Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 3/16/1981 The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by Benson I. Margulies In attendance were BIM, WER, naha, CAH, RK, GCO, barmar, Steve, GMP, HGA, Alan, Mark Plotnick. Late were: JSL, JIS, Jay, RLL. The minutes of the meeting of 3/9/81 were read and accepted as corrected. JSL came in during the reading of the minutes. Treasurer's Report: The VT100 was bought and arrived today. c/ arrived at this time. We have spent $6,892 so far this month. Chairman's Report: The WMY, RLL, and BIM met with Low and Corbato' this week. The most important finding was that the Institute DOES consider us to represent student computing. Nothing concrete in terms of funding was actually laid down, though. Office Report: RK cleaned the office today. The office was waxed this week. c/ redid the office book signout list, address list, and interesting phone-number list. These lists are kept in the VSDB directory on AI. Maybe they should be moved to Multics, but they are in R. BIM is annoyed at the lack of ventilation in the office. Perhaps we should get a fan, or maybe open up the holes in the ceilings. Let's call Physical Plant. Computer Services: I/O lossage: The weekly routine that processed the I/O logs were buggy, so we weren't being credited for all we should have been getting, and the weekly was also running out of CPU time. RK fixed it and added a new weekly that runs in queue 4 with no time limit. The routines that are taking so much time may be rewritten in PL/I. CAH proposes that the SpinWriter be run as a real daemon instead of an interactive process. He says that the only functionality we would lose would be the ability to log into Multics over the hard-wired line. What we would win would be the ability to have finer control over the daemon using "x" commands. BIM also thinks it is a win. BIM says that JIS doesn't like it because it makes us more dependent on the operators. BIM has been trying to get the new backward-printing software for the SpinWriter installed. The IPC pool rooms are now open 24 hours on weekdays. The only time they seem to be closed now is Saturday after 17:30 until Monday morning. Telecommunications Report We have to tell the phone company to change our phones in the Student Center terminal room. There is a VT100 in the office, but it should not stay here long. CAH wants to move it tonight. BIM moved to move the VT100 to McCormick and their LA36 to Random Hall. McCormick and two fraternities have asked for video terminals. The motion passes. Naha moved to put a 212 in McCormick to replace the 113. Passes. WER send letters to those living groups who have not paid us. We sent a letter to Baker saying that they may be billed for the dataset that disappeared. Steve is planning to redo the documentation on the wall in the Student Center terminal room. He will work on it during Spring Break (next week). He wants people to help him. We should also write some info segments along this line. WER spoke to the new terminal chairman at Baker, and she and JSL convinced him that there was no way that we are giving them a terminal this term. Publications Report: c/ will finalize the new warning form and ECS handout. WER will finalize the new policy statement. BIM checked the office handout drawer. It looks well fed. The new Lisp Notes went to Course 6 on Friday. They only cost $2.43 a piece, since we had them Offset, not Xeroxed Bulk. Other: WMY came in at this time. There should be another User Meeting. WER thinks that we shouldn't have it because we don't want to attract users. BIM will coordinate this, and try to solicit help from the Vice-Chairman. He doesn't want to work alone; people should get involved. The drop poster from last term is still around. There is a darkroom key in the cash box. People should sign up for their long-distance phone calls. Including those for SIPB business. Someone should go to the MIT Computer Network meeting. CAH will go. This is the comittee of which LSP is a member. WMY told some more of the going-ons at the meeting with Low. He spoke about the talks about how much we need, and the endowments that MIT receives. The Provost's office only has a discretionary fund of $75,000! BIM had suggested that a Student-Computing endowment be set up, so that people contributing to MIT can send it right to this, i.e. us. It was discovered that Paul Gray was instrumental in our keeping our $100,000 budget last year. WMY will make a budget proposal, and talk to Wes Burner. He will also talk to the CCE about funding. GMP announced that tomorrow Jerrets, Prisident of Honeywell Information Systems, will be giving the first of a series of $100,000 donation to MIT for LCS and the EE&CS Department. Applications: WARNING - Quader K. - New information. There was much confusion between him and us. It seems cleared up. WARNING - David S. Wilson - He was doing Navy ROTC stuff on his Student account. He promised never to do it again. Robert V. Duncan - Additional request of $100 on the 370 for doing lab calculations. He has had $100. He seems willing to move to Multics, although he is fairly familiar with the 370 already. BIM moved to give him $100 on Multics. BIM says he will help him convert. It has been left to the discretion of the office. JIS and Jay came in at this time. JSL moved that we set up per-term accounts, rather than leaving all accounts till the end of the fiscal year, and make this known on the policy staatement. Perhaps we should have a Student login message during the week before such a cutoff. WMY suggests that there be some hassle involved with getting the account turned back on, so that it isn't just beaurocratic paper-shuffling. The policy statement should at least tell when accounts expire. BIM agrees that accounts should only be for a term, although it should be fairly easy to get continuances. JIS remarked that flushing accounts will save us much disk space. Alan doesn't think that this needs to be discussed now. The cutoffs would be 2/1, 6/1, and 9/1. JIS doesn't think that it should be on the policy statement, sice they might change, but we would have many old policy statements. BIM suggests that we should just put on the policy statement that accounts are only valid for a term unless they give us a call. The motion was tabled, because the concensus was against deciding on it now. IFC (Bruce A Kiernan) - $60 to print the IFC newsletter. WMY remembers that the person said that they were coming to us because the IFC didn't want to fund it anymore. Alan corrected him, saying that they were previously getting marginal use of the Dean's Office's word processor. c/ moved to defer, since he said he could be here next week. Passed. Randy Race - No amount requested. For papers this term for Existentialism. Previously had $200 on Student and also a Coop account. Defered to next week. RLL came in at his point. Wendy E. Rowe - $100 - for getting better acquainted with Multics. Has had $100 this year. Promised not to do SIPBADMIN text editing on this account. Moved to give. Passed. Edwin E. Seidewitz - $100 by EC Vote - to finish the semester. It has been suggested that the auto'ed applications should be checked ahead of time, and only exceptional ones be read at the meeting. Who would we want to screen them? RK doesn't think that all interesting ones would be caught. Dies for lack of interest. Total appropriations: without Coop Autoed: Student: $830. 370: $0 To Meeting: $100, all Student. Coop: $115 Other Other: Steve thinks that we should field an IM team. Jay and WER are going to be interviewing random MIT students (us) for a 15.301 project. Question: would you be in favor if your children wanted to go to MIT? RLL reminded us that he will stop being treasurer in a few months when he graduates. Where are the three plates we used to own? Alan has been accepted into Graduate School here. This afternoon some users came in with a 15.301 question: should Course 6 be split into two departments? The meeting was adjourned at 21:13. Minutes taken and submitted by Barry W. Margolin, not acting like Benson.