Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of Monday August 7, 2000. The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by nathanw. In attendance were Voting members: tibbetts, cfox, nathanw, dmaze, ingolia, fyfer, gif, sly Non-voting members: zacheiss, belmonte, yonah, tb, jered, jhawk, hartmans | srz Prospectives: aatharuv, aletta, cana, nim | xela Treasurer's Report: '() Chairman's Report: '() Office Report: tb: The drinky birds have been going in and out of service, but they're working now. tibbetts: I want to propose allocating $400 to buy an 8-port KVM switch. ???: Will they work with our non-PC hardware? tibbetts: They work with Suns, and PCs, and SGIs. There's support for ADB, I'd be surprised if there wasn't a kludge for USB. jhawk: You may wish to amend your motion to include the frobby things. [ed note: keyboard adapters] tibbetts: The idea is that the head where belmonte is sitting would become not only bh, but zsr and the netbsd sparc [bill-the-cat] in the rack, and anything else that we decide we sort of love, but don't really. jhawk: What would you be doing with that space? tibbetts: That would become office head space. jhawk: So if you think that zsr should have a head, you should vote against it? tibbetts: Yes. sly: The idea is to take some of the machines that we don't use very often, and put them all together, and get the head space for something in general use. jhawk: The space where zsr's head is isn't particulairly optimal, and we don't want to encourage the use of that space. tb: Do you have an alternative solution to the problem that we have a lot of space spent on heads that don't get much usage? jhawk: It's not really optimal head space. neither solution answers the problem. sly: Move to call the question. tibbetts I actually want to bump the allocation to $500 and include the frobby things. [10-1-1 motion passes] hartmans: People occaisionally gripe about the ad-hocness of the wireless connectivity in here. Have people thought of what we could do to make that better? jhawk: My understanding is that talking about this in a recorded medium isn't a good idea. tb: It would be perfectly appropriate to purchase an AirPort. People should feel free to investigate this. zacheiss: It's probably not worth a lot of sipb's money, since the IS project for wireless networking is in delivery. jhawk: The money involved in purchasing wireless connectivity is so low as to make that irrelevant. Office Cleaning Report: tibbetts: The cables that used to be a mess on the floor are now in that milk crate. dmaze: Don't put heavy stuff in front of the monoliths. jhawk: Can anyone comment on the xmas light thingie? I will state that I will unilateraly send mail and maybe eject it. MIT Computing Report: zacheiss: 8.4.10 goes to the Athena cell tonight. Computer Services: zacheiss: Server maintainers: hardware for next year, submit proposals, please. SIPB Backup Report: zacheiss: They did themselves, except for limekiller as usual. Publications Report: jhawk: iLatex, and we had already allocated money for more. sly: I'm in theory writing a doc on how to upgrade [SIPB Athena-RedHat] 5.2 to IS 6.2. Orientation Report: cana: Tours, unless anyone has strenuous objections, are going to be on Thursday the 7th (the first week of classes). I'd like to ask the allocation of $100 worth of food budget. [white ballot motion passes] nim: We have confirmed a net drop for the midway. IAP Report: xela: If we do not request rooms by early October, we will get lousy rooms, I'd like people to let me know in the most rudimentary form what they're planning on doing. hartmans: I'd be willing to teach a class on SQL, or any other gross topic I could teach a class on, I'm looking for an interested assistant. belmonte: I'm looking for a deputy crash course in c sucker, or even a primary crash course in c sucker. CokeComm Report: gif: I should have bought three more flats, because I think people are starting to forget what coke taller than the fridge looks like, and yonah sucks. hartmans: Do you plan on updating dots? gif: Yes, at some point. Other: dmaze: I bound a copy of latex2e (the source), and will put it on the shelves. jered: 1) Leaving a palm 5 on a desk for a month will cause it to run out of batteries and lose all its data. 2) While typing a root password on a logitech wireless keyboard, I realised this maybe wasn't so smart. 3) I've retruned, and there was much rejoicing. hartmans: The last IETF involved two things that might interest SIPB people, BXXP (beep) is kind of cool if you've been complaining that the internet doesn't have a session layer. Derick Atkins is organizing a conspiracy to do kerberized IPsec. zacheiss: I received a present from golem in Washington. gif: Pinata, i choose you! gif: I was thinking of putting in an order of jerseys, people should talk to me. Other Other: sly: Toronto has moose. yonah: The midnight bike tour through boston is Saturday the 19th, starts 11:30 at Copley. The meeting was adjourned at 19:48. Minutes taken and submitted by cfox.