Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 10/9/2000 The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by nathanw. In attendance were Voting members: dmaze nathanw tibbetts yak sly jmorzins lgdean Associate members: fyfer kcr hartmans ingolia belmonte marc proven rjbarbal cana jhawk tlyu ocschwar | eichin cfox zacheiss jweiss Prospectives: xela aletta alex_c gschmidt lnemzer nim mwp | Treasurer's Report: sly: I don't have one. Chairman's Report: nathanw: We have a membership election for lnemzer. Let the grilling commence! tibbetts: Why is there hair on your face? kcr: I was going to ask the same thing...but you're the CEO of Tuneprint something-or-other, right? And y'all tend to spend a lot of time in the SIPB office, right? Is there a conflict of interest here? Why or why not? lnemzer: I remember precedent for this. We're working on getting an office, and when we get one, we'll be here less often. I've heard no complaints, and don't see any particular reason it's bad. hartmans: Where would you draw the line? What's appropriate to do or not? lnemzer: Mostly on use of MITnet in general, not running a commerce server off of MITnet. I wouldn't publish the SIPB phone number as a business contact. rjbarbal: What is your company doing? Can SIPB get stock options? lnemzer: Look at www.tuneprint.com. I won't say "no" to stock options now. hartmans: How do you handle priorities between being one of the few people in the office, waiting for some important call on your cell phone, and a user walks in complaining that they can't do their thesis because LaTeX prints "gobble gobble gobble"? lnemzer: I would warn the person that I might need to deal with some personal business. I couldn't deal with that sort of LaTeX problem anyways. hartmans: By definition, because I'm in the SIPB office, I consider being here more important to doing my work. If someone comes in, I try to be fairly attentive to them. jhawk: Name a bunch of SIPB services and the machines they run on. lnemzer: xcluster on lnitp; binkley has stats on www; AFS on the three "R"s in the machine room; any random service, including rtfm, sipb-nfs on charon. kcr: sipb-nfs runs on charon these days. hartmans: rtfm runs on penguin-lust. kcr: We have at least four servers that start with r. lnemzer: reynelda, ronald-ann, and, uh... [several people say "rosebud"] jmorzins: What types of machines do we have too many of? Too few? lnemzer: Too many running NetBSD. We have at least one Indy that's no longer in clusters. We have a higher percentage of Intel boxes than are in the clusters. I can't think of anything specific that we really should have but don't. hartmans: You've been around for a while. How did you get sucked in to SIPB? What should we do to suck people in better? lnemzer: I spent my freshman year not having any motivation to come in due to local feelings of disrespect on 5E. People asked me why I wasn't in the office IAP of my sophomore year, and I realized I had no rational reason to not be here. More generally, I'd agree that we need to seem less evil, and seem less closed. kcr: You're suggesting we should haze our prospectives less? lnemzer: I find this fun. It should seem like less of a closed community. We should seem more inviting when people walk in the door. jhawk: This is one of those "ask other people questions" things. Define the rules, and ask. lnemzer: I'm going to ask a question to a member I know doesn't know the answer, so he can either answer or defer to someone else who knows. Marc, what's the origin of the office rock? marc: Billions and billions of years ago, the universe was a mass of hot gases. Billions of years later, those gases combined into planets. On those planets, rocks were formed. One of those rocks made its way to W20-557. lnemzer: It was announced on 29 Aug 1988 during the office report that the rock lying around the office was going to stay against the wishes of the office manager. nathanw: In 1988, where was the office? lnemzer: Building 11? hartmans: SIPB's done some things over the past few years. Some of them have been useful, some haven't. What's been most useful? lnemzer: SIPB Linux/Athena was useful at 5.2. More recently, the working installer for the IS Linux/Athena is useful, and will be more useful once it's done and working. rtfm's been going on for a really long time. kcr: You are a Sloanie, no? What was your major? lnemzer: 15, Management Science specializing in Information Technology. kcr: You mentioned the RH/A 5.2 installer. RH 6.1 was released before we released SIPB/Athena 5.2. This may have been due to a lack of management on the part of SIPB. What would you do to correct this sort of problem? lnemzer: A good step is what we're starting to do with Debian/Athena, discussing before diving in what the goals of the project are going to be and how we're going to maintain it. ocschwar: Late one night, a user walks in complaining that wdc and some other person are doing something in the machine room causing the user to be very disconcerted. You notice that the other person is a venture capitalist that you need. lnemzer: I'd close the blinds in the machine room. sly: Have you answered the question, "what have you done for SIPB" yet? lnemzer: I've been around for 2 1/2 years now. I've hung around and answered questions. I've taught a couple of IAP classes, usually on installing and maintaining NetBSD/Athena. I'm probably the most active maintainer of hacks.mit.edu. I did a lot of the interaction between SIPB and UA/ASA groups for the past year or so, including our ads for the directory. kcr: Do you know the standard -er-joke question is? [no] So, the cluster is on fire. What do you do? lnemzer: I pull the alarm, try to make sure users are out of the cluster if possible, grab the save-in-case-of-fire box, if feasible, shut down machines. I might or might not lock the office. [It should be locked.] jmorzins: Is it time for Mark to ask the question? eichin: Why do you want to be a SIPB member? lnemzer: Recently, I've found myself in conversations where I'm not sure whether it's appropriate for me to be there. More generally, I'd like to keep the office open. If I'm not membered, my account will be going away in a few months, and I couldn't contribute to the community nearly as much any more. I've hooked up a turbine to Joe Barco's grave, and I'm trying to get a few more watts out of it. [Enter closed meeting 19:51] [9-0-0] [lnemzer is membered] [Exit closed meeting 20:20] nathanw: Our condolences, you're a SIPB member. tibbetts: Move to nominate alex_c for membership. [lgdean seconds] Alex has hacked on the Linux installer a lot, he bled all over the SIPB one-sheet. He's been maintaining the python locker for over a year; 6.170 depends on it now. [nathanw groans] It's damn inconvenient he doesn't have a root password and can't write to the sipb locker. [7-0-0] [election 10/16] tibbetts: Move to nominate nim for membership. He has mono; that's why he looks like he's stoned. He did SIPB rush. [yak seconds] nim: I used to do mutt stuff, it was almost in the outland locker. [7-0-0] [election 10/16] nathanw: Membership elections are great, but they're bad for my record [of short meetings]. nathanw: I was reminded during the closed meeting that we have a policy that if someone in the office is bothering you and you don't want to confront them directly, you should talk to the Chair. Office Report: marc: Were chairs ordered? [jweiss says yes] When do they show up? jweiss: One should show up the week after Thanksgiving, no schedule on the other one. kcr: The last motion I had passed was to buy a SCSI card for some random Linux machine to be determined later. I moved to allocate way too little money ($150) for it. It's an Adaptec 2944, probably. I don't have a price handy; $400 would be enough. Move to strike the allocation for $150, and allocate $400 for a SCSI card as previously discussed. [jmorzins seconds] sly: Friendly amend to amend the former allocation to $400. [accepted] [White ballot] [kcr allocation: $400 for SCSI card] zacheiss: The new Linux machine arrived, and machines got shuffled. bobbi-harlow is now sitting in a pile in the back. belmonte: anxiety-closet's external disk died today. jhawk: Marc broke Garry's pikachu's tail. tibbetts: I got the KVM and did a crappy job of setting it up. David did a better job of setting it up. We'll be getting a replacement since it's not dealing well with our hardware. xela: Move to allocate $75 for a new copy of the UNIX System Administration Handbook. [eichin seconds] [White ballot] [xela allocation: $75 for UNIX System Administration Handbook] tibbetts: Allocate $40 for a new edition of Java in a Nutshell. We have 1.0 and 1.1; we need 1.3/2.0. The new one covers Swing, not AWT. Revised: move to allocate $100 for the appropriate Nutshell books that cover Java and Swing. [jmorzins seconds] The books cost $30 each. [white ballot] [tibbetts allocation: $100 for Java Nutshell books] hartmans: People asked me to look at Oracle books. I got a list of Oracle books, but we don't want any of them. I'm going to do more work on that. zacheiss: MacOS X is finally installed on the new Mac. jhawk: Since the career fair didn't produce any drinky birds, we might want to look into replacements. nathanw: Move to get rid of the drinky birds. 1, they're filthy. 2, they're ugly. 3, they've done their job of impressing the Lime Group people. But they are and the area around them is disgusting. fyfer: I'm a huge fan, but I think sipb-drinky-birds-maintainers is doing a crappy job. tibbetts: We spent $2000 on a new Mac. I think the drinky birds are more useful than the Mac. jhawk: Things can be both useful and negatively useful at the same time. The Chair may want to consider the downsides of having the Nutella in the office for over a year. People should vote as their conscience sees fit. ocschwar: Friendly amendment to require that they go back to the Lime Group. [rejected] zacheiss: The drinky birds have made us more visible on campus. Some film group came in and asked to take pictures two weeks ago. xela: They give us a human face. It's a grimy human face, but it's a human face. ocschwar: We need to direct our obsessive-compulsive disorders one way or another. This is relatively safe. jhawk: We might replace the drinky birds with new ones every month. I'm concerned that the maintainers haven't performed an autopsy yet. sly: I think the Chairman's energy in making a cleaner office could better be directed elsewhere. [5-15-2, motion fails] rjbarbal: Move to give guest accounts to the drinky birds. marc: As soon as they go to Accounts and ask... dmaze: There's a bunch of stuff that the office doesn't have, like rubbing alcohol. The list is attached to the monoliths next to jhawk's right shoulder. Move to allocate $40 for the things on the list. [zacheiss seconds] jweiss: I don't want canned air. [16-2-3] [dmaze allocation: $40 for misc. office supplies] jmorzins: Does anybody know what that thing is? [points above meadow] marc: Did the mouse ever show up? jhawk: CAC came in and deployed snap traps. One is under zorp, one is between the couch and eichin. One is somewhere else I don't remember. There's also a sticky trap underneath snork. fyfer: Is CAC also responsible for checking these? Would they mind if we removed their sticky trap? [consensus that the sticky trap is cruel] dmaze: The trap people said that mice wouldn't go for the traps if we kept CokeComm food on the floor. tibbetts: We tried to buy a mouse for pickled-herring. It was lost, or something; it was a Logitech 3-button mouse. We scavenged a mouse from cj. zacheiss: We're now using the PS/2 mouse that was part of opus. jweiss: That mouse used to be on steve. Steve has the old pickled-herring RS/6000 mouse. The last time I tried to use that mouse on a Linux PC, it didn't detect properly. cfox: The other night, Mitch was complaining about the mouse on steve being very flaky. He took out the ball and cleaned it without luck. I told him the situation was temporary. jweiss: If we found the mouse that was supposed to come with the new pickled-herring, it would solve all of these problems. jhawk: The G4 has acquired a USB floppy on permanent loan from amu. sly: We have a packing slip for that mouse. People should look for the box. sly: I tried talking to the recycling people about getting a new recycling bin, and haven't heard anything back. Office Cleaning Report: jweiss: People need to learn the difference between "redeemable" and "non-redeemable". tibbetts: Is the cleaning bot ever happening? ingolia: RSN. lnemzer: I'll channel for gif: if it's not carbonated, it's not redeemable in Massachusetts. aletta: There are still multiple-stacked cans on the flats. dmaze: I've been trying to vacuum a lot. In the process, the documentation rack fell apart. I reassembled it, but since we have 4(n-1)+1 legs, or equivalently 4n-3 legs, I took a rack away. The extra rack is in the monoliths. MIT Computing Report: zacheiss: 8.4.14 for Linux, 8.4.13 for everything else goes to the Athena cell tomorrow night. jhawk: The Network group scheduled an outage for fps last night and executed it. There were also poserver upgrades this morning. zacheiss: po9 and po10 are now IMAP poservers and are now in W92. This means that everybody is now on IMAP-capable poservers, unless there are still people on po8. dmaze: I'm on po8. zacheiss: Oh, there are still people on po8. zacheiss: I did the prdb resync, but found a bug in probe's code and need to redo it tonight. This means that people who were deactived this past January will now show up in AFS ACLs as uids and not usernames. Computer Services: hartmans: In true Klingon fashion, the Linux/Athena installer appears to have escaped last week, mostly intentionally. There was a little bit of a timing delay, but well within normal release engineering bounds of error. There have been a lot of aesthetic problems; most users won't notice. There have been a few real problems, and a lot of people complaining about unrelated things. You can tell people the installer exists, but it's still in beta. zacheiss: Mail went to linux-announce. cfox: We should have Cc'd sipb-office. There's also a one-sheet that's been floating around the office. We should remove the "beta" from the one-sheet when we release and make copies. Move to allocate up to $20 for appropriate copies of the one-sheet. [jweiss seconds] [white ballot] [cfox allocation: $20 for Linux/Athena one-sheet] zacheiss: Our fiscal year purchasing is still sucking, but I have the bits to report bugs to sun now. sly: www has been crashing a lot, 5 times on Friday. anxiety-closet also died, taking webzephyr out, but it seems to be better now. belmonte: ingolia, alex_c, and I are in the process of placing a collection of biological software in the "seven" locker. People interested in installing software or in helping to get the word out among their colleagues should speak with us. jhawk: I suck in switch-quote land. tibbetts: vmware is really a project now, or something. It almost sort of works. There's a couple of things left to be done. There's a vmware-dev mailing list, owned by sipb-acl. I haven't sent mail; I'll send mail to sipb-office. SIPB Backup Report: zacheiss: UFS happened, AFS happened, I moved the fulls to Sunday. Publications Report: jhawk: We're out of iLaTeX here. I'm putting out the last ones now. Move to allocate $50 for 50 copies. [jweiss seconds] [white ballot] [jhawk allocation: $50 for 50 copies of iLaTeX] jhawk: Who moved the locations of things in the rack? tibbetts: dmaze did, I figured that nobody but jhawk would object. jhawk: I think it sucks that our most popular document (iLaTeX) got moved to a middle-of-the-rack position. fyfer: It also sucks that it's always covered with Athena documentation. hartmans: The version of iZephyr that was out was really old and has been updated twice since then. tibbetts: I hacked on the SIPB one-sheet. There are two copies about the office. There's discussion occurring on sipb-discussion; alex_c wrote his own version which is less formal. Orientation Report: nathanw: We have a list of frosh we collected at the Midway; we should contact them. tibbetts: I'll be the pledge class mommy if people want. I was thinking about sending them mail, but I was in Florida last weekend. IAP Report: xela: It's coming real soon. I'm putting in room requests this week for classes people have told me about. If you don't tell me about your class within the next day or two, you'll get a really lousy room. I'm going to be out of state for a month starting the 19th; deputy IAP sucker appearing soonishly. CokeComm Report: jweiss: People should take down empties. Other: hartmans: Long meetings are cool. nathanw: Whoever was complaining recently about meetings being too short and abrupt, this is your revenge. lnemzer: Nominate eichin for sainthood? nathanw: We don't do that. That's not our department. ocschwar: gzctlcoatl is almost ready for beta. Other Other: jhawk: There's an LSC sneak of on wednesday. lnemzer: geekporn.com appeared on Slashdot. jweiss: There's a blood drive this week. After you bleed on documents, go downstairs and bleed on the Red Cross. cfox: If the nice people at the red cross ask for your office phone number, giving them the SIPB office number is not useful. jhawk: There was a bug in the ANSI C reference implementation of Rijndael. [AES] nathanw: It only encrypted the first block, but it only decrypted the first block, too, so it passed self-tests. kcr: We've been giving evil a bad name. I think we should embrace evil, and encourage it more. tibbetts: I think the SIPB should embrace a terrorist organization, and ransom the Internet for US$10 million. The meeting was adjourned at 20:57. Minutes taken and submitted by dmaze.