Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 11/26/2001


The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by fyfer.

In attendance were 
	Voting members: fyfer golem nim aletta tibbetts arolfe emarcus
		kolya aatharuv	
	Associate members: hartmans yak yonah dmaze ingolia jhawk belmonte
	Non-voting members: 
	Prospectives: xela jtu | kent eisenbud
	Guests: 

Treasurer's Report:	

Chairman's Report:
	alex_c: Move to nominate eisenbud for membership.  
	<fyfer seconds>
	fyfer: He's interested.  Election meeting will probably be next
		week.  
	<9-0-0>
	hartmans: People should think of root passwords.
	tibbetts: We should use sipbroot, or profsipb.

Office Report:
	jhawk: I got a new soldering iron because I haven't put it away
		yet.  
	golem: Something's wrong with the back of the office.
	jhawk: The switch that I had installed on the keyboard frob on
		hodge broke when someone stepped on it.  But it worked until
		then.  I'd like to move to spend $20 on switches for the
		other ones.  
	nim: How many is that?
	jhawk: Five, I think.	
	<other suggest fewer, possibly just one>
	<white ballot>
	[jhawk allocation: $20 for switches]
	alex_c: Move to get rid of the clock on top of xcb.
	jhawk: It's not in anyone's way.  It's dumb to get rid of it.
		Move it if you don't like it.
	hartmans: It's really ironic that I'm making this
		justification.  It is aesthetically displeasing to have
		half-disassembled shit around the office.
	jhawk: It's assembled.  But it still doesn't work because it
		can't get radio signals in the SIPB office.
	xela: Maybe to the office czar should auction it.
	golem: We should give the clock to jhawk for him to get rid of.  
	alex_c: I accept the giving it to jhawk amendment.  
	hartmans: Giving it to jhawk seems reasonable since he's the
		only one who cares.  But it should be under the
		condition that it leave the office.
	jhawk: Why do we want to get rid of the clock?
	tibbetts: It's less useful that the old Next hardware.
	golem: We have a lot of cruft.  Why pick on the clock.  
	<jhawk moves clock to monolith>
	golem: Move to table this.
	<alex_c withdraws motion>
	jhawk: If people think stuff should move, they should move it,
		not move to pitch it.
	tibbetts: I move that it is the opinion of the SIPB that useless
		stuff not hang around the office indefinitely.
	<no second>
	keithw: I move that it is the sense of the SIPB that in the
		future, we shouldn't have smelly soldering.
	<tibbetts seconds>
	jhawk: Last time it smelled, it was from using the soldering
		iron as an iron and not to solder.
	<tibbetts withdraws seconds>	

Office Cleaning Report:
	ingolia: There is a new version of the cleaning bot to make sure
		that people are logged in locally and have been idle for
		less than an hour.  
	tibbetts: The non-fish should have to choose a totem animal.	
	ingolia: Since it is not-a-fish and written mostly in perl, I
		might call it an oyster.  

MIT Computing Report:
	keithw: Last week, I proposed three iCampus proposals on behalf
		of SIPB.  Microsoft liked the one about putting the
		library's CDs and such on the web.  This project has
		been approved, which leaves approval from the MIT
		council and the libraries.  In the near term, people
		need to register for the class to work on the project.  
	tibbetts: How is the class graded?
	keithw: I don't know.  I would assume you could take it on PDF
		or something.  	

Computer Services:
	hartmans: Alex are you going to release the kludgey installer?
	alex_c: I've been busy with real work and I'm happy to be able
		to keep tabs on people who have it.  Releasing it
		doesn't seem like a huge priority for me and leaving it
		in beta seems ok.  
	fyfer: Is it at a state where we should recommend it to people.
	alex_c: That's fine.  It should work in most situations.

SIPB Backup Report:

Publications Report:
	fyfer: We're still out of iMatlab.  
	aatharuv: I will deal.  

Orientation Report:

IAP Report:
	xela: It's sooner than you think.  
	fyfer: The SIPB IAP panel has a topic: Privacy.  Actually, it's
		a little more specific than that.
	keithw: Who's on the panel?
	fyfer: I don't know, but probably Rivest.

CokeComm Report:

Other:
	golem: Why do we have a treasurer's report?
	nim: Last time I said that we have money.
	hartmans: It appears that the legal advice that Debian got about
		putting crypto in main is more or less public.  This is
		cool because if people are interested in this advice, I
		can give it to them.  
	keithw: Is there a one-sentence summary?
	hartmans: We could do it. 
	golem: I still want to know.  
	nim: Why do we have a backup report?
	golem: In theory we could report on that if Garry were at the
		meeting.
	hartmans: The backup seems to have succeeded this week.
	tibbetts: Because God made it that way.

Other Other:
	tibbetts: My grandparents got a computer and a modem.  Four days
		later, they got a cablemodem.
	dmaze: Spending other people's money at Quantum is cool.
	xela: rav-eaters ate no ravs.
	hartmans: My parents' computer is ownzored.  
	aletta: According to my HASS class, everyone at EC knows how to
		get to the top of the great dome.  


The meeting was adjourned at 19:47.


	Minutes taken and submitted by arolfe.