Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 30 March, 1981 The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by Charles A. Hornig In attendance were: JAY, GMP, NAHA, CAH, WER, DCP, RDM, NML, WMY, RK, BIM, Barmar, DMK, KYM. Late were: ACW, J9, Steve LeBlanc, Richard Lawhorn, Penny Berman, Ken Sinclair The minutes of the meeting of 3/23 were read and accepted as corrected. User Interrupt: NSBE (National Society of Black Engineers) (James Clark) Wants to type up proceedings of recent conference at MIT. Had funding for registration of conference. Much of that funding was wasted by ill-timed crash. Must enter proceeding text and addresses of attendees to send proceedings to. WER: move to give them $100 for now to set to work. Seconded. There was discussion of the amount of text to be done. The amount seems reasonable. Some discussion of our funding priorities followed, in an attempt to explicate whether NSBE would be guaranteed funding. There was no apparent consensus on the issue. The motion to give $100 passes. Treasurer's Report: (The Treasurer Groaned) Spending for March: $11,509.48. So far in April billing period: $798.30. The treasurer is visiting finboard for next year's money. People should check off their phone bills. Year to date, $92,052.53. The chairman will see Wes when Wes gets back from someplace next week. What should we do? Bill thinks that there is nothing we can do, since we will either be bailed out or not. Bill will write the next-year's proposal in time for a meeting with Wes when he returns. Chairman's Report: The chairman has been trying to talk to Wes. Soley went and talked to people at the GA about the resolution that would have them approve our chairmen after we elect them. They will pass this thing regardless of us. We are a committee of them, after all, or so their reasoning goes. We can take creative action if they try to use the rule obnoxiously. RK: we should tell them to go away. BIM: what else would we be if not a student organization? WMY: they have no leverage over us. We might be able to be an MIT community organization. But we should do nothing drastic now. WMY will attend the GA meeting on Thursday. Also a meeting at a luncheon at noon on Wednesday to meet these people informally. KYM: If the GA don't get a quorum within 20 days, the UAP gets to choose our chairman. But if there is no GA, the UAP is powerless and can be ignored. BIM: this resolution is designed to take over the SCC. Thus it is not supposed to be reasonable. RK: move to tell the GA that we will not accept their intervention in our elections. Various: this will just incite them to nail us too. WMY: there is a consensus about how we feel, we should do nothing until after they pass or fail to pass this thing. Mark Plotnick had added himself to SIPB at MC. He was removed. Should he have been? Steve: this was poorly handled, he was repeatedly removed without any notice. CAH: I deleted him last. I understand that our policy is that that mailing list is for members only. If you want to mail just to members, there should be a list. CENT: If we want private mailing lists, they should be a pointer to a file, not in NAMES >. BIM: should the mailing list even be on MC? Is this specific to MP? WMY: MP is not at issue. We had the same argument about Chris Ryland. RK: he could read the office wall, or mail files, or C.SIPB. WMY: being on the list is different. Straw poll: should we declare the list to be members only? Yes. It will be moved to a file. Fred Richardson is a high school student doing independent study in computer science. We gave him an account on project SIPB last year. He wants to come back and do some more. Someone must call him and set things up. RK: he owes cokecom money, please get him to pay it. Steve LeBlanc volunteers to call him. (and to get him to pay up). Ken Sinclair came in during this discussion. Office Report: CENT has been working over the lent out book list. She has been hassling people who have our books. RK: SIPB_print has an alias of spbp. People had made trash of the monthly output, and had not even looked at it, let alone put it in RK's drawer where it belongs. OINK OINK -- please don't leave homework spread across the desks. Computer Services: The SIPB_Daemon had a cutoff of $20. We changed it to $50 daily. There is a grungy font catalog for the Daemon. There is no documentation for the super/subscript stuff yet. Should random users or SIPB users be able to mail files to the SIPB_Daemon for printing on the spinwriter? DMK changed the acl so he could mail them from his Student account. The reasons were complex, but from now on, do not do that. Leave the acl's null. There are super and subscripts and special characters. BIM has to write documentation. Telecommunications: NRSA data set must be ordered. Senior House wants to buy a terminal. Will we take away the DECwriter? Certainly not until the next reallocation shift. Perhaps not at all. Opinions on the subject were varied. Should we warn WILG/ADP and ET that we may take away their terminals? We don't want misunderstandings like this year. BIM: wait till we hear about terminals from ADB. WMY: send out a letter reminding people that we have finite terminals, and that terminals are cheap. CAH: we should not send letters saying that we may screw people. This should be part of our normal terminal letters. CENT: again, put this off for a week. RLL: ADB won't give us money until Wes comes through one way or another because they like to match funds. RK: this should be sent to everyone, including Baker House. We should be very careful about making sure that only letters are payed attention to, not random phone calls. The terminal concentrator runs, saith the DCP. Our chaos cable is approaching. We should be ready to do something by the summer, to allow us to do 370/Multics switching. We will need someplace to put it, and other useful stuff. People should think about helping out. Does the SIPB want the grinnel system? It isn't really available yet. Perhaps Leo will like it for Multics/370. Publications Report: For a week there was a slip on the board. We have new policy statements. People should go to Beane. A week is too long. Tell WER about changes you would like in the new policy statements. KYM: give people policy statements to read before giving them applications. Barmar: MS-1 are now $1. No more for us to handout free. Still cheaper than the equivalent VM document. Other: Election of Katharine Marvin to membership. She is elected. Also declared associate as she is not currently a student. Applications: Bob Theil: $40 to meeting by naha. Taking a MHD class, UROP, needs some computrons. This is not for the UROP, auto limit is the problem. No problem, limit is $200. Given. Ken Sinclair $170 -- text editing for 21.760, also manual for company he works for. previously had $25 in october. Barmar: editing manual for a company? General: its for a class. Barmar: move to give. Passes. TO MEETING SUMMARY ------------------ $100 to meeting NSBE for proceesings of conference $ 40 to Theil for MHD $175 to Ken Sinclair for course text editing Coop total: $222.00 Other Auto Total: $1525.00 ($50 370) To Meeting Total: $315.00 Grand Total: $2062.00 Other Other: New Tourist policy at MC, tourists need sponsor, DCP is sponsor for sipb members. There was a trip to Pennsylvania to RK's family's house. Reagan was shot at and hit today, but not killed. Meeting was adjourned to cake for many birthdays. The meeting was adjourned at 2200 Minutes taken and submitted by Benson I. Margulies