Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 11 February 1980 In attendance: NML WMY HGA RDM WER BARMAR GMP CAH DCP BSG RLL, and KHS. Late were NAHA RMP DGH, and JSL. The minutes of the previous meeting were read and accepted as typed. NAHA RMP DGH JSL came in at this point. Treasurer's Report $3062.03 so far this month. Our spending rate is recovering. $20K was added to the Student project. The treasurer is writing a generalised accounting program based on Version III Coke-com. User Interrupts Fred Shecter wants $60 dollars above the auto limit to work on more humanities papers. The chairman made general comments about the amount of money that text processing people usually take as compared to the amount that other users take, because text processing is so expensive. Maybe we should raise the auto limit or something like that. Given. Roy Weinstein $200 for text editing for papaers for humanities coureses (21.391 and 21.738). Given. (Found out about us from Prof. Postlewait.) Henry G. Fiorentini $200 on CMS for helping him analyse questionnaire results. He has to use CMS because SPSS is only available on the 370. Given, even though he beats his girlfriend. Chuck Markham for SCEP (Student Committee on Educational Policy) wants to analyse course evaluations, was unsure of amount. CAH moved to give $100 to start them off. They should be given nbdd access because of the large ampount of data they will have to store. Given. There was an informal discussion of the possibility of a student video group analagous to the SIPB. Mr. Markham was worried about administrative fascist types taking over MIT video facilities. Chairman's Report The chairman presented himself to Jean Bonney who was civil. Ms. Bonney had heard rumors of SIPB dissatisfaction with the way the Center ran its IAP activities, and the matter will be discussed further. A Honeywell sales type, trying to sell a Multics to Case Western Reserve Uniersity, called and asked us to send him whatever we would give new users. We sent him a NUMS and a NETS. Office Report There is no more office manager. He has gone into his cocoon and emerged as a chairman. Naha nominated Penny Berman who was not present to object. Barry has been handling the job listing service. Somebody wantonly destroyed the office ESS, which was the chairman's property. Computer Services Multics now runs with 640K, and is really noticeably faster. A couple of days ago a new answering service was installed. Today for the first time the new amazing features were turned on. Now when you hang up on your process, it is detached, and when you try to log in again it offers you all kinds of wonderful options like reattaching the detached process. There is a help file called process_preservation.gi. (Anonymous ECS was fixed so that it kills the process immediately on hangup.) The NUMS need to reflect this change. Professor Postlewait told his 21.738 class that the SIPB offered text processing services. We got two applications from people in his class. The philosophical implications were discussed and it was decided that the general problem was not serious enough to merit instant action. Telecommunications The MacGregor terminal chairman came in and asked us what had really happened with their terminals. Of course we didn't know anything about it but it developed that perhaps the terminal had been vandalized. No one knew anything. Details will follow from Richard Soley, hopefully. CWH called in the East Campus terminal because he said that some pins on the print head were jammed, but the terminal was checked and seemed OK. RDM has been in touch with Ramtek, Tektonix, HP, Aydin, Chromatix, and others about graphics terminal demos. We should be receiving programmer's manuals from some of these people. RDM emphasized the importance of holding up our end of these demonstrations by providing communications equipment, demonstration areas, and storage space. The chairman found some old letters from 1974 when we first considered getting a graphics terminal. At that time the SCC was interested in kicking in $1750 for the project. Perhaps they would still be interested in helping out with this project. The chairman will draft a letter to the SCC to see what they think. J&J Associates seem to be offering a reasonable graphics terminal of unknown origin for about $3800. Naha has a chart which uses thumbtacks to record terminal status for broken terminals. Wechsler will fix up the terminal trouble report forms. Publications The NUMS need to be modified to reflect recent changes to Multics. Barry volunteered to coordinate the effort. The blue cards are slowly getting delivered. The SIPB's new HoToGAMIT blurb is available to be commented on. There was hardly any drop poster report. The possibility for an LSC slide was discussed. HGA expressed interest in organizing this. Other 6-030 seem to be losing badly in an administrative way. They had a post-office quota overflow, and millions of psychotic students do not know their passwords or do not know what a password is. Recently they changed the password of everybody who did not change their own. Whether they changed their own is not determined. Applications Mathew Stern for Burton House wants $70 on CMS to catalog the Burton House library. Deferred until they can come to a meeting. David L. Andre for Zeta Psi to do bookkeeping for the fraternity. He claims to need shift 1 access ("$10 a day?"). He seems to have done the development on his Student account. Deferred with many interesting questions, until he can come to a meeting. Moses Minta needs an undetermined amount of money on top of the $120 he has had already, to polish up his knowledge of FORTRAN. Deferred. WARNING to Steven Knox, for doing 6.030 on his student account. The 6.030 people had screwed him with access and he felt he was justified in using Student in these dire straits. He was told this was questionable reasoning. Francisco Rodriguez-Vera was given $100 on CMS by EC vote. David C. Plummer wants $40 to write up Strobe Lab reports. Known loser. Given. Barry Margolin wants $75 for learning Lisp, PL/1, and text editing for 21.728. Given. $1585 autoed. Other other \ | Lost in transition. (AI crashed.) Meeting Adjourned / Minutes taken by ACW. An attempt at cleanliness and submitted by Richard Mark Soley.