Item 129. Minutes of the Board Meeting of November 15, 1995 Steve Weiss (srw) Sun, Nov 19, 1995 (00:20). 149 lines, 0 responses. Minutes of the Meeting of the Board of Cyberspace Communications November 15, 1995 (/) The meeting was called to order at 7:46 PM by Valerie Mates. In attendance were Valerie Mates (popcorn), president, Steve Weiss (srw) Secretary, Dan Romanchik (danr) Treasurer, STeve Andre' (steve), Steve Gibbard (scg), and John Remmers (remmers). Rane Curl (rcurl) was absent. Observers present were Mark Conger (aruba), Mary Remmers (chelsea), Jan Wolter (janc), Jeff kaplan (kaplan), and Rob Henderson (robh). (-) Treasurer's Report Dan reported that we had a great month last month, at $800, but we're not having a good month this month, with $170 so far. New memberships and renewals appear to be a feast or a famine, showing great variation from month to month. (\) 501(C)(3) Committee Report This was not given, because Rane was not present. (|) Computer Rehabilitation Committee Report This was not given, because Rane was not present. (.) Publicity Committee Report This was not given, because Misti was not present. (,) Technical Committee Report 1. Steve reported a reboot of Grex that occurred in the last month in which we lost the primary superblock on the disk. The immediate result was that all of /home (all user directories on the system) vanished. All was not lost, though, because we were able to reboot using one of the many backup superblocks, which saved the file structure. 2. The Sun-3 hardware has been pretty stable. 3. The Sun-4 Project -- installation of the software has been proceeding. There are still more packages to install. The kernel blocks were worked out conceptually at the last staff meeting, and will be written soon by srw (with help already given by mdw, and to be given by gregc). There was a security patch we installed which broke things and had to be backed out. Greg Cronau is looking into this more deeply. 4. Phone lines for ttyh6 and ttyh8 vanished one day for 3 hours. STeve called Ameritech and determined that they were doing cable work. 5. Phone line report - The staff phone line is to be installed and Ivars's line is to be installed, taking advantage of the free installation offer from Ameritech. 6. STeve investigated the prospects of repairing the 32MB memory card which went flaky on us last summer. There is a repair place which will repair it for $280 and offer a one year warrantee. This is somewhat attractive, because our source has them (used) for $325 with no warrantee. Also, he is out of them at the moment. (;) Newsletter Report The polls will close 11/30 and the winning newsletter name will be determined. (:) Grex Manual Danr admitted that he has put the project on the back burner, because he has become very busy with real work. (x) Deceased User Policy Srw (with editing help from several others) moved, and scg seconded: Motion: "Staff will honor requests to permanently reserve an account of a user who has died." There was much discussion of the merits of this motion. Some (mary Remmer, John Remmers) felt that the board was being manipulated into taking action where no action was warranted. Others argued that the motion was merely a codification of the way staff would have acted anyway, and that it would reassure the users who were upset by the lack of a policy. The vote was 4-1-1 with Remmer against, and DanR abstaining. The motion PASSED. (y) Trademarking the Newsletter Name This was deferred in the agenda. (z) Trademarking the name "Grex" There was some discussion, which concluded when scg agreed to inquire further at the law office he works for, and the item was tabled until next month. (y) Trademarking the Newsletter Name This item was tabled until next month. (?) New Business 1. Valerie pointed out that Grex had been deliberately powered down again at the breaker box. Our security clamp had been removed. This situation is being described on-line. NO action was taken. 2. Valerie reported progress in the process of finding an ISP who can provide us with better internet connectivity. Contact has been made with Isthmus, Merit, RustNet, MSen, and NetDTW. Valerie and Srw met with Sandy Walke III, the President of Isthmus, but we were not happy with the offer he made. There is some chance a better offer will be forthcoming. Merit gave us their standard response. $1000/year for a CSA, and we have to find a Merit affiliate to connect to, or $3800/year which we cannot afford (and I cannot remember what that gets us). Merit also suggested the possibility of a free 115kb radio link that they are testing. This would not last indefinitely, but it might be worth looking into while we look for a longer term solution. STeve is following up on this. RustNET is located at Domino Farms, and offered colocation, which is technically an ideal solution, but at $500/month is well beyond our means. MSen has responded with a tentative price, but their ISDN interface is being redone at the moment, and they need some time before they can make a commitment. We will continue to negotiate with all of these ISPs, until we can recommend a solution to the board. (!) Adjournment The meeting was adjourned at 9:11PM Elapsed time 1 hour 25 minutes Efficiency: 1.7529 lines of meeting minutes per elapsed minute. Respectfully Submitted, Steven R. Weiss, Secretar.