Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2009-05-11 The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by nelhage. In attendance were Voting members: kaduk, jesstess, ezyang, broder, price, ctl, jhamrick, nelhage | quentin, xavid Associate members: jhawk, mitchb, asedeno, jweiss Prospectives: s4m, afarrell, pquimby, austein, davidben, pweaver Guests: parshuraman@gmail.com Officer Reports: nelhage: I'm leaving after this year, and stepping down as Chair. Nominations for Chairman will be accepted after I read the duties from the Constitution. [does so] price: I nominate broder. broder: I decline. nelhage: I nominate ezyang. ezyang: I accept. quentin: I nominate jhamrick. jhamrick: I accept. nelhage: Any other nominations? [pause] nelhage: Step up, say a brief word about yourself and why you're running. ezyang: Hi, my name is Edward, username ezyang. I was membered earlier this year, and have been involved in working on scripts, and have been hanging out in the office. I'm currently a freshman, which is somewhat unusual to be running for Chair. I would like to be Chair because I think it would be a good experience, and people have told me they think I'd do a good job and carry myself well. My priorities would be to make sure SIPB moves along well as an organization, and recruit new members. I want to be an enabler, to make sure projects are able to move forward without burdens that are unnecessary. jhamrick: My name is Jessica. I've been a member since January, and have been hanging around since last September. I love SIPB as an organization, and am only involved in two groups: SIPB and the Assassin's Guild. My involvement with SIPB is way up here, and with the Guild is down there [motions high and then low]. I'm here every day, attempting to make SIPB a better place for prospectives to come in and feel that they're welcome, and playing a big role in making sure the office stays clean. Maybe I haven't done so well at that lately. I'll do more over the summer. I've been working on drawer allocation. I organized the reading group (starting tonight!), and want to see more freshmen in the fall, especially females because the ratio is really off right now. I think I could do a good job. quentin: One of the things you have to do as Chair is interact with other parts of MIT and IS&T, and one of the things that might happen with this budget crunch is that our budget could be limited or removed, and it might be your job to get it back. What would you do? jhamrick: If we lose funding from IS&T, there are other places to get it from. One is the ASA, but maybe that's not the best place since it funds other groups. There are other places involved with computer science around campus. I'd be happy to do more research into it. ezyang: I agree, we would have to research into it. I remember often hearing around the office that MIT has a lot of money trees and you just need to know the right one to shake. I'm currently Treasurer for the Guild, so I have some experience with budgets and allocations. I've dealt with Finboard, but not IS&T which deals with our funding. I hope the experience there would translate. I don't think that drastic budget cuts are likely. quentin: We're a single line item, like $20k, that could just be removed. jhawk: I think the most likely thing is that we'd be asked to cut 15% over the next three years like everyone else. Everyone will try to get more money, but if it doesn't work, how will we deal with that? ezyang: I'm not quite fully versed with the specifics of SIPB's budget right now, but would try to talk with all the groups involved that might have cuts and see where money is absolutely necessary. For example, it might be nice to have "Manga Guide to DBs," but maybe we don't need it. broder: Ouch. ezyang: Hey, I like it, too. It's very much a communication thing. jhamrick: I agree. I would talk with the Treasurer and see what people are spending money on, and what we use. If it comes down to that all the things are necessary, but we have to get rid of some of them, I would go around and talk with people requesting the money and ask if they can come up with something cheaper, find a way around it, etc. nelhage: More questions? kaduk: This seems an obvious question to ask, but one of the more obvious duties of the Chair is to preside over meetings. Are you able to regularly do so? jhamrick: I've maybe missed five meetings since I've been a member, so yes. ezyang: I'll admit that I didn't get membered as soon as I should have, because I wasn't good about coming to meetings. But since then, I think I've been good about it. afarrell: One role of the Chair is long-term planning. In what direction should we be heading? jhamrick: In terms of services, I think we're already in a really good place, and would want to continue being in that place, maybe make them [the services] better, but that's up to SIPB members themselves. I'd keep up with everyone, see how projects are going. I also would really like to see the club expand. At one point a few years ago, before I was here, SIPB was far more cruft than undergrads from what I hear, and I don't want that to happen again, because it's an undergrad organization. Also, computers aren't just for guys. ezyang: Some odd weekend ago, mitchb and I had a conversation about the future of SIPB, that lasted until about 7am. We were tossing around ideas about the next big thing in computing -- would it be cloud computing? Taking over the clusters on campus? What about web app frameworks like silverlight? Well, that's Microsoft, so "obviously" it's bad. It's hard to say where the future lies, especially looking now. I'm not a visionary in any sense of the term. The way forward is to keep an open mind and foster new projects. While the projects that are the mainstay of us right now have definite benefit to the MIT community, and I want to see them keep going strong, I want experiments like jhamrick's Dodona to succeed and grow. Some won't happen, but some will. nelhage: This is mainly for jhamrick, though ezyang can answer too, if he wants. You mentioned a couple times getting more women into SIPB. Do you have any concrete ideas about that? jhamrick: We should be more friendly. I understand that sometimes you come in to finish a project or a pset that's due in two hours and don't want to interact with anyone, and that's fine and happens, but in general, if a prospective walks in, say (excitedly) "Hi, I'm Jess, and this is the SIPB office," and "what are you interested in working on?" and the same goes for girls, I think. I'm not intimidated by it, but some girls are. They should have some sense of being paid attention to, but not any more than anyone else. I'd be happy to spend time showing them that there are girls in SIPB, we're smart too, etc. ezyang: I'll be frank -- having a female chair for SIPB would be good for the prospects of women in SIPB. I'm not sure how to solve the issue. If we increase the number of prospectives in SIPB, there'll probably be more women. Things we do have been discouraged in high school and middle school, and the social environment is not conducive to that. ctl: It shouldn't surprise anyone, but SIPB has had a number of quite successful female chairs in the past. jhawk: How long will you be with us, jhamrick? jhamrick: Two years, if I don't go to grad school. ezyang: I'm in town most of the summer, though I'm going home for a week or a week and a half. But I have an internship here in Cambridge. jhamrick: I have a Media Lab UROP, so I'll maybe miss a meeting or two unless I get sick, but I'm here all summer. jhawk: Do you think there's a conflict of interest between being Office Czar and Chair? jhamrick: I think Chair would make me more motivated to clean the office, 'cause... I'm in charge of *all* of SIPB now! jhawk: [speechless look] jhamrick: So it damn well better be clean. jbarnold: Are you prepared for the job being three times more demanding and painful than you currently think it will be? jhamrick: Yes. ezyang: Yes. mitchb: They're both lying - kick 'em both out! price: Yeah, they are both wrong. jbarnold: I think you're both excellent candidates, and I'm excited for you, but being Chair can be painful. Be prepared for an exciting time. jhamrick: Two years haven't jaded me yet. jhawk: But this will! [laughter] kaduk: External relations, in the event of disputes, can be interesting things. Where do you see the balance between being a decisive leader and being able to squelch certain problems, yielding to the will of the Board, and relying on meeting with more people to resolve internal disputes? I'm sorry that it's a poorly worded question; I've been trying to figure out how to phrase it better. jesstess: Are you asking "can you handle internal disputes?" kaduk: Mostly. jbarnold: How about, "to what extent do you feel the job is to pick what you think is the right thing to do, and make sure the group chooses that option, versus letting consensus form and percolate?" kaduk: I don't think that's what I was asking, but it's also an interesting question. s4m: Maybe "how authoritarian a Chair will you be?" jhawk: How about if you each start by telling us what *you* think kaduk is asking, and then answer it? ezyang: I think he's asking "am I going to be decisive so people can look to me to get me to tell them 'yes this should happen' as opposed to asking 'well, what do you think?'" If I had to describe my usual style, I'd rather let consensus percolate. One of the nice things about SIPB is that it has a very nice large alumni pool. Previous chairs are highly accessible, and ready and willing to give advice. To some extent, I will need to be decisive and able to put my foot down, but I'm able to listen to people, take this advice and this opposing advice, and figure out what's the right thing, and this is the sort of thing you don't really know about until it happens. jhamrick: I think he's asking "how are you going to deal with disputes between people? Are you going to fix them yourself by declaring who's right, or let the Board decide, or other?" And some of what ezyang said. Any of you who know me well know I like to make people happy. It's not always possible, but I'll always try to make it possible and mediate so that people are happy. If it's not possible, and I can't come up with a good decision, and more people should have a voice in it, then I will ask the Board's advice and seek advice from others like previous Chairs. But hopefully I can manage to mediate things to the best of my ability. I always try to see things from both points of view to get a sense of what the conflict is. Maybe I can't always do it well, but I try my best. nelhage: Can you guys name all the past Chairs in the room, by username and full name? ezyang: You're nelhage, and your name is Nelson Elhage. You're price ...[long pause]... Jonathan? jhamrick: Your first name is Greg. ctl: Do we really put people through membership elections twice? ezyang: Someone mentioned to me recently that jbarnold was a Chair. [pause while trying to figure out his name] mitchb: There's a list called sipb-_____[him]s. ezyang: ... Jeff? jhamrick: I'll guess... ctl? His username is golem. His real name is Chris. mitchb: Yeah... what's his last name? jhamrick: L? ctl: Lesniewski-Laas, but you did really well. kaduk: What's the relationship between the Chair and the EC? jhamrick: I see the EC like the President's cabinet -- people who can advise and be there when the Chair has questions, are there to settle issues within the Board that are not left up to just the Chair and needs the entire group's approval. ezyang: Having never been privy to EC discussions, I'd say it serves an advisory and decision-making role in the organization. jhawk: The President's cabinet is appointed at his discretion and serves for him. Is that what you're trying to imply? Probably not. jhamrick: No, they're not appointed by the Chair, and they don't work for me, otherwise I could ask them to get me coffee. jhawk: Well, you could *ask*. ctl: jhawk is dancing around the issue, which is that the EC is above the Chair, can overrule the Board or the Chair, etc. jhamrick: I wasn't necessarily trying to say that the Chair is superior to the Board. kaduk: If you have spare time, the sipb-ec mailing list is archived in discuss and you can look through history. nelhage: Any other questions? [pause] nelhage: Okay, please step outside. <6-4 ezyang is Chair-Elect> nelhage: There will be an election for a new Chairman at the end of the meeting. broder: We have crap from machine room cleanathon that we will be disposing of later. nelhage: There'll be a rolling white ballot, and mostly it shouldn't be contentious. SIPB Projects Report: jhamrick: dodona almost sort of works, except not really. s4m: How can I talk to Dodona? jhamrick: Ask me. nelhage: In the last week, barnowl has become able to Ctrl-C a long-running search. Your search doesn't run any faster, but you can stop it when you get bored. ezyang: In my yak shaving with autoinstallers, I implemented ACLs for pyafs. nelhage: Your yak depth is what, 6? nelhage: The s-m-r maintainers want to do some hardware shuffling. We plan to move linerva to run on the hardware formerly known as black-mesa, which was formerly for XVM, and are going to add more RAM to that machine to bring linerva up to 24GB of RAM. I move to allocate up to $400 for 4x4GB DIMMs for old-black-mesa. kaduk: I second. nelhage: White ballot? jhawk: Point of order - it would be nice if the Chair doesn't white ballot. broder: Fine. White ballot? quentin: scripts has a vague plan. I was hoping it would have been sent out by now. nelhage: Okay, please get it sent by the next meeting. We're not quite at the end of the fiscal year yet, but it's getting close. Office Report: jhawk: I'd like permission to borrow the unused CD player for a week for its pitch bending abilities. I don't think it's controversial. [no objections raised] kaduk: I believe it was previously noted that the shredder is sad. I've done some looking around, but not a comprehensive search. I've found two types we might be interested in, though not the industrial ones with costs greater than our annual budget. Cheap ones can be had for $50-$100, but one in the $250-$300 range would last longer. Which are we interested in? jhawk: Its demonstrated utility is enough that I think we should go for the better one. nelhage: I don't think it'd be unreasonable to get a slightly nicer one. It would be good if we cause it to be maintained better than the current one. This one may be getting near its end-of-life, but we haven't oiled it like we were supposed to. jhawk: It would be nice to get one without an oiling schedule. jhamrick: As Office Czar, I'll oil it if you show me how. kaduk: I move to allocate $350 for a new shredder. quentin: Are we sure the current one is dead? jhawk: Yes, if by "dead" you mean "ennnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnh." [That's roughly the noise it makes.] pquimby: What's the proper procedure for using or not using staples in that shredder, and what has happened with it? jhawk: It permits them. ezyang: Does the current one have a warranty? mitchb: It used to have a duplicate (unopened) until we finally forced jhawk to return it. "Oops." jhawk: That wasn't an "oops." <12-0 - $350 allocated to kaduk for a new shredder> broder: I move to allocate $20 for the "Manga Guide to DBs." jhamrick: I'm halfway done dealing with drawers. So far, everyone who's a member and wanted one but didn't have one now does. We still need a "Swap Space B," and some more space. If you got mail from me but didn't reply, please tell me why you still want your drawer, or that I can take it away from you. broder: There's a bunch of crap we've recovered from the machine room. If you have interest in it, go after it. We'll set aside stuff people have objections to discarding. kaduk: Discard means...? broder: SIPB-reuse first. Then probably community-reuse, and dumpster-reuse. broder: We have: o 2 PS2 KVMs that are not useful anymore (another one was grabbed for the office) o Old Sun RAM, I'm not sure how much it is, but it's probably not useful to us. o 2 sticks of RAM that were replaced in sql.mit.edu. I think they're 512MB each DDR2s o 4 1GB sticks, not sure what they are from (the RAM seems not worth keeping, because we tend to buy machines with however much RAM we want) o 2 PS2 keyboards (we have lots of them) o This thing nobody knows anything about quentin: It's the SCSI backplane from an IBM server jhawk: We should keep it. If we get rid of a server, the next person might want it. o This cable jhawk: Centronix 50-pin cable o 4 Sun keyboard adapters (we have some more anyway) jhawk: Not the modified ones? [No] o DB25 to... something (keep just in case) o Some UPS mounting hardware quentin: Those are from LAMP's power switches; keep them o DB9 female-female cable (may be a weird APC thing) o CPU fan o Old floppy disks kaduk: we have *new* floppy disks! o Box with power cables and SCSI cables (we have a surplus even excluding them) kaduk: Are the SCSI cables identical? broder: No, and there are also some terminators. o A SCSI enclosure of some sort (we removed the drive) o 10 Bast-T 12-port hub jhawk: It's not ours; it's Network's, though I doubt they want it. broder: Okay, I'll seek permission to dispose of it assuming network doesn't want it. o old-yaz the DECstation, with the drive still in it, because someone glued the case shut. [collective *boggle*] [Ed: It really had been sealed shut; post-meeting, mitchb, quentin, and jhawk attacked and defeated it. Upon being unable to re-close the case after removing the drive, re-gluing it shut seemed an appealing option.] o A Sun 280R o quiche-lorraine o 2 tape stackers o 17" LCD screen (we have 3 in s-m-r and 2 here in the office already; we don't need more o A Sun Ultra 60 labelled "new-bed" o deficit-cloaking-device (the old SIPB switch, which it's unclear if it's ours to get rid of; I've asked kaduk to look into it jhawk: It's definitely ours. o A bunch of disk drives, all believed dead quentin: Save the Sun caddies Given that beautiful and crufty display, objections to anything being disposed through sipb-reuse, then community-reuse, and then the trash, etc.? I move to dispose of everything not set aside already, pending confirmation that it's all ours to dispose of. quentin: mitchb, does scripts want old-bed? mitchb: That 280R?! It's freaking haunted! kaduk: There are cards in quiche. Do we want to keep any of them? broder: quentin says quiche is a TV tuning machine, and if someone wants it not for that purpose, we should keep the cards, and if someone does want it for that purpose, we should let them have the cards. [quentin and kaduk are interested, and will work it out among themselves] price: I second. Other: quentin: It's the end of term. ezyang: The Finboard deadline for submitting vouchers was today, which doesn't affect us, but other groups might want to take note. jhamrick: The SIPB reading group starts today. The readings are in /afs/sipb/project/reading-group. The first meeting will be after this meeting. Other Other: kaduk: I hear Ksplice is doing well. jbarnold: This Wednesday in Kresge at 7pm is the MIT $100k awards ceremony. You should come vote for us in the Audience Choice Award. jesstess: So, it's voting by texting. Is it against the rules to coordinate a remote vote over zephyr? jbarnold: I don't think I've seen such a rule. jesstess: I'm totally on top of it. jhawk: What's the prior art? Is it normal for people to do this? kaduk: csw is still unhappy. quentin investigated by removing each of the RAM modules in succession, and that didn't help. We should consider bringing it to N42 for warranty service. mitchb: Oh, it can go there? I'll do that tomorrow! quentin: Don't you need an appointment? [Ed: Post-meeting, mitchb found install media, and quentin reinstalled it; signs point to there having been filesystem corruption that the diagnostics didn't pick up, and it may be fine now.] The meeting was adjourned at 20:40. Minutes taken and submitted by mitchb.