[Imc-tech] report for membership mailing

[Paul Riismandel]

Here's my draft report for the membership mailing -- please let me know 
any corrections or additions by Wed's meeting.


WEBSITE UPGRADE
The Tech Group has primarily been in maintenance mode for the last six 
months, although an important milestone was reached.  In Sept. the U-C 
IMC's website switched from the Active software it was running to a new 
piece of software called DadaIMC.  The new software resolves many 
problems that have plagued us since the U-C IMC site went on-line 21 
months ago, and also allows the website features to be more easily 
updated.  We hope this latter change will rejuvenate the site and 
encourage more people to use it to post and read news.  Massive thanks 
go to Clint Popetz for his efforts in installing and troubleshooting 
Dada, and for transferring our extensive database of on-line news from 
Active to Dada so that the archive remains on-line and accessible.

PRODUCTION MACHINE PROBLEMS
We continue to experience problems with the two computers used for Audio 
and Video production, named MoJo and Sergei, respectively.  The problems 
appear to be related to heat, and perhaps system design.  It is likely 
that they will need to be replaced in the near future.

SPAM ATTACK
A lot of Tech's time during this past Summer was taken up with a website 
and e-mail list spammer who repeated flooded our website's Newswire with 
repeated postings.  The attacks at times exceeded 100 postings at once, 
jamming up the front page of our site, pushing legitimate articles off 
the front page and generally tying it up.  We were forced to take action 
to stop the spamming, and for a while unfortunately we had to log our 
website traffic to do it.  We've been able to stem the tide.  Upgrading 
to the DadaIMC software helped greatly, and so we've also turned off 
logging.

NEW CAMCORDER
Finally, we purchased a new digital camcorder using the money earned 
from the IMC's residency at Allen Hall back in March.  We hope video 
production can get off the ground soon.

PLEASE DONATE EQUIPMENT
We can always use an influx of good, working computers for use as public 
access machines, servers, and (if they're really good) production 
machines.  Please consider donating any of the following:
    -working CD-R drives
    -working PCs, Pentium II class or better
    -working MACs, G3 class or better
    -PCI 10/100 NICs
    -Wireless 802.11 NICs
    -working IDE Harddrives, 10 GB or larger

MEET AND VOLUNTEER
The IMC Tech group meets Wednesdays at 6 PM.