Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of April 13, 1981 The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by William M. York. In attendance were GMP, KYM, RDM, JSL, RLL, JAY, J9, DMK, CAH, RK, BIM, DCP, BARMAR, WMY, KHS, PENNY. NAHA WAS LATE. The minutes of the meeting of 6 April were read and accepted as corrected. Treasurer's Report: If we continued disk spending at the current rate, we would have $5500 left for the remaining two months. But we will not spend this much, so realistically we will spend a total of 8K a month for the remaining two months. We are clearly going to overspend, but it is not clear how much. WMY: the rates are going up for Multics, there will be a cpu charge, but it will primarily effect the number crunchers. ACW: what will this mean to emacs? How much will it cost? Some explanation of emacs usage followed. DMK: can we flush marginal applications? USER INTERRUPT: Mary Munson: Project STILE, a project with the Cambridge School system. A research program to analyze the effectiveness of the project. Request for CMS/SPSS, $150. Barmar: Will multiple people use this account? yea. WMY: where does this cost estimate come from? the professor. Penny: CS? JSL: when we they do this work? First two weeks of May. BIM: why the 370? The leader of this effort is an SPSS enthusiast. Motion to give $150. Penny: if we fail to allocate, what happens? The study does not happen. It cannot happen this summer. BIM: is the 370 really the right thing? WMY: they know how to use it. Motion passes. USER INTERRUPT: Charles Quintero $75 to meeting by JSL. This is a paper for a course in polymers, paper is crucial to the course, need multiple copies for multiple readers. ALAN: why is this application different from all other applications? Its a big paper, there have to be copies. There is a motion to reject. Passes. More Treasurer's Report: We got 900 record back from the cleanup. CAH: we haven't been kicked back for the spinwriter this year. We will correct this. GMP: how much money? CAH: about $500. Chairman's Report: *** BANG *** Newton Loui asked to be declared inactive. So be it. There was a meeting on Sunday in the afternoon of the GA executive board to rework the motion about general committees. The new version calls for an annual report. But they will not hack our bylaws. As for the motion about chairpeople, there was much argument, and the new motion just says "subject to the approval of the GA." The chairman will go to the GA meeting. Our bylaws are always subject to their review/modification. We should have an annual report, including an explanation of what happened to our budget this year. This should be a short letter we can send out separately, but it should still be part of the report. Perhaps we should get somethig into the (ich) Tech that states our view of the funding situation, before they print something nasty. We should issue a press release, and send a letter to the Tech. Benson will produce it. Fascist Graphs were unveiled. Annual Report Report: CAH: I have been editing the annual report. Two seperate sets of changes have been made, by CAH and Penny. It lacks continuity. It also lacks content, things need to be written. Office Report: RK: please date and sign messages left on the board. Barmar: we are still not filling up all the office hours. We are not covering the hours. Why does noone show up for SIPB meetings? Jay: it is hard toward this time of year. People have other committments. WMY: we do not require meeting attendance, but people are expected to contribute. We keep making more work, but we do not really have more people to do it. KTOC -- things will be thrown out if they are left on the desk. Computer Services: Terminal Concentrator works. We should get ready to use it. Grinnel Report: we cannot use it, but perhaps the center might use it? Who should we talk to? How would they maintain it? The source cannot be done on Multics, 'cause there is no PALX. RLL: all the keypunches are moving, the VT100 room will be solid terminals. We will talk to Leo et al. HSSP-PL1 lacked multip, or did it? We do not understand this, someone must investigate the PDTE. They do not in fact have multip. HSSP-LISP/Alec Destry had trouble with a password. It turned out to be his assistant. Joyce Suen has annoyed the operators so much that Leo seems to believe that HSSP students displace too many real users. The exact fault is hard to place. If nothing special happens, HSSP will no longer be able to use the terminal rooms. Joyce bought manuals, AGAIN. But we do not pay for them. Each time it happens we refuse to pay, and it sticks. Spinwriter use from other machines: Do we need untabbification, or no underscore queue names? How about form feeds? Can we get them through? CAH will do this, or at least try. WMY: why do we have this? RDM: So people do not have to log the SpinWriter into other systems. So people can use EECS from the student center. No progress on global AML. We tried to get access to unbundled stuff, but Jean Bonney was too busy this week. Still no doc on superscripts. Publications Report: nil ADB proposal report: RLL has not been able to get in touch with the FinBoard person for the proposal. Telecommunications report: Propose the terminal concentrator again. We have demonstrated feasability. We should also make a proposal for terminals for the dorms, parallel to that to the ADB. Some discussion of the details followed. CAH: make a better terminal room. Should we be putting 2 terminals in the dorms? JSL: how about a public terminal room in McGregor? It would be useful for all the people out in the far west. WMY: terminals are crucial. Corby thinks dorm terminals are good, also concentrator. General: can't we have a special meeting? Sure, tuesday night 7:30pm. Other: Someone has to clean up the manual racks. They are a mess. They are hard to use, and not up to date. Barmar and others will fix them up. Applications: Deborah Estrin, (no amt) project proposal. If the grant comes through, no more need for SIPB. Defer until we learn more about the project. A discussion of how to get more members to work on random office work ensued. It was proposed to establish a shit-list of members who would be "on the spot" to take care of office work. It was decided to invent the position of coolie-for-the-day, and assign everyone a day in which they would be responsible for any outstanding randomness. That is, come in in the morning or reasonably early afternoon and take care of things like Beane runs, postoffice stuff, calling in terminals, whatever. There will be a box with jobs to do. Applications: Tsai, Wei, unspecified amount, to learn to use emacs to be able to do master's thesis later. Motion to reject: passes. (he was not present at the meeting) Haskins, Junior, Randolf: $25 to meeting to finish assignments. He will go to Coop otherwise. (he was not here, had $150) Motion to reject: passes. Coop Report: RLL: 1) Explain that we must be notified when they are finished. 2) When they request a refund: tell them that me must wait till the end of the billing period, when we get bills. 3) Explain about manuals, disk charges, and dprints, as charges that do not appear immediately as usage. For Coop: we need a delete_user that deletes users files but leaves the home directory, to preserve disk charges. We need a mechanism for keeping track of Coop users terminations. We want a Coop login message about this. How about a separate file of Coop applications? This would make accounting control much simpler. How about a firm cutoff date from Coop users when we take the application? Much discussion followed. We should have a cutoff from them. There are ledgers for Coop stuff. We will fix delete_user to do the correct thing with respect to homedirs. There are still misc. charges that have to be charged by hand. Appropriations: Auto: student: 0; 370: 0; To Meeting: student: 0; 370: $150; Coop: $230 Why were there so many terminal trouble reports for New House out on the desk? It is broken. It may not have been plugged in. Other Other: Elections in 3 weeks for ocifers. SCEP has 400 records of quota, and are apparently doing something. We don't know what. print_face_of_moon exists for the office TV. gloria! the shuttle is risen! CPR is leaving. Penny's mother is running from, excuse me for, school committee. CAH has made the mail receiver take control characters. J9: the shuttle went up on rooket bosters. J9: there is a carnival near our place. ALAN told a joke about control characters in mail. Barmar has been labeled. We now have some amazing old SIPB forms from the McGregor Library. The meeting was adjourned at 2300. Minutes taken and submitted by Benson I. Margulies