Compsoc Minutes (20/10/2006)

Present (Exec listed first)

Bruce Tinton (Bruce)
Andrew Wheat (Candle)
Sean Connolly (Morlark)
Frederick Emmott (Fred)
Kim Tibbetts-Harlow (Kim)
Laurence Hurst (Laurence)
Arun Prasannan (Polar)
David Buckley (Bucko)

Agenda

Gaming meeting
IBM money
IBM Hursley trip
Perl tutorials
Calender
Compsoc fliers
Quotas
Ethernet cable
Defcon
Clothing
Gaming and LAN
Any other business

Gaming meeting

A member of the society emailed the exec list to suggest an open meeting to discuss gaming within the society. Bucko said that console and pc gaming are diverging at the moment, with many game titles being brought out on only one or the other and not both as has been done in the past. Kim felt that such a meeting was not necessary, however if the membership wanted it then he had no objection. Bruce suggested booking a meeting room, however after some discussion the decision was reached to hold it with an exec meeting, after the LAN.

IBM money

Bruce reported that authorisation for IBMs sponsorship money is in the hands of the union, but should have been authorised by the time of the meeting. Polar asked if we wanted to offer our services to the Video Games Design Society for their game coding event, and hopefully allow our members to take part as has happened in the past. It was agreed that this was a good idea.

Candle asked Polar about the programming competition. Polar said that our contact in Accenture has gone on holiday so there is no progress to report at the present time. Kim suggested sponsoring the “mini programming competition” currently being run by one of our members. Bucko said that since the member in question was running it and was happy for it to remain that way we should let it continue as it is.

IBM Hursley trip

Polar told the meeting that a coach needs to be booked for this. Candle said he would visit the union on Monday to sort it.

Perl tutorials

Polar reported that we need someone to give the perl tutorials. Sadiq Jaffer(Sadiq)‘s name was suggested as he gave them the year before last. Bucko said we could at least ask him, and Candle volunteered to do this. Kim said that the Physics department’s ’C’ course is at the start of next term and so a tutorial around then would not be a bad idea. Polar pointed out that the same problem exists, we need to find someone capable and willing to do it. Fred suggested that ‘Alp’ might be a suitable candidate since he does some work for the GNOME project. Polar also reported that Euan Macgregor(zx64) had agreed to give a LaTeX tutorial.

Calender

Polar suggested that it would be a good idea to have a calender and pointed out the calender.uwcs.co.uk sub-domain. Bucko asked if he was thinking about the iCal one which is never updated, and Polar said ‘yes’. Laurence said that he thought there was a ticket against the new events system to generate a calender automatically from the events database however it is not likely to have any work done upon it until the new events system is feature-complete. Polar asked if it was worth updating it anyway, as it does not need to depend on the website. Bucko suggested generating it from BadgerBOT’s events data since this should be easy to translate into iCal format. It was suggested that Christopher West(Faux) might be able to look into this.

Compsoc fliers

Kim reported that he wished to advertise the society more, using some fliers. He expects this to be fairly cheap, no more that 10GBP or 20GBP. He proposed putting fliers in the pigeon holes of all CS, Maths and Physics students. Candle asked him for a rough number of fliers. Kim said he was unsure, but expected about 2500 or 3000 fliers, any leftovers of which could be left in a lecture theater like L3 as he has observed that some people will read anything left in the lecture room rather than listen to the lecture. Bruce said that he thought the cost wast 3p per sheet for over 500 sheets of paper, but societies get a discount on that. Kim initially suggested a 1-sided 1/4 page flier but it was decided that this would be too small and 1/2 page fliers were decided upon. Bucko pointed out that we were given very little money in this year’s budget. Kim asked if there were any objections and, although Polar pointed out that we will need something left over to produce posters for guest lectures later in the year, there were none. Kim said he felt this was a good idea as people always read stuff put in pigeon holes, there was laughter from the rest of the meeting at this point. Candle asked Kim to find the price of 2000 fliers at 1/2 a page and post it to the exec list. Kim said he was also produce a sample flier this weekend.

Quotas

Fred asked if anyone objected to increasing the quota for all members who were members before 50M was made the standard amount for new members to bring them in-line with new members. No-one did.

Ethernet cable

Bucko reported that House of Exec have ethernet cable which they can donate some of to the society for sale to members. Fred reported that they had no ends, but can obtain them.

Defcon

Bruce said that someone had suggested buying defcon to him. Someone queried that fact that even if the society buys it, only one person would be able to play at gaming without everyone using their own keys on the gaming machines. Kim suggested emailing the company and ask about some sort of deal, as they are still a small developer they maybe sympathetic to out situation and be willing to help. Candle asked Bucko if he would email them as gaming officer and Bucko said he would.

Clothing

Candle reported that there are some clothes still to be collected.

Gaming and LAN

Bucko said that another email has been sent regarding email but as yet there has been no reply.

Candle said it was important that we should emphasise that alcohol will not be tolerated at LANs. Fred suggested disconnecting people from the network if they bring alcohol however it was decided, after discussion, that we would ban people from the remainder of the current LAN and the next one if they being alcohol. Candle pointed out that it is vital we explain why alcohol is banned and that no matter how careful you are alcohol unacceptable increases the risk of an accident occurring and people generally being stupid. Laurence was told to put it at the top of the newsletter before the LAN.

Kim asked about the music server. Laurence said that before Fred’s laptop it was always Bong. Kim asked if Bong could cope with running the music server and Fred responded ‘yes’.

Any other business

Bucko asked about insomnia. Fred reported that it was back in the hands of ITS. It is currently only accessible from ResNet. Bucko asked if some games could be installed in the interim so that they are there ready for when things finally get sorted. Fred pointed out that it currently will have quotas applied to it and the default port blocks so even if it is accessible from resnet there are no guarantees that the necessary ports to remotely administrate it are open.

Fred reported that a member’s website has been disabled due to it using an unfair (and obscene) amount of resources, possible due to an infinite loop in the code. He has emailed the user in question and asked them to fix it, however if the site is re-enabled without any attempt to correct the problem further steps will be taken, such as suspending his molotov account.

Polar asked about LAN seating preferences. Candle said to e-mail the members and ask them to email the exec list their MAC, IP and seating preferences. Bucko asked to be asked to check on power. Bucko also asked Fred to ensure that ITS have been emailed for network port patches.