I installed the latest version of Eudora a couple of weeks ago, and I immediately became curious as to why two or three chile-pepper icons were appearing next to some of the messages in my inbox.
Investigation revealed this to be a mood indicator, although I had no idea until a few days ago what that meant.
It seems that this new Eudora scans incoming and outgoing messages for offensive words and then rates the text according to how incendiary it is. If you try sending a message with a bad word in it, you get a warning like this:
Your message to "█████" regarding "Nice ass" is the sort of thing that might get your keyboard washed out with soap, if you get my drift. You might consider toning it down.
Send anyway? Cancel?
I don't know how I feel about this. On the one hand, I'm a writer, dammit, and when I use a word it's because I've consciously decided to use it. On the other hand, I'd hate to slip up and tell my mom about the fucking mess here at work, or whatever.
On another level, I don't know whether the motherly tone of the warning more offends me or amuses me. I don't yet know whether or not I'm going to disable this feature.
Oh, by the way, how did I first discover this warning message? I was sending a perfectly innocuous message to my friend Stephenie Van Dyke.
