Meeting Minutes

February 23, 2006

SAC Business - Laura Valentine

Laura: This meeting is being recorded. We use this to make notes, and we throw it away afterwards. For focus groups, we do a more detailed transcript.

Karen: We may also quote you in internal documents, but we won't attribute the quotes.

Laura: Current open slots in SAC - Tepper, SCS, MCS. Let me know if you know anyone who would be interested. Also, some students had asked for a presentation on privacy concerns. What are you interested in?

• What we thought of:
  • Who has access to your data?
  • Who is doing what with your data? What restrictions are there on the use of your data?
  • What kinds of data security measures are in place?
• What else?
  • What level of detail is data? For example, websites visited or that we’re just on the web?
  • I was told a fragment of every packet is stored? Could packets be reconstructed and to what extent?
  • Are email messages archived?
    • Karen: mail client backups are deleted after 21 days. Leave CMU and your mail is deleted along with your account.
  • To what extent can people look at AFS space?
  • Under what circumstances someone in ISO or someone else in charge could look at our data

Computer Store Focus Group - Karen Van Dusen

Karen: Who know that the store moved? [most students raise hands] What do you think of the move?

• Doesn’t matter
• I think it's a better placement, a lot more centralized
• Where is it?
  • Karen: It's in the bottom level of the bookstore now.

Karen: we're dealing with the pain of going from 1000 sq ft. to about 300.

• Where are you storing everything?
  • We're facing storage challenges!
    

Karen: So, we are trying to find out more about personal buying patterns at the store. We have a good sense of departmental patterns, but not personal - do you get stuff there because it's like a 7-11 and it's THERE, or are you looking for our standard machine configurations, or what. Let start with, have you used the store...

• Since the start of the semester?
  • 1 hand - I got a new laptop, and I got Office there, because it's cheap there. It’s usually like a 7-11 type thing.
• Since the start of the school year?
  • 1 hand - I got software, like Office because it's cheaper.
    • Karen - can I get hands for bought software at the store because it was cheaper?
      • 5 hands
• Since you were a freshman? [all hands go up]

Karen: When you go in, do you want or do you receive help from the sales consultants?

• No, I brought a friend
  • Karen: When you came in with your friend, was it important to be able to interact with the displays? Did you look at them?
    • I was just buying a cable, so didn't care; just wanted the right cable.

Karen: When you shop there, is it just because it's there, or because of the prices?

• [multiple] prices!
• I know a lot of people who are planning on buying out things like the Adobe suite before they go.
  • A lot of things have licensing restrictions
    • Yeah, but it's still better than pirated copies! And it's a hell of a lot cheaper.

Karen: Do you use the website at all?

• I check prices [agreement]
• Chris: I compare it to amazon and buy.com and go to whatever is cheaper.
  • Karen: do we ever win?
    • Chris: Lots of times, because I'm impatient, and don't want to wait two weeks.
    • That makes a big difference
      

Karen: if you could actually order it online from the store, would that make a difference? [lots of shaking heads] No, because you have to go there to get it anyway? OK. Other than prices, are there other areas where you'd like to see us improve?

• Mostly it's just convenience.

Karen: what about sales consultancy? Do you think, for (especially non-geek) students, it is a useful service to have somebody who is fairly skilled around to answer questions?

• David - Friends is always the way it's gone, with anyone I've ever been working with who wants personalized information. They find the people they know. I know that for me, if I'm at Best Buy and someone comes up to give advice, I'm like "I don't trust you". The trust issue is big.
• Esther (?) - I'm not very technical, and I'm not embarrassed to ask friends to help me or to bring them along. Also, the trust issue - are you saying things because it's GOOD, or because you get commission, or what?
  

Karen: About a year ago, I asked in this forum for hands if you knew where the Help Center physically was, and like 2 hands when up, and I asked where the Store was, and everyone knew. So - how many of you have used the Help Center for support? Call or walkin?

• Both
• Called
• Walked-in
• Esther - One time I walked in because I was so emotionally upset with my computer, and another time I went in when got kicked off network
  • So getting kicked off the network was a catalyst for you?
    • And also I had friends who worked there, and were like "why don't you come during these hours", and fixed it.
• My Windows profile was on the fritz, so I called and they had it fixed.
• I had a hard drive malfunction I needed fixed.
  • So you started in the Help Center, they verified it was hardware?
    • Yeah
• I know a lot of my friends, when they buy a new laptop, they take it to the Help Center and get it set up for the first time, make sure everything is compatible and secure.

Karen: What is the most important function of the Computer Store? Convenience? Software?

• Yes. Especially XP and Office!

• Google
• David: I have a Dell, so I've called Dell before, but every time it's a horrible nightmare and I promise myself I'll never do it again.

• David: I visited them once, and they said "if you do this through us, it'll be $2000, and if you do it through Dell, it'll be $100."
• I got a screen replacement, under warranty

• No - we'll rely more on friends if we have to pay
• David: There are so many students around who are really smart about this stuff, really capable.
• Esther: If friends work at the Help Center, I'd just catch them in their off hours.
• Karen: if the Help Center started telling those people no, we can't help you, they'd find friends?
  Doug: Yeah.
  Esther: I'd cry a little, but yeah.
  Karen: So the computer WOULD go through a window!

• Matthew: Operating Systems has 2 or 3 cluster sessions, where the professors and students show what they've done
  • David: Networks has done that this semester, too.
    

Laura: Were any of you required to use Linux for homework? In the clusters, or were you using one of the servers?

• David: doesn't make a difference, really, it's the same thing

Laura: What is specifically useful about access to the cluster itself?

• The Windows clusters get used a lot for classes, and the Linux clusters don't as much, so I can always go there and check my email, or whatever.
• David: ditto for me
  

Esther: I never use Linux. I tried my freshman year, and I just couldn't get it to work. The only times I need to use it is for some biological research, and I connect to linux.andrew.cmu.edu through a Windows computer with Putty.

Laura: Do you use the public Linux servers?

• David: All the time [several students agree]
• Karen: Is that an acceptable alternative?
• Matthew: Not entirely. The servers are public, and so if you're doing something that requires a lot of CPU, then if other people are running stuff it'll slow yours down. For things like Operating Systems, the simulator we use takes up a lot of CPU and runs very slowly if you're running it across the network, because it's not very efficient when it updates the display, so it ends up sending huge amounts of data over the network and ends up being really really slow.

David: From the CS perspective, I think it's very valuable for classes like Operating Systems and Networks to have that Wean cluster there. I think it's good on an academic level, and also there's a social network thing in the Wean clusters that's valuable.

Allison: I work in Wean cluster, and there are two kinds of users in there - people who are really confused, because the Windows clusters are closed and they've gone in to check their email, and the people who are just kind of sitting there, hanging out. And I heard the CS Lounge is gone, and so the clusters are kind of the replacement for now.

?: As a non-Linux user, I know there are a couple in Morewood and I just find it extremely frustrating, because I have no idea how to use them, and so I just wish they were regular computers a LOT.

• Matthew: The default configuration on them is really confusing, especially for people coming from Windows, and most people don't realize that you can switch the desktop environment to something like Gnome and then it's much better.
  • ?: I agree! They could have them set up a lot better, and that would make it easier for people to use the Linux clusters.
  • David: I discovered Gnome about 2 weeks ago, when my friend told me about it. And it's amazing, the ease of use. But for the past three years, I've hated going in there because I have no idea how to print anything, I just, there's no way to do it!
  • Mercy: Sometimes, I just want to print something and then leave, but with the Linux computers, the most I can do is log in and log out.

?: It's frustrating to go to clusters with both Windows and Linux machines, and see every single Windows machine taken up, and I just want to use Windows and I can't.

Allison: I think that Wean is useful, but the other ones, like in Morewood and West Wing, are hardly ever used. I don't think they're useful. [some agreement]

Laura: I have two scenarios here. One is, poof, there are NO Linux clusters, and one is, poof, there's nothing BUT Linux clusters -- OK, so, only Matthew would like that one -- am I right? [students laughing] If you didn't have Linux clusters available, what would you do? It sounds like you'd have a problem in OS?

• Matthew: And a few other CS classes. It would be a lot less convenient. I guess for some others, we'd be able to use the servers, but it's still kind of annoying.
  • David: What if the timeshare pool was expanded, so there were more machines, and less colliding with people on use?
    • Matthew: There's still the problem where X over the network can be kind of slow, depending on what you're doing with it. Also, is the data rate limited, the network speed? Because I've never gotten very fast transfer between them, and a lot of X applications run a little slowly.

Laura: So, where are we going? We are going to be surveying the faculty who teach in the Linux clusters. There aren't very many of them who've made reservations, so we know who they are and we're going to hunt them down. We're going to be talking to students who've logged in on those machines, students who've taken classes from those professors, that kind of thing, ask them what they are using them for.

Karen: the big thing that we're trying to find out from students is, we know which faculty are reserving to teach, and it's a really small number, but know there are faculty who are assigning work that needs to be done there, and those are the people we're afraid we're not going to be able to identify. So the big thing we need to know from you is - what those classes are, and who they are.

• Matthew: I think one reason they might not be reserving the Linux clusters is that none of those are a good layout for classes. They're all around, whereas a lot of the Windows clusters are rows facing forward, so I don't see how you could even teach a class in those.
• David: For this, Dave Eckhardt would be someone to talk to. He does OS, which meets in there, and he's also teaching Networks, and this is the first time in Networks that he's meeting in the Linux cluster.
• Laura: Are there any other faculty you can think of who require you to use the Linux clusters?
  • ?: Do you meant the Linux graphics cluster at all?
    • David: No, that's departmental. 

• Students don’t care much! Fewer and fewer students are using Mulberry.
• Faculty and staff care a lot more - about 40% use Mulberry
• Bboards aren’t driving Mulberry use. We thought they might be, but they're not. And something you guys taught me - you don't like Blackboard!
• Lots of people have local mail archives.
  

• we need to improve webmail. Attachment size is a big deal, and we'd really like to push notification of new mail.
• Alternate email clients - probably won't do a broad-based review of a lot of email clients, but there's some interest in Thunderbird.
• Develop a strategy for reading local mail. There are some commercial conversion tools for Outlook. The Mulberry mailbox format is standard, but how well other clients handle that standard is an issue. It works in Thunderbird.
• Develop strategy for administrating bboards and shared mailboxes. We don't know what we're doing here yet. The cheapest thing to do would be to put a web wrapper around cyradm. There's also Outlook Connector, which does a nice job, but it's pretty unsupportable. Also, I don't have really good data on how often people are doing this - lots of anecdotes.
  • Chris: I know some organizations, like fraternities, will have their own Cyrus account, and they'll have a graffiti board underneath that account which they'll share to all the organization members or all the fraternity brothers to make it a more private bulletin board.
    • Karen: And it's really useful to me to have that anecdotally, but I can't count those! We're trying to think hard about that.

• Karen: Probably not, but I'll bring that as an issue.
  

• Karen: Haven't. That's a good thought! There are many things making us hesitate about going down the road of finding another email client and supporting it. One of them about Thunderbird in particular is what you mentioned - there are 600 add-ons, and so if you walk into the Help Center because you can't get your mail, is that because you just installed a new add-on?

• Karen: Are there problems if you have a hierarchy?
• Laura: No, on a local machine, you're fine. If you have to move them back to the server, you have to recreate the hierarchy on the server.

• Karen: We don't know the answer to that question yet. One of the things we are thinking about is what is the level of support we should be offering for mail, period. Is it "if we just gave you your Cyrus server, etc" and I heard for 90% of you, probably yes, but 10% will need recommendations. So that kind of thing is going to drive the decisions we make. But while students are pretty happy with webmail, staff and faculty still culturally expect the extra features that you get from a desktop client. given that, I imagine that institutionally we'll be staying with some desktop client for a while.
  

• ?: It's on some of them.
  • ?: I haven't see it in West Wing
• Allison: I think Firefox runs kind of slow on Macs.
• Pomona: We're working on getting it everywhere.
  

• Allison: If you're in the video editing room, there's no Word or Office on there.
• Pomona: Faculty specifically requested us not to put Office on those machines, because they don't want people doing that work in there.
  • David: The only thing is, there's no sign for me saying "Don't come in here", and the other door was closed, and it's the only place for you to check your email or do your work in CFA, so where do you go? If you close one door, and the other door is open, what are you gonna do?
    • Pomona: This is the first time that's actually been brought up! We haven't had Word in that room, ever, so.
      • David: Wow. It was very stressful for me, but whatever -- I'll be the first!

• Laura: Would better documentation help?
  • Theresa: I think figuring out what the essential things are that people really need. On the very first page, there are like 20 different things you can edit, and I think most people just need to add people to the list or whatever.
    

• Karen: OK, so you as an information *provider* want to take advantage of WebISO?
  • Theresa: Yes.
    • Karen: So you want to be able to set up a server that uses our authentication.
    • Theresa: And it was difficult.
• Chris: Yeah, I've got the same thing, probably for similar projects. We're both IIS majors, and we have junior and senior projects, and often for those projects you really want to take advantage of WebISO. I know that the faculty advisor I've dealt with has said that it's often so difficult to figure out how to get the certificates, make sure it's running in the right way, that some people have worked on creating a class where the server will connect and relay your username and password and then figure out if you get a cookie back.
  • Karen: Oooh! I didn't want to hear that!
    • Chris: So if it was easier, or the people who needed to know it could know it, we'd be able to use the actual WebISO.
      • Karen: That's the scariest thing I've heard today. Thank you.

David: I wanted to agree with Theresa about the bandwidth issue. One of our friends was a Design student, and had these huge design files, and especially for things like that, if a central part of your curriculum is transferring files, how do you deal with that?

• Karen: We've heard this from Design, yes. We're working on this, and thank you for saying it again - we know these guys are in trouble!

• ?: I heard about that! Because people kept hitting reply to all!

• Karen: Yep.
  • Chris: Because I got 15 emails from October!
    • Karen: Whoa. Lots of people got messages about having to administer things for -1 respondents.
      • Chris: I got a bunch of email about a project I did last semester, and when I checked the headers, it said it had been sitting on the localhost of lists.andrew since October.
        • Karen: send those headers to advisor! You're scaring me a lot today!