12 High Life Thursday, November 29, 2001 Features Morpheus: Napster’s new, improved successor MusicCity’s file-sharing alternative, Morpheus, emerges as one of the top software downloads on the Internet ByMaxSocol Reporter Peeples graphic Where’s Nicole? Learning needs of today’s girls, tomorrow’s women UNCG Women’s Studies Department holds enlightening seminar exploring racial misconceptions, parent apathy, and student health care. By Nicole Washington StaffWriter Hearing any group of adults, especially those somehow affili ated with our educational sys tem, sit and rail about “those kids today” is always quite amusing. With this in mind, I was particu larly interested in attending a luncheon jointly presented by the Women’s Studies Depart ment at UNCG and Friends of Women’s Studies. This particu lar seminar was entitled “Meet ing the Needs of Tomorrow’s Women: The Future for Girls in the Triad.” Truth be told, I expected a large, boisterous group of childless old men who flee at the sight of a teenager. However, fleeing from small children is something 1 myself engage in on a regular basis, which is why 1 don’t baby-sit. Moving along, they were hunkered down like sol diers in a bunker, debating what is best for “today’s girls.” 1 was pleasantly surprised. The group that convened at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, where the luncheon was held, was mostly female. In addition, all (if not parents, grandparents, aunts or uncles themselves) held positions where they encoun tered children daily who may as well have been their own. The panel conducting the seminar included Dr. Robert Doolittle of the Guilford County Schools Health Alliance, Ernestine TaylOT, founder and di rector of “A Healthy Start,” Sharon Wissell, program direc tor of the Tarheel Triad Girl Scout Council, and Deborah Kelly- Birch, leader of the Multicultural Youth Forum at the Center for NewNcMfii Carolinians. The program began with Ms. Wissell, after a delicious lunch of salmon, toasted orzo and brown rice, green beans almcmdine, lemon tarts, eclairs, and iced tea. She was respon sible for the theme tables. We were sitting at the “Girl Scout manuals through the years” table. Next up was the most provoca tive speaker of the afternoon. Dr. Robert Doolittle. His speech covered the problems of parent apathy and providing healthcare for students. He then went on to express his personal ideas on how to solve the problem. He wanted nationally funded healthcare from birth until age 18 and even broached the idea of a parent license. On a small but important tan gent, parent licenses might be a good idea. You have to take classes and pass a test to be come a parent. Consider this: you have to get a license to drive a car, but to have and raise a child, you have to...nothing. Well, you have to do something, but let’s not talk about that here. Back to the story. The last speaker was Ms. Kelly-Burch, who leads “Faces Around Us,” a multicultural youth group that explores diver sity and racial issues affecting kids in Greensboro. She had an alarming insight- as much as we get our perceptions of other cul tures fran television, immigrants get their perceptions of Ameri cans from television shows like “Guiding Light.” That’s right. When people come to this coun try, they expect anorexic women in perfectly matched designer outfits wreaking chaos on the outside world from within their landscaped and gated commu nities. No wonder so many immi grants are disappointed. The Women’s Studies Initia tive for Girls is offering several workshops, seminars and dis cussions in the coming months. February 1-2,2002, UNCG will have a “conference, workshop and happening” called “Girls’ Real Lives.” Grimsley’s own Women’s Studies Club, in con junction with UNCG’s Women’s Studies Department, will offer a series of classes in April as the second annual “Workshops for Wild Women.” If you get the chance, I would highly recommend attending at least one of the workshops, which are not the “femi-Nazi” breeding grounds of urban lore. The femi-Nazis don’t come out unless you know the secret pass word and handshake. If nothing else, I bet you’ll get free food out of it. A few years ago, music file sharing rolled across the coun try like a radio wave. It has bear under attack by courts, the gov ernment, and recording artists and associates ever since. Now that it has become main stream, peer-to-peer file-shar ing, a type of action in which one person downloads a file frOTn another person’s computer rather than an Internet address, has been strongly frowned upon by many diffaent authori ties. In July of 2000, wvvw.napster.com was officially given an injunction by a district court for its program, Napster. Napster allowed anyone who downloaded their program to share audio mp3 files. While Napster has since been changed so that copy righted songs are no longer available, other programs and search engines have sprung up on the internet. These offer the same service as well as new op tions, including the exchanging of text, application, video, and software files. The most popular of these new services is MusicQity’s Morpheus, available at www.musiccity.com. Morpheus allows the free download of al most any type of file, including mp3s. MusicCity has altered Morpheus so that it is more compatible with slower connec tions, and their application has become the program of choice for most. The ethics of file-sharing mp3 programs have often been debated. “I think it’s okay for people to exchange music,” said freshman Lauren Petty. “I mean, you can do the same thing [lis tening to music] with the radio.” MusicCity’s quick move to pick up where Napster left off begs the question: Is it possible for the court’s decision to be enforced? Morpheus is only one of many new programs, such as KaZaA, a clone of the Morpheus application, and countless programs designed to download music from a peer-to- peer server known as Gnutella. “There’s no possible way they [the government] could stop all of it [file-sharing],” said sophomore Aquilla Moore. “Maybe they could take out the major ampanies, but there will always be those little ones just starting up,” said Moore. The user-friendly aspect of most file-sharing programs also contributes to difficulties the government may have in stop ping free file-sharing methods. With many programs, there are few steps required to find and download a song: using the program’s search application to input the song’s basic informa tion, choosing the correct song from the search results, and downloading. With new programs such as Morpheus, the process is sim plified further by the prevention of disconnected transfers and multiple sources, so that users have a faster download, and do not need to worry about any errors caused by the person with the file breaking the con nection. Peer-to-peer file-sharing is still very much in its infancy, and it has already run into nu merous problems. Despite these, it is doubtful that pro grams like Morpheus and KaZaA will be going anywhere soon, and if they do, there will be others to take their places. File-sharing is here to stay. You Have The Clothes We Have The Monet). 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