Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2007-11-05 The meeting was called to order at 19:33 by tabbott. In attendance were Voting members: andersk arolfe aseering jbarnold jhawk jwalden mathmike nelhage presbrey rayhe tabbott tilia wdaher yoz Associate members: asedeno dkk Prospectives: ecprice jesstess hmslydia kaduk yuhsin Guests: rdl gdasher@fas.harvard.edu No Reports: tabbott: There was a polyphemus outage. nelhage: The fileserver dumped core. rayhe: We had $30000. We spend $3000 of it, and $6000 in Athena fees. jbarnold: While I was looking around in the machine room, I found this old steve-dallas motherboard from before when steve-dallas was steve-dallas. It’s my understanding that back in the day, people tried to boot Linux on it and it wouldn’t boot. I don’t think there’s much sense in keeping it in the machine room. We should do something with it or get rid of it. It also had some RAM, but the RAM is useful for some of the 1U servers SIPB acquired. If anyone is interested in the motherboard, let me know. aseering: Do you know about the specs of this motherboard? jbarnold: It had a P-III in it. The story I heard from tibbetts is basically that it’s a cursed motherboard. That’s about all I know. tabbott: We swapped the monitor which used to be attached to general-dink into the machine room, and brought a CRT back out. I propose we get rid of this CRT. Thoughts? tabbott: Alright, we’ll get rid of the CRT. tabbott: We have this couch cover that nobody seems to use. I propose we get rid of that. jbarnold: It might be a member’s. jhawk: I find it useful for keeping feet warm on the couch. jbarnold: People were willing to get a blanket as long as it was kept clean, but nobody was willing to clean it. tilia: What about using that thing as a couch cover? tabbott: People pulled it off. tilia: It was used as a couch cover for a long time. rayhe: If we use a staple gun… tabbott: Thereby defeating the whole point of a couch cover. rayhe: Move to allocate $25 for a blanket for the couch. wdaher: Will you clean it? rayhe: That was implied. Yes, I will clean it at Windsington. rayhe: Here’s what will happen. I will spend $25 to purchase a blanket. I will wash both the couch cover and the blanket. I will put the couch cover on the couch and put the blanket on the couch cover on the couch. <8-0-lots, motion passes> tabbott: There’s that white LCD sitting next to Pikachu. (I don’t know why we have Pikachu…) The LCD has various cracks. I was wondering if we should get rid of that. wdaher: Wasn’t there a lot of angst about getting a power adapter? tabbott: Yes, it has been repaired, but there are scratches. We tried to get it working in the machine room and it didn’t work. wdaher: The new Mac arrived. There it is. tabbott: People have three days to get their data off of mariel-hemmingway and banana-sr. jhawk: Hasn’t the data been imaged onto the new Mac? aseering: Yes. rayhe: What is the fate of mariel-hemmingway? Can we make it into the new DEFCON sign? tabbott: If someone is going to do that… jhawk: What’s the status of the old DEFCON sign? jbarnold: Talk to quentin. Anyone else should feel free to sieze control of that project, because quentin is far overcommitted. quentin [later]: The old defcon sign is electronically finished and working. It just needs to be mounted. mathmike: Rumor has it there’s a cluedump today. tabbott: Nelson is going to be talking about how to exploit things. nelhage: I’ll be giving a cluedump about buffer overflows. There will be a buffer overflow-related challenge announced at the end of the cluedump. nelhage: Move to allocate $50 to be donated to the Waseem Sebastian Daher Juice Endowment Fund in the name of the winner of this challenge. jbarnold: I’m not sure what the intent of the motion is. If it’s to encourage people to hack on the stuff talked about at the cluedump, that won’t work because everyone at SIPB wins and everyone not at SIPB loses. nelhage: If a non-SIPB member wins, the allocation is not spent. This is only if a SIPB person wins. dkk: What is this Juice Endowment? jbarnold: The fund provides free juice to SIPB members via the SIPB fridge. So far it has not received any funds from the board, only individual donations. wdaher: I have a proposed amendment, to allocate $30 regardless of whether a SIPB member wins. nelhage: I withdraw the motion. rayhe: I make nelhage’s motion. jhawk: Kodak is introducing their new VISION3 Color Negative film stock. asedeno: I like my new DVR. rayhe: I’m considering allocations later for our annual equipment replacement, as well as finally getting an appropriate mount for the projector. We can either purchase a mount or someone could volunteer to build a mount from the ceiling, and that would be highly encouraged. If you have ideas, email me. tabbott: How much would it cost? rayhe: They range in awesomeness from $150 to $300. jbarnold: The other solution is to mount a larger screen. rayhe: Even if we mount a larger screen, we still have to mount the projector upside-down, because of the way it projects. We could put it on the underside of the shelf. kaduk: Can you post links to some of the commercial mounts? rayhe: Sure, there will be zephyr to -c sipb shortly. more awesome: less awesome: dkk: Before the end of the next meeting, the XO laptop will be available for purchase. You can spend $400 to buy one and donate one. tabbott: There will be a Linerva outage on Friday to see whether changing our version of AFS will stop our processes stuck in iowait. nelhage: Currently Linerva has a load average of 95 and climbing. gdasher@fas.harvard.edu: I’m from HCS and I’m here to announce an HCS event in December about helping undergrads whether they want to go to grad school in computer science. We’ll have a panel of two academics and two people from industry, including the author of Programming Perl (who’s at Google now), and the CTO of Akamai; there will be a panel discussion on that topic, moderated by Harry Lewis. I’m here to ask for your advice about what would be an appropriate faculty member from MIT to invite, and also to ask whether SIPB would be interested in co-sponsoring the event. ecprice: Madhu might be good. yoz: Joel Shingel? jbarnold: Is he really an academic? yoz: Mike Stonebraker? wdaher: rtm? rayhe: Chris Terman. wdaher: Can we email them somewhere? gdasher@fas.harvard.edu: gdasher@fas.harvard.edu. tabbott: Are there individuals interested in helping to organize this event. rayhe: Depending on the dates, I could help. gdasher@fas.harvard.edu: Friday, December 7. jesstess: Is advertising what you need? gdasher@fas.harvard.edu: We’d like advertising, but other things would help too. dkk: My first idea was that this is a recruiting session for Google and Akamai. gdasher@fas.harvard.edu: I intend for it to not be that, and the moderator will make sure it isn't. dkk: I would suggest that SIPB make it clear that we will not take anything from the companies in return for helping. rayhe: I do think we should take something from the companies. rayhe: SIPB is out of small t-shirts. I’d like to allocate $400 for another run of t-shirts. jesstess: I volunteered to take care of it. jbarnold: Pay attention to what didn’t disappear last time. tabbott: Debathena for Gutsy was released a week ago. We’re currently working on preliminary packages for Lenny. jbarnold: What’s the status of Debathena stickers. tabbott: My understanding is they haven’t been ordered yet. kaduk: There was a deactivated server from the machine room sitting around. I took it home. tabbott: Somebody mounted a stapler and screwed it into the wall. jwalden: I said I was going to take care of the fax machine. I’ll get to it next weekend. jesstess: Everybody should harass Dennis about SIPB IAP. tilia: It’s sooner than you think. jwalden: It is! tilia: Aaaaaah! jwalden: I’ve already told him that he should confess that he’s too hosed and should let me help him. jbarnold: I’m going to take a minute to harass people about IAP classes. jbarnold: andersk, are you teaching an IAP class? andersk: I’M TAKING MINUTES SHUTUP jbarnold: jwalden? jwalden: Yes! jbarnold: I’m going to be teaching an IAP class on uplink. The mail is pending. jbarnold: ecprice? ecprice: Probably Python. jbarnold: mathmike? mathmike: No. I’m going to work on my thesis on natural language processing. jbarnold: You could teach about natural language processing. jbarnold: rayhe? rayhe: Not yet. nelhage: jesstess? jesstess: I’ll do whatever glasser doesn’t do. I will dress up as rms, and teach the Emacs class. hmslydia: I don’t know if anyone remembers 6.171, an intense spring semester class for undergrads that was database-backed web design. We are resurrecting the material in the form of an IAP competition, 6.470. andersk: Wait, 6.470? What’s its real course number? tabbott: It’s like 6.189 or something. andersk: *cries* nelhage: Is it using a toolkit? hmslydia: Undecided. The meeting was adjourned at 20:08. Minutes taken and submitted by andersk.