Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 11/21/2005 The meeting was called to order at 7:30 PM by jbarnold. In attendance were Voting members: jbarnold tabbott jhawk kchen yoz golem | arolfe Associate members: aerynne srz jtu hartmans asedeno jweiss xela Prospectives: tilia mshaw rram axiak aseering nelhage cporter austein glopez ahslocum jwalden presbrey Guests: Treasurer's Report: '() Chairman's Report: jbarnold: Next week we have elections for mshaw and aseering. You should come to these elections, even though it is near the end of term. jbarnold: We seem to have lost the whiteboard inside the front of the office, next to zsr. I don't know what happened to it. I don't know whether a user stealthily stapled two things and ran with it, or what. If you have any clues, let me know. tabbott: people who arrive late at meetings should talk to the Secretary at the end of the meeting so they end up in the minutes. Office Report: jtu: That's gone [pointing at the missing whiteboard behind zsr] cporter: The blue dress that was on the table went on the coatrack jtu: I could have sworn that I saw some MTG flats flow into the SIPB machine room. srz: These aren't the flats you're looking for. aerynne: someone left a hot sub wrapper on a desk last night, and I was going to trash it, but forgot. Don't do that. hartmans: That was probably me. I know I shouldn't do that, I probably missed it in a cleanup pass. Office Cleaning Report: tabbott: The big paper recycling bin in the center of the office is for that. Not for trash, old food, plastic, bottles, or anything else. jtu: [Pointing at the recycling bin at the front of the office]. This is not a paper recycling bin. It is an other recylcing bin. jhawk: I don't think you should try to reroute users to the paper recycling bin. jbarnold: This makes it hard to get to staplers. jhawk: This need not be true. You can use all sorts of sizes. MIT Computing Report: jbarnold: There was a talk at iStab about the future of Athena. It was one of iStab's more productive meetings, which isn't necessarily saying much. They said we should expect more clusters to get mutated into "experimental new settings". They might be visualization clusters or other flavors, which would be similar but different from the collaborative spaces. jbarnold: Winathena will not necessarily become more like Athena with time. This is not necessirily their goal at all. The name isn't great. cporter: Didn't it use to be called pismere? kchen: yes. jtu: A user was a sad and basically wanted to dup4, and alejandro discovered that this can't be done on winathena. jbarnold: There was talk about people using laptops, and about possibly Athena being a Linux package that you can install, and maybe also with a similar Windows package. golem: They should clearly turn all the clusters into Starbucks. jbarnold: I've got a graph showing the planned number of general-purpose Athena workstations declining with time. Net down from 425 to 275 by 2007. jbarnold: Minutes for the meeting went to istab-info recently. You can add yourself to the list if you're interested. jhawk: Supposedly they're also on the web. golem: I sent mail to network@mit.edu today, and it bounced. jtu: Why? golem: Some error in their configuration. jhawk: Did you tell them? golem: How am I supposed to tell them? I told you. jhawk: This could be a membership question. golem: I used the most effective solution. I told you. jhawk: I do not think I'm the most effective means of communication with the network group. hartmans: The network group told me they'd solve my problem. jtu: Did they offer you a pony too? hartmans: They didn't offer me a printer. Computer Services: aerynne: I still have iAthena in my backpack. tabbott: I wish to read a passage from iMatlab. "Copies of the SIMULINK User's Guide are available for reference in the Athena Consulting Office (11-115), and in the Barker and Hayden Libraries." It was last updated in 1997. tabbott: I think iMatlab should be updated. golem: Did you check there? tabbott: I did not check 11-115. cporter: Whenever I get sqlite working, I will make signup available. yoz: I'm writing an ask-sipb column about Linux distributions. If you want anything about your favorite distro included, you should email me. Publications Report: jbarnold: We're OK. Orientation Report: IAP Report: jtu: I'm thinking of making an LSC slide this week, since my volunteers are hosed. Please stop me! yoz: Is there an LSC movie this week? tabbott: No. cporter: It's sooner than you think. jtu: If you want to get your class into the print guide, do this before Thanksgiving. aerynne: I thought they aren't doing the print guide anymore. jtu: But we are! hartmans: I think it's fabulous that a student computing organization is the one that feels the need to have a print guide. ahslocum: Who should I email about a class? jtu: sipb-iap-sucker@mit.edu hartmans: Can we add something else to the name of this report? CokeComm Report: aerynne: I'm here. You can give me money if you want. Other: jbarnold: It's almost Thanksgiving. cporter: Star Wars Musical showed this weekend. It was good. hartmans: And long. jtu: But good. xela: Having your car die sucks. jtu: Anyone want to have dinner after the meeting? Other Other: asedeno: Redmond is far away and three weeks is a long time. I'm back. jweiss: Blood drive in sala, tomorrow, 8-8. Come bleed. jwalden: Apparently Microsoft is giving away their Visual Studio Express Plus compilers for free for some reason. If you download it in the next year and register then it is free for life. jwalden: It does basic, web developer 2005, C#, C++, J#, ... hartmans: WTF is J#? asedeno: It's like Java and like C#. hartmans: Why ... [trails off] jwalden: They're available at snurl.com/mscompilers mshaw: Sleep is good. I should have more of it. jhawk: Sleep with ASA members. jbarnold: Office space allocations were this week. jbarnold: The SIPB office was not de-allocated. aerynne: I'm hand-editing sty files. The meeting was adjourned at 7:46 PM. Minutes taken and submitted by tabbott.