Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2007-04-30 The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by tabbott. In attendance were Voting members: andersk arolfe aseering ctl jbarnold jhawk keithw k_lai mathmike presbrey rayhe tabbott wdaher | jwalden Associate members: asedeno mitchb Prospectives: seanyliu spang Guests: Officer Reports: keithw: Move to allocate $80 to purchase the E.T. Janes book on probability. keithw: OCW paid me $1000 for the IAP class I taught. I told them to put the money in the LAMP account. I would like that money. Move to [some sketchy financial transaction with jhawk]. [motion withdrawn] MIT Computing Report: jhawk: Something happened. aseering: MIT switched to a new billing system for IP addresses. jhawk: According to an article by me in Friday’s Tech, effective July 1, next fiscal year, there will no longer be recurring charges for telephony and networking. Instead, departments and labs will be billed a fixed fee per month based on the number of employees. SIPB may have to fight to not have its budget reduced. SIPB Projects Report: jbarnold: I have three motions and a comment. The comment is that we are launching this open cell phone infrastructure project that I sent mail about. jbarnold: At the bottom of my drawer, I found a receipt for $15.96 for donuts for the scripts.mit.edu IAP class that I previously forgot to submit (it was stapled to a piece of paper indicating the purpose of the receipt and the date on the receipt matches). keithw: Propose to amend this to $15.95. jhawk: Jeff has not explained the sketchiest part of this and that bothers me. jbarnold: This is IAP 2006. keithw: Propose to amend this to $15.94. jhawk: Second. <3-many-5, amendment fails> ctl: Propose to pay Jeff interest. tabbott: Vote on the original motion? jbarnold: There’s this Athena DEFCON sign which works. I paid for it out of pocket. Does SIPB want to reimburse me for it and own the sign? I am charging the items that made it into the final sign, and not the parts that we didn’t use. Move to reimburse myself $357.73. The parts list, with receipts, will be submitted with the reimbursement and I will keep a copy for anyone to review. jhawk: I think that members should prorate shipping and get that reimbursed in general. jbarnold: scripts.mit.edu would like to be able to switch to not using the SIPB machine room switch for the internal communication between the scripts.mit.edu and sql.mit.edu servers, for various technical reasons, some of them security related. Move to allocate $175 for two 8-port gigabit switches for this purpose. presbrey: I made this cool web app at quickprint.mit.edu. It lets you upload a PDF or PostScript document and print it to any cluster printer. presbrey: I was talking with a member after the last meeting about moria, the Tor directory server. I suggest that if bandwidth is the only concern, we consider getting colo space in W91, until the network upgrade happens and we move it here. presbrey: The prices for the colocation are $475/year. jbarnold: I think that you get 2U of space for that price. We could put a SIPB backup server there. tabbott: Is there a reason we aren’t using TSM for sql backups? jbarnold: That’s a reasonable idea. Anyway there’s potentially a second U. jhawk: This money would not be out of this fiscal year’s budget, right? presbrey: It bills the day after we move the machine into the space. presbrey: They are offering to convert the machine to be rack-mountable. keithw: Is there a problem with having it here? mathmike: We don’t want to use the bandwidth, we talked about this last meeting. keithw: Is W91 less money than serverbeach.com? presbrey: Yes, $475 is less. jhawk: How much money do we have left? tilia: About $3500 not including the shelf and whatnot. tabbott: So about $3000 left this fiscal year. presbrey: Move to allocate $475 for 2U of space in W91. jhawk: This is until the network upgrade happens…so we can pay IS&T not to upgrade the network? presbrey: I would amend the motion to say that I want to move the sql mirror server there immediately after moria leaves, to improve sql reliability. [discussion of Tor and moira for keithw] keithw: Joe, is this your project or are we just helping out Roger? presbrey: It’s not my project. I run the Tor exit node, so in that sense I’m involved. keithw: If this is just helping Roger to save bandwidth fees, there should be a SIPB member that says “this is my project.” jbarnold: The issue is that the machine needs a temporary or permanent home. tilia: Why can’t they find someone else’s bed to put it under? tabbott: I’m uncomfortable with this expenditure in the sense that it seems there are better solutions. ctl: If you’re not going to buy the colocation space anyway, you’re wasting too much brain power on this problem. presbrey: My feeling in talking to people in the office was that we were fairly confident that the W20 network upgrade will happen fairly soon. If that is the case, this motion is more of a quest to colocate the sql backup server for the majority of the year. tabbott: I think those are very different motions. presbrey: Notes on the front of the sql page currently say that we don’t retain your data. jbarnold: Is changing the IP address of this machine particularly difficult? We could put it on the machine room network for n months. [blah blah blah] <4-0-12, motion passes> aseering: I sent email earlier in the week about wanting $200, lola-granola, and space in the office rack for an Ubuntu mirror server. Move to allocate these resources. arolfe: What about using snork instead? aseering: I wouldn’t be opposed to that. Move to allocate $200 for just the hard drive and controller. tabbott: We had a hackathon on Saturday and made substantial progress on Debathena. We have not been making substantial progress on the GUI related stuff, but we should have Debathena Etch completed soon. Office Report: mathmike: The Aeron came today. rayhe: A shelf was installed for the projector. Unfortunately, the projector does not project the correct sized screen from that self. I’m looking at a better solution. rayhe: Move to allocate up to $40 for ratcheting screwdrivers. jwalden: I got ahold of Creative Office Pavilion. They will be here Wednesday morning to repair the Herman-Miller chair. mathmike: There are a bunch of boxes for the chairs. Can we get rid of them? jhawk: I think it’s a very bad idea to get rid of boxes the first day an item shows up. I think a week is a good time to wait. tabbott: How about that shredder, jhawk? jhawk: I’m sorry. mitchb: What is the current plan for the shredder? jhawk: I’m going to ask Office Depot if they want it back. mitchb: Is jhawk actually going to deal with this, or should I make a phone call? jhawk: I’m going to deal with it. rayhe: There’s been some demand for sound bars for the other two monitors. tabbott: I’d personally prefer that we not have speakers. The office is already distracting enough. Speaking of which, do we have headphones? jwalden: We have IAP headphones. jhawk: There is also a pair of headphones in amu’s drawer for general use. tabbott: We successfully garbage-collected a drawer. tabbott: We have SIPB T-shirts. Ask me if you want one. presbrey: Move to allocate $110 for two Lenovo power adapters for laptop-land. jhawk: Would someone like to look into getting a sheet-bed scanner that sucks less than the one we have? rayhe: I would like to purchase a new USB 2.0 DVD burner. Move to allocate up to $70 for this. jhawk: Would it also do Firewire? rayhe: That would be $20 extra. Amend to $90. tilia: I just learned about the second Aeron at this meeting, so adjust numbers accordingly. Education Report: tabbott: There’s a first year summer mailing soon. Is anyone interested in taking charge of that? mitchb: What’s the deadline for that? tabbott: Friday, I think. Other: kchen: This Saturday at 8PM the MIT Concert Choir is performing St. John Passion. Other Other: '() Other Other Other: '() Discussion Report: The meeting was adjourned at 20:16. Minutes taken and submitted by andersk.