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Grex > Coop11 > #77: Minutes from the 2/23/99 Grex Board Meeting | |
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scott
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Minutes from the 2/23/99 Grex Board Meeting
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Feb 24 02:07 UTC 1999 |
The meeting was held in Zingerman's Next Door in Ann Arbor.
Present:
John Remmers (remmers, President), Mary Remmers (mary), Scott Helmke
(scott, board, acting Secretary for this meeting), Dan Gryniewicz (dang,
board), Mark Conger (aruba, Treasurer), Charles Mitchell (arthurp),
Sindi Keesan (keesan), STeve Andre' (steve, Board), Jim Diegert
(jdeigert), Tim Ryan (tpryan), Drew (drew), Steve Gibbard (scg)
Absent:
Jan Wolter (Janc, Secretary)
8 Opening Gavel Pounding - remmers
The meeting was gaveled to order at 6:38 pm
216 Treasurer's report - aruba
income good so far (whoops, Mark forgot to give me the sheet before I
left the meeting)
spare parts fund: Since we don't need all the money we collected for
the spare parts fundraiser, aruba was asking donors if they wanted their
money back or wanted to let Grex keep it. Most have agreed to let it
stay with Grex.
auction $1700 pledged, so far received $1200.
5624 Publicity Committee - Misti
nothing to report.
229 Technical Committee
Problems with expansion memory card, being worked on.
Donated disks not working yet, will be worked on some more. Trying to
format disks on a 2nd system to avoid excess Grex downtime.
Donated CPU card has been tested, works fine.
Old staff line modem died, using spare GVC modem now
Backup tapes purchased, backup done.
Janc has written a daemon that helps stop certain vandal activities,
limits use of excess memory.
21 Pumpkin Lease
new lease for Pumpkin is available online; negotiated by Mary Remmers.
Electricity is separate, which we will need to measure on a regular
basis. Basically lease has a rent increase of 5%/year, can be renewed
each year up to 5 times.
We need liability insurance. Mary found a policy for $300/year from
Hastings Mutual. There are some slight issues with exact wording on
lease with regard to insurance.
Motion: STeve moves that Grex pay up to $300 to purchase liability
insurance. Misti seconds. Vote is 6-0-0, motion is passed.
Motion: Aruba moves that Grex signs the lease for the Pumpkin, as
posted on Grex. Dang seconds. Vote is 6-0-0, motion is passed.
554 Grex Logo Misuse
An Internet site has been claiming that Grex is a partner, providing
services (they claim to give out Unix shell accounts, which are really
Grex accounts). Is this a violation of our trademark? STeve thinks
this is some individual just fooling around, based on Web pages he
found. STeve would like to send mail to admin at sites hosting these
pages. Other organizations that are listed as "partners" may be taking
legal action. Should this be handled by staff in the usual manner?
General agreement to do it that way. We could probably make webnewuser
reject this site, but that might not be worth the effort.
STeve will work on this.
14412 Credit Cards - all
Still gathering info on costs.
Big discussion right now in Coop in is allowing a credit card to be used
as ID for Grex membership. This would be useful in making membership
easier (instead of having to mail in ID). STeve recommends we do this,
since verification is now pretty good.
Another issue is setting up a secure Web system to allow payments.
"Certificates" for secure transactions
could be expensive. Grex could work with a company that provides secure
Web payments rather than setting up a physical system of our own.
Dang will look into Web payment services.
374720 Computer Rescue - tpryan
Tim has been selling salvaged 386 computers thru Kiwanis (as donations
that Kiwanis can sell).
Would like to use Grex to organize getting volunteers, finding donors
and recipients.
No board action needed. Scott and Dang, as members of Grex computer
rehab committee are willing to pass the committee on to new people.
Tpryan will enter an item in Coop.
231 Postal Scale Purchase - aruba
treasurer could use a postal scale to predict auction shipping charges.
Keesan donated a small scale during the meeting.
23 New Business - all
STeve brought in a graph of Grex user growth. We are still growing.
Freewheeling discussion of growth, possibility of Grexlike systems other
people might start.
Misti: has seen where people are being pointed to Grex for bots, cracker
info, etc. Staff would like more info, email addresses.
Aruba: finally sent tax exempt forms to Ameritech (2nd try). We could
get several hundred dollars from refunds for the last 2 years.
606 Final Gavel Pounding - remmers
The meeting was adjourned at 8:22 pm
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| 15 responses total. |
pfv
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response 1 of 15:
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Feb 24 06:07 UTC 1999 |
You know.. I shoulda' posted this back in the other item dealing
with the site that sez it's a "grex partner", but here we go:
Why not leave it be, but intercept the info and reply with a
message that explains why he is NOT affiliated and how to create
an account properly? I mean, isn't he just trying to post the info
to grex and then echo the response to the users browser?
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steve
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response 2 of 15:
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Feb 24 11:39 UTC 1999 |
Because this person is claiming a false affiliation with Grex,
thats why.
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mary
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response 3 of 15:
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Feb 24 13:06 UTC 1999 |
Thanks for both taking the minutes and posting them so quickly,
Scott. (Scott volunteered.)
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scott
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response 4 of 15:
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Feb 24 14:39 UTC 1999 |
(Everybody kept *staring* at me when the Chair asked for a volunteer. It felt
so *dirty*)
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janc
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response 5 of 15:
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Feb 24 16:59 UTC 1999 |
Thanks Scott. Sorry I couldn't make it.
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jep
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response 6 of 15:
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Feb 24 17:34 UTC 1999 |
No one figured out the agenda numbering scheme this month. What is it,
remmers? (These things drive me nuts. (-: )
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richard
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response 7 of 15:
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Feb 24 23:02 UTC 1999 |
hmm...does grex actually own the trademark on the name "grex"?
if not, grex may not be legally able to stop other sites from
advertising it as a partner or in other ways invoking the grex name
without permission.
I know that some time ago, at least a year ago, someone in party told
me grex was on a list of links on a pornography web site, listed as one of
the "affiliates" of this site that would provide email addresses that
users could use to send porn stories anonymously. It was how this user I
was talking to end up using grex.
This is where grex's open access policy could be more difficult to
maintain down the road. Suppose the FBI goes after that web site, and
subsequently goes after grex because it is listed as a link, and finds out
grex has users storing lots of porno material in its files.
But what can be done?
I guess any site can advertise any other site as a link, whether
they have permissions or not. Whether they have trademarks or not.
permission or not.
As long as grex is open access I guess grex is going to be that feature
used and abused by other sites.
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scg
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response 8 of 15:
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Feb 25 04:36 UTC 1999 |
Grex claims a trademark to the word Grex. If I understand trademark law
correctly, as long as we consistently try to protect the trademark, it stays
legal, but if we let lots of random organizitions use it without question,
and then try to stop one particular use, we wouldn't have a case.
The grex.com site is Graphic Expressions, not Grex.
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krj
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response 9 of 15:
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Feb 25 16:09 UTC 1999 |
I'm not sure trademark is relevant. "Melonite" isn't claiming to
be Grex or offering a competing service called "Grex;" they/he
are falsely claiming an affiliation. IANAL.
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drew
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response 10 of 15:
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Feb 28 20:14 UTC 1999 |
No mention seems to have been made of mary remmers' information about the
impending disposal of 2000 computers (486 and Pentium) by a hospital due
to the BIOSes being non-Y2K-compliant. Depending on how much could be netted
for each computer (sale price minus new BIOS chip), it could set grex up
for life.
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steve
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response 11 of 15:
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Feb 28 20:34 UTC 1999 |
It won't happen. I have more details on it, and we aren't going to
be able to get into the loop on that.
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other
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response 12 of 15:
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Mar 1 11:18 UTC 1999 |
um itd is doing a $2 mil computer upgrade over this week. any volunteers to
stand guard at property disposition?
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steve
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response 13 of 15:
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Mar 1 13:20 UTC 1999 |
Heh. They'll put them on pallets and try to sell them one at a
time, or by the pallet. Unforunately for us, they frequenty get
outragously high prices on things, so we aren't going to feed on
this round of goodies.
(sigh)
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rtg
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response 14 of 15:
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Mar 11 08:28 UTC 1999 |
It's a shame what people are being scared into spending over the y2k
issue. Of the computers I've tested, I've seen several that 'failed'
the y2k century rollover test, yet even those would retain a year 2000
date across power cycles and reboots, once set manually.
What this means, is that if the computer is running at midnight, dec
31st, it will start reporting 1900 dates, but if it's turned off while
we're at the party, and the date is set manually at next power-on, then
everything proceeds fine from there. A one-time, 30-second
circumvention is not a good reason, IMO, to spend millions on replacing
computers.
..And I'm angry because I'm too damned honest to benefit from the
windfall this paranoia is raining down upon those willing to go along
with the joke.
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dang
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response 15 of 15:
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Apr 28 03:42 UTC 1999 |
Take the U of M hospital, for example. They have thousands of
computers, literally. Quite a few of them can't afford to be shut off,
even for a fairly short time, as they are used for important patient
data and drug interaction data, and things like that. You would need
hundreds of people to be sitting at these computers at midnight, to
change the date, and you *still* wouldn't be able to use them for that
few minutes. Asside from that, you would need these people to stick
around for a few hours, changing the date on every computer in the
place. That's a lot of money, and a lot of hassel, and it's possible
that some other Y2K failure would show up in these computers. All we
know is that they failed one test, and testing likely stopped at that
point. Mind you, I don't think anything drastic would occure, but it's
possible. It's much easier to take the one time expense to replace
them. The infrastructure to replace computers is in place and we
oiled. Besides, maybe I can get some cheap computers out of this Y2K
deal. :)
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