Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 14 September 1981 The meeting was called to order at 19:32 by William M. York. In attendance were RK, barmar, GMP, JIS, KYM, ADF, ACW, HGA, WMY, DLW, DCP, J9, JSL, CAH, WER, DPC, c/, RLL, Alan, and several non/prospective members. Late were: LRH, Naha, Jay, TZS The minutes of the meeting of 7 September 1981 were read and accepted as corrected. LRH came in during this. *** User Interrupt *** MIT Islamic Society - from EC vote to meeting - $50 to print up mailing labels. They were planning to use a programming language, but were told to use format_blocks. RK noted that this comes to about a penny per person per mailing, and should probably be getting funded out of their dues. We suggested that they get a Coop account. They will try to raise the money for a Coop account. *** End User Interrupt *** Naha came in during this. Membership Report: Alan, KYM, DPC, and WER are active full members. CAH and JIS are now associate members, and no longer EC members. PAE has declared himself inactive and has resigned from the EC. There are currently 16 active full members, 6 EC members. *** User Interrupt *** Russell L. Brand - for humanities text editing. Showing ESG freshmen how to use Emacs, in an informal experimental seminar on computers for non-computer majors. HGA thinks that ESG should be funding the second part. He says that if it works well, they will try to get funding for it in the future. He will see if he can get alternate funding for this part. He is asking for $50 for the humanities text-editing. It was autoed by the meeting. Doll, Claire - $200 for independent research in Course VI. For designing a program to do the business computing associated with 6.901, in which they have set up an actual company. Some people suggest that this might want to be done on EECS. Her major project is designing and learning the ropes invloved. JIS has thought about this, and doesn't think that EECS would be willing to help, and that we should give it to her because it is an eduactional project. She would like to use JCF, as she is very familiar with it and some special features of their Fortran. ACW & RLL explained why it is difficult for us to fund on the JCF. Moved to give $200. Given. We will discuss with her the differences between JCF and Multics, in the hopes that she can learn to use Multics. *** End User Interrupt *** Jay came in during this. The chairman spoke to the prospective members at this point. Treasurer's Report: Jay managed to win today when dealing with E19, clearing up some confusion about Charoen-Rajapark. $2098.97 Multics month-to-date. SIPB and SIPBADMIN spending is grossly high. $49.70 on 370 this month. Remember to get a cutoff date when taking 370 accounts. Someone lost this summer because we set his cutoff to the end of the summer when he actually only needed it for last term. He ended up spending alot on disk over the summer. Jay would like to institute a fascist policy by deleting accounts on the 370 very soon after the cutoff date, so we don't have to deal with the over-runs. We will wait at least a week after the cutoff if the account had been active recently. Remember to get cutoffs from Coop people, as well as real people. Chairman's Report: Nothing major has happened in the chairman's life recently. The chairman will call Prof. Hulsizer to see if he can convene the CCE, and will try to find FinBoard members. The chairman and JPT are taking 4.201, the introductory graphics course, which is taught on the ArcMac. Office Report: The office will be waned tonight. Help move the furniture. The office manual has been revised, so look at it. Coolie-of-the-day: Members should sign on the calendar for coolie-of-the-every-day-or-so. The file drawers have been shuffled weirdly, DCP's stuff has been moved into a box, and last year's applications are in a real file drawer. Sign up for office hours. SpinWriter ribbons and LA120 paper were ordered. The chairman read c/'s resignation from the post of Office Manager. Text of resignation is attached. We need a new Office Manager. The Office Manager should probably try to manage the coolie program. WER volunteered. The plant that was hanging around the office for a few days was BIM's. Computer Services: CAH spoke to someone from the MIT-Wellesley Exchange about getting access to the Wellesley computer from local phones. RDM is supposed to be looking into getting a real MIT extension on the Wellesley computer. For now, the best you can do is use the tie-lines. We will remind RDM. Should we do a cleanup of Student and delete users who were cut off? We will do a cleanup of segments from August 15, 1981. We will wait another week before deleting users. Should we let people use shift 1? Yes, but they should shy away from it. We currently have two virtually brand-new scratch tapes. Take this into account when getting new tapes for dumps. We have IPS Course catalogs. We should set up a meal-ticket arrangement for funding students taking these courses. Telecommunication Report: DCP adjusted the SpinWriter so that it wouldn't lose underscores so badly. We should call it in to get this problem fixed. JIS spoke to someone from MacGregor about getting a new dataset. The person indicated that MacGregor probably won't have trouble raising money for a new dataset if necessary. RLL has made an appointment to see the Student Center librarian about moving a terminal into a booth. WER has written a letter to Baker about what they will have to go through to get another dataset. Someone from telecommunications called to ask what features we wanted in the Next House dataset. Bill tried to answer her questions correctly. Senior House may be getting a Heath19, and is looking into cheap Vadics. McCormick house gov't is going to poll its terminal users to see if they really want the VT100. Nothing has been done about a SpinWriter noise-proof cover. CAH will begin looking into a graphics printer again. RLL still hasn't installed a 300/1200 switch on the other student center Vadic. The Series-1 is now operational, so the 370 can be used from VT100's and full-duplex Teleray1061's. Publications Report: 6.030 will not be using the Lisp Notes. 100 will be printed, for Alan's class and for ourselves. There will be a new policy statement that mentions cutoff dates. Runoff wallcharts are in a labeled folder now. Policy statements should include information about the different projects. JIS will try to write a program to fix the default projects of Student users. Annual-Report Report: There was a 4-5-hour Annual Report hacking session on Thursday, and will try to do this again this week, Thursday after dinner. Thanks to those who helped: barmar, c/, LRH, RK, and WMY. Barmar will try to organize a marathon stats-hacking session. R/O Report: The tour was a win. Thanks to everyone. Send Alan mail if you have ideas for how it should be improved. The EMS was cool; thanks to DCP for getting us in there. All the refreshments got eaten, of course. Joe Romm didn't write anything about the tour for the Tech, because he thought it wouldn't get the treatment by the editors that it deserved. R/O is over for us. Other: The 9700 is an amazing loss. Fonts have to be preselected and there is no graphics. We should not phrase our invitations to use Coop as if we are selling the service. Let the user know that they are paying the Center and that we are just easing the way. The HoToGAMIT defines "funny money" as computer time, so many students think that is what we deal in. In addition, they mention User Accounts before us in reference to getting accounts. People should take Licklider's 6.913 course on Public Policy Issues in Computing, so that it stays alive. Pm Weizenbaum is the new editor of the IPC Bulletin. She used to be the technical writer at CISL, and wrote the first part of New User's Guide. Elections: Membership for Lyman R. Hazelton. People should consider the fact that he is planning to get a PhD. in the future. Voted in. 11-0. He is an assiciate member. Jay nominated Tony DellaFera (ADF or Tony) for membership in the SIPB. Approved. We need three (3) new members of the Executive Committee. Eligibles include: BIM, DMK, DPC, JPT, RLL, WER, Alan, KYM, MG, and TZS. WMY described the balloting procedure, and stressed that they should be followed exactly. Winners are: Alan: 11, RLL: 8, WER: 7; Runner's up: BIM: 3, JPT: 2, KYM: 1, DPC: 1. Applications: The autoed applications are going to be processed at a later time, by individual members. RLL will total the amount now, though. Wilson, Sean - to allow him to use his already autoed money for typing freelance manuscripts for the Tech. Given. Rowe, Wendy - $80 for text-editing for 6.930 and 21.760. Given. Skrzypek, Joseph - $40 - to learn Multics editors and Lisp. To meeting because he is a student's husband. Given. *** Randomness Interrupt *** There is an Allan Cytryn Wechsler memorial napkin on the board in the hall. *** End Interrupt *** MIT Rocket Society - $50 for calculations in altitude and velocity simulations (continuing from last year), club mailing lists, and text-editing by-laws. Given for the simulations. Tsui, Mosum - $40 to finish resume's and cover letters. We looked in his dir, and he has alot of stuff. Given. Delin, Kevin - $50 to edit Burton House newsletter. Given $20 so he can get started, hopefully Burton will begin funding after that. Total appropriations: $5295 without Coop Autoed: Student: $4,630 370: $185 To Meeting: $480, EC: $0, all Student. Coop: $295 Other Other: c/ reminded everyone that personal storage space has been shuffled over the summer. We are going to try to straighten out the storage in the gray shelf. DCP was coordinating colors among the various multi-colored puzzles. There is a Missing Link (TM) in the office. It is J9's. J9 donated some silverware to SIPB-Com. They have "SIPB" engraved on the handles. KYM is taking a course in magnetic materials from an interesting professor. She repeated a story he told about an experiment that was causing trouble with Cambridge Power and Light. RLL visited the Tokomak lab (future SIPB Tokomak) today. Do we want to maintain a sick scanning electron microscope in Bldg.13? DCP saw a crossbow for sale cheap in Bldg.56. TZS came in during this. Coke-Com was run. Pay up. J9 and ACW had a party this weekend. 78 ravs were cooked and eaten. There was also weird music, provided by BSG. There was no Vogon poetry, though. This was not the end of the weirdness. On Friday night, several of us went to Deli-Haus. When we got out at around 2am, we found that RK's car had a dent and one less hubcap. Most of the dent was able to be pounded out, and he has replaced the hubcap. Anyone want to help barmar maintain TPSA, and eventually take it over? The meeting was adjourned at 22:39. Minutes taken and submitted by Barry Margolin.