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Grex > Coop13 > #410: Agenda for Grex BoD meeting: Sunday, May 20, 2007, 7 PM | |
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slynne
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Agenda for Grex BoD meeting: Sunday, May 20, 2007, 7 PM
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May 10 15:43 UTC 2007 |
Agenda for Grex BoD meeting: Sunday, May 20, 2007, 7 PM
1. Arrivals 7:00 PM
2. Opening Gavel Tap 7:30 PM
3. Treasurer's Report
4. Staff Report
5. Old Business
*Surplus - what do do with it.
1. Spam Filtering (being researched by staff)
2. New Motherboard/Memory (being researched by staff)
3. RAID Disks/Bigger Disks (being researched by staff)
* Internet Access Policy and Classes of Users (please see
coop:407 for discussion)
6. Schedule Next Meeting
7. New Business
8. Closing Gavel Tap
The meeting will be held at 208 N Grove St, Ypsilanti, MI. All are
welcome.
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| 23 responses total. |
cross
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response 1 of 23:
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May 18 20:48 UTC 2007 |
Here's something else I'd like to address: I tried to email this to the board
and staff, but it's not clear that it made it through.
In the middle ages, theological scholars frequently debated such
(seemingly) silly questions as, how many angels can one fit onto the
head of a pin? I read somewhere (perhaps in the fortune file) that we
must take this in context; at the time, they weren't debating whether
the number was one, two, or even two hundred, but whether the numbers
were finite or infinite. In other words, the discussion was a debate
on the limits of divinity; the particular question was merely an
allegory in the larger discussion.
We're not dealing with issues weighted by the same theological import
as those late scholars, but I do think we've reached a point in our
existence when an existential question becomes important: what does
immortality mean for a grex account? In particular, I've been poking
around in the password file a lot recently, and have noticed that we
have immortal users who have not logged in, in some cases, in more
than a decade. Of the 307 names in /usr/local/etc/immortal (30 of
which are accounts that do not exist or those mysterious non-existent
single letter logins), 193 have not logged in in over six months (172
of those have not logged in in the past year; 154 in two years, 129 in
3, 105 in 4, 91 in five years or more). In other words, fully 1/3rd
of our immortal users haven't logged in for over five years; more than
half haven't logged in in over two years.
So the question: Should these users continue to remain immortal? Is
immortality on grex a synonym for infinite lifetime of one's account?
For some of these, it seems obvious that they are not coming back, at
least not any time soon. Should, then, their accounts be deleted, or
perhaps locked? It seems that someone who disappears for a few years
and comes back is one thing, but someone who disappears for more than
a decade is quite another matter all together. What do others think?
Btw: Some of these users are deceased (jor and blueyes, for instance).
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cross
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response 2 of 23:
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May 18 20:49 UTC 2007 |
PS: Here's a list of the users who are (a) immortal, and (b) have not
logged in within the last five years:
abby dorian host2 leann rogue
abrahamk draken host3 livi sarrica
adbarr dynamo hross lkt scgtest
anasazi ec htp169 lotte sgs
andrewb ejkloos indigo matrixg simcha
autoresp fes info meena sisiro
baby field info-f mfeo talon
bad fire info-g mike threeps
blh fish insanity morel truffle
blueyes freida jasmine mraina uli
bsa466 fwdehaan jbrennan msqladm user6122
cardding gandolf jedisg mutt wfh
chr garima jhurmanf mysql willard
cicero gregc jjc nissa wolfe
confetti grexlogo jmc nsiddall wolfmage
crude grexohio kendra pashok
dadroc grrwoof kep precious
des hawkeye kinnari quail
dolly host1 ldiot regordon
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gelinas
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response 3 of 23:
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May 19 01:00 UTC 2007 |
(I'm inclined to keep the accounts around, for as long as grex continues to
exist.)
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maus
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response 4 of 23:
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May 19 16:55 UTC 2007 |
I would tend to agree with gelinas. I think the incremental cost of
keeping those accounts open is significantly smaller than the value of
them having true IMMORTAL status (in big, capital, underlined letters,
in italics, even). One presumes that the threshold to get that status
was nontrivial in its first place, so why diminish the social value of
what they did to earn that and stuff?
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cross
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response 5 of 23:
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May 19 17:02 UTC 2007 |
Actually, the threshold is just asking for it; becoming immortal is trivial
on grex.
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mary
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response 6 of 23:
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May 19 20:42 UTC 2007 |
Does this list bother you?
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slynne
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response 7 of 23:
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May 19 21:21 UTC 2007 |
I can think of some people on that list whom I think should stay on it.
I imagine that for the people on that list that I dont know there may be
people who would prefer it if the names remained on the list. I think
our immortals list is a good idea. I think it is nice that all it takes
to get on it is a request. I cant think of any real reason to get rid of
it.
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cross
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response 8 of 23:
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May 20 18:09 UTC 2007 |
Regarding #6; Not in the slightest. In fact, I don't know the vast majority
of people on it.
However, I'm just curious what to do about people who clearly aren't coming
back, for two reasons that I can think of: 1) Is it a security risk to leave
old accounts around that are accessible? 2) What if someone else wants an
older login name, that hasn't been used in 10-12 years? Should we tell them
`no' just because someone has the login name, even though they aren't using
it, and aren't likely to ever use it again?
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cross
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response 9 of 23:
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May 20 18:10 UTC 2007 |
Er, so, I apologize for the short notice, but something has come up this
evening, and I won't be able to call into the board meeting. Sorry!
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gelinas
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response 10 of 23:
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May 20 19:30 UTC 2007 |
Re the last question in 8 above: Yup; that is, in my opinion, the real
purpose of the immortals list: to prevent loginids being re-used.
As for the first question, if there is a security risk, we could disable the
accounts, or switch them to a shell that tells the user to contact the staff
and then logs out again.
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cmcgee
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response 11 of 23:
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May 20 19:57 UTC 2007 |
I'm not sure what good-for-Grex goal we achieve by removing names from the
immortals list.
Whatever title we put on this list (immortals, permanently reserved names,
letter strings that may not be reused) does not add or subtract from its
utility. It is useful to have a list of such letter strings.
Given that there should be a list with *some* letter strings, what difference
does it make how many are on it? Is anyone harmed by not having access to
a particular letter string?
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slynne
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response 12 of 23:
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May 20 20:33 UTC 2007 |
The only harm I can see is that people may want to use those particular
logins for themselves. Generally, I think that they can probably find an
acceptable alternative without too much trouble though.
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denise
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response 13 of 23:
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May 21 03:09 UTC 2007 |
I'd love to see some of those people back on grex, there were some pretty
interesting people [not that there isn't any interesting people now! :-) ].
Too bad we can't get in touch with them to invite them back!
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aruba
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response 14 of 23:
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May 21 05:05 UTC 2007 |
I suspect what Dan is getting at is that he'd like to phase out the old
algorithm that Grex used to use for encrypting passwords, and that can't
ever be completely done while there are old accounts around whose passwords
are encoded he old way.
If we can find a thecnical way around that issue, then that's fine, but I
have to agree with the general chorus here that being in the immortals list
should mean that you never get reaped. If there are only about 300 people
on the list, then I can't see how it's any drain on the system at all.
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jep
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response 15 of 23:
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May 21 12:36 UTC 2007 |
I would not want to see loginids of deceased Grexers being used in the
future. Another of those is ec. I would really hate to have someone
start using his loginid. But those IDs can just be locked; there is no
need to leave the actual accounts in place.
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maus
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response 16 of 23:
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May 22 02:37 UTC 2007 |
For security reasons, I could see locking the accounts and setting an
error message telling them to email staff to have their accounts turned
back on. I think keeping them immortal is a *GOOD THING*.
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mcnally
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response 17 of 23:
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May 22 03:17 UTC 2007 |
re #16: it goes without saying (I hope) that such accounts should have
any special privileges (such as group membership in any but unprivileged
groups) suspended while they are inactive, but why "lock" them "for security
reasons"?
Anyone who wants can have an account on Grex, after all..
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denise
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response 18 of 23:
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May 22 04:39 UTC 2007 |
'Not wantingto see loginids for deceased Grexers being used in the future.
Another one of those is ec.' ec's deseased? [I may be misreading this...]
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tsty
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response 19 of 23:
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May 22 07:42 UTC 2007 |
yes, ec committed suicide in canada about a year ago.
well, maybe longer ago than that, actually.
news made it to the m-b0x.
VeryBadNews.
i see absolutelyu azero advanatage or improbement to grex by disturbing
the immortalz as they now are, fwiw.
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cross
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response 20 of 23:
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May 22 12:43 UTC 2007 |
Regarding #14; Mark has it correct, but reversed. It was rather because
I've been dinking with the password hashing algorithm that I started to look
at the password file and noticed a lot of inactive accounts that were
immortal, but that I was dinking with immortals to try and change the
hashing algorithm. I just sort of looked at it and said, ``wow, some of
these accounts are really old, I wonder if anyone even knows these people
are still around? I wonder if *they* know they still have an account?'' As
far as converting the password file goes, I suspect that its irrelevant, as
most of these folks aren't going to remember their passwords anyway, and are
going to need them to be reset. :-)
Let me clarify something that I think folks are confused about: I don't see
a *problem* with the immortals list at all, but rather all I have are
questions. I actually think it would be really cool if these people could
be convinced to come back to grex, particularly if people know them and
could ask them about it. For the record my two cents are that we shouldn't
delete idle immortals either. Oh, and I also thought it was neat to see
some accounts that had been inactive for 12 or so years.
Well, let me rephrase that last bit; I see a lot of system type users in
there that probably shouldn't be (they're already protected from automatic
deletion by other means), but that's obviously not what we're talking about
here, so let's ignore the pseudo-users that don't correspond to an actual
human being, just some function of the systems software. (For completeness,
an example of such a user is the `mysql' account; the MySQL database package
has its own user. Nobody logs into that account, really; those who need to
access it for various administrative reasons occassionally do so, but that's
not the issue here. That account won't be deleted because it has a very low
UID number, so its inclusion in the immortal file is redundant, though it
doesn't hurt anything. In some ways its equivalent to putting `root' into
the immortal file; doesn't hurt anything, but has no effect.)
Now, the argument for disabling some of these accounts is largely for the
protection of the user and account itself. It would be unfortunate if
someone figured out how to break into one of these accounts and then started
to impersonate that individual; the longer an account lies fallow, the
higher the probability that that could happen. In particular, I could
imagine this being particularly unfortunate for a user who is deceased
(though I also like the idea of preventing that user's login from being
reused as a legacy sort of thing).
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denise
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response 21 of 23:
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May 23 00:59 UTC 2007 |
[I remember ec from online years ago, and in person, too, at some of the mnet
gatherings. Its sad that things got so rough for him. May he RIP.]
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slynne
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response 22 of 23:
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May 23 02:22 UTC 2007 |
Yeah. I was never especially close with him but we were in the same
class at Community HS and we had several mutual friends. I always really
liked him. We would occasionally send each other emails. I had a little
crush on him at one point. I was more effected by the news of his death
than I would have thought.
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krj
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response 23 of 23:
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May 24 22:16 UTC 2007 |
I recognize one of the "immortal" accounts as something I was
involved with. "grexlogo" was a place to keep image files for
the Grex logo. Maybe there's a better solution for that now.
I've lost the account password.
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