Cisco Webex bug allowed anyone to join a password-protected meeting Cisco has confessed to a vulnerability in its Webex Meetings Suite sites and Webex Meetings Online sites that allowed an "unauthenticated" attendee sitting on a workstation far, far away to join a "password-protected meeting without providing the meeting password". According to the security advisory, which was rated as "High …
I so wish folks would stop perpetrating this ridiculous ungrammatical use of "-ee". An attendee is someone who is attended, like the Queen or Donald Trump. The person doing it is an attender (or sometimes "-or", as in gladiator). The gladiatee was the person spifflicated by the gladiator's gladius or short sword. Similarly an "escapee" is someone who is escaped from (e.g. a guard). The person doing the escaping is an escaper.
If we hadn't abandoned teaching grammar and etymology, the language might have had a chance of survival. Instead it's now Humpty Dumpty time, so any old noise will do for anything you mean. Get it wrong often enough and it becomes accepted as right (particularly if some clueless goat built it into a spell checker), but it remains wrong because words and components of words have intrinsic meanings by virtue of their origins.
As the AC noted, language changes. The admittedly few lexicographers I have spoken with take a descriptive rather than prescriptive approach to language. As far as the word of the moment, the first use of "attendee" predates most folks' time on this Earth (first recorded ca. 1935), so it seems a bit late to protest.
" Get it wrong often enough and it becomes accepted as right"
Considering this covers pretty much of the English language, your point is invalid.
If you don't believe this to be true, go and read something written from the medieval time period. Good luck.
When I read Chaucer, having heard that his language was incomprehensible to the modern reader, I assumed what I had was a modern translation.
It wasn't. Claims about mediæval English are grossly overblown.
Now Beowulf, on the other hand, I find as incomprehensible as Finnegans Wake.
This made me laugh: "The unauthorized attendee will be visible in the attendee list of the meeting as a mobile attendee," said Cisco.
Followed by: "Cisco PSIRT is aware of active use of the vulnerability that is described in this advisory."
So you just set your name to someone who is already on the call and join with that. I've been on many Webex calls where someone is on twice (or even more times) because you just can't get the bloody software to let you in, so you try a different browser or try on your phone.
I have to say I've found the software to offer a very poor quality meeting -- most of the time the voices break up. Why on earth does it have to be such a massive and complex application? Poo -- that's my assessment.
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