THE MAGAZINE OF USENIX & SAGE June 2002 volume 27 • number 3 inside: USENIX NEWS & The Advanced Computing Systems Association & The System Administrators Guild news USENIX MEMBER BENEFITS the standard to which we now have to As a member of the USENIX Association, And So It Goes perform. you receive the following benefits: In the meantime, the latency between FREE SUBSCRIPTION TO ;login:, the Association’s by Daniel Geer magazine, published seven times a year, invention and exploitation is shrinking – President, USENIX which fundamentally is a good thing in featuring technical articles, system adminis- Board of Directors tration articles, tips and techniques, practical the bigger scheme of things. The human columns on security, Tcl, Perl, Java, and dynamics of scheduling new workshops operating systems, book and software around emerging topics and disciplines reviews, summaries of sessions at USENIX conferences, and reports on various stan- (which is exactly where we can do the dards activities. most good) are such that USENIX pretty ACCESS TO ;login: online from October 1997 much cannot get anything effective done to last month www.usenix.org/ [email protected] in under 9-12 months despite the fact publications/login/login.html. that, just as in business, there is a really ACCESS TO PAPERS from the USENIX Confer- substantial and growing first mover A little like writing your own obituary, ences online starting with 1993 advantage to that professional society this is my last column as President of www.usenix.org/publications/library/ that best calls trends right, that has the index.html. USENIX. We have term limits here and, first meeting on a new topic at exactly THE RIGHT TO VOTE on matters affecting the all in all, that is a good thing. I may still the right time in exactly the right venue. Association, its bylaws, election of its direc- find something to do around here, but I tors and officers. welcome the new Board and President Knowing when to strike, what to strike, OPTIONAL MEMBERSHIP in SAGE, the System Kirk McKusick and wish them well. and who needs to be involved are at the Administrators Guild. critical core of the risk-reward tradeoff Over the time I’ve been associated with DISCOUNTS on registration fees for all that USENIX as a business lives within. USENIX conferences. USENIX an awful lot of changes have But let me be clear about something: For transpired. In that regard, USENIX mir- DISCOUNTS on the purchase of proceedings those of you who have something to say and CD-ROMS from USENIX conferences. rors changes going on in society in gen- and who want to create vehicles for SPECIAL DISCOUNTS on a variety of products, eral due in large part to technical change knowledge transfer, USENIX is books, software, and periodicals. See – our communications are overwhelm- absolutely remarkable. No other profes- http://www.usenix.org/membership/ ingly electronic when they are not face sional society relieves you of as much specialdisc.html for details. to face, distance is measured in either logistical detail. No other professional FOR MORE INFORMATION network latency or the dollar cost of air- society comes close to the price-per- line tickets, security is no longer a geek- REGARDING MEMBERSHIP OR formance value that USENIX delivers. only issue (which is arguably a fearsome BENEFITS, PLEASE SEE No other professional society has meet- development), it is much cheaper to ings where the signal-to-noise ratio is http://www.usenix.org/ retain electronic data in full than to more favorable. membership/membership.html selectively cull it, and it is the capital markets rather than tenure committees Sure, I am a true believer, but I invite OR CONTACT that ultimately sort technologies into you to try to get something together [email protected] winners and losers. under the umbrella of any other group and compare it to what you can get done Phone: 510 528 8649 Running an organization like the here. Measure your experiment in how USENIX Association is getting harder at much time you have to put in versus least insofar as our core mission is con- how much intellectual value you get out. cerned. We exist to accelerate the Measure it by looking at the quality of advance of knowledge in our field, what our Proceedings and don’t take my word Mike O’Dell famously called “moving for it, use CiteSeer (http://www.citeseer. information from where it is to where it org) to confirm that when measured by is not.”The reason running USENIX citation frequency USENIX meetings are well is getting harder is that our success tops. Yeah, USENIX is cliquish but at no to date does nothing so much as raise other society can you expect to talk to 64 Vol. 27, No. 3 ;login: the actual authors of the tools you can’t is your time while all you have to risk is Newly elected directors will take office live without. your reputation. Expensive and scary? at the conclusion of the next regularly EWS Sure, but consider the alternative. scheduled board meeting which will Want to call the USENIX regulars elitist? be held June 14, 2002 in Monterey, No problem as far as I am concerned I’ve asked each of the current USENIX California. USENIX N since every bit of elitism in these here officers to do something that has not parts is earned. USENIX is about getting been part of the USENIX managerial Ballots Received: 1295 things built and recognizing those who tradition heretofore and that is to write Invalid Ballots: 17 get it done. Just as the IETF is the domi- a report on their term of office, what got Participating Ballots: 1278 nant standards organization because of done and what didn’t. This is not an easy its simple creed, “Rough consensus and thing to do – USENIX is a lot more PRESIDENT: working code,”so, too, our simple idea is complex than it seems or, to put it dif- Marshall Kirk McKusick 1100 that USENIX is where you go for that ferently, that it looks simple from the Abstain 159 working code; it’s where you go if you outside is a triumph rather than just No Selection 19 want to know what actually works rather something that you can buy at the store TOTAL 1278 than what might be theoretically inter- like milk. VICE PRESIDENT: esting. As such, it is actually hard to write in Michael B. Jones 679 Were it not such a low bar, I’d point out one document something that is read- Trey Harris 543 that we have an awful lot better taste in able by the mildly curious, meaningful No Selection 56 what is “novel, non-obvious and for the serious student, reassuring for TOTAL 1278 reducible to practice” than the US Patent the well-wisher, and a counterweight to & Trademark Office does, not to men- the heckler. That it is hard to be at once SECRETARY: tion that we are becoming more selective universal and concrete is precisely why it Peter Honeyman 758 in our selection process in the face of a is a good thing to try, even when the real Steve Simmons 479 rising volume of submissions. role of an individual Board member is No Selection 41 much more like an adverb than a noun, TOTAL 1278 As I have said here several times before, i.e., we modify more than we pre-empt. I’d like to urge those of you with ambi- TREASURER: I’ll finish my report when my term is tion to remember that it is never too Lois Bennett 1117 actually over, which will be about when early to choose whether you are going to Abstain 126 you read this. Read it if you care but lead, follow or get out of the way. I’d ask No Selection 56 don’t if you don’t. all USENIX members to recognize that if TOTAL 1278 you want something to happen the In the meantime, I want to thank you all surest way to get it to happen is to real- for the opportunity to lead over the past DIRECTORS: ize that you have more leverage here decade and a half, and just as it is the Jon “maddog” Hall 829 than you are going to get anywhere else. duty of a teacher to be surpassed by his Tina Darmohray 688 Samuel Johnson observed that knowl- students, it is now your job to prove that John Gilmore 662 edge is of two sorts, where you know a you’re better than I was. Avi Rubin 656 thing yourself and where you know Godspeed. Ted Ts’o 530 where to find out about it. Æleen Frisch 401 Let me tell you a secret of career success: Peg Schafer 357 That secret is simple – You can either Darrell Long 282 (on your own) go out and scour the 2002 USENIX Adam Moskowitz 206 countryside for knowledge, or you can Clem Cole 192 (by serving on USENIX program com- Board of Directors James Yaple 117 mittees) get the countryside to bring its best work to you. I recommend the pro- Elections Results gram committee approach; you will find The results of the elections for Board of that it concentrates the interesting traffic Directors of the USENIX Association for like nothing else, and all you have to pay the 2002-2004 term are as follows. Names in bold are the elected officials. June 2002 ;login: 2002 BOD ELECTION RESULTS 65 Association’s Committee on Women Summary of the (http://www.cra.org/craw/) for $10,000. News from NUUG USENIX will also be a sponsor for the USENIX Board of CRA’s Snowbird Conference in July by Jon Petter Bjerke 2002.