Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 11/13/2006 The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by jbarnold. In attendance were Voting members: jbarnold tabbott nelhage kchen aseering mshaw andersk arolfe jhawk Associate members: jemorris ocschwar gschmidt mitchb Prospectives: mathmike k_lai hartnett dnawi jwalden Guests: Treasurer's Report: Chairman's Report: jbarnold: We're going to be doing some EC member-at-large filling. We'll get to that at the end. k_lai: I've been taking meeting minutes for a long time; I'm now involved in IAP. jhawk: Why are you standing where you're standing? As opposed to where Anders is standing? mshaw: That's not always the case. jbarnold: (really bad fake whisper) It's acceptable to stay where you are! mitchb: An acceptable answer would be that you're not standing there because Anders is standing there. jbarnold: Isn't it true that the Student Center is closing on 11/22? Because I forgot to mention it earlier in the meeting! tabbott: Name three important office services. k_lai: scripts.mit.edu. jbarnold: Yes! k_lai: I've been using it for Random Hall desk. Linerva. tabbott: You should say that louder. k_lai: linerva.mit.edu is cool. arolfe: Are there any other SIPB services whose maintainer's votes you'd like to have? k_lai: stuff.mit.edu... jbarnold: OK, people should start yelling out services now. k_lai: Oh yeah, IAP classes. jhawk: What's the SIPB IAP website? k_lai: I don't know. jhawk: I think it's stuff.mit.edu/iap jemorris: Who was Jeff before Jeff was Jeff? k_lai: jtu... I'm not really sure who the other one was. tabbott: rayhe was able to list back really far. jhawk: I think the point was that Jeff was Jeff before he was Jeff. jbarnold: Two terms... jbarnold: Further questions? jhawk: Earlier, you mentioned that you weren't sure when you became a prospective. How could you look it up? k_lai: In the members_and_prospectives file. In the office directory. dnawi: How do you think becoming a member will change your interaction with SIPB? k_lai: I'll be able to hang out in the office more. After I stop being hosed, I'll start doing more stuff. nelhage: What makes you think you will get un-hosed? Ever? k_lai: Well, I'll eventually graduate. arolfe: Move that jhawk ask the question. jhawk: Parse error? arolfe: I move that jhawk ask why k_lai wants to become a SIPB member. jbarnold: We have some time to spare yet. mshaw: Point to your favorite or least favorite part of the MIT mail system, by color. Point, please! mitchb: Outgoing! No, DMZ! No, Aahhh! k_lai: I like po12. It gives me mail. mitchb: Speaking as a po11 user, I agree. tabbott: So, orange is the color of the Internet. Does this mean that you dislike the Internet? jbarnold: I disagree with your interperetation that orange is the Internet! tabbott: So, which service do you think is least important? k_lai: I think Xen is the least important of those mentioned so far. jbarnold: Do-do-do-do-do! Daily double! mshaw: You were logged into this machine. k_lai: What is zygorthian-space-raiders? jhawk: A user asks for a cable. Proceed. k_lai: I ask for a student ID, their name, what dorm they live in. jhawk: Run cable-sipb; it asks for this information. jbarnold: Right now, we're out of cables. arolfe: Who was membered second last week? andersk: I don't even know. arolfe: I was asking Jeff. arolfe: I move that Anders ask the question. andersk: I'm supposed to ask a question? jhawk: What does it mean when someone's supposed to ask the question? Katherine? k_lai: I don't actually know. jhawk: mitchb? mitchb: I do know; I won't ask the question. andersk: I've been informed that the question is, Why do you want to be a SIPB member? tabbott: That's not in the form of a question. andersk: This is the reason that you want to be a SIPB member. k_lai: I'm confused. nelhage: Do you think that becoming a SIPB member will help you become less confused? k_lai: I'm interested in what SIPB does, and I'd like to contribute to that. jbarnold: Now, you have to put that in the form of a question. mitchb: Don't we need music for this part? [mitchb note: I'm pretty sure that didn't happen, because I can't whistle, but it amuses me, so I left it there] [membership election for k_lai: 9-1-0, +/- 1 for error because jhawk left] jbarnold: We're voting to replace janetryu because she's no longer in town. jbarnold: So the list of people who are eligible are all active voting members. I won't bother listing them because, if you don't know their names, they're probably not active. tabbott: I nominate nelhage. arolfe: I nominate k_lai. arolfe: Do you want to be nominated? I nominate aseering. jbarnold: I think we're going to forego speeches... tabbott: I think they're not allowed. jbarnold: That'd be why we're going to forego speeches. This person is elected for two months until the regular elections in February. tabbott: I think we should use instant-runoff voting. jbarnold: I don't think we're allowed to do anything that's more of a stretch than what I'm already doing. [nelhage is elected EC member-at-large: nelhage-8, k_lai-1, andersk-0, aseering-0] MIT Computing Report: mathmike: Over the weekend, there was the MS Puzzle Hunt. They sent mail; anyone at MIT didn't get it. kchen: What happened to it? nelhage: Epsilon Theta lost Internet access because of a DoS to a machine at the house. MIT blocked traffic to the machine at the border router; this restored access. We don't know what earned the machine a DoS attack. jhawk: The PO server system has been flaky again. jbarnold: Point to the part that was broken. (referring to the diagram of MIT computing on the wall) jhawk: outgoing had some difficulties... jbarnold: I Said Point! tabbott: I believe this is unrelated to the problem with the MS mail. SIPB Projects Report: mitchb: Join us in an hour when Tim (tabbott) gives a presentation on Debian Athena! mitchb: We're approaching the end of the term; if you were interested in giving a Cluedump, contact me soon. jbarnold: People, maybe Paul Hill, might be interested in giving a presentation on WinAthena, aka. win.mit.edu. When should this happen? They have some concept of lockers, and software being in lockers; I really don't understand it. kchen: Maybe why they're using DFS, how files are stored, etc. jhawk: Maybe we should understand the reaction of: I need to install software but I can't; I need to print to a color printer but I can't; I send e-mail to acis-help. jbarnold: When this comes up on Zephyr, people don't seem to know the answer to things. tabbott: I think the question of why people don't answer their e-mail isn't the kind of thing that will be dealt with in a cluedump. mshaw: This is probably also too political for a cluedump, but, Why do only WinAthena machines get dual head? tabbott: Someone should run a Robert's Rules cluedump. ocschwar: Actually learning the full version of Robert's Rules would take more time than we have this semester. jhawk: WinAthena gets dual heads because faculty have requested it for certain applications. tabbott: What software? jhawk: I don't know offhand; possibly third-party, possibly for chemistry. jhawk: Robert's Rules are important to know even in part because they allow meetings to move along smoothly. mitchb: For the Paul Hill talk, I think we want to set his expectations appropriately. jbarnold: I think we want to make it a fairly technical talk, so that we can help users afterwards, and so that it's not an ambush. jbarnold: Any other ideas for questions? mitchb: The update system. ocschwar: We could look through old minutes. jbarnold: I'd love it if someone would volunteer to do that right now. mitchb: The decision structure, who's responsible for what. jemorris: How do I install stuff in lockers? Office Report: andersk: The Key Office is out of SIPB keys jhawk: It appears that our black 747 has walked. Has anyone seen it? mitchb: Is that a stapler? jhawk: Ken and I have both observed that the Fujifilm DVD+R's don't work. I tried twice to burn DVD's, and got verification errors both times; I tried a DVD-R and it worked the first time. tabbott: So you don't have evidence if it's the DVD+R part of the burner or the disks? jhawk: Ken has tried them on another machine; it's the disks. tabbott: We often get one of the new cluster machines every year; we haven't gotten one so far. Should we remind them? jbarnold: Yes, you should remind them. tabbott: Who is "them"? jbarnold: Well, you're supposed to remind "them". tabbott: But I don't know who they are... tabbott: So, we have a spare office shredder. I had a contest to see if anyone could reassemble a shredded document; no one was able to do so, so I thought it should be awarded to k_lai for doing a good job in the office. jhawk: So I've been lame about this; I feel that we should deal with this, for ethical reasons. I'd planned to tell Office Depot; I fully expect them to request that it be returned. ocschwar: The best thing to do to contribute to publications is to write more. Office Cleaning Report: Publications Report: CokeComm Report: jbarnold: We now have a Coke Committee. Mail was sent to sipb-office about this. Orientation Report: IAP Report: k_lai: IAP is even sooner now. If you haven't sent us room or class information, send it to us now. mshaw: Can I recommend that you poke individuals? we'll forget. jhawk: I'd like to move $1000 for refreshments during IAP, as requested by tilia. jbarnold: I'd like to propose a friendly amendment to specify what the $1000 will be used for. I think we've found that the web.mit.edu IAP guide is so much more important than other forms of advertising, that we won't want to spend much on that. I'd like to know a bit more about how the money will be spent. jhawk: Also, last year, $250 was spent on trinkets that the Board saw as not worth it. tabbott: I think the Board should oversee spending. jbarnold: I'd propose that we allocate $200 for food, and not a blanket $1000. mshaw: As a past IAP sucker, I'd like to mention that it'd be incumbent on the board to not put additional stress on the IAP sucker. One of the advantages of a blanket motion is that it makes their lives a little bit easier. jbarnold: I agree. I think that's how these numbers have gotten this high in the past. I think it's likely enough that we won't want to spend substantial amounts on publicity that a smaller allocation is reasonable. k_lai: I also think slides and such aren't very effective. I haven't really talked to Tilly about this. mshaw: Are you organized to do anything in the next week? k_lai: I don't know; I'll talk to Tilly. mshaw: I suggest we allocate a smaller amount as a discretionary fund for the IAP suckers at some point. I don't think it needs to exist this week. jhawk: I'll withdraw the motion for this week. Other: jwalden: Tomorrow, I'm flying out to a Firefox developer's conference for the rest of the week. It's a busy week during term; it's going to suck. mshaw: I've finished a fellowship application. Other Other: The meeting was adjourned at 20:29. Minutes taken and submitted by aseering.