Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 1 March 1982 The meeting was called to order at 19:36 by William M. York. In attendance were barmar, GMP, WER, JR, HGA, DMK, HDT, Ramin Zabih, BCN, WMY, c/, CAH, Naha, DCP, Charlie Marker, Lai, J9, and a user Late were: LRH, ZRM, TZS, RDM, CBF, PLJ The minutes of the meeting of 22 February 1982 were read and accepted as corrected. LRH and ZRM came in during this. *** User Interrupt *** Dunmire, Cristopher - $50 - To do about 40 pages of text editing. Has had $100 so far. Given. Hall, Elizabeth - $100 - to have text editing funds available for the end-of-term crunch. Has spent $80 of her $100 allocated so far on several lab reports and expository writing. Given. *** End User Interrupt *** Treasurer's Report: February Spending: Multics: $7790.04 of which $2091.28 was SIPB/SIPBADMIN (27%) 370: $270.20 Total: $8060.24 w/o JCF. Last year $11,697.17 Coop: $745.03 Year through end of February: $57,909.33; last year $80,544.04; (This does not include the $4,410 for IPS courses that we still haven't been charged for.) With IPS course charge, spending would be $62,319.33 (18K less than last year!). It seems as if the cutoff that we enforced is the reason for this underspending. We may have to have another publicity campaign like two years ago; ZRM suggests that it stress other computer uses besides text editing. We need to spend about $16,000/month to use our budget up. Motion to raise the auto limit to $200. Passed. MTD Multics: $1418.21 (372.15 DISK) YTD except March 370 and February & March JCF: $59,327.54 Multics allocated & not spent $21,000 IAP course checks will be deposited sometime this week. We will be getting ~$1300 from Finboard to cover fiscal '82 publications as soon as Jay xeroxes all the receipts for them. This means we have over $2000 in the checking account to buy something with. Two of the Telerays were paid for today. We are in the process of negotiating the transfer of funds from ESP's part of 10782 to ours. WMY will get in touch with the last customer. TZS came in during this. Money should be put in Coop. Chairman's Report: Elections: Gill Pratt and Ramin Zabih were nominated last week for membership in the Board (although Gill is not here yet). Thirteen of the nineteen active full members are present, so the magic number is nine. Gill is here now. Responses to "The Question": [RK called from Fornicalia at this point.] Ramin: wants to learn about computers and be able to help others learn; Gill: wants to increase the availability of computers to MIT students, and likes helping people. Gill: 10-1-2 RDZ: 12-0-1 Both Gill and RDZ were elected to membership. RDM came in during this. Office Report: There is another keyboard on the office TV. It is very dirty, but it works. Sign up for office hours OR ELSE. Barmar explained the cutoff labels that were put on applications. The first number is the amount the user had spent up until the date the label was affixed (currently 1/1/82). The second number is his absolute cutoff amount on that date. This is followed by the user's cutoff date. If the second number is higher than the first, you should go to the bills in the orange binder to find out the user's actual spending up till this date. The weird action of the keysets on the office phones was demonstrated. Bob Payson will give Lai the key to the storage room tomorrow. Where is the office soldering iron? The office also needs oil for the chairs. Someone had better take the chart recorder, or it will be removed forcibly. People seem to be looking in the coolie box, so people should put notes in the coolie box. A Spinwriter cover can be purchased for between $350 and $400 dollars. WER doesn't have time to build one, and isn't sure that one could easily be built. Naha called two companies today: one of them has a $320 cover, but expects the printer to be on a table; the other costs $395 including a $20 option for a mount to be used with a stand. They both have guarantees. J9 is willing to build one, if someone will design it. Motion to appropriate $500 for the purchase of a cover. Passed. CBF came in during this. The special SpinWriter ribbon order came in just in time. We got forty-eight of them, and we are expecting a gross to come in soon. We got the ribbons 26 hours after we ordered them! Computer Services: The people from Mt. Allison (see last week's minutes) were referred to Wes Burner. CAH proposed that we put the names of our users in the Multics Inquire database. We will put up a login message that will announce this and then do it if few people object. Coop policy statements are under the regular policy statements (there is a piece of cardboard separating them). RK has been hired by CISL and has sent in his resignation to Wang. He will be starting at the end of March. The new "repeat" command is incompatible in several ways with the old one. Someone should fix it. CAH has a finger and whois program. Chris Stacy tried to make use of a system bug to get super access on Multics. Luckily, the bug had been fixed already. Telecommunications Report: LRH will make an appointment with Wes Burner to talk about the static mux. We should lower ZBT's liability for their coupler to $50, as they have our old crufty Novation. The fourth Student Center Z19 line still isn't working. Bob Davine came in and told us that the No.6 Club terminal has been on our service contract since Jay put it on contract last time. All the frats have been contacted, and there still is no sign of the missing coupler. RLL will check the EECS machine room, as that is the last place he remembers it being used. Several frats picked up their Z19's. There is now an LA36 and two TTY43's in the office. We are still waiting on modems; there was a delay in purchasing. Eastgate is unsure about whether they are willing to put up the $1000 liability for the terminal. There is also a problem with getting the phone lines in there. It looks like they will not be getting it this year. Publications Report: Manual racks came in, so manuals will have to be collated, racked, and distributed to the dorms. WER will try to arrange a day. PLJ came in during this. Now that there is Emacs documentation in the NETS, what should we do about the Emacs handout. WMY suggests that we excerpt the Emacs chapter from the NETS and make it a separate handout for people who are not text editing. Other: We got a purchase order from the DuQuesne University library requesting Lisp Notes. We will send the Notes and bill them. Where is the other office stapler (the gray one)? Applications: Glass, Brian J. - $40 - continue text editing and calculations for several classes. Given. Horton, Jerry - $25 - text editing a graduate thesis proposal. Rejected, as we do not fund thesis proposals. Hu, Wei-Ming - $100 - text editing for several courses. Has had $80 so far. Given. Akido, Mikado - $100 - text editing for several classes and job applications. Has had $140 so far. Given. MIT Canadian Club - $75 - maintaining a membership list and list of activities. Deferred until they come to a meeting. Tou, Ivan - $50 - text editing for several classes. Had $96 so far. Given. Arminio, Joseph - $50 by EC - editing a 140-page paper that he typed in elsewhere. Colon, Melvyn - WARNING - was printing out letters to foreign dignitaries, which was not on his application. Hoekstra, Michael - $50 by EC - college transfer applications that had to be postmarked that day. Total appropriations: $2960 without Coop Autoed: Student: $2370 370: $50 To Meeting: $440, EC: $100, all Student. Coop: $120 Other Other: Does anyone have C__o_u_r_t_s _o_f C__h_a_o_s? DMK wants to read it. WMY pulled the whassay program hack, which pretends that you get random messages from other users, on Marshall Presser, a co-worker of his. He fell for it hook, line, and dynamic linker. He called RAR and asked him if there was a problem with the system that was causing him to get other people's output. J9 went to an auction and met Claude (information theory) Shannon's wife. She also got lots of random stuff and fifteen lbs. of mohair. It's snowing. The new Medical Building has an inside balcony, so you can jump off in the warmth. WER will be playing at the Mezz Coffeehouse on Saturday night. She is the only performer scheduled, so she wants help. See J9 about being in a local science-fiction movie. ED's van was stolen yesterday night. WMY and SEL have put down an order on a new car, a 1982 Mustang. It sounds impressive. WMY plans to go to the World's Fair in Knoxville, Tenn. this summer. JSL took a flying lesson from LRH this weekend. He didn't take to the maneuvers LRH pulled very well. Barmar is planning to go to Florida for the next shuttle launch later this month. The meeting was adjourned at 21:55. Minutes taken and submitted by Barry Margolin.