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25 new of 66 responses total.
nharmon
response 7 of 66: Mark Unseen   Feb 12 00:55 UTC 2010

I'm surprised the root password isn't sealed by the board in a
tamper-evident envelope with staff just given least privileges via sudo,
with a couple of staffers having root-level sudo.
kentn
response 8 of 66: Mark Unseen   Feb 12 01:26 UTC 2010

It's more likely in a hermetically sealed mayonnaise jar under
Funk and Wagnalls' porch.
nharmon
response 9 of 66: Mark Unseen   Feb 12 01:47 UTC 2010

*snort*
tonster
response 10 of 66: Mark Unseen   Feb 12 05:51 UTC 2010

resp:7: that's how ford used to keep their root passwords sealed.
nharmon
response 11 of 66: Mark Unseen   Feb 12 09:58 UTC 2010

It's also the recommended safe practice for financial institutions.
kentn
response 12 of 66: Mark Unseen   Feb 12 13:16 UTC 2010

That doesn't sound like all that bad an idea, actually.  
jgelinas
response 13 of 66: Mark Unseen   Feb 13 18:34 UTC 2010

The board approved root access for both tsty and remmers.  When either
will get that access is, I guess, up to the staff.

Most of the stuff is done by sudo now, I think.  Note that sudo just
makes more passwords lucrative targets.

There is still some disagreement on broadcasting the board meetings. 
Thus the limits on recording and disseminating the recordings.  We are
probably going to have to take membership-level action to get it
'right.'
cross
response 14 of 66: Mark Unseen   Feb 13 22:15 UTC 2010

resp:13 Sudo does *not* "just make(s) more passwords lucrative
targets." Sudo is a very, very useful tool and is the preferred
mechanism for doing things as the superuser these days.

I have given root access to both Remmers and TS via adding them to
the 'wheel' group.  Both should use sudo to access things as root.
I don't even know what the root password is, but it would probably
be a good idea if someone changed it to something that they know,
write it down, and store it somewhere securely.

I should state publicly that I have serious objections to adding
remmers to staff.  When I lobbied to get re-added to staff some
years ago, remmers objected strongly.  When I got re-added to staff
and elected to the board, remmers resigned from both.

I find that timeline suspicious and have found him difficult to
work with.  He created what I felt to be a very divisive forum to
discuss Grex being down during the recent outage, which fragmented
the discussion, *despite* being asked not to do so, by me, as a
baord and staff member.  In the past, he was not responsive to
email; I recall asking him multiple times to create me an account
on the machine that housed Grex's CVS server and he did not respond
until after I'd resigned from staff.  I feel like John is the type
of guy who likes to "take control."  I feel like he doesn't work
particularly well with others, and I'm concerned about him having
root access.

A lot of John's technical ideas are not well thought out and tend
to rely on things he's heard, rather than things that he's done.
He lobbied strongly to put in a complicated content-management
system on Grex, without having even used it.  I find that problematic,
and I'm worried that, with root access, John will do things that
are not easily supportable by the rest of us.  Similarly with his
ideas about virtualization.

I see his no-staff-stamp addition to staff as something of a coup
by the Grex old-guard.  I would have been happy to have him do
webmaster things, but full-on root access is an entirely other
matter.
veek
response 15 of 66: Mark Unseen   Feb 14 02:02 UTC 2010

you'd suppose Grex was an attractive female with all this plotting 
going on *grumble* anyway, umm..

1. Surprisingly, though I find the concept of old and new guards to be 
weird (what is their to guard even?), I kind of agree that Cross is 
right about Remmers appearing to be very sneaky <g> I have been 
pondering his sneakiness, myself, the last few days, and making 
speculative assumptions - mostly because, not sure if you remember 
but.. like the time ppl were grumbling about staff and asking for 
volunteers or some such thing, and I volunteered and then remmers 
volunteered and well.. *sigh* and after that all was forgotten.. 
anyway, the impression I got was that he volunteered simply to squelch 
me - I'm acutely aware that it's logically unsound but read on without 
flaming me and thou shall see, what it's to bee, to be mee.. :p

2. If Remmers is being a sneaky ol' coot, that's okay - the matter is 
irrelevant because.. at the end of the day, what counts is work done 
for Grex by staff and that is a very measurable quantity!

So.. *miaow* wouldn't it make sense for the board to give emm a task 
list, or Cross and Remmers to duke it out by doing stuff for us.. like 
E-Mail (which we don't have) or My-SQL stuff etc etc..

Basically, the whole sneaky Remmers AND old-guard thing, becomes a non-
issue see.. if a guy is laboring on your behalf, why bother with the 
color of the cat so long as it catches mice.

3. I mean, we should clearly demarcate tasks.. both are competent, both 
know Unix, BOTH have CONTRIBUTED in the past.. give emm whole projects 
and see who *does* what to determine the future. Would this work??
veek
response 16 of 66: Mark Unseen   Feb 14 02:51 UTC 2010

Re #15: mind you, I'm NOT saying Remmers IS sneaky and it's not my 
intention to even hint or cast doubt on his reputation! I don't know 
remmers at all! I've always found him polite and reasonably helpful.

What I am saying, is that: divining intent is a waste of time when you 
can use work done as a measure of competence. Not work done 10 years 
ago..

The reason I mentioned my own remmers thingy was because I meant to 
illustrate how my perception of some random guy on the net could 
influence my thought process. Not that Cross is mad or that Remmers is 
innocent.. we have simply no way of knowing for sure what their motives 
are.. so use measurable evidence.. in any case work gets done.
veek
response 17 of 66: Mark Unseen   Feb 14 03:31 UTC 2010

BTW, SRW got back :) all is well.. he's waiting for his Grex passwd to 
be reset so he can make changes.

See now.. that's another case to point.. I was a bit worried about that 
- thinking that he was being nasty and Oo! what a scum-bag! In fact, if 
ye had asked me for my opinion on SRW just 10 secs ago, I'd have slayed 
the man! In fact, and I hate to admit this, I was wondering if board 
had done some nasty evVil thing by telling me one thing and had snuck 
behind my back and told SRW to silently discard my request.. and I was 
in the process of listing all my sins and pondering which particular 
stunning discourse with Chad had been the last straw. Then the whole 
remmers thing, for a moment I contemplated a remmers sneakily calling 
SRW and telling him to you know.. put my request in the dustbin. *sigh*

It's all very embaressing and it's not meant to detract from what Cross 
is saying (because Cross is a different person and probably does not 
react the way I do).. my point is Resp 16: makes a lot of sense and 
avoids this complicated debate. Remmers can suggest something and work 
on his project - even if Cross thinks it's crap and Cross can do the 
same. It doesn't have to be perfect, or the most beauteous, or the most 
elegant piece of work (RT).. it's just a stupid shell with hardly any 
users.. so we should be able to do what we want and have a lot of fun. 
veek
response 18 of 66: Mark Unseen   Feb 14 03:33 UTC 2010

so long as Steve can reset the box<g>
jgelinas
response 19 of 66: Mark Unseen   Feb 14 16:20 UTC 2010

Since the matter of 'staff stamp' has been raised:  The matter was
discussed in e-mail.  No formal vote was taken, but the discussion made
clear that the majority of staff were in favour of adding tsty and
remmers.  So the board acted.   
cross
response 20 of 66: Mark Unseen   Feb 14 16:25 UTC 2010

a) If it's the discussion I'm thinking of, the stipulation was that both
be added without root access.

b) It seems that the majority also wanted tonster added.
tsty
response 21 of 66: Mark Unseen   Feb 18 04:28 UTC 2010

  
wel, i did wnat tonster added. and i will lobby for tonster in 
the futre.
  
cross
response 22 of 66: Mark Unseen   Feb 18 05:52 UTC 2010

I did, too.  Who wanted more in the way of an interview or whatever?
tonster
response 23 of 66: Mark Unseen   Feb 19 16:34 UTC 2010

I do find it rather odd that there's some question and need for an
interview, like I'm asking for a job and grex is some top secret weapon
or something.  I've been around m-net and grex for 17 years, and I've
been a root/sysop for m-net for over 10.  I'm not some new person no one
knows.  
nharmon
response 24 of 66: Mark Unseen   Feb 19 18:39 UTC 2010

If you were an animal, what animal would you be?
tod
response 25 of 66: Mark Unseen   Feb 19 20:03 UTC 2010

"Why should we hire you?"
nharmon
response 26 of 66: Mark Unseen   Feb 19 20:16 UTC 2010

"Are you a people person?"
tonster
response 27 of 66: Mark Unseen   Feb 19 21:55 UTC 2010

Maybe I'm just asking for too high a salary, but damnit I'm worth every
penny.
nharmon
response 28 of 66: Mark Unseen   Feb 19 22:16 UTC 2010

Can I see your manager?
slynne
response 29 of 66: Mark Unseen   Feb 19 23:06 UTC 2010

Hahaha. That reminds me. How come we arent talking about LOST online
here any where?
tonster
response 30 of 66: Mark Unseen   Feb 19 23:32 UTC 2010

because I haven't started watching this season and you don't want to
ruin it for me!
cross
response 31 of 66: Mark Unseen   Feb 20 17:03 UTC 2010

I'm a bit disappointed in the boards previous decisions vis-a-vis
staff.  It's the old-guard re-asserting themselves.  Oh well.
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