mooncat
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January 9, 2003 Board Of Directors Meeting Minutes
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Jan 14 20:16 UTC 2003 |
Attendees: Aruba*, Flem*, Gelinas*, Mary*, MDW*, Mooncat*, Other*,
Bhelliom, Keesan, Jdeigert (* indicates Board Member)
1. Meeting commenced at 7:37 pm
2. Other commented that he was disappointed that no one guessed
the reason for last month’s numbering scheme.
3. Skipped for a few minutes
4. Elections: Chair: Mary, Treasurer: Aruba, Secretary: Mooncat
7. Special meeting- to be held at Valerie and Jan’s, currently
scheduled for February 15th.
Regular Board Meeting: February 27th, 7:30, Zingerman’s Next Door
5. Musical Registrars: MDW talked to the SemiSlug people, advice
was that with VeriSign they recommend switching at least 30 days before
the expiration of the current agreement, and usually prefer more like
60 days. A few people had good things to say in regards to Dotster, no
one had any bad things to say. MDW recommends that we switch to
Dotster. PIR.org (?) is a new group that handles the domain
registrations for organizations, may be worth looking into for the
future.
Aruba motion: Transfer Grex.org to Dotster and pay for two years.
Gelinas Seconded the motion, 7 for, 0 against, 0 Abstained.
6. Staff has been seeing a variety of interesting spam, our ISP is
blocking packets from Grex to places associated with spam. This has
produced many half-open connections- and there is a limit to how many
half-open connections there can be at one time- when this limit is
reached Grex refuses new connections.
We should talk to the ISP to see what is going on from their end. In
the meantime MDW has doubled the number of half-open connections Grex
can maintain.
As far as load spikes- it could be many things., MDW found a list of 8
people who were getting a lot of spam- one account getting mail
delivery attempts every 10 seconds (these were being denied because
said box was full). A couple of the people on this list were accounts
that had already been reaped. He guesses that there is spammer software
out there that uses cyberspace.org as a generic address. As far as what
can be done- mail cannot be delivered to full boxes or reaped account-
problem is that now all the accounts getting hit are reaped or full.
Solution may be to go after these spammers legally- enough clues as to
who they are that we could potentially sue them. Some of the mail is
getting bounced back to us, even though it didn’t originate from us.
There is no technical solution to this that doesn’t involve spending a
great deal of money.
MDW mentioned three solutions: A. Can just live with this and cope with
the lag and slow system times.
B. We spend $$ on more machines and a faster network connection.
C. get a lawyer, track these people down and make them stop.
MDW will put an item on Grex so this can be publicly discussed.
Discussion begins on changing mail permissions, perhaps only allowing
local mail, or only mail by permission.
Back to the lawyer idea- lawyer could send a cease and desist letter,
that would cost maybe $100, or so. There are many ways we can reach the
people responsible. Criminal proceedings wouldn’t cost us anything.
If cease and desist doesn’t work, and we’re reasonably sure we have the
right person we should consider legal proceedings. AOL has successfully
gone after spammers who used AOL for mail. This goes back to MDW
stating that he will create an item. Other would like to talk to the
County Prosecutor’s office about what criminal proceedings would entail.
(exit MDW, brief intermission while the meeting changes locations and
goes into the Kid’s Room)
Mail by request? Could be a staff problem. Someone would have to handle
all those requests. Possibly have a half staff member to permit mail
and for a short time maybe we should experiment with mail by permission
only.
Hardware has been good. In last several weeks the quality of the DSL
line has been degrading for a bit and then “repairs” itself. Quality of
DSL has pretty much always been bad. Steve rather likes a Lansing
company over our current provider, but unfortunately they don’t offer
service in our area.
3. Treasurer’s Report: For December we took in $384 and spent $458.
There were no new members in December. So far in January we have taken
in $204 with one new member, and one returning member.
Last year we lost about $800 overall. Monthly average was $444, with
$402 in dues and $42 in miscellaneous donations/income sources (i.e.
CafePress) (note, we have to get going on the auction)
CafePress has paid us about $95 (with $20 more owed).
According to membership data (and the nifty graph Aruba put together)
overall Grex has generally hovered between 90 – 100 members, since
early 2002 we have steadily been at around 80.
Personal Property Taxes- Steve will begin looking for prices and
compile the information for Mark, who will do the paperwork and submit
any taxes we owe.
Phone Lines: we’re currently down to seven, six dial-in and one staff
line, if we want to drop anymore we should just drop our Centrex
contact and figure something new. Talk more about this next month? Dave
Cahill entered a reply in coop with more information on fines for
dropping Centrex before the contract expires.
Mark sent the corporate forms to Lansing, and will call again to make
sure they actually did change the address listed for the registered
agent this time.
Cyberspace.org was renewed for 1 year with VeriSign, Grex.org is going
to Dotster, in a year this will be reviewed.
Savings account interest has dropped to 0.75%
8. New Business: Steve, purely by accident, found cheaper batteries for
the UPS, has two different prices, and there may be another place,
hoping to get the batteries cheaply and soon.
Bhelliom re-stated that the publicity committee is open to anyone
interested. If anyone out there IS interested and has creative ideas,
please come forward. If no one steps forward, we will discuss the
status of the publicity committee at the next meeting.
Aruba remarked that if anyone is interested in working on the Grex
Handbook, please let him know. It was last updated about five years
ago, so it could use some up-to-date information.
9. Closing gavel was at 9:00 pm precisely.
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