Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 05/18/98 The meeting was called to order at 19:30:00 by cat. In attendance were Voting members: jered hartmans jdaniel nygren svalente yandros magdalen cat jmorzins klmitch yoav | pipa yak kretch foley Associate members: mhpower jweiss jemorris srz jhawk rjbarbal | kcr sgw xiphmont tytso mycroft mhbraun shabby jewell marc Non-voting members: Prospectives: gisele sepherke mwp@mwpnet.com tb jmercado jjnichol lnemzer Guests: taralee lxs Treasurer's Report: hartmans: How much money do we have? svalente: No idea. hartmans: Suggest we spend all our money on chairs. cat: Do we have enough research to choose good chairs, given how these last ones have performed? hartmans: I will find someone to do research. svalente: You'll need to find a new treasurer soon, I'm planning on graduating. Sorry for lack of warning. kcr: Students retain their status over the summer. cat: it would be polite to not resign until next term, since elections over the summer are frowned upon. svalente: ok cat: so we'll have an election sometime at the begining of next term. Chairman's Report: rjbarbal: Move the motion sent out in e-mail yesterday. (see below) [Fails due to lack of second; revisted after elections] Elections meeting for sepherke begin yoav: What projects have you worked on? sepherke: Office manual, iWebmaster, was a webmaster, just started project list last night, helped with user questions. svalente: How do you doublespace in EZ? sepherke: OLC stock answers. sgw: Anyone in the office you don't know? Knows everyone she can see. hartmans: What was the most out of date thing in the office manual? sepherke: The list of machines, probably. Banana was still on it. AFS backup was out of date as well. The document was revised to be easily passed on and be a general source of information. jhawk: What color is W20's connection to the MITnet backbone? [One of the correct answers is orange, but nobody is certain.] kcr: Ask a member something you know that we probably don't. sepherke: (to pipa) What is the name of the PolyJ compiler, and what is the specific problem with using PolyJ on an Ultra? [Answer: guavac. On Ultras only, the translated file is missing all the 'import' statements.] xiphmont: Name the only Athena platform that could run 'crashme' indefinitely. [Answer: The VAXen.] mhpower: Question about mail bouncing to discuss server. If something similar happened for SIPB, what would your priorities be? sepherke: If it were something large scale, I'd drop some things, or find someone to cover for a while. jmorzins plays anem-the-machine with sepherke. jhawk: What other activities consume a lot of your time. sepherke: OLC, that's about it. kcr plays name-the-chair with sepherke. shabby: Move that mycroft ask the question. jered: Objection, mycroft isn't crufty enough. kcr: Friendly amendment to tytso. [denied] shabby withdraws the motion. rjbarbal: Move that mhbraun ask the question. mhbraun: Sepherke, why do you want to be a SIPB member? sepherke: It give me an opportunity to learn, help out other people, and to discuss things about computing with a lot of people who are very knowledgable. I also want to give back to the organization, and I think I can do that best as a member. I also like SIPB because it has older people, and when I leave MIT and want to be able to come back here and be a part of the organization. [17-1-1 sepherke is a member] Elections meeting for sepherke end kcr: Move to have a 10 minute recess to find a working bathroom. [second] [many-5-4 motion passes] hartmans: The secretary would like to apoligize for the lack of last week's minutes going out, due to hosage. rjbarbal: I move that: It shall be a standing policy of the SIPB that: a) All members (both full and associate) present at a general meeting may vote on any motion that does not pertain to elections and that is not otherwise limited by the Constitution of the SIPB. b) Only full members may vote on motions pertaining to elections. c) Anyone present at a general meeting may give a preference in a non-binding "straw poll". mycroft: It was stated in your mail that this is the current policy of SIPB, however this doesn't seem to be the case particularly regarding who can close a meeting. jhawk: Why is this not a constitutional issue? rjbarbal: I thought about doing that, but it's easier to get a standing policy, there might be cases where we have special votes where we might want the same sort of policy, and it was not 100% clear to me that this was needed in the constitution. jhawk: What does the constitution say? rjbarbal: There are limits on who can vote in elections and who can vote to close meetings. jhawk: I assert it's inappropriate for this policy to exist given similar policy in the constitution. It might be appropriate as an interim measure until the constitution is updated. hartmans: I disagree, but ask: Why do we need this? rjbarbal: Ever time we have the policy vote people ask "can I vote on this?" I want to make this clear. mhpower: I think the idea is a good idea, but I don't think the wording is right at all. "pertaining to an election" is too vague. Friendly ammendment to change "pertaining to elections" to "constituting an elections process". [Friendly ammendment accepted.] kcr: Your motion is neither pressing nor well thought-out. kcr: The statement regarding straw polls seems unreasonable as other cases may be desired by the person doing the straw polls. jhawk: Friendly ammendment to eliminate section c). [fails] [PUSH] hartmans: move to postpone indefinitely. [second] [PUSH] hartmans: move to close discussion. [second] [many-2-3 motion passes.] [POP] [13-5-5 motion passes] [POP] [Motion postponed indefinitely.] nygren: Move that: The SIPB asserts that users should always feel comfortable and willing to come into its office at all points when the office is open. The SIPB also recognizes the importantance of maintaining a social atmosphere its office. The SIPB requests that affiliates avoid engaging in behavior in the SIPB office that is likely to make users (or other affiliates) uncomfortable; this includes, but is not limited to, excessive PDA (public displays of affection). The SIPB requests that affiliates avoid engaging in behavior in the SIPB office that interfers with the SIPB's ability to further its goals; this includes, but is not limited to, creating excessive noise. hartmans: Friendly amendment to strike the acronym PDA. [Accepted]. rjbarbal: Move that the latter 2 sections of the motion change to: The SIPB requests that affiliates avoid engaging in behavior in the SIPB office that is likely to make users (or other affiliates) uncomfortable or that otherwise interfers with the SIPB's ability to further its goals. [second] mycroft: This is a really slippery slope, we are simply going to spend a lot of time flaming about what makes people uncomfortable. tytso: If you don't have specifics, you might as well not have the motion. We need a general social consensus about what is and is not acceptable. This isn't the end-all, but it's a start. hartmans: I'm concerned this is too strong, anything anyone claims makes them feel uncomfortable could justify them asking it to stop. kcr: I think that the [Ad Hoc committee] report is much more ignorable than a motion. mhpower: I think it's important for people to feel uncomfortable at time as it makes you realize that others don't have the same values as you do. hartmans: Richard, you're interpretation is valid, but not correct. It's a matter of difference of degree, the original motion is more constrained. yandros: Last time this came up, we didn't need motions or policy. [PUSH] yoav: Move to close discussion (on richard's amendment) [second] [many-4-3 passes] [POP] Voting on amendment: [4-11-6 fails] [PUSH] rjbarbal: Move to postpone indefinitely. [second] [PUSH] kcr: This seems like a really bad idea. Move to close discussion. [second] [13-4-6 passes] [POP] [9-8-4 passes, postponed indefinitely] [POP] [Motion postponed indefinitely.] mhpower: Move to adjourn. [fails, no second] jemorris: Last week rfrankel and I merged in previously approved amendments to the constitution, so we now have one consistent document, which the EC has been asked to approve of. hartmans: People should think very hard before preventing some portion of the board from discussing an issue. mhpower: Is it valid for a member to ask for a non-member to not stay around the office? There was a case this past weekend of such a person who was considered abusive. hartmans: I would prefer that a member doing so get a consensus of the members in the office. jhawk: I think it's reasonable for the people sitting near the door to use their best judgement. nygren: I think that people should inform at least the chair in just an instance. Office Report: lxs: I come from IS with Rhapsody DR2. Our licensing agreement is one license per CD; honor this. If you need more for debugging, talk to us and we'll get you a 2nd CD. This is prerelease software, keep it somewhere safe. nygren: The plastic nameplate next to the door broke off, we should get it replaced. cat: Two new speakers got brought in by jhawk, they are in temporary locations currently. jhawk: I decided it would help the office to have more speakers playing softer music. I picked up a pair at Swapfest and they work. cat: Currently portnoy and zsr experience louder music than the rest of the office due to the configuration. mycroft: Move that the SIPB buy a plastic OPEN/CLOSED sign. [motion dies] jhawk: When you throw out packaging, remove the packing list. Office Cleaning Report: cat: It happened. jhawk: I decided to declare Saturday as office ceiling cleaning day. jhawk: People should remember to close bottles and nozzles of cleaning supplies. cat: When people leave the office, they should look around for obvious trash. MIT Computing Report: jweiss: There have been more attacks on named on MITnet, Sunday morning and today. There will be a 8.1.17 patch release going out tonight. This will fix the problem on Suns and Indys. Computer Services: mhpower: There were a few forged bounced mailbomb attacks on SIPB servers this week. mhpower: There have been some web server stability problems over the past several days. SIPB Backup Report: yandros: Joe did picayune, I did charon. hartmans: The Premium cleaning tapes arrived today from ADS. cat: We received one our backup tapes via UPS; it was in a drive we sent in for repair. Publications Report: xiphmont: We are out of the green Emacs cards. yandros: People have sent several requests to sendpubs, sendpubs is being lame. sepherke: The office manual is significantly revised. Send comments to sepherke and gisele. R/O Report: sepherke: Activities midway form is submitted; looking for people to help and move stuff for the actual event. elliot (via cat): We really need someone to volunteer to assemble our one page summer mailing. It's due this Friday. gisele volunteers, but can't work until Wednesday morning. sepherke as well. They get the job. IAP Report: '() CokeComm Report: sepherke: There's no candy left. jweiss: People should take down empty bottles. pipa: If people want to help with a trip to BJs, talk to me. Other: jhawk: There was a power event centered at Brighton substation on Saturday. mhpower: 2nd place in 6.170 tournament was won by a team with 2 SIPB prospectives: lgdean and dmaze. hartmans, jered: The DoJ did not seek an injunction, and Win98 shipped today. The Federal government, 20 states, and D.C. filed anti-trust lawsuits against Microsoft today. Everyone Look at Jonathon: yandros: Post-meeting ultimate. Other Other: jered: Bertucci's SUCKS! kretch: spatula-city now has 3 screens. The meeting was adjourned at 21:09:06. Minutes taken and submitted by jered.