Students and faculty at the Vermont State Colleges System were none too pleased when they learned administrators had taken three weeks to notify them about a possible network security breach. (A laptop belonging to an information-technology employee was stolen late in February, and system officials admit that the machine may store payroll information and Social Security numbers.)
Last week, someone found a thematically appropriate way to protest the administrators’ delayed disclosure. A hacker broke into the e-mail account of Stephen C. Allen, administrator of Lyndon State College’s computer network, and sent a campuswide message lampooning Mr. Allen’s job performance:
Hello, and good-day. My name is Identity Theft Victim, Stephen C. Allen — LSC LAN/System Administrator. This email is being sent because I chose not to change my default e-mail password, allowing my account to be hijacked through simple methods. Recently 20,000+ VSC student, alumni, faculty and staff identities were compromised through the theft of a stolen VSC laptop. (Rutland Herald)
8 Responses to Adding Insult to Injury
Guest - January 25, 2012 at 1:37 pm
Did anyone ever just tell you no?
To come to the end of writing a book and then to be faced with this … oh my.
I was reading _The Subversive Copyeditor_ (on Kindle) when I came across the word “publically,” and it set me to thinking. If that can happen to you, maybe there’s something awry in the whole system. I’m sure I could learn to bake my own bread, sew my own clothes, and repair my own car, but I don’t do any of those things, and I could not possibly at my age learn to do this kind of copy work. (I can, of course, string three independent clauses together with coordinating conjunctions.)
I take your point that writers are idiots, but not being able to edit on paper would be a deal breaker for me.
Carol Saller - January 25, 2012 at 1:48 pm
Oh, you might surprise yourself, 22089159x. A few paragraphs in, you’d probably be fine.
(And what’s wrong with “publically”?)
Guest - January 25, 2012 at 5:06 pm
Probabally not. See what happens to me: pleonastic replies.
Guest - January 25, 2012 at 5:10 pm
I would prefer a tuna fish sandwich to it, but I’m not the one who said Huddleston and Pullum’s _Cambridge Grammar of the English Language_ was “too lax to be helpful, but browsing through it may give you an appreciation for developments since you last studied grammar.” Not “too detailed” at 1860 pages or “too expensive” at $196, but “too lax.”
dottyeyes - January 25, 2012 at 7:07 pm
One of my publisher clients considers it a slight insult to authors to lock copyedited files. I think locking the files is done mainly because many authors aren’t familiar with electronic editing–not because the publishers think the author shouldn’t make additional changes. I’m glad to hear that locking is routine for other publishers.
Carol Saller - January 26, 2012 at 1:16 am
The purpose of locking the files is usually not to prevent changes; an author reviewing editing is normally expected to participate fully, making changes and comments. Locking the files merely ensures that changes are tracked.
dottyeyes - January 26, 2012 at 7:31 am
Your statement states more clearly what I wanted to say! I may borrow the gist of your statement when sending authors a locked manuscript, if you don’t mind.
dank48 - January 26, 2012 at 2:54 pm
Absolutely wonderful article, and the comments–repetitions included–seem to me to underscore some of the points made. Writing and editing should be like a good marriage, not like a battle. It’s a partnership, with both “sides” working toward the same goal.
Anybody of my acquaintance (with the sole exception of Jacques Barzun) who has gone through the agony of writing a book worth the name knows what has gone into it. But you’re more likely to be able to bake your own bread, sew your own clothes, and repair your own car than you are to be able to edit your own prose. There’s a reason surgeons don’t operate on their relatives. You simply cannot be objective about your own prose. One author whose endless qualifications and subtle shadings of meaning were clearly the result of many hours of work resisted the whole idea of editing mightily. But she was good enough to say thanks for the deletion of a word from the footnote that had described Sarajevo as the site of the attempted assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, which sparked World War I.
And Professor Barzun is the exception because he turns in faultless mss.