Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 01/20/97 The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by yonah. In attendance were Voting members: annmarie danw jered amu sit kretch pipa rjbarbal fubob yonah tlai djib | nygren katyking gutnik beaners cordelia Associate members: marc eichin mycroft mhpower ghudson jweiss tytso tlyu sgw jtkohl len18 Non-voting members: Prospectives: tivol jfmurphy rdl amsmith jewell Guests: Treasurer's Report: The treasurer is not the chairman. Again. Chairman's Report: yonah: Next week will be an election for amsmith. kretch will get to be chair. rjbarbal: I'm planning on having straw polls for two sets of amendments next week and the week after. This will keep both meetings shorter. danw: Wouldn't it make sense not to have any such discussion at an election meeting? rjbarbal: One of the sets is small and the other is larger and can be punted until the week after next. I'll send out mail. Office Report: cordelia: I share a drawer with rshah which I have emptied of my stuff. I will accept bribes for transfer of ownership. jweiss: Office has regressed from pit to pigsty. ghudson: If anyone feels like being office czar, xiphmont has a drawer which he probably doesn't need. rdl: There is hardware in the machine room which shouldn't be there. e-mail was sent concerning this but no consensus was reached. I'd like to suggest that stuff which isn't claimed by SIPB be given to APO. sgw: There is also more hardware potentially on the way (more DS 5000/200s) early next week and I'd like to know if people are interested in it. jweiss: I care about it. I don't want it to be around the office or machine room. It should be noted that the SIPB never decided to collect it. sgw did. gutnik: Is taking one home legitimate use? yonah: Well, depends on if machine maintainers want, for example, to use it to replace, say, charon. But it's all unclear at this point. tlyu: it should be noted that ultrix is a dead or dying operating system and there are no free operating systems that really run on that hardware. eichin: I propose that we should get rid of the ASAP. sgw: I'd be happy to get rid of it, but I'd prefer to see it go to campus groups in need of hardware. marc: I'd like to point out that giving groups this hardware would doom some people to hell in learning UNIX system administration. mhpower: How do we propose to deal with our lack of Ultrix licenses? sgw: The machines have MIT prop tags on it, so we probably have licenses somewhere. ghudson: does MIT actually have per machine license? tytso: I believe the hardware came with 2-user licenses. sgw: We also have some number of serial and one ethernet x-terminals. This stuff might be more useful to individuals than to groups. kretch: Binkley's monitor cable got a little frobbed so I'll try to get it replaced. (I was actually thinking about the x-terminals.) amsmith: Do people think that a hardcopy emacs-19 manual would be useful? [yes] cordelia: I move that up to $100 be allocated to purchase an emacs-19 users manual. [second, white-ballot. amsmith will deal.] sgw: The x-consortium is going away RSN. Notably, their ftp server will be going away, along with everything on it. The OpenSystems group might pick that up, but that's unclear. I'd like to solicit the SIPB community to see if perhaps we could at least make an archival copy of it and maybe even serve it no one else picks it up. mhpower: I don't think we currently have the bandwidth to support that. marc: Since a bazillion sites mirror ftp.x.org, I don't see why one of them doesn't do it. sgw: There is a milo-lovers mailing list. There is even some discussion. jered: I installed some patches from SGI on steve-dallas. Notably, it fixs bug dealing with cores causing panics. I sent mail about it (including how to back out the patches). ghudson: The sound card on cutter-john has been moved to zsr. I also installed a 3c590 so that cutter can use AUI instead of TP. This would allow Milo to always have a net drop. MIT Computing Report: '() Computer Services: jweiss: Does anyone know anything about RTFM migration? Is it actually happening? mhpower: yes. SIPB Backup Report: foley (via sit): everything (non-AFS) was done. Publications Report: cordelia: I move to allocate up to $100 for 50 copies of iLaTeX. [second, white ballot, kretch will deal] We're low on cluster cards and athena reference cards. Mail sent to sendpubs. R/O Report: '() IAP Report: kretch: the Internetworking class happened. A lot of people were there. It was cool. nygren: The unix software development class happened. eichin: ada happened. A lot of people showed up and only about half of them were SIPB members. CokeComm Report: amsmith: There has been a bloodless coup. I have taken over for rcaileff. I'm in the process of getting finances in order. People are encouraged to give me checks, preferably next week. jweiss: people should take down cans and bottles. If you don't know how, ask me. Other: '() Other Other: cordelia: Today is my last evening in Massachusetts. I am going to Texas. jtkohl: It is possible to have a good day skiing even if you jam your thumb, lose a perscription lens, and break a boot. annmarie: I'm in the Shakespeare ensemble and we're doing scene night on Friday and Saturday in Walker. Everyone is invited. rjbarbal: The members of the tea-lovers mailing list have been having tea parties on weekends. There will be a tea party at the Sci-Fi marathon next week, sometime around 4pm on Sunday (depending on movie breaks). yoav^H^H^H^Hjered: My hair is not orange and I AM NOT YOAV! sgw: The x consortium has nothing to do with this announcement. I had a really good dinner and I had a free .25 tea from coffeehouse and it was really good so everyone should go down and encourage them to keep it that cheap. beaners: Tea is icky. sgw: No it's not. rjbarbal: Move to make tea the official drink of the SIPB. sgw: Various SIPB members supposedly responsible for AFS have reportedly taken tea intravenously. jered: I have installed a new version of X-emacs which actually works on all platforms and actually works sorta. [gutnik can crash it] Read the README in the xemacs locker. cordelia: gutnik and len18 have bead chains on their ears. The meeting was adjourned at 19:56. Minutes taken and submitted by sit.