Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 11/24/97 The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by kretch. In attendance were Voting members: fubob kretch harrisj svalente jfmurphy jewell amu nygren tlyu katyking | nathanw Associate members: marc kcr jweiss mhpower yandros srz danw rjbarbal mwhitson | jhawk Non-voting members: Prospectives: xela yak aellwood sjens jefreypu sepherke Guests: "Martyn Peck" Treasurer's Report: '() Chairman's Report: '() Office Report: jhawk: I lost a book, "Catcher in the Rye". If you find it, let me know. kretch: snork arrived jhawk: How is the carpet replacement situation? kiev: Any chance of getting an anti-static carpet? nathanw: The bookshelf laptop port needs a chair. srz: Should this power strip be hanging [pointing to center table]? kretch: I will deal. Office Cleaning Report: kretch: People aren't always taking the initiative. If you are here Friday at office cleaning hour (Friday at 4PM), Get up, pitch in, and don't be lame. MIT Computing Report: jhawk: NW12 router lost it Friday. It appeared to have run out of memory Computer Services: mwhitson: SquidCache! How does SIPB feel about running a SquidCache on one of SIPB's servers? mhpower, would you elaborate on your legal concerns? mhpower: I went to a meeting with lawyers [webmasters' guild] about electronic copyright. A web cache could be considered an infringement on copyright. jhawk: But a SquidCache would be useful. It seems unlikely that we would be sued. Running caches is popular. But we do need to be careful. We should talk to the MIT legal department. mwhitson: Note that the existing SquidCache on my machine gets more use from outside squid cache servers. marc: We should do this before Clinton signs the NET act. (regarding criminal violations for electronic copyright.) nygren: What privacy issues are involved? jhawk: It would be a poor idea to collect statistics on things we shouldn't collect. We should avoid profiling the "typical" usage. yandros: News in particular has that problem. mhpower: This is a new service that ... ? [too soft to hear] mwhitson: I am willing to continue maintenance, although I'd like the service taken off of my personal machine. jhawk: Current versions of browsers deal reasonably-well in the absence of a proxy. yandros: As for technical issues, most modern browsers can be made to do the right thing. mwhitson: Let's go ahead on the condition that someone speaks to the legal department, gets the "go ahead" from legal, and legal will defend SIPB and any members involved. srz: Someone who has never used SquidCache may uncover new problems. Let's have more testing first. nathanw: I'd really hate to not run a service because of some non-technical ambiguities. mwhitson: I called for testers a while ago. The call is still open. I'll table this for a week for discussion. yandros: Isn't there a new charon? jhawk: The new charon arrived. jweiss: If there are large number of cardboard boxes in the machine room, please get rid of them. The machine room is *not* a closet. SIPB Backup Report: jhawk: Backup procedures could be more automated. A prospective could create some kind of interface to do this (for tape shuffling, etc). kretch: I'll do AFS tomorrow. Publications Report: katyking: There's only one iLatex left. But there's some in the back. Nevermind. R/O Report: '() IAP Report: kretch: The guide should be out soon. CokeComm Report: mwhitson: We have lots of coke. Other: rjbarbal: Don't overstock the fridge. Half the fridge contents fell out when I opened the door. marc: I'm no longer a regular employee at Cygnus. jhawk: There was a potentially serious TCP error, exploited by a program called land.c. Other Other: harrisj: Webmaster received a question whether we work for area 51 or the pentagon. someone: No, we work for area 52. mwhitson: Having your phone lines high-jacked is bad, especially when the hijacker calls lots of phonesex 900 numbers. kcr: Driving people to the hospital is not the worst thing. katyking: My parents are here. The meeting was adjourned at 19:50. Minutes taken and submitted by fubob.