Minutes of the August 23, 1995 Board Meeting.

Aug 27 07:33 UTC 1995

 Minutes of the meeting of the board of Cyberspace Communications, Inc.
 August 23, 1995 at the Michigan Union Food Court

 1. The meeting was called to order at 7:14 PM by Valerie Mates.

 Board members attending:
 Valerie Mates (popcorn), President, Steve Weiss (srw), Secretary,
 Steve Gibbard (scg), Rane Curl (rcurl), John Remmers (remmers).

 Absent: Dan Romanchik (danr) Treasurer, STeve Andre (steve).

 Public in attendance: Mary Remmers (chelsea), Jeff Kaplan (kaplan), 
  Kevin Powell (kpowell).

2. Treasurer's report: not given (danr was absent)

3. 502(c)(3) committee report - Rane Curl reported that there was no
 progress.

4. Computer Rehabilitation Committee Report - Rane Vurl reported that 
Rob Argy (ajax) would be taking over where T. S. Taylor (tsty) left off.

5. Publicity Committee report: not given (Misti Anslin (mta) was absent)

6. Technical Committee Report: STeve was not present, so this report 
was initially given by popcorn and srw, and later refined when more
information became available. STeve came just before the meeting ended and
clarified a few points.

* The SUN-4 is now up. It is running SunOS 4.1.3 at Greg's house.

* The CD-Rom we bought for it does not work. It may be replaceable.
  We used a borrowed one to get this far.
  
* The 325MB disk has heat problems. It should be replaced. Staff requested
  by email the sense of the board regarding this question, so that a 
  replacement unit could be purchased before this board meeting. At this 
  time the board did not know whether the staff had purchased a replacement.
  
Motion: (srw,popcorn) The staff is authorized to spend up to $350 to purchase
a 540 MB hard drive and emclosure for the SUN-4 project.

This motion passed unanimously 5-0.

* Mary Remmers (chelsea) expressed concern that the board was conducting
  business by email instead of in the open.

* Grex went down last night because the power was cut at the breaker box by
  a tenant.

* Our electrical work is done. The plug sockets were rewired and a wire
  was routed through a joist. Greg Cronau and Marc Unangst did the bulk of
  this work.

Later in the meeting, when STeve Andre' and Marc Unangst arrived, there was

more information on technical issues, as follows:

* Marc Unangst is going to locate the set of patches needed to achieve the
  proper security level for SunOS 4.1.3 on the SUN-4.

* Greg has already compiled the GNU bin utilities, perhaps 15% of the 
  software needed for it. It will need to be placed on the internet, and
  we are awaiting that to begin letting other staffers set up the
  remaining software.
  
* Some of the tougher parts yet to do are the installation of the Shadow
  Database and programs that use it, the kernel patches, Picospan and NewUser.
  
* The 540MB disk (which we approved earlier in the meeting) has been
  purchased.

7. Verification Policy - STeve Andre (steve) was absent, and had not posted
   anything further. John Remmers (remmers) said he would try to find the
   older material we had, and post it again to get discussion going again.
   
8. Newsletter Report - John Remmers will start the runoff vote.
   (I may have missed something said here, if so I apologize and hope
    that Rane can fill in whatever I might have missed.)
    
9. Grex Manual - not given (danr was absent)

A. GrexOhio - The group of Ohio Grexers, known as GrexOhio, has requested 
   permission to use the name Grex. there was discussion of the question
   of granting the use of the name "Grex" to this group. Some concern was 
   expressed about where the money would go that they collected as dues.
   Rane wanted to  adopt a club charter policy to cover this kind of 
   organization. We compromised on a resolution which grants the authority,
   for the time being.
   
Motion: (rcurl,srw) The organization "GrexOhio" is permitted to ose the name
   "Grex" in their name "GrexOhio", pending the adoption by the Cyberspace
   mmunications, Inc/ board of an associated club charter policy, to which
   GrexOhio will be required to adhere.
   
The motion passed unanimously 5-0.

B. New Business - Steve Gibbard suggested that we use (tm) signifying a
   common-law trademark on the name Grex in our official documents.
   Steve Weiss (srw) questioned whether it was a "trade marl" or a
   "service mark". Valerie Mates (popcorn) said she will bring information
   on the various registration options to the next meeting.
   
   Steve Weiss (srw) discussed a new Web-based conferencing application
   which he plans to construct to be compatible with Grex's existing picospan
   conferences. He calls this system "WebSpan" and it is currently being
   discussed in coop (item 70).
   
C. The meeting adjourned at 8:55 PM

response 2 of 9:

Aug 27 18:41 UTC 1995

From what I recall, they were getting two data channels of ISDN,
or 128kbps ("an ISDN link" typically means one channel, or 64kbps).
I think MSEN offered them free Internet service, if they paid for
the hardware and Ameritech charges.

response 4 of 9:

Aug 28 04:01 UTC 1995

  True..."link" is a bit ambiguous!  Though to nitpick,
it's two B channels ("bearer," for voice or data) and one
D channel ("delta," for signal/network info) [2B+D], and
that's not a fixed configuration for all ISDN lines, just
for the most common type (BRI, or Basic Rate Interface).
 
  Prices on BRI equipment has dropped in price a lot in
recent months, as more manufacturers are jumping into it,
and ISDN is becoming more mainstream.

response 6 of 9:

Aug 28 23:14 UTC 1995

   Billions of nanocents.  ;-)

response 8 of 9:

Aug 29 01:26 UTC 1995

   It's about $1400 a month for a T1 line, carrying Internet
traffic last time I checked which was probably a year ago.