Item 166. January 9, 2003 Board Of Directors Meeting Minutes Anne Perry (mooncat) Tue, Jan 14, 2003 (15:16). 126 lines, 14 responses. 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. 14 responses total. ---------- (166) #1 S M (mynxcat) Tue, Jan 14, 2003 (15:18). 1 line. Why are your apostrophes so funny looking? ---------- (166) #2 Glenda F. Andre' (glenda) Tue, Jan 14, 2003 (17:33). 2 lines. We were there (STeve and glenda), I know we were a few minutes late, but we were there, whimper. ---------- (166) #3 The Accidental Purist (other) Tue, Jan 14, 2003 (18:17). 1 line. Well, you were both sitting behind flem, so it was hard to see you. ;) ---------- (166) #4 Glenda F. Andre' (glenda) Tue, Jan 14, 2003 (18:25). 6 lines. But STeve responded to questions and made comments and when we moved to the other room I sat next to you. You guys just don't love us. Pout. God, I think I have been hanging around with my daughter too much. ---------- (166) #5 The Accidental Purist (other) Tue, Jan 14, 2003 (18:30). 5 lines. Well, if *I* were taking minutes, I'd have indicated your presence. But that's neither here nor there. (Anne, this is not a criticism, so feel entirely free to ignore it.) ;) ---------- (166) #6 Glenda F. Andre' (glenda) Tue, Jan 14, 2003 (19:18). 2 lines. Yeah, I was sitting in a lab after all the students left and was going to be there for a while longer. I was tired of doing math and was bored. :-) ---------- (166) #7 Allergic to liars (russ) Tue, Jan 14, 2003 (23:38). 4 lines. Regarding the half-open connection problem, why are we blocking outbound traffic to spammers rather than inbound traffic FROM spammers? Getting rid of the inbound packets eliminates the half-open issue. ---------- (166) #8 Marcus Watts (mdw) Wed, Jan 15, 2003 (01:25). 3 lines. We're not blocking either direction. Our ISP is, and before you ask, yes we've asked them about this, and no, we don't know why they're doing this. ---------- (166) #9 Sindi Keesan (keesan) Wed, Jan 15, 2003 (09:42). 1 line. Perhaps they don't want to deal with mail bouncing back from the spammers? ---------- (166) #10 Dan Cross (cross) Wed, Jan 15, 2003 (14:47). 1 line. Did anything about the next grex come up? ---------- (166) #11 John H. Remmers (remmers) Wed, Jan 15, 2003 (15:38). 3 lines. Re #10: I think the next grex is the main purpose of the special meeting scheduled for February 15. (See item 7 of the minutes, which comes between items 4 and 5.) ---------- (166) #12 Mark A. Conger (aruba) Thu, Jan 16, 2003 (09:36). 1 line. That's right. ---------- (166) #13 Dan Cross (cross) Thu, Jan 16, 2003 (15:05). 1 line. Whoops, my bad. Thanks. ---------- (166) #14 Anne Perry (mooncat) Wed, Jan 22, 2003 (14:06). 3 lines. (I'm sorry Glenda, I know you and sTeve were there, it's in my handwritten notes, just somehow when I was cutting and pasting the minutes that part got lost, my apologies.)