Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2008-05-19 The meeting was called to order at 19:31 by kaduk. In attendance were Voting members: jhawk, mathmike, jesstess, yoz, wdaher, quentin, jbarnold, mitchb, golem, kaduk, tabbott, jwalden | price, broder, ecprice Associate members: kchen | kcr Prospectives: neboat, njess, ccpost, rishig Guests: Officer Reports: mathmike: There will be elections at the end of the meeting for neboat and njess. kaduk: Yes, I'm derelict in my duties. price: This is the last meeting of the term, so it's time for me to report to you about the SIPB. I'm glad to report that the state of the SIPB is strong. We've been productive on a large number of visible projects. We have a lively office often, and are actively recruiting new members. The next release of Athena, Debathena, was developed by SIPB. This is the second time in less than ten years that SIPB has brought Athena to a new platform. This is thanks in large part to work by tabbott, andersk, and nelhage, and is going to be Athena 10. That will make it the most widely used SIPB project since Linux Athena. It's a good example of transferring maintenance of a SIPB project to IS&T. It will bring credit to SIPB among potential members and give us credibility when talking with IS&T in the future. Linerva, which it spun out of, currently sees 500 users a month and about 100 at a time. The SIPB virtualization service has been worked on a great deal by broder, ecprice, price, neboat, ccpost, quentin, and andersk. It is used by the CUPS service, individual members, and some student groups. Thanks to mitchb it has borrowed several blade servers. It has a new name, but I'm not going to tell you what it is just now because if you all start using it immediately, we'll run out of RAM. We intend to release its software to the world at large. scripts.mit.edu has over 2100 users, and continues to make progress on its technology. andersk, quentin, broder, and geofft have been doing the day-to-day work on it. A poster on the bulletin board [points to 6.00100K poster] indicates how much it is in people's consciousness. Users have over 1500 autoinstalled applications now, over half of which are Mediawikis, so there are almost 800 people getting wikis with almost no effort. Thanks to acrefoot, njess, and price we've done several upgrades recently. We recently added an autoinstaller for Trac thanks to andersk and price. We reorganized the machine room, punting a table and some shelves, and rackmounting most of our machines. We got new AFS servers with terabytes of storage, which we are backing up to TSM so we no longer have to manage our own backups. We have a monitoring server, syn, thanks to quentin. courses.mit.edu, created by mathmike, is in use by many people and has better URIs than Stellar. MacAthena works, created by broder. Barnowl now supports Unicode thanks to asedeno and nelhage. We have no fewer than three printing services - quickprint, created by presbrey and made to play nicely with IS&T by broder, is a web interface for printing easily; cups, set up by broder and ternus, provides easy printer access to many non-Athena Linux users, and may be used in Debathena; queues, set up by broder is lpq for the web. LAMP is down, but keithw and quentin are looking into it. We've lockerized several things recently: jifty by nelhage, sage by tabbott, and remctl by broder, for instance. We didn't have cluedumps or asksipb this term, but will in the Fall. The office has seen a clearing out of laptop land thanks to geofft and ccpost, and of tables in the back thanks to ternus, price, and others. Many more people seem to be around the office week after week than there have been in years, thanks in no small part to the available space we've created - new laptop space and clearing out of junk. An important goal will be to continue converting space for stuff into space for people. Our library has been a great success (in particular the 6.033 notes, new perl books, and Intel architecture books used not only as monitor stands for tabbott). We have a new Cokecomm, dnawi, who has been actively buying things and experimenting with the selection. Events have been successful - we had a CPW party with twice as many people as last year's. We had a peak of 20 people, and a total of 30, visit during that night, and I hope we'll see some of them in the Fall. We had a barbecue organized by jesstess where wdaher and rayhe and some others grilled. We showed the Harvard people who attended a good time. There were two of them. So, we have many good projects and a lively office. I don't have numbers for the office's occupancy, but hopefully we will soon thanks to the [presently down due to cutter-john] door sensor ternus implemented and the web graphing code that nelhage wrote. I do have graphs about meeting attendance, though. All of the following represent attendance at the second through the next-to-last meeting of the various spring terms. [draws graph presenting roughly the following set of information: Median total attendance Year: '88 '95 '99 '03 '04 '05 '06 '07 '08 People: 15 35 33 16 16 24 20 22 18 ] If the focus of what SIPB is were meetings, this would be serious cause for concern. But projects are the major focus of SIPB, and we've had great activity on those. [Mean student attendance (both members and prospectives, but not guests) Year: '95 '03 '04 '05 '06 '07 '08 People: 24 8 9 14 14 14 15] Mean student attendance at the same meetings has gone between about 10 and 20, having a high of 24 in 1995, and a low of 8 in 2003 - fewer members than are supposed to be active to populate the EC. One thing students do every 4 or 5 years (or sometimes longer), is stop being students and [sometimes] graduate. Of our current ranks, 12 are planning to graduate and leave the Institute in June - that's 40% of our members. At the end of last June we had 24 members. If tonight's elections succeed, we'll have 20 at the end of this June. [fire alarm interrupt at 20:06] [meeting resumes in 5-234 at 20:15] price: Hopefully our glorious, prosperous, lively office will still exist in an hour. A major challenge for us in the Fall will be to build back up our strength after this strong cohort graduates. There is one other aspect of membership that I'd like to discuss: associate members. [Mean associate member attendance Year: '87 '88 '89 '90 '91-'01 '02 '03 '04 '05 '08 People: 1 2 4 4 6-10 10 5 4 5.5 1.5] There are about 1.5 associate members attending any meeting this year. This is lower than in any year since 1987, and almost an order of magnitude lower than in the '90s. I'm unsure what the result is. It's possible that lower attendance of older members makes younger members or prospectives more comfortable, so in that respect maybe we're better off that way. On the other hand, our connection with our alumni members has been extremely important, and so I think we lose something by this. It's been a steady decline, and so this does not seem to be a one-year blip. I'd be interested in hearing thoughts about this, though perhaps right at this moment isn't the best time. Does anyone want to toss out thoughts right now? mitchb: There was a perpetual drop of 1 when jhawk became a student, so part of this doesn't actually represent people who have gone away. jhawk: It also has to do with people who've simply moved out of town. kcr: There will be a spike in associate members when the current strong cohort graduates. price: So that's the state of the SIPB. golem: "Four more years!" price: Introduce yourselves. njess: I'm njess, Noah Jessop. I've been a prospective for year and 3 days. My involvement has ramped up slowly over the last term. I'm around the office a lot, help users, was at our table at the CPW midway, price and I do a lot of work on scripts, and I'm giving the presentation on scripts at the IT Partners conference. neboat: I'm neboat, known as TB (among other things), I was prospectivized two years ago, but didn't start hanging out at SIPB until this past term when I realized that a lot of my friends are here. Mostly I've been working on sipb-xen's autoinstaller for paravirtualized machines. The plan is to integrate that work into the existing automated system. jbarnold: Here's an easy warmup question. We're not in the SIPB office right now; what building are we in? neboat: 5. njess: More specifically, room 234. quentin: Name as many office heads as you can. [alternating]: yaz-pistachio, mega-man, cutter-john, portnoy, lying-naked-in-the-periwinkle [mitchb: more like lying-naked-on-the-windowsill], opus, coleco-sidewinder, zsr, oliver, bobbi-harlow, hodge-podge, quiche. mathmike: Be as specific as you can. What was the last class to occur in this room? Look behind you. [at the blackboard] njess: 5.60. [the stuff on the blackboard does look like 5.60 material] mitchb: It was probably actually a review session and not a class. broder: Name 16 SIPB members not currently here. Well, okay, 12. [alternating]: danjared, jtu, spang, dkk, lnemzer, paigep, nelhage, arolfe, geofft, k_lai, aseering... [long pause ensues] tabbott: Here's a hint: UTF-8. neboat: Oh, right. asedeno. [collective shock that he didn't name andersk] kaduk: njess, who was price before price? njess: tabbott. quentin: neboat, who was price before tabbott? neboat: jbarnold. jhawk: You're in the office, and you hear rolling chairs in the hallway. What do you do? neboat: Get up and look outside. jhawk: Okay. There's a girl rolling chairs down the hallway. njess: Ask "What are you doing taking that property of IS&T?" jhawk: So you're an enforcer, huh? njess: Get her username, zephyr -c sipb about what's been taken, insist that she tell SIPB when it's been returned. jesstess: Pick a service we provide, and tell us how to make it better. neboat: Anna's Burritos pumped through pneumatic tubes. jesstess: How about one of *our* services? njess: SIPB could start lobbying to get IS&T to support scripts, as it's becoming more and more popular, along the lines of the model price mentioned that Debathena has followed. neboat: sipb-xen has made a lot of progress, but there's more to do. Getting it out of the alpha stage, bug fixing, etc. njess: Adding new phrases to isyournewbicycle.csail.mit.edu. mitchb: I object to that being called a SIPB service. kaduk: What is your OS of choice and why? njess: Windows XP, MacOS, and Ubuntu. MacOS runs everything and is beautiful, Ubuntu runs on my antiquated hardware, and Windows for the Excel keybindings I can't get MacOS to deal with. neboat: Ubuntu and XP SP2. Ubuntu for being able to debug things yourself, and Windows for the games. tabbott: What do you want to improve about the office? njess: In the hardware department, I think SIPB should continue to provide premium office heads; we want to draw in people by what we have that the clusters don't offer (clusters have big monitors now), and maybe improve laptop land. neboat: [Burrito tube discussed previously], expand person space, I like air conditioning. kaduk: There are multiple climate control options. mitchb: At the end of this meeting, we discover that W20 has exploded. Where should SIPB lobby to have its new office? njess: There's an increased student activity space initiative already underway. I'd say that SIPB should be right next to UA Office in the new student center. neboat: Closer to EC, for walking distance. kcr: Where do you set up the emergency SIPB office before the five years of MIT bureaucracy necessary to get the new space pass? quentin: Name one or two SIPB services you think are most important, and one or two that you're not sure why SIPB offers. wdaher: Then name your least favorite SIPB member. neboat: Debathena njess: scripts [important] neboat: staplers njess: bobbi-harlow on non-login basis [not sure why] njess: wdaher, since he asked [least favorite] jhawk: How do you feel about the fact that a near-verbatim transcript of what you say here is world-readable in AFS, and maybe on the web? neboat: It doesn't really bother me. njess: I believe you have to only say things you can stand behind anyway. jbarnold: Will you steal, or through inaction allow to be stolen, deberg's laptop? njess: Who's deberg? jbarnold: deberg is an associate member, who has been involved in several political efforts, was just narrowly defeated for Cambridge City Council, founded Act Blue, etc. tabbott: And he has a laptop. jbarnold: He sometimes comes around the office and asks this question at membership elections. njess: Okay. No, depending on how many zephyrs and e-mails are sent. neboat: No, and it doesn't matter how many zephyrs are sent. quentin: Where do you draw the line between laptops and groceries? njess: [Some reasonable answer] jesstess: You have a friend who wants to hang out at SIPB, but doesn't know anything about it. What do you do? neboat: Let them hang out. jesstess: How do you get them involved? What's an easy target? njess: There's a document in /afs/sipb/admin/text/members. price: Yeah, I should update that. neboat: When I showed up, price got me involved with sipb-xen. I've been happy with that choice. jbarnold: Across the board, what are two things the Board could do better? njess: Package something at a level beyond cluedumps to bring people who are interested but haven't had much exposure into the UNIX world. neboat: When I started hanging out at the SIPB office, I wasn't really sure what my bounds were. For example, when the phone rang, should I have felt free to answer it? So, perhaps a better orientation for new people. kaduk: Followup: what do you think SIPB could do to make the office more welcoming to people who haven't hung out there? njess: Better PR - people know they can use the stapler on the door, but not the five of them on the table. They don't know they can come hang out in this place where "important work" is happening and nobody's talking. Maybe put up some sign, scrolling ticker, etc. or come up with some welcome blurb. neboat: Maybe improve general demeanor towards new people. broder: I move that someone ask the question. I don't really care who. [Everyone looks around for non-student. It takes a surprisingly long time to notice kchen.] kchen: Why do you want to be SIPB members? neboat: I've enjoyed hanging out at the SIPB office and being around my friends and contributing to projects that help computing at MIT as a whole. I want to be more involved. njess: I've found an environment where you can ask any question and people will jump and drop their work to respond, and it encourages me to do the same. I've been forging friendships. I'm less afraid of saying something that might be stupid. It's a place of learning and I want to help bring it to other people. <15-0-0 njess is a member> <15-0-0 neboat is a member> SIPB Projects Report: quentin: We're approaching the point where we've squashed all the vulnerable SSH and SSL keys. kaduk: What's the current scope of this vulnerability? quentin: Certainly all of scripts is secure now, but I can only speak for projects I'm involved with. kaduk: How about the AFS servers? quentin: They've been taken care of. mitchb: I note that none of the Solaris ones were ever vulnerable. tabbott: A bunch of XVM machines are still vulnerable. njess: I'll be giving the talk at the IT Partners conference discussed last week, and geofft reports that the allocation made last week will not be used. Office Report: kaduk: The external windows were washed. Whether the interior side was as well is unclear to me. jhawk: Dell came to look at cutter-john, and replaced the processor, and the motherboard, and the power supply, and then discovered that the hard drive was dead, and arranged to meet us outside W20 to deliver the new disk. kenta installed Athena, but X doesn't work or something... tabbott: Does someone want to do something? mitchb: I'll do something if nobody else wants to, but it'll start with a normal reinstall. kaduk: It also looks like there's a probable flakiness with the video card. The output sometimes flickers, there's non-crispness at the edges of objects, etc. yoz: Are those the same issues we saw when the old monitor was attached to zsr? tabbott: I think they are different problems. jhawk: I hear that there was an ubersecret meeting between price, nelhage, and John Morgante. quentin: I was at the equivalent meeting for The Tech, and asked some questions. These jacks will have power over ethernet, but are not on battery backup. jhawk: But it's the same physical infrastructure as the regular network, so there are no real assurances about what will happen during network outages. quentin: They'd also like to replace all analog phones in the building. jhawk: This has already happened in the cluster. Other: quentin: It's finals week. tabbott: The thesis deadline is Friday. kaduk: The W20 cluster is scheduled to close at 7am Friday for some CAC work on the walls and floor. There is some discussion underway about whether the shutdown can be delayed by a few hours. Other Other: jwalden: A friend with whom I interned two summers ago is a current law student at Yale. On January 15 this year he had the opportunity to visit the Supreme Court for oral argument in United States v. Rodriquez, on the side of the respondent Rodriquez. Rodriquez was a felon convicted for possession of a firearm; at issue was a law affecting the length of his sentence. Under 18 U. S. C. 924(e), the crime had a minimum sentence of 15 years if the offender had three previous convictions for "violent felon[ies]" or "serious drug offense[s]", where a "serious drug offense" must have a maximum sentence of ten years or more prescribed by law. Rodriquez had two previous violent felonies; his one serious drug offense had a maximum sentence of five years under state law -- but under a recidivist enhancement, that maximum sentence was doubled to ten years. The question was whether Rodriquez's drug offense under the Armed Career Criminal Act of 1984, by dint of the recidivist enhancement, had a maximum sentence of five years or of ten years. The Supreme Court ruled today in a 6-3 decision that the maximum sentence was the ten year sentence under the recidivist enhancement. Justice Alito delivered the opinion of the Court and was joined by Justices Breyer, Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas; Justice Souter dissented and was joined by Justices Ginsburg and Stevens. mathmike: In about 30 days, California is scheduled to start permitting same-sex marriages, and doesn't require you to be a California resident. wdaher: When you graduate, CSAIL gives you a USB drive. tabbott: What's the trigger for this? wdaher: I'm unsure, but you have to complete a survey. jwalden: Firefox 3 is almost code-frozen, and is finally dropping CVS. jhawk: In favor of? jwalden: Mercurial. The meeting was adjourned at 21:04. Minutes taken and submitted by mitchb.