Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 10/1/2001 The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by fyfer. In attendance were Voting members: tibbetts arolfe fyfer gif nim golem alex_c kolya aatharuv | jmorzins Associate members: ingolia sly jhawk hartmans eichin jweiss yak | belmonte srz Non-voting members: Prospectives: vkm aletta xela jtu | alien ike Guests: Treasurer's Report: nim: Hi. There's been a minor reorg in the Treasurer's drawer. You should only interact with the four non-hanging folders in the front. sly: We've been caught with our IP address pants down. Vanity host names have been noticed. People will be contacted about what should be done. Since SIPB isn't prepared to pay for these, we're working on a way to allow people to use laptops in w20 but not elsewhere. Chairman's Report: fyfer: aletta is up for election. tibbetts: Pick someone you don't know and give them a name. aletta: There isn't one. marc: Pick someone you know and give them a different name. aletta: froggy [to jhawk]. hartmans: What are some of the more interesting problems you've had to deal with recently helping users? aletta: The printers have been so fucked. I know all about printing, including Acrobat reader. A guy came in with a course that had asked him to run a program but gave little direction. I explained paths and how to write a file to put everything in his path. jmorzins: Name things that hung from the ceiling that aren't now. aletta: This was asked last election meeting. froggy: And you still don't know it? aletta: Hair, of some sort. gif: The Easter Bunny. fyfer: Another canonical answer is Kevin Iga fyfer: Name a service that SIPB runs and what machine it runs on. aletta: The SIPB mp3 server on mkc. froggy: What is the most serious crisis facing MIT today and come up with a bizarre chain of causality connecting it to SIPB. aletta: I'll go with still being bitter about freshmen on campus and I'll go with I'll bet Scott Krueger asked a question the day before he died and jhawk was mean to him ruining his self esteem. hartmans: Pick two text processing systems that were in wide use before you were born and describe how to double space in them. aletta: Pencil and paper. You put an X on every other line and write on every other. In LaTeX, put in the documentstyle with doublespace. nim: What do you think SIPB's biggest problem WRT to memebership is and how should we fix it? aletta: Prospectives coming in and asking questions and being ignored by half the office. So SIPB doesn't feel like a comfortable place to them. I think we need to be aware of this problem and talk to people when they come in. We should make people feel more welcome to join rather than trying to answer their question and send them away. fyfer: Do you think it would help people get to know prospectives if they introduced themselved on a mailing list? aletta: That has a slightly high activation energy. tibbetts: You should develop social skills and say "hi". aletta: The person who makes them a prospective could send something. hartmans: Have them send somethign themselves. jmorzins: Who was Liana before her? aletta: Nathan. hartmans: Describe some of the things you've done and what you're interested in. aletta: I'm Aletta. I've done work with people who haven't used Athena much and trying to get them acquainted. A lot is around ESG. I did mini Athena sessions during orientation. I worked on orientation and iAthena. I'm interested in Athena. I've worked on Solaris boxes in physics labs. I'm interested in using a Mac again. hartmans: SIPB's changed over the last few years. How do you think SIPB should deal with decreased emphasis on Athena and people having their own computers and with some of the other changes that have happened? aletta: You seem to think that these changes make SIPB less useful. I don't particularly see that. I think Athena may be becoming more useable and that SIPB may be more useful if more people use it. jmorzins: I move that marc ask the question. marc: Why do you want to be a SIPB member. aletta: I don't think I have anything creative beyond the standard answers. I'd like a key. It's annoying when the office is closed. I'd like to be able to vote. I get frustrated when a vote doesn't go the way I wanted. Office Report: Office Cleaning Report: tibbetts: A mouse lost. MIT Computing Report: jweiss: Patch release tonight. jweiss: The Cluster combo changed today. Computer Services: alex_c: I've got an alpha for the linux installer. It's for the layered-ish install. fyfer: Is the resulting product going to be normal and updatable? alex_c: That's the goal. tibbetts: Move to allocate up to $350 to buy a second 1GHz processor for the VMWare machine. froggy: When and how is the price likely to go up? tibbetts: No. Various people asserted it would go up. hartmans: We've started using the machine. [tibbetts allocation: $350 for processor] tibbetts: Move to allocate $600 for 10 IP addresses for the VMWare machine for the next year. I may not start billing until we need them. sly: It's $16 per IP per month. tibbetts: That hurts. Move to allocate for 4 addresses for a year. That's $768. froggy: Can't you find four addresses we're not using, like for laptop addresses? tibbetts: We've been using some of those. sly: Get them. If we're going to have a way for people to use laptops, we're going to need those addresses (ie, the laptop addresses). [tibbetts allocation: $768 for IP addresses] SIPB Backup Report: Publications Report: aletta: Emily Marcus and I are working on iAthena. We'll send out mail in the future. If anyone wants to help, send mail to iathena-dev. froggy: I promised to work on 3 docs when tibbetts and arolfe picked three, but they've been lame. jmorzins: There's lots of dust on the usenet publication. froggy: We have no iLaTeX. We shouldn't let the office copy disappear. Orientation Report: IAP Report: alien: I have the class list as it stands now. We have CCC, CCCC, Crash and Burn courses, Encryption on Athena, BRL, Sawfish, Ethernet, Python, Software Engineering, and several other classes pending. We don't have rooms yet. I've applied for the lecture series rooms. We need a volunteer for a Perl class. They won't assign rooms until next week. tibbetts: What's happening with the lecture series? alien: I applied for rooms. We have Radia Perlman and jis speaking and are inviting Scott Bradner to be the third speaker. CokeComm Report: hartmans: All hail cokecomm. Other: froggy: I'm ordering NetBSD Why-Not t-shirts. I sent mail. Let me know if you want one. sly: OLC is looking for more people. hartmans: For a short period of time, I'll be working for the organization that employs the largest number of SIPB members. Sucks: froggy: My bike broke today. Other Other: golem: The meeting's not noisy enough. I didn't wake up. froggy: If anyone understands "fdpats" in screen, I'd like to talk to you. belmonte: I have these petitions that are aimed at ending the Massachuetts income tax. See me to sign. The meeting was adjourned at 20:08. Minutes taken and submitted by arolfe.