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Homage to the founder:
A pictorial history
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University
Library Special Collections
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| This
photo of a pageant celebrating the University's centennial is
one of many illustrations included in the new pictorial history
of U.Va., published by the University Press of Virginia and
the University Bookstore. As part of the four-day celebration,
which actually took place in 1921 to coincide with the final
exercises of the first class who entered in 1819, this allegorical
skit called "The Shadow of the Builder" was performed
on the steps of the Rotunda. It dramatized in dance and verse
Jefferson's decision to use fine Italian marble instead of rough
Virginia stone for the column capitals of the Rotunda. English
professors John C. Metcalf and James Southall Wilson invited
writers to contribute poetry to a centennial anthology, The
Enchanted Years, which included works by Thomas Hardy, D.H.
Lawrence, Vachel Lindsay and Edwin Arlington Robinson. See The
University of Virginia: A Pictorial History. |
"Slow
Dance" almost halts U.Va. e-mail
By
Rebecca Arrington
Sleet
and snow may not hinder mail delivery, but an unauthorized mass
e-mailing almost stopped the University's electronic mail system
in its tracks last week.
The
electronic missive was sent by a Medical Center employee Sept. 3
to roughly half of the faculty and staff at U.Va. Apparently unaware
of the University's policy on mass e-mailings, the employee fell
prey to the plea of an Internet chain letter that asked its recipients
to send the e-mail to as many people as possible. The letter, which
contained an inspirational poem titled "Slow Dance," claimed
to be the wish of a little girl dying of cancer. The letter also
claimed that for every name on every e-mail sent, the American Cancer
Society would donate three cents toward the girlšs treatment.
Not
only is the letter a hoax, but "the volume of e-mails stemming
from this incident stretched the University's computing system to
its limits," said Chip German, director of policy and planning
at the Office of Information Technology. "The sender exploited
a feature of the Medical Center's Microsoft Exchange mail system
that allows a user to send a message to 'everyone whose last name
begins with' In this case, the sender broke up the whole alphabet
and sent to roughly half of the University faculty and staff. Things
got worse, because people who received the first mailing and wanted
to complain about it sent their complaints via their own 'reply
all' feature, meaning that the reply is going to everyone who received
the original message. The problem cascaded to the point that it
threatened some mail systems.
"The
irony of it all," German noted, is that it took a mass mailing
from one of U.Va.'s computing teams on Sept. 7 to resolve the problem.
To
prevent future incidents, German urges individuals who receive such
e-mails not to respond to them and instead to report them to abuse@virginia.edu.
According
to U.Va.'s policy on mass e-mailings, approved in January 1998,
"system-wide electronic messages by voice or e-mail should
be reserved for rare and truly urgent emergency notices. The frequency,
content and other characteristics of most messages are inappropriate
for such delivery." U.Va.'s policies and handbooks outlining
responsible computer usage are online at: http://www.itc.virginia.edu/department/policies/.
Violating the terms of these policies could revoke users' network
access, German warned.
Individuals
with legitimate mass e-mailing requests should contact postmaster@virginia.edu
or call the office of the University's chief information officer
at 982-2249.
The
click of a button ...
Today, with the click of a button, a message can be forwarded
to hundreds of people at no apparent cost to the sender. If each
of the so-called good Samaritans sends the letter on to only 10
other people, the ninth resending results in a billion e-mail
messages, thereby, clogging the network and interfering with the
receiving of legitimate messages. Factor in the time lost reading
and deleting all these messages and you see a real cost to organizations
and individuals from these seemingly innocuous messages.
Source: U.S. Department of Energy Computer Incident
Advisory Capability Group
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