Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 10/14/96 The meeting was called to order at 19:31 by yonah. In attendance were Voting members: rjbarbal, foley, sorokin, aurora, emhavens, cat, sit, fastcart, danw, bert, fubob, yonah, hartmans, kretch, katyking, nygren, nathanw, elliot, amu Associate members: ghudson, jtkohl, warlord, jemorris, eichin, jweiss, abbe, xiphmont, mcmullan, len18, marc, mhpower Non-voting members: Prospectives: gutnik, daveg, annmarie, jmorzins, tlai, jjnichol, ianand, mcinery, jefreypu, sgens Guests: Treasurer's Report: kretch: When you buy things, get the tax exempt number Chairman's Report: ghudson: Let's do the rest of the meeting first. [agreed] [election mode on for gutnik, daveg, annmarie] aurora: A user comes in unable to us inc; over quota; what do you do? gutnik: suggest /var/tmp, bitbucket daveg: check diskspace usage annmarie: netscape cache, disk usage ghudson: stock answer on how to incorporate into a temporary directory; it's non-trivial. yonah: stock answer on getting below quota. abbe: How did you FTGOS? annmarie: I'm a webmaster. I've answered a lot of the questions that come to webmaster. I've answered questions in the office. I also teach Athena mini-courses. I often direct people to SIPB and tell them that SIPB exists; many people don't realize they can come in and ask questions. gutnik: I helped with tours. I have recently become a webmaster; still acquiring clue. I've answered user questions, helped proof random documents. daveg: I have answered user questions from the hot seats a lot. Mostly finished iDotfiles. Tend to be more in the interfacing with users side. nygren: Describe what a webmaster does? [to annmarie] annmarie: People send mail to webmaster either asking to be linked in or asking to use to use gateways, or asking random questions. Can you help me find random people, this URL doesn't work etc. I try to help people because I've been on the other end of those questions. Even though it can be annoying to the webmaster, I try to help. [gave examples] hartmans: What do you plan on doing in the future that you aren't doing now? gutnik: I'm acquiring clue on being a webmaster; I can answer simple questions. Trying to understand how scripts break. There was talk of me writing iMathematica; if interest or licences happen, I might write that. daveg: Interest in continuing to work on documentation. Any projects that happen to come up, especially in the area of coding. I'm not into much of the service maintinance. annmarie: I'm interested in working on docs, working on backups, but mostly learning and getting clue. danw: Yonah gets hit by a metier. You are elected grand dictator for life; how would you change SIPB? daveg: I'm interested in continuing the floppy hat movement. There are some changes that are positive in that area; interested in continuing. gutnik: I'd punt OSes that people haven't heard of in 10 years. I think I'd try to publicize some of the SIPB services more. Possibly documenting this. annmarie: I would publicize the existance and purpose of SIPB a lot more. Half the people I teach have no idea that SIPB exists. kretch: A user comes in and says that they have a Sparc Ultra they want to turn into an AFS client. What do you do. daveg: The Ultras are not support AFAIK. Point at mwhitson, jweiss, who would have an official answer. gutnik: Points out he's running it on his Ultra. jweiss: You don't ask me for the binaries; you ask ghudson. Point them at the afs-contacts lists. While things like Ultras are not supported as Athena clients, site contacts will try to download transarc binaries when available. aurora: Someone comes into the office and wants to be a prospective; what do you do? gutnik: Add them to members_and_prospectives, show them around, talk to them, ask them to come to meetings. daveg: Points out sheets a about being a prospective annmarie: Ask them what they like to do, invite them to be generally helpful, point them at people who do similar things. foley: Generalized double space question. gutnik: Frame: paragraph designer and select double space. [Audience points out you can just hit the double space button.] daveg: LaTeX : doublespace in document options line. annmarie: You don't do it in html. [Not even Netscape?] cat: What does SIPB do? annmarie: SIPB maintains a lot of services and provides user support. Not only does it maintain various services, it helps users dealing with Athena and computers. daveg: SIPB is a group of people interested in computers and are willing to help people use computers. gutnik: Support services, help users, write docs and software nathanw: How often does your caffene consumption approach LD50? [LD50 is the lethal dosage for 50% of animals in an experiment] annmarie: every day! bert: You get struck by lightning; how do you want to change elections? daveg: I don't think there is anything wrong with the way elections are done as long as prospectives are made aware of how they work. [sorokin asks daveg to clarify] As an organization we are free to decide what we want in terms of the requirements of the member. I don't think that making a hole bunch of constitutional changes is really needed. As you go through a new set of members, the characteristics of SIPB change. As long as SIPB has an idea of what it thinks it is, and what it thinks it wants its members to be, and can elaborate that, it is fair. annmarie: I like the kinder gentler membership suggestion. mhpower: Most common email dropped on the floor? gutnik: Ranom cruft that goes to rtfm? mhpower: There is a bug in NCSA Mosaic... danw: Name a locker that is provided mostly for software but is not officially supported by either IS or SIPB gutnik: potluck annmarie: outland daveg: pclu? kretch: danw's evil twin steals all machines. What differences would users notice? daveg: webster would get 2/3 screwed gutnik: news.answers would get really quiet, web server, SIPB software [someone]: I move that mhpower ask the question. gutnik: [to mhpower before he can ask] I'm not going to marry you. mhpower: So, why would the three of you like to be members of the SIPB? annmarie: I'm a grad student in course 7. I'm not going to be getting a degree in course six any time soon. This is sort of my statement to the world that we [course 7 majors] can do more than just play on a Mac, throw in data, and have the Mac spew out a random answer. I can do more than play with genes and proteins; I can deal with computers as more than just tools. That's what SIPB means to me. gutnik: Because my life is empty and I need SIPB to fill it. Seriously, because several people think I am a SIPB member. It would give me more incentive to learn about some of the SIPB services that I have had little conatact with. daveg: It is a goal I set for myself as a freshman. By becoming a member, I will become more involved. annmarie: 20-0-2 [passes] daveg: 22-0-0 [passes] gutnik: 14-4-4 [passes] [ammendments mode] rjbarbal: I tried to make it really simple and strip out the bylaws ammendments that were major. I'm proposing ammendments to correct spelling, grammar, a few organizational things, making the bylaws gender neutral, etc. bert: Unless I'm confused, what you said is factually incorrect. There are some changes that are significant substantive changes. marc: Move to limit discussion to 45 minutes. [second, white ballot] rjbarbal: The first ammenment fixes the spelling of the title. The second amendment is a preamble. Also discusses membership and meetings. rjbarbal: Change: in order to be nominated, a prospective has to accept the nomination. If the chair gets the data out late, then he can get written permission from all full active members and still hold the election. rjbarbal: There is a new section on special meetings. EC meetings must have at least five people including one officer. [Discussion about a provision that would establish quorum at general meetings] ghudson: I strongly suggest we don't try to solve the quorum tonight; we don't have the data, terms or a consensus. rjbarbal: I will strike that. [quorum] sit: Why are meetings of the EC only open to the MIT community instead of to the public? hartmans: Stolen from the old bylaws? nygren: I haven't finished diff'ing, but it says that it has to be unanimous to close the meeting. ghudson: This is the way it was before. hartmans: [stuff about how one person can disclose the stuff anyway, if you can't trust EC members to agree to a closed meeting, can you trust them to not disclose stuff?] bert: First, in the amended body, there is no mention of us being a standing board of the UA? Is keeping that in the title enough? Also, why change from bylaws to constitution? rjbarbal: There is mention of being a standing board, it's just not in any part that's being changed. It's not bylaws, it's a constitution, bylaws is misspelled, and the file is constitution.tex nygren: Special meetings don't require business be approved by the EC. rjbarbal: That's the point of a special meeting--to allow business to be conducted without EC approval. bert: Under the new bylaws, you can only suspend someone's membership once per EC election cycle. [people agree] rjbarbal: The EC has to announce the change in general meeting time at least seven days in advance under the new ammendments. ghudson: [reading amendments] All business conducted at the EC meeting must be conducted by unanimous concent. rjbarbal: Strike decision about unanimous concent for EC meetings. jweiss: We are reorganizing the section on regular meetings. There is no provision for closing meetings--even at prospective elections. rjbarbal: All meetings have to be open as well under the current constitution. jweiss: I will vote no in the straw pole without fixing that. rjbarbal: I will give you some wording. I would like a straw pole on the closed meeting issue. [mumble grumble] ghudson: All general meetings of the board shall be open to the public unless the meeting is voted closed by a majority of full active members present. [accepted] kretch: Is the one shot at dismemberment thing new? rjbarbal: It's only one shot for suspension while you are being revoked, but you can move to revoke more than once. kretch: Why do you invalidate a ballot if one entry is bogus? rjbarbal: We have had problems with illegible ballots, and we want to let people know that they need explicit ballots. yonah: You don't want to ahve different numbers of votes for the same election. eichin: four minute warning on time nygren: Rather than striking unanimous concent, why don't we change that to 2/3? [yonah objects; ghudson objects] Also, in the section on general meetings, business is subject to EC approval. yonah: It means the EC can overide the membership. rjbarbal: straw poll 22-0-4 Office Report: jtkohl: The placement of laptop docs has gotten substantially less optimal since last week. Move to swap pickled and cutter-john. ghudson: I was planning to swap back. warlord: svalente felt having two useful machines next to each other (cj and zorp) would be bad ghudson: True, but objections were not addressed. jweisss: offline? [goes offline] warlord: Someone from OSF will come by and upgrade gene-simmons. MIT Computing Report: () Computer Services: ghudson: I would like to remind anxiety-maintainers that they need to get a projection on equipment needs. ghudson: There is a plan to upgrade ra to a new ASO configuration fileserver. I would like to target for IAP. SIPB Backup Report: hartmans: AFS is happening. foley: We have two exabyte cleaning tapes. However, two tapes disappeared; someone signed for them. I'm trying to get a copy of the signature. Publications Report: katyking: We're out of something. kretch: We are low on iAthena, iAFS, and out of iMatlab. sorokin: I move that we get some. yonah: We do have iAthena. abbe: 25 copies of iAFS, 100 of iMatlab. [second, white ballot] R/O Report: () IAP Report: kretch: The form this year is different. You should be planning and writing blurbs, but don't send things in until I get the form. The deadline is the 25th. eichin: I got good response for my Ada class. sit: mkgray and I were thinking about teaching Perl CokeComm Report: [the office]: We're out. Other: abbe: I bought a computer; this is the first non-PC JR I've owned. ghudson: I'm setting up Gnat, so if you want to use Ada it should happen soon Other Other: gutnik: Frisbee should start happening soon nygren: katyking and I met warlord at [missed location] and they had a hot tub for $2k. We decided this would be a bad use of SIPB funds. elliot: There will be a talk by Diffie in 34-101 Thursday at 1600 on cryptology, technology and politics. danw: Embeded SQL sucks so much it must be an alien conspiracy The meeting was adjourned at 21:41. Minutes taken and submitted by hartmans.