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.
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