srw
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Minutes of the Board meeting of July 22, 1996
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Jul 28 02:43 UTC 1996 |
Minutes of the meeting of Cyberspace Communications
Monday, July 22, in the Michigan Union Basement Commons
1. The meeting was called to order by Scott Helmke at 7:45 PM
Directors present:
Scott Helmke (scott), President
Steve Weiss (srw), Secretary
Misti Anslin (mta),
Steve Gibbard (scg),
Rob Henderson (robh),
Valerie Mates (popcorn),
Absent:
Mark Conger (aruba), Treasurer
Others present:
Damon Andre' (dea),
Glenda Andre' (glenda),
Staci Andre' (sea),
STeve Andre'(steve),
John Remmers (remmers),
Carson Rizor (carson),
2. Treasurer's Report
The treasurer, Mark Conger, was not able to attend, so no treasurer's report
was given. The figures for the month of June are posted online in coop.
3. 501(C)(3) Committee
Mark was not here to give a report.
4. Computer Rehabilitation Committee
Scott Helmke announced that there was nothing new to report.
5. Publicity Committee
Misti Anslin announced that there was nothing new to report.
6. Technical Committee Report (steve, popcorn, srw, scott, robh, scg)
* Hardware: There are no hardware issues currently pending.
* Telnet queuing:
It mostly works except for some users/locations from
which it fails. Often the result is that the connection is broken at the
login prompt. Marcus is investigating to determine the cause.
This telnetd supports the HUPCL flag in the pty, and it is set OFF by
default, so users will get a login prompt after disconnecting
(by default), in the same fashion as the dialups.
During the discussion, Carson suggested that we use HUPCL as the default,
rather than -HUPCL, because that would make our telnet service work more
like that of other systems.
* The Idle Zapper
The idle zapper has been installed. This one (idled) is a different one
than the one we had earlier (untamo). Untamo had been shut off because of
undesirable side-effects. Idled appears to be much better behaved.
Idled warns users with 15 minutes of idle time, and disconnects them at
20 minutes.
Valerie noted that the zapping of duplicate logins is turned on. There
was discussion of this, and some concern expressed that we did not have a
policy not to permit duplicate logins, even when the system was full.
Valerie agreed to begin a discussion of this question in coop.
"less" has been fixed so that users do not appear to be idle when using
it as a pager.
"rzsz" needs to be looked at yet, so that the zapper won't zap
file transfers.
* Terminal Server:
We have a second terminal server now (thanks to ajax), and it has been
named "groupie". It appears to work much better than "groovy".
Steve Gibbard plans to install it in the dungeon to replace "groovy", but
we must wait for telnetd to support user counters instead of ptys to
control the giving of service at the head of the queue.
We may add support through groupie for the new lines for testing
purposes, before they are placed in the hunt group.
* Modems:
We plan to install three of our new modems. One to replace the line that
is down (ttyh6) and 2 for the new lines. The new lines may not go into the
hunt group right away.
* Web Site:
The web site is not particularly well organized, and we are looking for a
volunteer who would be capable of reorganizing the pages.
* Ethernet Cards:
Although we do not immediately need them, Scott mentioned that
Computer Renaissance is selling 3C509 cards for $5, and that at those
prices we should pick up a couple of them. We will need them to attach
additional PCs to the network.
10. Newsletter Committee
Misti Anslin announced that there was nothing new to report. No articles were
submitted. Misti thinks that the idea of a newsletter may now be dead. We
agreed to take it off of the agenda.
11. Auction Committee (popcorn, robh)
The auction has broken $1000 in bids, with some items still open for bidding.
About $500 has been collected so far.
12. Membership Chair
After a short discussion a motion was entered as follows:
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MOVED (Scott Helmke, Valerie Mates) that Jim Reuter (omni) be appointed as
chair of the membership committee.
The motion PASSED 5-0-1-1 with all in favor except Misti Anslin, who
abstained, and Mark Conger who was absent.
13. Grex Has to Move (see below)
14. Centrex Lines
STeve Andre reported that Ameritech has decided to assign an account
representative to our account. His name is Ken Curian, and he works
out of Milwaukee. We should have Centrex prices from him within the week.
STeve said that based on preliminary discussions with him, it is likely that
Centrex will save us money as well.
15. People's Food Coop Discount
There was much discussion of this idea. As Valerie explained it we could
offer a discount or something (like a manual) for free to members of the
PFC. The advantage to us would be local publicity.
There were concerns expressed about our inability to offer a discount without
a bylaw change, and whether a free manual offer would be enough to allow us
to participate in the PFC's discount program, which is how we get our
publicity.
Valerie agreed to continue the discussion in coop, and no further action
was taken.
16. Continuation of Lease
Our lease is up in a little over three months (11/1/96) and will renew
automatically unless notification of intent to terminate the lease is given.
The question addressed was whether we would want to continue to stay at the
dungeon assuming that legal difficulties were resolved in our favor.
STeve Andre' argued that we should retain the option to stay, but after
a discussion of the pros and cons of staying in the dungeon, the following
motion was made:
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MOVED (Scott Helmke, Misti Anslin) that we notify our landlord of our
desire to terminate the lease on 11/1/96.
The motion PASSED unanimously 6-0 with Mark Conger absent.
13. Grex has to Move
The discussion of this agenda item was delayed so that we would be sure we
had enough time for items 14-16.
This item grew out of the difficulties with certifying the dungeon as a legal
space for us to occupy. The City Building Department appeals board is still
considering the appeal of a ruling that they mad against us. If we lose the
appeal, we will have to move.
Now we have voted to terminate our lease, which commits us to move by 11/1/96.
This item is a discussion of the various options we have.
* The Red Cross building.
The Red Cross has offered (tentatively) to house us in a room in their
basement. The space would be donated (no rent). The major disadvantage
of this site is that it is located in the SE AA switch area, and so we
would have to change our 761-3000 telephone number.
* The West Huron Commercial Building
This building is just west of the AARR trestle over Huron Street, on the
north side of the street. The physical layout is excellent. The rent is
$60/month and no lease is possible. We could probably arrange to require
3 month notice. The biggest advantage is the physical layout, and the
biggest disadvantage is the unwillingness to lease.
* CO-locating with an undisclosed ISP
Valerie is conducting discussions with a contact person at an ISP with the
idea of obtaining a new physical location and a high bandwidth connection
to the internet, in exchange for publicity, exposure, and other non-cash
considerations. We have not come to an agreement yet, so this possibility
is still being explored.
* The Cottage Inn Building on Plymouth Road
We have seen this space. It is also an excellent physical layout. We would be
able to have 150 square feet (50% more than we need), although we would
need to build the partitions. That is one disadvantage. Another is the rent.
It is negotiable, but would be in th $60-$100 range. We could do a full
year or multi-year lease at this location.
There may be other sites still under investigation, and with the time
pressure removed as a result of the delay in the appeals board decision, we
decided to table this question until next month. In the meantime, the status
of the various alternates must be pinned down so that we have enough
information to make a decision.
20. New Business
Rob Henderson asked the board to clarify the policy on what can be contained
in individual users' web directories (www). In particular we need to
resolve the question of whether we want to permit Java classes to be shipped
via http from Grex. Steve Weiss mentioned that .zip files are present and
that it is hard to tell what is in a zip file. We currently have one user
with zipped text files, and another with zipped midi data files.
Rob pointed out that the midi data does violate our existing policy of
disallowing multimedia files. However, midi data files are often quite small.
so the question of whether the size should be a consideration was raised
again.
Rob said that /u/robh/wwwdirs contains a list of the contents of these
directories. We agreed to discuss this question more in coop.
21. Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned at 9:37 PM
Respectfully Submitted,
Steven R. Weiss, Secretary
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