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campus life for 101 years. It's
the single best way to preserve
your A&M experiences for years
to come, if you did not order
the '03 Aggleland as a fee
option when you registered for
Fall '02 classes, you may order
one in the Student Media
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Aggieland 2003
D iscovejResearch Inc.
You may qualify for a clinical research study if you have any
of the following conditions:
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• Up to $100 paid for time and travel
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the Prize & Endowed Lecture Series
TROTTER
INFORMATION * COMPLEXITY * INFERENCE
Tuesday ~ March 4, 2003
7:00 p.m.
Rudder Auditorium
s on the origins of the universe
Polkinghorne made a 25-year career as a
theoretical particle physicist before he decided
in midlife to enter the seminary and become
an Anglican priest. Polkinghorne has written
that he respects both science and religion and
believes that science's search for
understanding ultimately leads to God.
presented by
College of Science
in collaboration with The College of Engineering
Dr* Alan Gufh:
Guth, a National Academy of Science
member and physics professor at MIT, is
known as the father of the "inflationary
universe” theory, which holds that a repulsive
force embedded in the universe caused the
inconceivably rapid early expansion of the
Big Bang.
10
Tuesday, March 4, 2003
SCI|TECH
THE BATTALION
Tech Ethics
Copyrights are useless if not enforcd
Last summer, a 29-year-old
computer engineer began a 46-
month sentence in federal
prison, convicted of charges
that many resnet-surfing stu
dents at Texas A&M could eas
ily find themselves charged
with as well.
The crime is digital copy- cures jackson
right infringement, and the
criminal is anyone who downloads or distributes
illegal copies of copyrighted digital media, a
commodity that has become the cheapest form of
entertainment - it’s free.
Yet the crime is so commonplace that manyw
ho commit it don’t even realize it. After all,
downloading a movie, a music album or an
artist’s entire repertoire only involves a move
ment of the mouse and a quick double-click.
Computer users will continue to
violate copyright laws as long as
the chance of getting caught is as
slim as it is now.
“A number of people don’t
even know (this type of file shar
ing) is illegal,” said Jeff McCabe,
Associate Director of Information
Technology Issues in A&M’s
Computing and Information
Services Department. “Part of it is
an awareness problem, and part
of it is that people just say T
don’t care.’”
The government has taken action with the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the
Recording Industry Association of America is on
a rampage against those who sell bootlegged
music CDs and DVD movies, yet it is still
incredibly easy to get a hold of illegal music.
KaZaa, Direct Connect and Hobbes are common
utilities used for peer-to-peer file sharing. All are
readily available and all are perfectly legal to use.
These utilities provide an excellent interface for
file sharing between computers on campus and
on the Internet as well because of their simplici
ty. Users easily copy their CDs or DVDs to their
computers and share the contraband.
These utilities contain disclaimers that warn
against distributing copyrighted material. A
user can search for a music file, but it is impos
sible to discern which files are free todistritac
and which files are illegal copies. Basically,
anything goes.
McCabe holds that even though copyright vio
lations are easy to commit, there is really no
excuse for them to occur.
“You could go out and buy a gun, androba
place w ith it (fairly easily). You could copy
music and share it. also,” McCabe said.
Yet getting online and double-clicking a fileio
download does not seem so wrong to those who
do it. More than 2.6 billion songs are illegally
downloaded in the United States each month,
according to musicunited.org, a music industry
organization that speaks out against digital musit
piracy. Music listeners clearly do not liken musk
piracy to armed robbery.
The United States government does, however
“According to the DMCA,you
shouldn’t be circumventing any
copyright," McCabe said.
Each of the 2.6 billion songs
downloaded every month carries
with it a $30,000 fine andapos-
sible federal prison stay, accord
ing to a CIS information page.
Students or other users maynoi
be trying to break the law when
downloading music files, but
ignorance is never a defense.
How then can people be
expected to comply with laws that theydonol
kn ow exist? Ignorance in numbers leads tovio-
lations in numbers as well. A strong push
against piracy should be taken if users are
expected to quit stealing copyrighted material.
CIS posts an information page outlining Ik
consequences of illegal file sharing deep on its
Web site. File sharing utilities such as KaZaa
and Direct Connect mention in documentation
that users should not share copies of files they
do not own. Yet illegal file sharing is rampant
on campus - and around the world - because of
its ease and appeal. Until some accountability
is introduced, media thieves have noreasonto
quit trafficking in free information - the cheap
est commodity in the world.
The crime is so
commonplace that
many of those who
commit it don’t even
realize it.
Blood clots kill 60,000 yearly
By Lauran Neergaard
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — If you’re
lying in a hospital bed, chances
are doctors didn’t check you for a
silent killer — one that causes
some 60,000 potentially prevent
able deaths per year.
It’s called “deep vein throm
bosis,” when a dangerous blood
clot forms deep in the leg mus
cles. The clot sometimes floats
into the lungs, causing sudden
death.
Such clots made headlines a
few years ago when seemingly
healthy people collapsed after
long airplane flights. Take an
overseas flight today and you’ll
probably see a video advising
walking around or at least wig
gling your legs frequently to
keep clots at bay.
While that’s good advice, it
provides a skewed vision of the
clots: most actually occur when
people are hospitalized for sur
gery, trauma or some other rea
son. Worse, although simple
steps can prevent blood clots in
hospitalized patients, troubling
new research suggests too many
physicians either don’t know to
check for the risk or they forget.
Working hard to move the blood
The heart pumps oxygen-rich blood through arteries to
the rest of the body. Veins carry the blood back to the
lungs for an oxygen refill Fighting gravity to push blood
up from the legs is a hard job. one that can be
complicated by illness, injury or prolonged inactivity.
C»
caul#*
ifthebrt
pools, II
clot floats is
the W:
can ca®
sudden dean
Risk factors:
► Hospitalization for acute
illness or surgery
► Immobility during long travel,
by plane or car
► Obesity
► Pregnancy
► Birth control pills or estrogr
therapy
► Smoking
► Relatives with blood clots
► Being over age 40
► High blood pressure, ltea (
disease or cancer
SOURCE: Clinically Oriented Anatomy
Emily Bh** 11
Now a group of
doctors and federal
health officials are
trying to raise public
awareness of DVT, so
more physicians will
check for it — and so
people at risk can take
steps to protect them
selves, whether
they're entering the
hospital or taking a
long trip,
“There are so
many preventable
deaths,” laments Dr.
Samuel Goldhaber
of Harvard Medical
School. “It’s
become a crisis.”
Goldhaber is con
ducting the largest
study ever done on
who gets DVT and
why, using a registry
of 5,000 DVT
patients from 180
hospitals. Findings so
far are “quite shock
ing,” he said: More than half of
the people who developed DVT
while hospitalized for other rea
sons never got the clot-prevent
ing care that doctors should have
administered.
There aren’t precise counts.
but officials estimate up to-
million Americans suffer D'
each year. In as many *
600,000, the clot moves to ^
lungs, called a pulmoitf!
embolism. Anywhere fro®
60,000 to 100,000 of them die-
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1U mm. from Rtmo M ree Vfriefi Rental Library
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Volume 109
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fall, hoping to li
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THE BAT
In the Febi
Vanity Fair ma
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letter from a
what she th<
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in the real worl
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“Who speaks S
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Texas A&M’s
the Awareness
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two- day progra
Tuesday in r<
writer’s claims.
CAMAC (
efforts Tuesday
ing a panel mac
sors and jo
addressed the r
of Latinos in t
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and how to dea
After CAM/
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Dr. Man
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and Classical