2006

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SIPB Cluedump Series Schedule

Below is the draft schedule for the SIPB Cluedump Series for Fall 2006. This site will be updated as we decide on further details, and will be updated with any relevant updates on the series.

How Athena Works
 Date: September 11, 2006, 8:30 PM
 Presenters: Marc Horowitz (marc)
 Location: 3-133
 Notes: Based off of ghudson's document
 Abstract: 
  Athena is a ubiquitous part of the computing infrastructure at MIT, often taken
  for granted.  Its history goes back more than twenty years, encompassing the
  invention of a number of technologies which are widespread today.  However, its
  development marked a time of rapid change in distributed computing.  In some
  ways, Athena is still well ahead of a typical distributed computing environment.
  
  I will discuss the history of Athena, its notable inventions, and give an overview 
  of each of the network and workstation services which make up Athena today, including 
  Kerberos, AFS, Moira, Hesiod, and the installation and update processes.
 Bio: 
  Marc Horowitz arrived at MIT in 1988, when Athena was still a funded research
  project.  As a Watchmaker (student developer) at Project Athena, he worked on
  the Kerberos, Zephyr, and Moira projects.  Marc was also vice-chairman of the
  Student Information Processing Board in 1991, and Secretary in 1992.  From 1992
  to 2000, Marc continued to maintain an informal relationship with Athena,
  working on commercial versions of technologies born there, especially Kerberos,
  and participating in follow-on open source development and IETF standards
  activities.  Today, he works with RFID software for BEA Systems in Burlington.
 Slides: A PDF is available here
 License: http://creativecommons.org/images/public/somerights20.png Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5  License 
AFS
 Date: September 18, 2006, 8:30 PM
 Presenters: Mitch Berger (mitchb) and Tim Abbott (tabbott)
 Location: 3-133
 Abstract:
  AFS is the distributed filesystem product used by MIT, pioneered at Carnegie
  Mellon University and supported and developed as a product by Transarc
  Corporation (now IBM Pittsburgh Labs). It offers a client-server architecture
  for file sharing, providing location independence, scalability, security, and
  transparent migration capabilities for data.
  
  We will describe AFS, its various components and their interactions. We will
  talk about how AFS works, including discussion of important design and
  implementation details, including many useful quirks at most one of us was
  aware of a week ago.  We will say something about Ubik (the distributed
  database protocol), replications, the Basic OverSeer server, afs_randomMod15(),
  and numerous other things that you've probably actually heard of.
  
  This talk should cover the information necessary to take you from knowing how
  to use AFS (fs la, fs lq) to understanding enough to debug interesting
  problems, and being able to administer an AFS cell without reading too much
  documentation.
 Slides: A PDF is available here
 License: http://creativecommons.org/images/public/somerights20.png Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5  License 
Athena Locker Management + Hesiod
 Date: September 25, 2006, 8:30 PM
 Presenters: Jacob Morzinski (jmorzins)
 Location: 3-133
 Abstract:
  This cluedump will outline a couple topics, mainly concentrating on
  how software lockers on Athena work.  We'll discuss what a "locker" is,
  and how your computer finds lockers when it needs files from them.  We
  will move on to discussing how it works when you run software from
  lockers on Athena, and how you can install your own software -- either
  into your own personal locker, or into a special software locker.
 Slides: A PDF is available here
 License: http://creativecommons.org/images/public/somerights20.png Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5  License 
Technical overview of scripts.mit.edu
 Date: October 2, 2006, 8:30 PM
 Presenters: jbarnold
 Volunteers: tabbott
 Location: 3-133
 Abstract:
  The scripts.mit.edu web script service allows individuals and groups to put CGI
  scripts (perl, php, python, ruby, scheme, etc) on the web using nothing more than
  an Athena account.  Integrating this functionality with Athena presented certain
  challenges that had to be overcome before the service could be launched.
  
  In this talk, Jeff Arnold will describe the design and implementation of the
  SIPB script services.  This talk is intended to be a technical overview of the
  internals of the services rather than a gentle introduction to the services
  (for documentation intended for potential new users, see http://scripts.mit.edu).
  
  Technical documentation about scripts is available at
  http://scripts.mit.edu/wiki, and the code is available via 
  svn co https://scripts.mit.edu:1111.  Our code is released under the GPL.
Columbus Day Holiday (No Cluedump)
 Date: October 9, 2006
Kerberos and Related Technologies
 Date: October 16, 2006
 Presenters: hartmans
 Volunteers:
 Location: 3-133
 Abstract: 
  Sam Hartman will give an overview of Kerberos, SASL, GSS-API and
  related technologies.  The talk will focus on what these technologies
  can do for users and application developers.  The talk also describes
  how Kerberos works over the network enough to explain what its
  advantages and drawbacks are.
The Multics Way
 Date: October 23, 2006
 Presenters: srz
 Volunteers:
 Location: 3-133
 Slides: http://web.mit.edu/srz/www/slides/
 Abstract: 
  Multics was an extraordinarily influential operating system developed
  as a joint project of MIT, GE, and Bell Labs.  Multicians went on to
  develop many other important systems in computer science, such as
  Unix, AFS, and Kerberos.  This talk will discuss the design philosophy
  behind Multics and explain how it is an example of the MIT/Stanford
  style of design, captured by the phrase "the right thing".
  
  We will illustrate a few examples of the Multics design philosophy and
  discuss how features that Multics had over 25 years ago are still
  being added to modern Unix systems today.  We will finish up with a
  brief overview of Multics resources available today that describe a
  well-documented, well-designed operating system.
The Law (copyrights, etc.)
 Date: October 30, 2006
 Presenters: keithw
 Volunteers:
 Location: 3-133
 Abstract: 
  Could MIT listen in on your phone calls and read your e-mail?  Does the DMCA
  really authorize torture?  Why did a Republican group have to pay $537 to
  wdaher last year?  Do those MIT singing groups need permission to release
  recordings of other people's songs?  How did Aimee Smith beat the rap after
  getting arrested for calling the MIT Police "fucking pigs"? Could you get in
  trouble for buying from allofmp3.com?
  
  Keith might not be able to answer all these legal questions, but he will help
  you learn how to research legal issues for yourself.  The cluedump will
  discuss American law and legal research, how to use Lexis-Nexis, and touch on
  topics relevant to technology, copyrights, and MIT.
E-mail at MIT
 Date: November 6, 2006
 Presenters: mitchb
 Volunteers: nelhage, jmorzins
 Location: 3-133
 Abstract:
  Where's that e-mail I was supposed to get three hours ago?
  Why did that e-mail from my advisor get flagged as spam?
  What if I don't want to buy five billion Rolex replicas?
  
  Just a few years ago, the standard e-mail setup for an ISP could be fairly
  simple - one server for your incoming mail (POP), and one for your
  outgoing mail (SMTP), and sometimes these were even the same server.
  Handling e-mail for a community with the size and characteristics of MIT,
  especially in today's world with the huge spam problem that plagues us
  all, is a very challenging task.  Accordingly, MIT's e-mail architecture
  is orders of magnitude more complex than the setup people could expect
  from their ISP years ago.
  
  In this talk, we'll be discussing many of the details of MIT's e-mail
  setup, including the various types of mail servers MIT has and the roles
  they play. We'll talk about the paths mail takes through the twisty maze
  of the mail system, how we try to combat the spam problem and why it's so
  difficult, and how to interpret e-mail headers and do some basic debugging
  of mail delays. We'll also cover some of the tradeoffs between moira lists
  and mailman lists.
Debian-Athena
 Date: November 13, 2006
 Presenters: tabbott
 Volunteers:
 Location: 3-133
 Abstract:
  The Debian-Athena Project was an effort to create a modular port of the
  Athena environment to Debian GNU/Linux.  The modulararity allows the user
  to select from various levels of integration of Athena with one's personal
  computer, varying from complete kerberos integration, to simply being able
  to blanche lists or run locker software without problems.  SIPB's linux
  dialup, linerva.mit.edu, currently runs Debian-Athena with a few security
  enhancements.  In this talk we will discuss the design and implementation
  of Debian-Athena and the various challenges that we faced in creating it.
WIN.MIT.EDU
 Date: November 20, 2006
 Presenters: pbh
 Volunteers:
 Location: 3-133
 Abstract:
  The creation of the WIN.MIT.EDU started in 1997. The domain started to be
  used by early pilot programs in 2001. The domain is now managed and operated
  by IS&T's OIS group and has been used by well over 10,000 individuals.
  Tonight's talk will attempt to focus on aspects of the domain that are of
  direct concern to students and talk about how students may add value to the
  domain.
SAP & MIT's Financial Systems
 Date: November 27, 2006
 Presenters: mitchb, jhawk
 Volunteers:
 Location: 3-133
 Abstract:
  As one might imagine, the finances of an entity like MIT are quite
  complex, and require similarly complex systems to keep track of them.
  Most people go through their time at MIT without knowing much about its
  finances, but lots of them often wonder where the money's being spent,
  what really happens after someone orders office supplies on the web,
  what an endowment actually is, why it took so long to get a  
  reimbursement check, etc.  In this talk, we'll attempt to demystify   
  some of the inner workings of money at MIT.
  
  We'll discuss SAP (MIT's primary business and financial system), as
  well as other interrelated systems such as the Roles Database, the Data
  Warehouse, and ECAT.  We'll cover much of the elusive vocabulary that
  people involved with MIT finance use, and will discuss and provide 
  examples of the way MIT structures accounts and assigns permissions, 
  how to examine account activity, the detailed process by which MIT 
  purchases items, and a handful of other topics.  While the focus will
  not be on the things that are specific to student group accounts, some
  of the information presented may be of interest or use to people involved
  in the treasuries of such groups.
Xen and virtualization
 Date: December 4, 2006 [didn't happen]
 Presenters: nelhage, aseering
 Volunteers:
 Location: 3-133
 Abstract:
  Virtualization is the hot new topic in both software and hardware
  these days! Learn about the software behind virtualization, and how it
  works, as well as about Intel and AMD's new hardware extensions
  intended to make implementing virtualization easier. Then, learn more
  about VMWare and Xen, two of the leading virtualization products on
  the market today, how they work, how they're different, and what they
  can do.
Audio and Video Compression (HDTV, MP3 and DVD)
 Date: December 11, 2006 [didn't happen]
 Presenters: keithw
 Volunteers:
 Location: 3-133
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