SIPB

Gregory A Jackson (gjackson@mit.EDU)
Mon, 13 Feb 1995 14:22:13 EST

One other point: there are several places where SIPB receives credit for
various kinds of Web support. SIPB certainly provides this. However, it's not
that simple. For example, SIPB's list of student Web pages is at this point
somewhat smaller than the corresponding list linked to the official MIT home
page, and for various support-related reasons the latter is likely to remain
valid longer than the former. (In due time both will give way to information
simply being included in MIT's online directory -- if you view my directory
entry tomorrow, for example, you'll see my URL right there.) And on the page

http://eddie.mit.edu/cevat/report/jargon.html

there's this entry

"SIPB
Student Information Processing Board, an MIT student-run activity that
provides computer resources, including Web publishing space, to students"

which is a little galling because the space SIPB "provides ... to students" is
actually the space IS provides students, complemented by some sepate filespace
we provided SIPB, and all enabled by equipment that we provide to SIPB and
funding that we provide to SIPB. That is, SIPB is part of the mechanism
whereby MIT provides Web support to students (and an especially effective part
of those mechanisms), but it is not the source of that support as much of the
draft report intimates. There are similar issues with regard to the CWIS
facilitator, whose "space" for departmental and similar Web information is
paid for out of academic-computing budgets.

The danger is that we'll let think people think we can do without central
support and funding because there are all these support mechanisms like SIPB
and the CWIS Facilitator who are filling the void, whereas in fact the central
support and funding is making all those diverse support mechanisms possible in
the best MIT spirit of centrally-supported entrepreneurial collectivism.

gj
e40-359a/MIT/Cambridge MA 02139
voice: (617) 253-3712
fax: (617) 258-8736
url: http://web.mit.edu/gjackson/www/home.html
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