Eudora's Mood Watch; was, Re: Dickhead

[John McChesney-Young]

Jesse Sheidlower wrote of "Ashcroftian versions of Eudora" (in Larry
Horn's memorable turn of phrase):

>I think we should all make an effort to not use such programs,
>or at least to figure out how to defeat their nannyisms.

I can only speak to the matter of the Mac implementation, but
Eudora's Mood Watch is intended to discourage people from sending
potentially offensive messages *contrary to their own preferences*.
It's best seen as a cyber-Jiminy Cricket whom one can enclose in a
sound-proof jar if desired, although it's a feature, not a bug.

I believe that in the default setting - I may have changed it on my
machine - it simply displays questionable vocabulary in dark red and
puts one to three chilies next to the Send button in proportion to
the words' naughtiness and number, and then on queuing the message it
asks confirmation that despite the potential for offense (three
chilies = the keyboard/soap query) the user actually wants to send
the text unaltered.

Regardless of the defaults, disabling the feature entirely is a
matter of unchecking a single box in Special->Settings->Mood Watch,
and it's very easy to customize its range of application and
stringency as well.

John
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*** John McChesney-Young  **  panis at pacbell.net  **   Berkeley,
California, U.S.A.  ***