ordering and organization of message boards (by subgroup) like several users have been asking about. Luckily, next week will almost certainly be a much calmer week.

As a reminder, please use the COMM request from on the Communications Office web site to submit message board creation and moderator change requests. Requests for IRC operator access will be added to COMM request shortly, after I have time to add a CService username field to ELS.


Communications Office Links

http://www.ehcomm.net/ - Communications Office
http://www.ehnet.org/mb/ - Message Boards
http://www.ehcomm.net/request.php - COMM Request Forms
http://www.emperorshammer.org/irc.htm - IRC Code of Conduct

http://www.minos.net/ - MinosNIC
http://els.minos.net/ - ELS Management


Submitted,

COMM/AD Turtle Jerrar/CS-8/SSSD Sovereign (Paladin),
GOE/BSx2/PCx2/ISMx7/MoI/IS-2GR-1PR/LoC-CSx2-Rx3/CoE/CoLx2/CoB/LoA/OV-6E
{IWATS-AIM-ASP-BX-CBX-GFX-IIC/1/2/3-JS-LIN-M/1/2-PHP/1/2-SM/1-VBS-XML}