Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 09/1/2003 The meeting was called to order at 19:31:02 by keithw. In attendance were Voting members: keithw ike kchen | merolish Associate members: jhawk ocschwar hartmans belmonte lnemzer Prospectives: mwp eirl jbarnold | rayhe wjh miah wdaher Guests: Introductions: kchen: I think we forgot to email sipb-midway-03. Treasurer's Report: keithw: The treasurer is not here. hartmans: The treasurer is moveing keithw: Who is the treasurer? hartmans: tibbetts? keithw: He's engaged, right? hartmans: He's moving out of the Ghetto into -- I don't think they've named it yet. Chairman's Report: hartmans: The chairman is still in China. They have not announced any revolutions yet. keithw: Are we going to have to do like a spy exchange to get him? merolish: We nominated Josh for membership, I think, at some point this summer, and aren't we supposed to elect an EC sometime soon? hartmans: I informed our illustrious chairman while we were in Hong Kong... and he asked that we delay elections until his return. It is a bit weird that most of our officers have graduated. keithw: Very rare for something like that to have happened. Office Report: jhawk: Move to reimburse myself $10 for two 9-volt batteries for the office's multimeters from the auction fund. hartmans seconds. MSPWB. belmonte: Since glasser is not here, there's been this mail from glasser that sipb should buy an external CD burner. It seems like agood idea. I don't know that anyone has done any research on it. hartmans: I think it sounds like a great idea if you can figure out something that would in general work. You're going to have to compromise between interoperability and performance (USB, USB2.0, Firewire). jhawk: I thought that point was to have something expeditiously so that returning students could backup their windows machines before reinstalling, and this is a big problem right now. hartmans: Move $400 for glasser and belmonte to find a reasonable product that will meet the need for people to backup their windows boxes before reinstalling. ike seconds. keithw: White ballot? merolish: Objection. ike: I don't think glasser would do it w/o discussion. 6-0-3 motion passes. Office Cleaning Report: ike: The office looks like it has turned into a pit again; I'll have to do something about that, though maybe not tonight because of Reg Day. MIT Computing Report: keithw: Many people who have had their drops turned off, because they've had the virus, say that they've not yet been turned back on. hartmans: MITnet is bad enough that if you reinstall your Windows machine, it will probably be compromised before you're done reinstalling. ike: If you go down to OLC, you can pick up a piece of paper with 30 instructions on how to do this. merolish: Net Security has instructions on port filtering, do they work or not? hartmans: That's what ike meant. It's a lot more complicated than just reinstalling. ike: And you have to get people to do it. kchen: Network Security is currently backlogged because of all the [compromises]. It takes a few more days to get drops turned back on...you can also find [the instructions] online, there's also a link from one of the Ask SIPB columns. keithw: Kevin, could you explain why, when people's drops are off, they still get link? kchen: I believe that the routers are configured to ignore that specific drop. hartmans: No, the drops are turned off at the repeater, apparently you still get link. jhawk: The drops get segmented from the rest of the network. merolish: Isn't there a new release tonight? Err, not a full release-- ike: patch release merolish: Also, the basement building 4 cluster is reopenning-- ike: day after tomorrow hartmans: Heather was in here recently, one of the reason we haven't been able to get cluster cards is they lost the source. belmonte: There've been reports of some degree of access point fuckage? keithw: Is there any way to choose to associate with a different access point with the same ESSID? jhawk: I think that there is not. Computer Services: hartmans: We should figure out what the freshmen want to do and get them involved in specific services and project. keithw: Freshman, we apologize for the "ghetto" nature of this meeting. Normally, we're less "ghetto." Yes, you should all be involved in cool projects. keithw: The Library Access to Music Project is almost --well, has perhaps already made a formal request to the licensing arm of the National Music Publishers Association for the rights to buy music. Indirectly via LoudEye. We thought our distributor had made this request back in May, but the person who would have made that request left before making the request. Loudeye's new lawyer is an indie rock-star who has plenty of "cred" -- short for credibility. We could have plenty of CDs by mid-October. miah: What's her name? keithw: Lara Lavi belmonte: Have LAMP's inquiries put LoudEye out of business yet? keithw: I don't know how much I want this to be archived for posterity. hartmans: There was a SIPB VMware outage last week, because of a dead processor on steve-dallas, I believe it has been repaired. Publications Report: keithw: We don't have any cluster cards, for reasons discussed _infra_. Orientation Report: ike: SIPB Computer Tours are still being organized. I've heard back from Jeff Schiller, President of Information Systems, Thursday the 25th doesn't look good, Wed the 24th does. jhawk: What? ike: Jeff Schiller is not President of Information Systems. keithw: Why don't we ask the freshmen? jhawk: Because we know better? keithw: In the past, Tours have gone to see Richard Stallman, and he flamed at the people, so we should consider doing it. ike: I'd have to email Stallman. keithw: He loves to influence young minds. ike: I will continue to email people; hopefully we will solidify Wed the 24th. ike: For the record, I was lame, otherwise I would have emailed these people back in Early August. I thinks vans are easy to get, so I will deal with that later. miah: I drove the vans last year, and am happy to do that again this year. I thought 3 cool thinsg were the media lab, LSC/LCS, and W92. keithw: If you're going to LCS, that's where you can see Richard Stallman right there. hartmans: Cluster computing? miah: Stata Center? hartmans: offline belmonte: W92 can be very interesting, but it is very far away, and in the past we have lost people. ike: That's why vans were used last year. belmonte: Oh. kchen: Our last-minute preparation seemed to have gone okay. We have about fifty frosh on sipb-midway-03. I'd like to move to allocate $32 to jenselby for the soda. hartmans seconds belmonte white ballots. MSPWB keithw: A lot of people asked about the Jay Leno; why he was going so slow. [Kevin,] can you send that email for next meeting? IAP Report: UNISON: It's sooner than you think. CokeComm Report: hartmans: No Dr. Pepper, Evil. jhawk: There is Dr. pepper. belmonte: There appears to be no Diet Vanilla Coke [...Coke Lite...Europe...Branding...research grants.] Other: keithw: Other! hartmans: We eliminated Other. keithw: By the prerogative of the presiding officer...Other! ike: We have Other today, because of Keith! keithw: The Tech is next publishing on Friday, so I hope we'll have a good Ask SIPB column. I hope people save them. kchen: Is there a Features section in Friday's edition? jhawk: I think that Ask SIPB should have some boilerplate text, like in that black space, that mentions our phone number and our office address and soforth. keithw: We seem to have perhaps been scooped on the Linux HDTV project, because a company is now selling a card that at least lets you watch HDTV under linux. I don't know the details. ike: You should buy one. keithw: I don't think we need one. ike: You should benchmark the two solutions. keithw: The base model appears to have been done commercially. We can brag that we were doing it earlier, but nobody really cares. Other Other: keithw: Some recent day [sic], in ACLU v. Howard Dean, some circuit court found that the Communications Decency Act-like law in Vermont, signed by Howard Dean, was unconstitutional. Also, the ACLU's response to the government's appeal to the Supreme Court of the ongoing litigation surrounding the Child Protection Act--which is the sucessor to the Federal CDA; this is basically a watered down CDA -- that litigation is still ongoing -- is due on September 10th. The careful among you will remember that this law has already been before the Supreme Court once. The meeting was adjourned at due to Mon Sep 1 20:00:20 EDT 2003. Minutes taken and submitted by jhawk.