Item 147. Minutes of the November 20 Board Meeting Steven R. Weiss (srw) Mon, Nov 25, 1996 (02:37). 215 lines, 0 responses. Minutes of the Cyberspace Communications Board Meeting Held November 20, 1966 in the Cafeteria of the ITI Building on Hubbard Road in Ann Arbor. 10. The meeting was called to order at 7:36 PM by Scott Helmke. Board Members in attendance: Scott Helmke (scott), President Mark Conger (aruba), Treasurer Steve Weiss (srw), Secretary Steve Gibbard (scg) Valerie Mates (popcorn) Misti Anslin Tucker (mta) Rob Henderson (robh) Members of the public: Jan Wolter (janc) Jared Mauch (jared) N. Siddall (nsiddall) Peter Riley (nestene) Rob Argy (ajax) Jeff Kaplan (kaplan) 20. Treasurer's Report Mark has posted the treasurer's report online in the coop conference. In summary our income was $752 and our expenses were $607. We still owed for last month's electricity, so we did all right in October. We broke even if one accounts for the electricity but not the cost of the new disks. Our bank balance at end of month was $4331.12 of which $60 is in the UPS fund and the remainder is all in the general fund. Mark mentioned that Ameritech had charged us for the whole installation of the new centrex hunt group. This was an error, as those costs were supposed to be spread over the first year's bills. STeve agreed to contact Ameritech to straighten this out. 00. We briefly interrupted the agenda to recognize Rob Henderson's Birthday 30. Rehabilitation Committee No progress was reported in getting the 8088s from scg to dang. Someone mentioned that we could use one of those machines ourselves as a serial terminal in the pumpkin headquarters. Misti said that her office had some computers that it was giving away. Someone will contact her at work to see what they have that we can use. 40. Publicity Committee Valerie reported that Ken Josenhans (krj) said he would put together a flier for the music conference, to be distributed in music stores. Misti handed around some new fliers, and asked for comments. 50. Technical Committee * Disk Failure: We had a disk failure. We were able to get the disk to work again, and took a full backup. Following that the disk was in service for about 24 hours but then failed again, this time without coming back to life as before. We bought 2 2GB disks. One as an emergency replacement for the failed disk and one for growth as approved by the board last month. We were fortunate to be able to buy both for only a few dollars more than we had allocated to buy just one. Rob Argy located this excellent bargain for us. The second disk will be used first as a medium for the project to rebuild /home and then it will be used for growth. Grex was off the air for 4 or 5 days while the emergency disk was ordered, delivered, installed, formatted and the restoration of files was completed. Fortunately the tape restore went flawlessly. * Memory card failure: We had a non-recoverable error on a memory card and we replaced it. We still have a few spare memory cards. * Grex was freezing (almost crashing). It was a recoverable state. That is, the system could be brought back to life from the console, so it wasn't a full-fledged crash, but it required manual intervention. We aren't sure exactly what is causing this, but it is related to the interrupt chain or the clock we suspect. We re-seated all the cards and think that we may have cleared this problem up. * STeve Andre' ordered fans for our disk enclosures. We have enough enclosures, but the fans are the wrong size, so he is returning them. * STeve also will be returning the failed 2GB Micropolis Disk, which is still under warrantee. * We now have obtained the Centrex-Mate information from Ameritech * IOLan Terminal Servers: The first one has been crashing every few days. The second one worked fine on scg's Ethernet, but also crashes when put on the net with Grex. Scg plans to contact Chase to follow up. * Modems: We can work on those now that we have the Centrex-Mate information. * Hierarchical Home - Staff plans to rebuild /home as a hierarchical directory structure in order to improve performance. Most people will not notice any effect. People with hard-coded home directory paths will have to change them. Warnings have been posted in the motd. No date has been finalized for this, but it should be expected fairly soon. * Also coming soon, we plan to begin reusing old deleted UIDs when new accounts are created by newuser or wnu, and these newly created accounts will be in a different group in order to facilitate this. 90. (Agenda item taken out of order) At the last staff meeting Staff decided to recommend to the board that Jeff Kaplan (id = kaplan) be added to the Grex staff. A motion to this effect was entered. MOTION: (popcorn,scg) Add Jeff Kaplan to the Grex staff with all of the rights and responsibilities pertaining thereto. PASSED: 7-0 60. Discussion of the question of whether a person must be a member in order to run for election to the board. This question is not addressed explicitly in the bylaws. Historically, the vote administrator has always interpreted the rule requiring membership to serve as a board member to apply to running for election as well. There was discussion of this question, and both sides of the question were argued. Both Valerie Mates and Steve Gibbard, board members who are running for re-election, announced that they would abstain. MOTION (scott, aruba) Direct the vote administrator to interpret the bylaws such that non-members may be nominated for the board of directors, and may run in the election, with the understanding that they must become members in order to serve. PASSES by a vote of 3-1 with 3 abstentions as follows: In Favor: Mark Conger, Scott Helmke, Rob Henderson Opposed: Steve Weiss Abstaining: Misti Anslin Tucker, Steve Gibbard. Valerie Mates 70. Multiple Votes for One Member This question arose from a long discussion in coop. Steve Weiss argued that since it was our policy to limit an individual to one vote, we should not permit the same name to be associated with multiple accounts. He conceded that he had no desire to see additional ID required in cases involving family members. There are currently two accounts registered with the same name, but one is really intended for use as an organization's account, and not the individual's. This calls in a separate question, because technically organizational memberships are not provided for by the bylaws. Mark agreed to change the name of the organizational account to the name of the organization rather than the individual, and Steve said he would be satisfied with that, as long as the same individual is not listed on two voting accounts. With this understanding, no board action was deemed necessary, but the question of organizational memberships remains. Valerie agreed to start a member vote for amending the bylaws to permit organizations to become members, as soon as the director election is over. 80. Internet Connection Valerie contacted Paul Southworth of CICnet. The possibility of our getting a T1 phone connection from them was killed when we found out that this would require our paying for a $4000 connector at CICnet. We are continuing to investigate an 128k ISDN connection. There are up-front equipment charges for this, too, at approximately $1500 for both ends, but the monthly charges are only a small increment over what we are paying now. No action was taken. More investigation is needed. Several people supported the ISDN connection as a more affordable step up in bandwidth. Originally, the possibility of using ISDN had been ruled out, but now there appears that it may be possible to arrange. The sense of the board was to investigate ISDN. 100. Golden Key Campaign The "Golden Key" is a campaign against restrictions on the use of encryption technology on the net. Rob Argy asked if we could put a link to it on our web site. Given the nature of our mission, the board agreed that it was appropriate to support this campaign in this way. This was not put forth formally as a motion, but no one felt that such action was needed. 110 New Business. * STeve Andre' asked for a second lock (a dead-bolt) to be added to improve the pumpkin's security. Staff discretionary budget should cover this. * The emergency disk purchase had never been approved by the board. MOTION: (scg, srw) To amend last month's approval of a disk to approve up to $570 for the purchase of 2 2GB disks. PASSES: 6-0 (Scott Helmke was not present for this vote) This was a formality so that Rob Argy could be reimbursed the purchase price for the new disks, one of which was already in service. 120 Adjournment The meeting was adjourned shortly after 10 PM. I am afraid I did not note the exact time. Respectfully submitted, Steve Weiss, Secretary