========================================================= NOTE: These are DRAFT minutes until this note is removed. ========================================================= Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2012-12-10 The meeting was called to order at 19:30:00 by bbaren. In attendance were Voting members: achernya bbaren dwilson lexrj phurst Associate members: andersk glasgall lfaraone mitchb tlyu Prospectives: abost codetaku dlaw dove mingy sqshemet Guests: Administrivia: bbaren: I accidentally broke the fluke thermocouple; I move we allocate $50 for a new one. [Second, white ballot.] mitchb: Do you want to censure yourself for that? bbaren: Are there any motions on the floor? mitchb: If there are, we can suck them up with the new Dustbuster. achernya: I move for $41 to order a new Dustbubster with 1-day shipping. [Second, white ballot.] quentin: As per sipb-office, I move we allocate $2,043.98 for a new iMac with RAM (to be installed by us) and AppleCare. This will be better than MKC. [Second, white ballot.] SIPB Projects Report: sqshemet: We had the last Cluedump; it was dlaw talking about Go. It was awesome, and now they're over. The series went really well. jhawk: Do you have any stats you can share with us? sqshemet: Attendance started to drop off near the end because of hosage. dlaw: The smallest was Ur/Web with 7; the largest was the second week with 29. lfaraone: sipb-voip has two new maintainers: achernya and myself. We are working on making it a useful service that will be more maintainable. achernya: Friendly amendment, I'm not a maintainer, I just make sure it doesn't explode. Other: achernya: Yesterday the save-in-case-of-fire box was saved on account of there being a fire alarm in W20. It was saved by myself, lfaraone, omalley, and thallada. lexrj: Did you use the frisbee? achernya: I don't know the purpose of the frisbee. lexrj: You're outside and bored, play frisbee. achernya: Oh, no it was raining. lexrj: This is my first meeting in over two years. lfaraone: This is my first meeting in about... six days. mitchb: You had one on Tuesday without us? lfaraone: Only you. Other Other: lexrj: Winter is coming. Membership Election: dlaw: I'm dlaw, I'm a junior in 6-2 and 18; I've been coming to meetings for a while, written a few one-off patches for projects but haven't been really involved. Recently I co-organized the cluedump series for htis fall. sqshemet: I showed up here in June and didn't leave. I've co-organized cluedumps, I've been attempting to help with Scripts with varying degrees of success. dwilson: What should next year's cluedump organizers do differently? dlaw: Reserve a room in W20 rather than out in the east side of the main group, since it'd reduce the time to transport snacks and we'd have a greater walk-in potential. sqshemet: And not deal with the schedules office. dlaw: They double-booked us three times. glasgall: I'd add that people writing cluedumps should either be members or arrange office access so we don't wind up with people trying to get food out of the office five minutes beforehand. abost: I might suggest advertising a little bit better; the way I found out was a leftover poster in the basement of building 26. jhawk: From a prior year? abost: Yeah. Anyway, I'm glad that I heard about them, which is how I started coming to SIPB, but it's something to keep in mind. achernya: Our bulletin board is very empty. Choose something that hasn't been on it to put on it. sqshemet: The couch. bbaren: Clearly you've been reading previous meetings. glasgall: Who's been playing Ingress against me, and can I request you stop? dlaw: A hologram would be very nice. They exist. bbaren: A grumpy fuzzball would be very cool. glasgall: How do you doublespace cluedumps? dlaw: It's all about preparedness. sqshemet: I'd say talk to Schedules; they'll do it for you. jhawk: What's the thermocouple effect? dlaw: When a temperature difference at a metal boundary causes an electrical potential? jhawk: But what is it really? dlaw: When thermocouples are very small and people don't realize they're thermocouples. mitchb: Can either of you recount for us the story of the Great Flood of SIPB? dlaw: One day for mysterious reasons, water started coming out of the ceiling and going into the floor. sqshemet: Things got wet. lfaraone: How wet did they get? sqshemet: Depends on the thing. mitchb: What do you do with completely flooded books for the next half-a-year? sqshemet: Heat guns? mitchb: Apparently 'put them in the freezer and forget about them'. jhawk: Do you think everything mycroft does is correct? mitchb: It's what was *done*. By the way, it was 'chilled water', which is ethylene glycol. You don't want to drink it. glasgall: Where's the save in case of fire box. bbaren: And the fuse box, and the fire extinguisher. [They are pointed out.] mitchb: Name three things in the box. dlaw: Frisbee. sqshemet: One-time pads. mitchb: Why do you know what's in the box we're not supposed to open? dwilson: Make up a story for why mitchb and quentin had to get OTPs out last 4 AM. dlaw: They were attempting to compromise the account of someone who had an account in the box. sqshemet: In the process, they managed to break cryptogrpahy. mitchb: Please point to the nearest non-functional LISP machine. dlaw: Isn't LISP by definition functional? mitchb: I will accept that in lieu of a pointing finger. [sqshemet points towards East Campus. The answer is possibly one of Stat, MIT Museum, and Google Cambridge.] jhawk: Two of the items you were asked to point out have problems. Describe them. sqshemet: The SICOF box is hard to pull out. We should go through it. The fire extinguisher is not in the office. lfaraone: What do you do if there's a fire? sqshemet: Institute policy is to not fight fires. It depends what's on fire and how big it is. dlaw: And whether it's my fault. lfaraone: Are you or have you ever been a member of Students for a Democratic Society? dlaw: No. sqshemet: No. achernya: Can you tell us why this was asked? sqshemet: SDS once tried to infiltrate other groups to steal their funding. achernya: Please demonstrate encrypting/decrypting something with a one-time pad. bbaren: The pad is 31337. [dlaw encrypts 'hello' as 'kfoov' and sqshemet decrypts it.] glasgall: Favorite programming language and least favorite feature/design decision? dlaw: Go. My least favorite feature is the existence of stunted exceptions; it satisfies neither the people who think exceptions are good nor the ones that think they're good. sqshemet: I like Python but not whitespace sensitivity. jhawk: SIPB hasn't produced an annual report since 2005. How do you feel about this? dlaw: I don't really care. sqshemet: I think we produce reports as necessary. jhawk: The purpose is to maintain our visibility with IS&T so they know we're not just goofing off. sqshemet: Doesn't ISTAB help with that? bbaren: Both of you have spent the last term on cluedumps; what's another mechanism you feel would be useful for community outreach? dlaw: Scheduled office hours, where if people are looking for help people could come. sqshemet: Absolute beginner targeted hackathons. I think it's sometimes daunting for everybody at a hackathon to seem to know what they're doing. jhawk: Last night around midnight I was sitting in the dark in lobby 13 talking to a police officer. He said he hadn't seen people in the office lately. Why do you think that is? dlaw: Time of year, decreased activity in general. sqshemet: I guess my frame of reference is summer vs school year, and there are many more people. achernya: Given that we have a staffing problem, which I can attest to, how do you intend to fix it? dlaw: I will open the door when I find it closed. bbaren: I assume you'll remain inside the office when you do so. bbaren: On that note, what are the requirements for the office to be open? sqshemet: Have a member in the office or a prospective who was trusted by a member. bbaren: Technically you're not supposed to leave prospectives in the office. dwilson: Is that the case? bbaren: I don't think there's anything in the constitution. Anyway, the qualifier I was looking for is that the member must be *conscious*. bbaren: Name at least three SIPB projects which have become famous outside of SIPB. sqshemet: Scripts, LAMP. dlaw: Define famous. bbaren: Three projects started by SIPB members which have become famous outside of MIT. I revise my question. dlaw: Ksplice... bbaren: The ones I was thinking of are Ogg and the Perl DeCSS script. achernya: How about Mosh? quentin: Arguably X. bbaren: I move quentin ask a question. quentin: Why do you two want to be a SIPB member. mitchb: I think quentin should make number and thing agree. bbaren: If elected you will share one key and Athena account. dlaw: I want to help SIPB continue to be SIPB; to help maintain the projects and the culture and the structure of the organization. sqshemet: I like the people here and what happens, and would like to be involved in a more official capacity; I hate not being able to run the prospectivize script. bbaren: At this time, I'd like to ask all non-members to leave the office. [Begin closed session.] [Both elected 8-0-0.] The meeting was adjourned at . Minutes taken and submitted by phurst.