srw
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Minutes of the 4/26/95 Grex Board of Directors Meeting
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Apr 30 05:30 UTC 1995 |
Minutes of the Cyberspace Communications Board of Directors
Held on Wednesday, April 26th 7PM at Zingerman's "Next Door" Upstairs.
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1. The meeting was called to order by Valerie Mates at approximately 7:15 PM
when a quorum was present. Board members Attending:
Valerie Mates (popcorn), Chair
Steve Weiss (srw), Secretary
Rane Curl (rcurl), John Remmers (remmers),
Steve Gibbard (scg), Steve Andre (steve).
Others in attendance:
Dave Lovelace (davel), Mary Remmers (chelsea), Greg Cronau (gregc),
Misti Anslin (mta), Chip Botkin (chip), Rob Argy (ajax), Carl Miller (carl).
The order of business at this meeting was rearranged because some who gave
various reports did not arrive in time. Their sections were deferred.
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10. Treasurer's Report:
No treasurer's report was read because Dan Romanchik was out of town.
Valerie reported that the treasurer's report would have contained
no special information this month. Things were "perking along".
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11. 501(C)3 Committee Report:
Rane declared that "perking along" also described the progress of this
committee. There was nothing special to be reported.
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100. Computer Rehabilitation Committee Report:
Rane reported that we had needed 3 computers and that we received a donation
of 4 computers (and 2 printers). They are being kept at TS's place, but
the committee is in dire need of a working place, that is, a place to be able
to work on these machines.
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1010. Win Consortium Report:
Valerie gave a report of the activities of the WIN consortium. The TIIAP
grant has been applied for. The efforts of a significant number of Grex
people went into this joint effort with HVCN. Steve Weiss pointed out that
Grex has made no commitment to WIN beyond the TIIAP grant application.
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1011. Reusing login IDs.
Steve Weiss explained that a situation occurred after a recent reap that
a long-time user of Grex who used .forward to redirect mail sent to his Grex
account, had had his account reaped because he had not logged in for 3 months.
Subsequently another person, one who wished to have that ID, ran newuser
and recreated the account. The first user has complained to staff that his
mail is now going to someone else.
Our current policy is that once reaped, an account may be reused immediately,
and the prior owner has no special claim to the ID. It is first-come,
first-served.
Steve Weiss said he would create an item in coop to discuss the
situation to determine if it were appropriate to change our policy so as
to prevent such an unfortunate situation. No action was taken.
---
At this point in the meeting, the individuals needed to report on the
remaining agenda items were not present, so the chair moved on to some
new business with the idea that the meeting would return to these agenda
item when the requisite individuals arrived.
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1011 (1) New Business: Meeting with Landlord
Greg Cronau, STeve Andre', and Valerie Mates met with Nick Contaxes, our
landlord. The current usage of the dungeon appears to violate the city
ordinance regarding usage of a residential property. We will attend
a meeting with the city to discuss zoning.
The electrical inspection will cost $300, and there was much disagreement
as to whether we should be liable to pay any of this.
Mary Remmers suggested that a group be assembled to look for a new home
for Grex, as a contingency.
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110. Technical Committee Report:
Steve Andre' reported that grex had been reduced to 64 MB Ram to see if it
would make the disk instability problem recede. It did not do so. Therefore
grex was restored to 128MB, because at 64MB it was much slower.
We are processing greater than 3500 pieces of mail per day. This is by far
the biggest drain on Grex's resources.
The staff bought 2 Sun 4/200 CPU cards, 2 32MB memory cards and 1 SCSI
controller. Greg has temporarily installed one Sun 4 card in one of his
boxes to verify that it works correctly. He can boot with it.
The plan now is to acquire a disk for the new Grex machine. Rob Argy has
a 1.7 GB disk for $500, which we plan to acquire.
We now have three new modems and phone lines, to bring the total in the hunt
group to 11, but one is still not installed, so we are running at 10.
Ameritech is having big cable problems along Liberty Street. Our service is
suffering because of it.
Httpd is still down. Marcus is testing it, and it should be available soon.
There is a new sendmail program.
Valerie enhanced the Grex help command.
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111. Verification Policy:
STeve Andre will enter into coop the policy he has been drawing up, so that
it can be discussed there.
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1000. JCC follow-up report:
It was reported that we made $770 at the JCC sale.
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1001. Adding Rob Henderson to Staff.
Moved (srw/remmers) that Rob Henderson be added to staff to read
the mailing list and staff conference.
The motion passed unanimously, 6-0.
Valerie said she would notify Rob by email, as he was not present.
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1100. CO2 Fire Extinguisher
STeve Andre explained that "dry chemical" fire extinguishers are cheap but
will ruin the equipment. CO2 is the type of fire extinguisher which is needed,
but they cost $130.
Moved (steve/scg) that we procure a CO2 Fire Extinguisher not to exceed $150.
The motion passed 5-0 with Valerie Mates abstaining.
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1101. (2) New Business: Continued Support For WIN.
Moved (srw/popcorn) that the Grex Board supports continued association
with the WIN consortium.
The motion passed unanimously, 6-0.
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101. Publicity Committee Report:
Misti Anslin reported that she has added Corey (login "volt") to the
publicity committee.
Misti proposed that we approve a contest to design a Grex Logo, with the
prizes to be memberships. There was much discussion over whether that was
an appropriate use for memberships, so that part of the idea was dropped.
Moved (srw/scg) that the board recognizes the need for a logo and authorizes
Misti to run a contest to obtain a good one.
The motion passed unanimously, 6-0.
Moved (popcorn/remmers) to authorize $100 for Misti to produce flyers to
publicize Grex.
The motion passed unanimously, 6-0.
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1101. (3) New business: Mailbox Limits
Valerie reported that our mail spool is too small. We need to manually move
mail every day to keep it from filling. It was proposed to configure the new
sendmail so that it can reject mail intended for users whose mailboxes exceed
some maximum size. This could produce bounced mail if the problem isn't
rectified by the user. Bouncing mail usually, but not always, will unsubscribe
the user if it is coming from a list server.
The board generally approved the idea. The topic will be entered in coop for
discussion by the public. No action was taken.
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1101. (4) New business: Add cfadm trainees to Staff
Moved (remmers/popcorn) to add <helmke> and <davel> to staff as conference
administrators (cfadms). they will have access to the staff conference and
the staff mailing list if desired.
The motion passed unanimously, 6-0.
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1101. (5) New business: Guest Accounts
Rob Argy (ajax) handed out the plan he had put together for how guest accounts
could work on Grex. Marcus Watts pointed out that there severe difficulties
with the proposed technical solution that involves changing the code in
"login". Other pointed out that there are alternative technical solutions to
those problems.
The board took no formal action at this time, but several members generally
encouraged Rob to continue his pursuit of this goal.
----
The meeting was adjourned shortly after 10 PM, I believe, but I didn't
take careful note of the time.
Respectfully submitted, Steve Weiss (secretary)
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mdw
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response 1 of 8:
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Apr 30 10:22 UTC 1995 |
I wasn't at the meeting itself (you'll not I'm not listed as attending
at the start); so could not have possibly made the comments srw
attributes to me about the "guest account" and login at the meeting.
Nevertheless, from a "social engineering" standpoint, I think I would
argue quite strongly against giving "guest" access to
write/chat/mail/party/bbs/sh. Essentially, at that point, guest becomes
an "anonymous" account, and I see two difficulties there.
(1) Most freenets treat accounts as "scarce" resources, and give them
out only under special circumstances, and then often only after a
several week wait involving snail mail., lots of nosy questions, and
sometimes ID and cash donations. That means we're faced with a huge
population of incoming users who are used to that, expect that, and are
likely to avoid newuser for reasons that might be hard for us to
understand.
(2) We have a very small population of self-proclaimed "hackers" and
other people with less than generous motivations. Such people are
likely to use guest, as an anonymous way to hassle their "friends". Of
course, they do that today by just creating extra accounts. But at
least people can learn to recognize those accounts as belonging to
troublemakers. By creating this public "guest" account, we've provided
a much more anonymous avenue to make trouble from. That does not mean
we'll necessarily get more trouble. But it does mean that the new
person coming onto the system now has to DEAL with this reputation.
People who today might be willing to help a newbie, might be much less
willing to help a "guest".
Having said that, I like a lot of the information that Rob had in his
chart, and I'd like to see *that* available. I like the idea of an
optional self-guided tour of some additional information on grex - that
way, people who are pretty sure they just want to get an account, can
run newuser, while people who want to find out a bit more first, can do
so.
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