Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 17 November, 1980 The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by William M. York. In attendance were GHuber, J9, Barmar, WMY, Naha, HGA, c|, ACW, BIM, GMP, RLL, Alan, JPT, RDM. Late were: MG, RK, JIS, Soley, Jay, JSL, DPC The minutes of the meeting of 10 November, 1980 were read and accepted as corrected. The secretary had to leave at this point to do much homeworking, so c| took over attempting to take the minutes. User Interrupt: SCEP, represented by Robert Willis. They want to crunch data and print out things for the course evaluation guide. We gave them $100 in August. They have run out of money while trying to print out most of the current files being stored. They have a tape which they will also write these files onto; then they will delete them and thus stop using so much storage. They are performing a technology switch from hand-processing all forms and typing in the data to having it read by an optical scanner and the statistics done by a data-processing company. Also they have data hanging around from the past year which they have not caught up with, but which the new processing will finish. Thus they have some expenses which they expect to incur only this year. They would like $910 this year: $120 to finish with stuff from last fall, $270 to finish with stuff from last spring, $420 for preparing during next summer for gathering data and so forth next fall, and $100 for falling into miscellaneous holes; they expect to ask us for approximately $700 yearly under their new setup. We asked about SCEP possibly getting funding from elsewhere; Mr. Willis claims that they are getting funding from other sources for other portions of this work: the DSA will be paying about $3000 for optical scanning of forms and Finboard will be paying for publication of forms and guides. He was informed of the decreasing rates, but most of his expenses are dependent on printing rates. We suggested that SCEP look for alternative sources of funding, because as usual we will not commit to funding them indefinitely. Motion to give SCEP $910 for this year; passed. Mr. Willis asked about SCEP having its own project. Motion to give SCEP a project. Discussion; some people suggested that we give them a project "next time around". Mr. Willis suggested that SCEP get a project in January, as then he will have more time. SCEP will get $50 in SCEP1, $860 in SCEP. MG, RK, and JIS came in variously during the user interrupt. Treasurer's Report: Spending on Student disk charges is down to a third of total Student spending. $7786.08 were spent on Student so far this month, storage $3000, other spending $1100. The rate changes won't affect our budget; our users will just be able to work during the day instead of only during the off shifts. There has been a vast increase in usage. Chairman's Report: CCE meeting is Thursday. The campus networking meeting was today; nothing much was said. Corbato' wants to put together a networking proposal in a year. 10000 ports in three years was mentioned at the meeting; some people were skeptical that so many would exist so fast. Corbato' says he got no money with his title to implement whatever they come up with. JIS and DLW (as WMY's designated replacement) went, as well as Moon and Kulp and such. No more word on the hardware proposal. The chairman will mention losing courses which use punchcards at the CCE meeting. Office Report: Barmar reorganized the text queue output files. The two wires hanging on the wall by the spinwriter are the hardwired lines for the Spinwriter and the Teleray; they will work on Wednesday. One will be 1200 baud and one will be 9600 baud. Will the Teleray be a public terminal, as we decided many meetings ago to designate it when these hardwired lines came in? Discussion on this. Alan suggested that the Teleray and manual racks be switched for easier access to the Teleray by the users who will be coming in; general agreement. The wall rate chart will have to be redone; ZRM isn't here to do that. MG volunteered to do a new chart. The chairman asked for a white background, and RDM agreed that battleship grey only looks good on battleships. APO is printing envelopes for us. We have a new, unbroken keyboard on the office TV. Continuation forms: Should we leave the area for describing changes in the project blank if the continuing project is the same? The right thing to do is report on the progress of the user if his purpose for being funded has not changed. Computer Services: HSLA charges are going away, but anything over 1200 baud will be hardwired, costing $50/month. User Interrupt: John C. Mallery, coming to meeting because it pushes him over $200 for this year. He wants $100 to write an analogy program in Lisp and a twenty page paper. Given. More Computer Services: BIM has researched getting a Greek-char. thimble to work on the spinwriter, because several users have asked about such (as it is, they have to leave spaces and then handwrite in the Greek letters). An iodim will have to be written to make this work; BIM claims he doesn't have time to do this. He also said something about telling users about a runoff feature that prints out a separate file reminding them where to write in their greek (or other weird) chars. Bill explained that his sub/superscripting program is not compatible with the text queues; people who want to use it must come to the office and sit at the spinwriter and run it. Such people should be pointed to WMY. He explained a few things about what users have to put into their files to make use of his program: .tr at the beginning to make runoff leave the s in the file, and u and d for going up and down half-lines. Secretary fault: The office TV decided not to cooperate with the secretary. The meeting halted for about 5 minutes while many people fixed it. Still More Computer Services: Queuing files to the Student Center printer was discussed. RDM mentioned something about fixing up the Student Center printer daemon. GMP suggested having one command that will ask people questions and queue to where they want things printed out according to their answers. Barmar volunteered to work on this. Soley came in at this point. Jay and JSL also came in soon after. Palter urged people to test programs they change; the whole program, not just the changed part. As might be expected, changes cause obscure errors which would be found if the programs were tested. Rates change on the 26th; we should tell people this. The new rates info segment explains how wonderful Multics is; it was put in, it is rumored, at the insistence of Corbato'. The PL1 compiler still truncates the file if foo.pl1 and foo are both names for it. BIM and WMY suggested that each other get the fix Benson wrote (before he went to France!) installed. There are a slide and a drop poster advertising the user meeting. The slide was shown this past weekend and will be also this coming one; the drop poster was painted Thursday evening. There was some hissing when the slide was shown at the various movies this weekend. RDM brought the copy for the slide over to LSC last Thursday. Someone should call LSC to make sure they are showing the slide this coming weekend. Larky.Student sent an obscene message and garbled alphabet soup as a trouble report. He was given come-to-office; BIM is filling out a warning form right now. The Lebanese Student Club isn't doing mailing list stuff so much as writing letters. NML got us a new institute map for making a terminal-site map. Telecommunications Report: The TTY43 from ZBT came to the office, was fixed, and went home. We will soon have RS232 connectors. The ADM3A goes into modes where spaces won't wipe out, causing problems in the minibuffer and when redisplaying. This is a hardware misfeature. Teleray lossage: Bill experimented but couldn't get the office Teleray to lose; he thinks the problem is line drivers. Barmar says he tested the terminals in the Student Center the next day and couldn't get it to lose either. The office VT100 shift key sticks sometimes. Publications Report: NETS were picked up. 50 NUMS got made and picked up. BIM's and ACW's new NETS master went out on Friday and 50 copies were ready today, but no one picked them up. Barmar is modifying the Lisp Notes, making an alternate version with references to Twenex (because this year's course will be taught on EE instead of on Multics). It was strongly suggested that instead of making a special edition with only Twenex examples, Barmar should make a new version combining Twenex, Multics, and ITS examples, so that the people who have ITS accounts and those who we give Multics money to continue practicing Lisp after IAP will still be able to use the Notes. c| tracked down the order forms Palter ordered all these manuals for dorms with last summer; they were at User Accounts. She made copies of them, and will proceed to order those manuals we couldn't get last summer, also any necessary addenda for those or the ones we already have. DCP has redone masters for the green cards; they are on the board and should be commented SOON. 4000 green cards will cost $104 from new beane. DPC came in now or sometime before. IAP Report: There will be an IAP; keep January clean. There was a Lisp course organiziational meeting last Wed. All the teachers were there; they discussed curriculum and divided subjects for teaching. The Lisp course will happen. There will be a mini-course on textpro; the notice has gone into the IAP Guide; Leo Ryan might let us use the pool room. This will be a one-night course repeated once a week. Alan brought the programming contest notice to the IAP Guide. The IPS is both winning and losing with respect to IAP. They will take the mention of the $10 fee out of the IAP Guide. They will teach PL1 on Multics, but (at the insistence, according to GMP, of the School of Engineering) FORTRAN on the 370. Jay will write a handout for the students in these courses explaining about SIPB funding them. If they are using cards Bill should complain about that at the CCE meeting (Neanderthal technology!!). RDM asked that Jay's handout be something policy-statement like so we can better hold them responsible if they do bad things. Secretary fault: PLASMA glitched. The secretary was recovered faster than last time. BIM suggested that minutes be taken on Multics instead of on MC; he seemed to think this should be a matter of Board philosophy (all our users are on Multics....). The Board declared that where/how minutes are taken is the secretary's prerogative. Other: It's going to snow tonight. We have only 9-150 for the user meeting; c| canceled 10-250. JCG is working on the agenda. There was a short office quiz. Quizzes will be graded by next week. The Office Quiz Committee plans more short quizzes (since they're short, they don't lengthen the meeting much). DCP came in during the quiz and was handed one. Applications: David W. Sarup, wants MACSYMA for UROP; the project will turn into thesis. His application says that MC does not have enough address space. HGA took it, and told him to come to the meeting, and bring a UROP letter; Mr. Sarup did neither. According to Harold, he seemed to feel pretty harassed about having to go through all the hassle of coming here and applying and having his application go to meeting. Harold did not think of suggesting he use LispMachine Macsyma, which has a larger address space than MC. Motion to defer to a meeting, passed. Edwin V. Seidwitz, has had $200, wants another $50, for textpro for his ESG seminar, and for implementation of a function-structured language. Total appropriations: $2875 Autoed: $1815 Student: $1615 370: $200 To Meeting: $1060, all Student. Other Other: The NE Personal Computer Show is this weekend at Hynes Auditorium. c| apologized for all the lusers who called about the ticktock ad about her typewriter. ZRM sends greetings from Vienna and wonders if we are going to buy Comets. There is a PDP8I somewhere at MIT. Jeannine passed her area exams; there was a round of applause. She has now been committed to the PhD. program. Now she just needs to write a thesis. The SIPB was discussed in RDM's anthropology class as an escapist society. WMY's fiction class teacher was Harry Gammerdinger's advisor (or something like that). Harry was the luser who did a paper (his thesis?) on hacker myths; he hung around the office for several months and was even elected a member. He got all the stories mixed up and didn't quote anyone correctly. The advisor (WMY's fiction teacher) had read the paper and didn't believe that any of the myths Harry mentioned had any truth to them. WMY tried to dispell his skepticism (because many of them did happen), but apparently to no avail. A professor from course 17 came to the office asking about the adventure program, which had been mentioned in his class. His name was Lipsky. HGA discussed it with him without mentioning the ARPANET. Drop Date is Friday. The Drop Date Eve movie is Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, in 10-250 because 26-100 has something else in it. There will be several showings. WMY and the Phippses went to court last Thursday about their losing first-floor tenant; they still haven't received a decision. The tenant they are fighting was arrested in a large Cambridge drug bust last week for selling cocaine. Hacking during meeting (which topic had come up while the applications were being read) was considered. RK thinks that hacking should not be forbidden during meetings; rather, extraneous conversations should be stopped. His opinion is very strong on this. Bill seemed to think that hacking is a strong cause of conversation; some people agreed with him. Bill decided that there was no strong consensus on what to do. People should pay more attention during meetings, especially during applications reading. The meeting was adjourned at 2208 into a birthday party for Palter, who already has been given one before last meeting and who Paltered on this one. Other people with birthdays are DPC and JPT. New members are reminded to tell us their birthdays if they want them celebrated. Minutes taken and submitted by c|, temporary Beandorfer. ;; Local Modes: ;; Mode:TEXT ;; LISP ) Hack:1 ;; Auto Fill Mode: ;; Fill Column:70 ;; Fill Prefix: ;; END: