I discovered that Mozilla Thunderbird supports NTLM authentication for POP3 (and IMAP). It is enabled by checking the 'use secure authentication' checkbox on the account server settings panel. No more cleartext passwords!
... until the collector arrives ...
This "blog" is really just a scratchpad of mine. There is not much of general interest here. Most of the content is scribbled down "live" as I discover things I want to remember. I rarely go back to correct mistakes in older entries. You have been warned :)