Minutes of the SIPB meeting of Monday, the Sixteenth of February, 1981. ***** The meeting was called to order at 19:39, by William M. York. Present were R. Mabbit, D. Kushner, B. Margolin, C. Hornig, J. Pattin, J. S. Love, S. LeBlanc, M. Nahabedian, J. Mosley, D. Plummer, A. Weschler, B. Margulies, W. York, L. Gooch (user) and M. Freedman (user). Late were D.Christman, R.Kovalcik, and J.Schiller. ***** The minutes of the previous meeting were found on MC and read. The minutes were accepted as corrected. ***** USER INTERRUPT: Mark Freedman Mark talked to Roger Roach. They don't want another RDMS example project, so it is us or nothing. Application is now for $280 to finish database by the end of the term. Barry moved to give. What did Roger say? That this project was not in an area where he wanted examples. Motion passes. ***** USER INTERRUPT: Laura Gooch $120 to meeting by JSL. Several large humanities papers and a UROP report. She has had $80 so far. Spencer says that the only reason for "to meeting" was the auto limit. Steve moves to give, David (CP) seconds, motion passes. ***** Treasurers Report: Richard: $5428.88 month to date. 1/3 is disk charges. Most spending is on Student, Student2 has spent very little. It has 90 users registered, Student has 872. Two weeks ago Carl Hoffman did some investigating of spending patterns, but nothing new has happened. Spencer claims that many mailboxes are filled with old cleanup messages. Mailbox compaction? Benson says that unaccept messages is more important. Charlie: The Post Office can't be very important because it is nbdd. Bill: it is only $900 for the fiscal year. Steve: does anyone know that we are running low? The Center knows, but Provost Lowe was not been told in the letter. Charlie & Bill: we are spending money because we have many users, not because of some specific issue that we could nibble on. Should we continue to fund these big application? Yes, thats what we are here for, and we do not want to turn off the spigot yet. Bill: should we tell Wes about our projected shortfall? Benson: no, that might force Wes to take early, official notice and turn us off. ***** Chairman's report: Benson: a letter was sent to the Provost's office, we hope to talk to him presently. Bill: Where are the budget statistics? Charlie: in the annual report. General: grump. Bill: report to CCE on our budget is almost complete, and will be submitted. Barry: why was the name of the CCE funny in Tech Talk? Nothing significant. General: The chairman is a member of the CCE _e_x _o_f_f_i_c_i_o. ***** Office Report: Allan: we have a user list alphabetized by userid and last name. There are far more students (Students?) than anyone else. Allan went on about all the wierd names. Davidoff is followed by Davidon. Steve's first name is Catherine. How strange. Jay wants the enormous pile of NCAR listings to evaporate. Charlie is not sure he has another place for them. There is an Ann Arbor here. ***** Computer Services: David claims that the daily plot job is erroneous. Charlie and Bill will look in to it. Richard: take paper to Student Center La120!! Some discussion followed. NCAR is mostly done, the programs are very slow. The fortran conversion was the hard part. ***** Telecommunications: Ann Arbor Info: (1) No service contracts are available now. (2) Factory service (5 day turnaround) <= $270 for repair of whole thing. If you send in parts the prices get lower. Compare service contract of VT100 at $17/month. Warranty is 90 days, but can be extended to one year. Delivery is four to six weeks. Quantity discount would afford us an extra to use for board swapping. Where is Wendy? Interviewing IBM in Tuscon. Spinwriter: Benson wants to spend $110 for diablo style spinwriter firmware that has a graphics mode. Discussion ensued about the need for it, and what we would do with it. The secretary was talking, and could not keep up with all the details. Motion was seconded. Motion passes. Phone upgrading: Allan got a somewhat spurious listing of the phones of classes K and worse. R. Kovalcik came in at this point, and J. Schiller was found here at the same time. Charlie: move to upgrade the 113A datasets in the Student Center with 212A's. Ron: what else are the Vadices (3451) for? Charlie: people are afraid that 3451's will walk away. But no one worries about telco modems. Also, renting is better for our budget. Jeff: telco will charge us for disappearing 212's, and the replacement for a 212 may be as much as $1000. Richard: we are waiting for some bolting of things to happen. Bill: if all this bolting happened, would you still want the motion? Charlie: it hasn't happened. Bill: if they were put in this week? Charlie, we want to use capital equipment for other things. Phil: can they be in the cabinet? (no!) David (Kushner): when we bought Vadices, did we think about this? Bill: bought for terminal concentrator, and not in use for that yet. David Kushner: can we secure them, is that acceptable? Charlie, will it be done? Richard: someone should bring the vadic in from home. Ron: it would be a bad move to buy things because we need them, and then hide them in a closet for fear of theft. Benson: they are already bought, so the argument about capital is a bit specious. Charlie: how much is a voice jack for data? Richard: same as a phone line ($6/month). We have no budget for the 212's, which are expensive. Allan: ammend to read that we put the Vadics in the Student Center instead of 212's. (Unfriendly) Ammendment was called to a vote. Ammendment passes. Charlie: we ask for removal instantly, to get the jack, don't we? Else the phone company will steal the Vadic. General confusion at this point. Seems we will do it somehow. In any case, the motion was called to a vote and passed. SMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKESMOK ESMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKESMO KESMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKESM OKESMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKES MOKESMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKE SMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKESMOK ESMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKEFILLDSMOKESMO Motion to limit discussion on recommendations of SmokeFilledRoomII Meeting to 20 minutes. Amended to 5 minutes. Seconded and Passes. Move to accept recommendations by Allan. Seconded. Recommendations were unfurled. Dorms to get: all but Random, Baker, and Bexley. Frats: CP, DTD, ET, Fenway, Fiji, PBT, PKS, Student House, WILG/ADP, ZBT. Additionally, give a 113 dataset to NRSA. Further: Office Teleray moves to Student Center. Richard: put switches on Telerays to allow half duplex operation with 370. Salient Differences: Decwriter leaves Student Center, Random loses terminal, WILG/ADP gets one. Five Minutes Ends. Should we continue talking? Discussion Ensued. Motion to accept recommendation comes to vote. It passes. The gag held. Someone should go to Lab Supplies to buy LA120 ribbons. Noone knows how save the treasurer. But the treasurer told us how. But the list of account numbers is still not in the req. book. David (CP): we need a treasurer presumptive to be trained. Bill: everyone should be able to hack requisitions. Discussions of how to train a treasurer, or make everyone learn how. Buy terminals? SmokeFilledRoomII considered buying a pair of Ambassadors. Do the keyboards lose? Jeff finds that they decay. Two key rollover is a problem. All the problems in the Treasurer's summary are real. Everyone is unwilling to buy a terminal without a service contract. Straw poll reveals disinterest in Ambassadors at this point. Benson: move to buy two vt100's with advanced video. Richard: we haven't quite the bucks. Seconded. Where to put it? Put a terminal in McCormick, and the LA36 elsewhere. Amend to one terminal. Barry: we can put a terminal in dispatch, maybe. Jeff: we want them to buy them. Ron: many things are in the air. Why not wait? Benson: don't wait, we can unorder it, if nothing happens in a month we will need some terminal. Richard: it will arrive immediately. Question is called. Motion Passes. We should decide where to put this terminal next week. ***** Publications: Various things going to and from Beane's. ***** IAP: Barry: There was a post mortem meeting with Jean Bonney and User Accounts to figure out what happened over IAP, and what could be improved. Mostly we had trouble getting started. Primarily, Barry failed to do some registration before vacation. We had too much paperwork. Various problems were described. How to handle the non-MIT types? They are all on same project. We should still get a credit for non-MIT people. How to do the funding? We gave all the funding this year. In past, we gave $10/student. IPS wants to charge, to give economic disincentive to oversubscription. They have too many people registering. People were turned away by people who will sign up for anything free. This will be settled later. Allan: we should take complete control of the courses, have the teachers deal with us. Bill: we take the flying fecal material if something goes wrong ... Richard: this would be a big thing. Would we be able to hack it? Benson: should we be involved with losing 370 courses? Spencer: no. Bill: we won't, anyway, except for funding. Barry: do we even pay? Bill: we pay if we decide to pay. But we won't administer the 370. Jay: we can't decide this without further discussion with upstairs. Charlie: talk about this in October. Phil: how many IBM users were APL? We don't know. ***** Other: Elections next week. Runoff for exec-com member at large. Telenet document. We will get one, since one disappeared. Steve: a user asked to be turned off after having finished his 35 page paper in $35 with emacs. He had been allocated $100. Penny: Please mail envelopes with lisp notes. Don't leave them to ripen. Steve: people aren't doing things that are on the board. Shouldn't people who put them up should just do it themselves? Bill: Yea, yea. Same old problem. Sign up for office hours. ***** Applications: WARNING Lebanese and Coon, Coon is printing letters for Lebanese students. Circumstances were explained. See the applications for details. These people will be talked to. Jeff: we now know what the Lebanese students want to do, and it is individualized letters to individual members. We can't afford this. We should not give. David (Plummer): if we ask them to not do individual mailings, they probably won't. Charlie: move to reject the application. Jeff: Ibrahim knows he was trying to pull a fast one. Motion passes. Richard: should we continue to have BYTE? Noone much seems to want to. Motion to get more BYTE. No more BYTE. Benson: The archive of minutes on MC:SIPB has been archived on Multics, and can be gc'd. David (Plummer): we should still keep recent minutes on MC for ITS people. Naha: fluf about Computerworld. Allan: We got Clark Baker his contest prize. It is in the cash box (Steve's Ice Cream certificates) to be given to him when he shows. ***** WARNING FORMS: (Houghton, NSBE (National Society of Black Engineers)) Original Application: NSBE: computer network between chapters at MIT and Cornell. Losage: NSBE revealed password to world for their network. Suggested use of ARPAnet to other universities. Charlie: Saturday night, saw that weird things for NSBE were being printed by Houghton.Student. David Plummer: One of them (Houghton?) came in to use terminal, and he was given a hard time. He claimed not to know. Said he was going to go talk to supervisor. Said he would come to meeting. (The person was actually JWMiller) Charlie: In the Student bin I found the same thing that was aborted Saturday, printed on Sunday, after they were talked to. Since hint had not been taken, warning forms were issued. (note, it had been requested before they were tslked to, but this was not realized.) Jay: Houghton called office this afternoon. He has no connection with NSBE, but he is lab partner of JWMiller. His account was used for both of their lab reports. JWMiller was using Houghton's account again just now. Benson: ARPA is not our problem. Disemminating passwords is not necesarily wrong. We are not the FBI. What they are doing is what they asked to do. Jeff: if an ARPA violation like this caused shit, some of it would land on us. Charlie: We have to stomp on the account sharing, and warn them about the ARPAnet. Publicizing passwords is okay. Richard: Wes's opinion of us will slip. Steve: We supplied the money for the letter that said "Use ARPA." Bill: JWMiller needs a warning form. Also come_to_office. Houghton should be turned off entirely, maybe? No, leave come_to_office for now. Untranscribable General Randomness Nothing should be done till JWMiller appears at a meeting. ORDINARY APPLICATIONS ESP $200 for spring courses by Jeanine. Various courses. Steve: Move to give. Seconded. Passes. Bill Chambers, $75 to meeting. Nearly finished $40/$50. Purely an auto issue. Given. Mark E. Dodson. ~$40 to meeting by JSL. Had $160. Spencer: needs $5 to finish the paper in the original application. Wants the rest for resumes. Benson: move to give $40. Seconded, and Given. Charles Garrett. $50 to meeting by WMY. Has $140. More papers etc. Move to give. Seconded, and Given. Randy Haskins. $50 to meeting by WMY. Motion to give. Passes. Peter W. Mui. $50 to meeting. papers for course, and quota. Motion to reject. Does he have an ARCS account? Seconded. Fails. Motion to give. Second. Passes. Michael A Stoodt. $60 for 4.60, 6.035 text editing. Has $75. Move to give. Passes. Technique, one last $25 to finish volume. Last deadline passed. Was autoed in great hurry. Motion to give passes. SUMMARY $280 to meeting to MKFreedman. $ 75 to meeting to Bill Chambers. $ 40 to meeting to Mark E. Dodson. $ 50 to meeting to Charles Garrett. $ 50 to meeting to Randy Haskins. $ 50 to meeting to Peter W. Mui $ 60 to meeting to Michael A. Stoodt. $ 25 to meeting to Technique. ------------------------------------- $630 TOTAL to meeting. AUTO TOTAL $1880., $300 Coop (370) MOTION (sickness) Bill: Should we raise the auto limit. Benson: we have a lot to meeting because of old users who had $75, or $100 before we lowered the limit. Barry: we can say that no initial application can be over $100. David (Plummer): the limit does not change spending. Bill: spending limits should happen by members not just saying "oh, you can have up to ..." General Discussion. Motion to raise auto limit to $200. Seconded. Passes, narrowly. Members should try to instill parsimony. A general discussion of what happens if we run out of money ensued. JWMiller Interrupt: He called, was explained to, and was turned back on. He explained that his real problem was lack of quota, which will be fixed. ***** Other Other: We have a weird sign. Bill will bring in modem. Scientific American had cubes on the cover. Various discussion of movies and records. Meeting Length: Bill should possibly tell people that they have repeated something someone else had said, or talked aside from the point. Various discussion designed to prolong the meeting to midnight, which was approaching, ensued. ***** The Meeting was adjourned at 0000. Minutes taken and submitted by Benson I. Margulies, secretary.