Minutes of the SIPB Meeting of 2007-08-20 The meeting was called to order at 19:30 by andersk. In attendance were Voting members: andersk ctl danjared jbarnold jhawk presbrey tabbott Associate members: asedeno belmonte mitchb ocschwar Prospectives: mclamb Guests: Officer Reports: tabbott: I realized that while tilia is not leaving town, we’re required by the ASA to have our treasurer be a student. So we’ll probably be holding treasurer elections on Labor Day Monday. Let me know if you have any problem with that date. MIT Computing Report: jhawk: The mail system, after a nice long stretch of performing well, seems to have a large number of small delays this weekend and perhaps some much larger delays that are still extant. SIPB Projects Report: mclamb: In organizing tours I’ve sent out some emails that those of you on sipb-tours would have received. Unfortunately, a week later, I haven’t received any responses. I will be following up and maybe calling as well tomorrow. danjared: As mentioned in email, the GNOME summit is trying to get somebody to sponsor them for getting a room, probably in Stata. I would be willing to deal with this on behalf of SIPB if SIPB will allow me to. Otherwise I will see if I can go through other means. D'Souza and the people he works with are interested in helping out. tabbott: What is the scale of this conference? danjared: I think around 100 people; a few days. For the past two years it’s been in the Media Lab, but this has been bad. jbarnold: What time of year is that? danjared: October. jbarnold: I think in the past it has been sponsored by IS&T. It might be worthwhile asking them what the deal was with IS&T being their sponsor. jbarnold: I just want to be sure that they didn’t just screw some group in IS&T. danjared: This is a fairly time-sensitive thing. Maybe can I get approval under the condition that they didn’t screw IS&T? tabbott: This is simply SIPB helping to get them room reservations, right? danjared: Yes. jhawk: Tangentially, it may be a little late to get room reservations for October. tabbott: This should be some sort of motion that makes clear what the board is agreeing to do. danjared: I move that the board supports me approaching IS&T representing SIPB, asking them to sponsor the GNOME summit so they can have conference space here. <3-0-8, motion passes> tabbott: The Debian-Athena project released packages for Debian sarge, etch, Ubuntu dapper, edgy, and feisty. . Everybody should upgrade their packages. tabbott: Our next targets in Debian-Athena are the Athena GUI, and perhaps an installer. presbrey: I move to allocate $1200 for hard drives for sql.mit.edu. presbrey: There’s like 10 GB left on sql.mit.edu (out of 80). jbarnold: We’ll be getting two 750 GB drives in RAID 1 per server, for around $250 each. jhawk: Does sql or its sister project scripts have any idea what its anticipated expenditures this FY might be? presbrey: sql has no other expenditures to date. I already got more backup space from Athena; they doubled our space there. I’m slowly deleting old backups that are on the disks in the machine room so that the 10 GB buffer is being maintained. There are between 3 and 5 new sql users per day at around 4 or 10 MB. jhawk: I don’t see how that translated into anticipated expenditures. presbrey: None. danjared: Do you have a time frame in which you expect that space to be used? presbrey: Five years. The idea was that I can stop deleting backups. jbarnold: Also, when you go to a 750 GB drive you get twice the cache (32 MB instead of 16 MB). Also, replacing the drives in the sql machines is an intensive process and involves a brief outage. <7-0-4, motion passes> Office Report: jhawk: I move $20 for a 1 GB flash card for the camera. jhawk: Our TV shuts itself off when there’s no signal. jbarnold: What if we put in a signal of white noise? jhawk: White noise with a VBL or white noise without a VBL? I assume it would shut off without a VBL. danjared: We have an XO sitting in the cable drawer. It should find another place. I’d like to get some kind of laptop lock for it, and a USB stick for upgrading it. Move to allocate $75 for the lock and USB stick. tabbott: I want to hear more of a plan for the lock mechanism. danjared: I was thinking somewhere near Laptopland. tabbott: The disadvantage is that we might lose some Laptopland space from the XO being locked on the table there. jhawk: If it doesn’t have a standard laptop lock thing, how are you going to lock it? danjared: A chain. andersk: The laptop is topologically a torus. tabbott: If we had a long enough cable that we could store it in the shelf and it could reach Laptopland, that would be better. tabbott: What is our threat model? Are we concerned with SIPB members walking off with it? danjared: Worried about random people walking off with it while the office is open. Obviously if someone is determined to steal it, they’ll find a way. danjared: I think it would be better to leave it out instead of putting it away, so that people will use it. tabbott: I’m fine with this proposal, but I’d prefer that the laptop not become a permanent fixture of Laptopland. danjared: The combination or a key could be left somewhere that SIPB members can get it. jbarnold: So you’re proposing locking it to Laptopland, and if people want to use Laptopland, they need to get the key, unlock it, and move it elsewhere? Its permanent home should probably not be in Laptopland. <5-0-6, motion passes> Education Report: mitchb: jdreed asked us earlier if and/or how many cluster cards we wanted. It sounds like he has the ones printed for this year with the new combo. We have tons upon tons, maybe literally tons, but of course they’re all from previous years. He offered to bring them over but nobody guaranteed they’d be in the office. I’d be happy to go get them. jhawk: I think we should pick a number that’s somewhat less than the number we have, and feel free to throw out the old ones. I think 1000. tabbott: I suspect 1000 will be an overestimate but that seems fine. tabbott: We have this activities midway a week from Friday. If you are available to help out from 4:00 to 6:30 PM at the SIPB table, send me email. tabbott: The cluedumps series will be starting up. If you’re interested in giving a talk for that, email cluedumps@mit.edu. tabbott: We want a quality flier to hand out at the activities fair. I think you don’t want me to design it. If anybody’s interested in helping create something that doesn’t look horrible, let me know. Other: '() Other Other: jhawk: The September issue of Vogue had 727 ad pages. Discussion Report: The meeting was adjourned at 19:57. Minutes taken and submitted by andersk.