Minutes of the Board Meeting of Feb 26, 1996

Mar 2 07:01 UTC 1996

Minutes of the Meeting of the Board of Directors
of Cyberspace Communications, Inc. held on 2-26-96 at the ITI Cafeteria on
Hubbard Road in Ann Arbor

1. The meeting was called to order by Scott Helmke at 7:40 PM

In attendance:
Scott Helmke  (scott), President
Mark Conger   (aruba), Treasurer
Steve Weiss   (srw),   Secretary
Rob Henderson (robh)
Steve Gibbard (scg)
Misti Anslin  (mta)

Absent:
Valerie Mates (popcorn)

Others present:
Rob Argy      (ajax)
Carson Rizor  (carson)
Drew Lanagan  (drew)
STeve Andre'  (steve)

Since Rob Argy had to leave early, we agreed to discuss the agenda out of
order. The JCC sale and the Rehabilitation committee items were discussed
first.

10. The JCC Sale

Rob Argy again volunteered to coordinate our efforts to raise money by selling
surplus equipment at the JCC sale. The Sale will be held on March 24. We
discussed the number of tables we could best use, and settled on renting two.

Motion: (scott,srw) To approve the rental of two tables at the JCC Sale.
Motion passed by a vote of 5-0. (mta not voting, as she had not yet arrived).

4. Computer Rehabilitation COmmittee

Rob Argy reported that there are still 5 or 6 PCs and 2 printers. These
machines are waiting for Rane to contact recipients, and waiting for storage 
to move them out of Rob Argy's apartment.

2. Treasurer's Report

Mark Conger reported that we are having a pretty good month of February.

In Jan and Feb together he reported expenses of $991 and income (dues plus 
T-shirts) of $1034.

For the modem fund drive we have $505 collected, which is enough to
replace our 2400 baud modems. We don't know yet about the price for new
GVC modems. STeve Andre' was supposed to be looking into this.

3. 501(C)(3) Committee Report

Mark Conger hasn't talked to Rane Curl yet about picking up the project.

6. Technical Committee Report

* STeve announced that he had located a source of new GVC modems on
the West Coast. The price would be $90-$95 per modem.

* We are still having problems with mysterious reboots. There appear to
be cycles of this, and it is not correlated to temperature.

* The other hardware is functioning normally.

* 8mm DAT tape drive needs to be cleaned. We need to find a tape cleaning
kit for it.

* Sun-4 

  o Greg has fixed the Jumbo Disk Patch
  o The disk thrash test has completed without any sign of the disk bug
  o We are scheduled to move the computer to the dungeon on Wednesday.

* The mail program "mh" was zapped by the disk bug, but we didn't have
a backup for it. It had to get rebuilt. Marcus has done this.

11. Coop login Screen

The board discussed the situation with the Grex Login Screen. A rough consensus
was that the fairwitnesses should resolve this between themselves, with
input from the Grex community.

4. Publicity Committee Report

Misti Anslin reported that the manual "Wizard in Training" is available.

It will have a black and white cover rather than the promised color
cover, until the next release. This is because of problems with the color
printer.

These will be mailed on Thursday to the 12 new members (plus anybody who
sign up in the next two days).

Misti will be coming to the Mar 24 JCC sale with fliers for Grex.

7. Newsletter report.

Misti Anslin reported that no new submissions have been received, so
there has been no progress.

12. Commercial Use of Grex

There was a substantial amount of discussion of this question. Various people
discussed past practices of limiting commercial use, and others expressed a
desire to permit incidental commercial use.

The consensus of the board seemed to be that 
 (1) Serious commercial use of Grex is discouraged
 (2) Incidental commercial use of Grex is acceptable
 
No motion was made, and no action was taken. This item was not tabled though.
The board was having trouble establishing on a policy on this question.

13. CDA

Scott Helmke reported that he had attended Arbornet's meeting at which
the effects of the CDA were discussed. Scott reported that David Cahill 
expressed a very optimistic viewpoint on the effect the CDA would have.

Steve Gibbard wanted the board to take no action until the CDA is enforced.
Rob Henderson concurred. Scott Helmke, Steve Weiss, and Misti Anslin
expressed that they would like to have a policy in advance that Grex would
comply with the portion of the law being enforced.

Without more agreement, no motion was offered. We decided that it would
make sense to continue this discussion in coop. Scott Helmke agreed
to enter the item, and board members were encouraged to post their opinions.

14. New Business

Carson Rizor raised the question of Kenn Capman's (wolfmage) offer
to perform a magic show to raise funds for Grex. Valerie Mates has the
packet of information about this, and Carson volunteered to look into
it further. He will get the packet from Valerie when she returns.

The meeting was adjourned at 10:00 PM.

Respectfully submitted,

Steve Weiss, Secretary

response 2 of 18:

Mar 2 08:40 UTC 1996

Has it really been that long since the meeting? wow.

Thanks, Steve.

response 4 of 18:

Mar 2 16:09 UTC 1996

<Erinn reeeeally needs a copy of the Wizards in Training book....hmm...>
*slip out*

response 6 of 18:

Mar 3 00:26 UTC 1996

Is there a newer product that would make a better deal?  Since we are buying
five, we could likely stand to support a new modem.  The GVC's have done well
for us though and it is always hard to find a Grex-quality modem.  Buying
obsolete stuf at a premium price doesn't sound sensible though.

response 8 of 18:

Mar 3 12:36 UTC 1996

re #3: what problems? 

        seriously, I don't believe that they were discussed at the meeting.
        I'm keeping my mouth shut as far as to why I know about them.

response 10 of 18:

Mar 3 17:45 UTC 1996

You are probably right.  The GVC's have been unusually good, and though
they are only 14.4, I don't think Grex is going to go to 28.8 on the dialins
any time soon.  I can't think of any other feature newer modems might have
that would be worth more to Grex than reliability.

response 12 of 18:

Mar 4 05:30 UTC 1996

It is a real advantage to have only one or two kinds of modems that work
in the modem pool, rather than a heterogeneous mixture of modems that
work different ways.  There is, in fact, a 28,8K GVC, but I don't think
it makes sense to get that unless we are willing to replace everything
with that.

response 14 of 18:

Mar 4 10:09 UTC 1996

The point to have decided on 28.8K GVC's was when we originally bought
the 14.4K ones.  In fact, I did urge we do so at the time, but it was
felt the additional expense was not desirable.  Given we didn't do so
then, I do wholeheartedly agree we should not do so today.

response 16 of 18:

Mar 4 15:19 UTC 1996

   If the 28.8 GVC's turn out to be as good as the 14.4 ones are,
then at some point I wouldn't have any problem getting some of
those too.  As long as we have a clearly defined trunk hunt for
different speeds we can deal with things pretty well.  It's the
scenerio of having 5 different kinds of modei that gets really
hairy.

response 18 of 18:

Mar 4 18:38 UTC 1996

Thanks, Valerie.