Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 10/17/2005 The meeting was called to order at 7:30 PM by jbarnold. In attendance were Voting members: tabbott janetryu kchen keithw arolfe jbarnold glasser jhawk Associate members: jtu jmorzins astronut srz dbj jweiss Prospectives: mshaw illix rram tilia Guests: Treasurer's Report: arolfe: I ordered all the books that we needed that Quantum had. Conveniently, MIT's system for purchase orders says it lets you create them for purchases of up to 50 items, except it lies and you can only do 20. Chairman's Report: jbarnold: A week ago, I sent an email with items that were in the office that belong to members and should go away. I got some responses, but I want to get rid of the items that were not claimed. Does anyone have any problems with such items being disposed of in some capacity? keithw: Can I list the items? jbarnold: yes keithw: (with notation as to the status of the items by jbarnold) - (still being investigated) Blockbuster video bag containing orange ribbon - (still being investigated) a floppy disk labeled "jclay device programming" - (not heard anything) a "100-sheet writing tablet" - (not heard anything) a Microcenter receipt for a $169.99 Simptech 40gb 2.5" HDD - (not heard anything) Red Hat Linux 6.1 CDs - (claimed)"The Macintosh Bible" labeled (as far as I can tell) "I belong to TERC I.S." - (not heard anything) Belkin green cat5 patch cable - (not heard anything) Belkin gray serial cable jbarnold: I move to get rid of all the stuff not accounted for jtu: second [White Ballot -- motion passes.] Office Report: jweiss: Hotline has one of the HP machines for us. Dave Wyman has tried to drop it off in the office, but has had surprising bad luck. It'd be good if someone could email him and setup a time to do the delivery. jhawk: I'll do that, and tell him that otherwise he can drop it off in the machine room. glasser: I want the office to have a better Haskel book. jhawk: Is it not one of the ones we just replaced? jtu: second glasser: It's much more practical than the one we have. jhawk: Haskell is not very practical in general. glasser: It is these days, it's awesome. jhawk: It's a book, we should get it. white ballot -- motion passes Office Cleaning Report: jweiss: There are holes on the floor over here. golem: Pick them up before someone falls in MIT Computing Report: jhawk: One of the web.mit.edu's misbehaved for much of the weekend, so that it didn't serve some content in a nondeterministic fashion. Apparently there was a configuration problem with one of the network interfaces. You can get the current names of web.mit.edu by using "hesinfo www sloc" to help debug problems. jmorzins: In related news, there's a new webserver. Briefly last week, one of the www machines was serving pages using web's configuration settings, the main difference being how it handles ~s. jhawk: Do you know how to get those machines' names? jmorzins: No. I believe that www and web are the same machines but different virtual server configs. Computer Services: keithw: Sportcast had its debut yesterday. We did some filming of the volleyball tournament, and like anything that doesn't involve computers, it worked great. MIT won all the games. We'll probably have a dress rehearsal with computers this coming weekend. If you want to help email sportcast@mit.edu. jtu: People met about work getting done on stuff.mit.edu earlier today. jbarnold: Any progress? jtu: Yes. arolfe: The machine bloom-beacon is now on some previously normal ops hardware, and has made it sad. jbarnold: Things are looking promising that scripts.mit.edu will support group lockers soon, thanks in part to tabbott and axiak Publications Report: jbarnold: I think we're ok. Orientation Report: IAP Report: mshaw: IAP. Jeff and I met with anneh about her interest in classes that course 6 students could teach. Course 6 apparently has to offer things for credit to get things offered on them. They want C++, Java, Matlab, Scheme. Java has been taken care of by rram. jut: Thank you ricky! jbarnold: I think they're more looking for intro scheme. keithw: I know someone who knows someone who has taught Scheme before. arolfe: I move the keithw reveal the names. keithw: One of them is here right now. jbarnold: Are there notes on this data in your office drawer? jtu closes the door keithw: I think if this person and their friend wants their friend to teach it, ... arolfe: I move to deallocate all funds from sportcast unless keithw reveals the names! jtu: second someone: white ballot! jbarnold ignores the rogue motions jhawk: I think that it is an error to perpetuate the idea the course 6 cannot offer IAP courses not for credit. I think anyone who tells you that is confused. jbanrold: I think that anneh knows what she's doing. jhawk: I think it is weird that anyone in course 6 can but course 6 officially cannot. jhawk: I think that sends the wrong message. mshaw: Nonetheless, this is something that SIPB is good at. mshaw: Are you doing it this IAP? jhawk: No. I don't feel like doing it this IAP. jbarnold: Well, Keith will find us someone to teach Matlab. keithw: He declined. jbarnold: Course 6 is apparently planning to torment the 003 TAs until they agree to teach something. jbarnold: So, we still need C/C++ teachers and Matlab teachers. xela: It's not as bad as you'd think it might be for teachers of C. We've got some very nice materials currently in existence. jbarnold: Also, it does not have to be 5 sessions of 1 hour each marathon. CokeComm Report: Other: mshaw: the basement of 66 athena cluster was locked on Sunday with the lights off. I don't know anything other than that. srz: Some users came in asking about it. jbarnold: Athena is disappearing one cluster at a time. It's like a horror movie where they keep wandering off one by one. jtu: I got a 4-letter username today. jetu. jbarnold: I think I finally found out why Athena Minicourses were made fun of in Voodoo. It has something to do with them making advertisments in Voodoo in the past. rram: It looks like perhaps Voodoo just printed out a '96 issue that's not on their website. Other Other: jhawk: Facilities today restricted access to floorplans.mit.edu to restrict it to people on campus and with MIT certificates. jhawk: Apparently, it's a reaction to the ABC report on the MIT nuclear reactor. This is strange since the floorplans for that haven't been available on floorplans.mit.edu since September 11. jhawk: They apparently also didn't mean to leave on the net18 restriction. rram: I was still able to get the floorplans to the Nuclear reactor from a link off whereis.mit.edu, as of recently keithw: Maybe we should setup our own rival to floorplans.mit.edu jhawk: We could just provide the mirror image of the floorplans to avoid scandal. janetryu: Alpha Phi is hosting a homecoming dance for charity this weekend. Saturday is the lasy home football game, so we're having the dance on Friday. It's supposed to be the same night, but we couldn't get space. You can get tickets for $5 in Lobby 10, and you can vote or nominate people for homecoming royalty for more money. jhawk: Apparently some high schools aren't having proms anymore. mshaw: The ASA is trying to setup an RT system for stuff. We were wondering whether SIPB could help us out, since there used to be sipb-rt. jbarnold: Who's on sipb-rt? jtu: seph, tibbetts jbarnold: We should be able to help them out. mshaw: Is there a better way to do what RT does that SIPB would be willing to help with? jbarnold: I think HCS is setting up RT at Harvard. jweiss: RT is the basis of the system IS&T is moving from Casetracker to. It's written by Best Practical; the name associated to that is Jesse Vincent, who is on zephyr sometimes. jbarnold: I think it's best to send mail to sipb@mit.edu tabbott: A few prospectives are on sipb@mit.edu who worked for Best Practical last summer. xela: Anyone who knows how to get in touch with Joe Presbrey, talk to be after the meeting. jbarnold: I can. [Jbarnold gets a phone call during the meeting] jbarnold: Hello. I'm at the SIPB meeting. jbarnold: I think that was Joe. keithw: What's your cell phone number? jbarnold: It went out on zephyr, though it was intended to only exist in AFS readable by scripts people keithw: For the minutes? jbarnold: I don't want it into googleable space. keithw: What instance? someone: jbarnold keithw: Ahh, (Jeff's phone numbers are read) jhawk: Move to adjourn. jbarnold: Anyone else want to read a phone directory? tabbott: seconds jhawk's motion The meeting was adjourned at 7:53 PM. Minutes taken and submitted by tabbott.