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. www.dailygamecock.com MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2003 v“m - - -— _a East Coast anticipates Isabel ERIK SCHELZIG THE ASSOCIATED PRESS MIAMI — Hurricane Isabel weakened slightly Sunday but was still a powerful Category 4 storm as it plowed across the Atlantic Ocean on a course that could slam it into the centred East Coast late this week. “It’s looking more and more likely that this is going to be a big event for the eastern United States,” National Hurricane Center meteorologist Eric Blake said Sunday. Computer models predict that weather conditions over the East Coast should prevent Isabel from turning back out to sea and miss ing land, hurricane specialist Stacy Stewart said. “Landfall along the U.S. mid Atlantic coast somewhere be tween North Carolina and New Jersey between four or five days (Thursday or Friday) is appear ing more and more likely,” Stewart said. “Little or no signifi cant weakening is expected to occur until after landfall occurs.” In Wilmington, N.C., John Byrnes had already stocked up with 25 sheets of plywood Sunday and enough two-by-fours and screws to barricade the windows at his house, his in-laws’ house and their downtown law"office. His household generator was ready and he had an extra tank of propane gas to run appliances. “We’re all pretty much taken care of,” Byrnes said. “We’re in standby mode.” At 5 p.m. Sunday, Isabel’s max imum sustained wind speed was1 155 mph — 1 mph below the mini mum for Category 5 — and down 5 mph from earlier measure ments. Experts had said it would be extremely unusual for Isabel to maintain Category 5 strength as it moved north over cooler water. The storm was centered about 900 miles southeast of Cape Hatteras, N.C. Hurricane-force wind of at least 74 mph extended 100 miles out from the center. It was moving toward the west northwest at about 13 mph, and was expected to continue on that path into Monday, then turn to ward the Carolinas, possibly mak ing landfall Thursday or Friday. Forecasters note that hurricanes can be unpredictable, and long range forecasts have large possi bilities for error. In Washington, D.C., emer gency officials were working on acquiring additional sandbags, ' and planned to begin a public ed ucation campaign and meet with ♦ HURRICANE, SEE PAGE 3 SURFYOURSELF Track the hurricane’s progress www.nhc.noaa.gov . USC students wary of music downloading BY LAURA MOSS THE HAMECOCK Many USC students are be coming more cautious when downloading music from the Internet now that the recording industry is cracking down on il legal file sharing, often targeting entire universities and specific college students. In April, the Recording Industry Association of America sued four college students for on line music piracy. The students are now paying between $12,000 and $17,000 in annual install ments to the association. Tve heard of students being sued for downloading music off the Internet, and now I'm more careful in how many songs I have on my computer," said third-year business student Katy Alley. The association filed 261 law suits Monday against individuals across the nation for possessing an average of 1,000 illegal down loads. The association’s President Cary Sherman said the associa tion's efforts to educate the public about online music piracy haven't made enough of an impact. RIAA members such as BMG and Sony Music have reported a 31 percent decline in compact disc sales over the past three years, and estimates that more than three billion songs are ille gally downloaded each month. The association now offers an amnesty program for violators. Individuals must admit they have participated in illegal file sharing, delete all downloads and agree never to trade files again. The 261 individuals sued last week are in eligible for the program. The association has issued subpoenas to several universities about illegal file sharing. This has prompted many universities to warn students about the conse quences of trading files. USC includes such warnings in its computer network regis tration guidelines. The guide lines state that all users are per sonally liable for downloading illegal copies of music and that violations can result in removal from the network and legal ac tion by the university. Clemson University is also working to stop illegal file shar ing on its campus. The school is issuing written reprimands to violators, and repeat offenders ♦ FILE SHARING, SEE PAGE 4 - PHOTO BY MORGAN FORD/THE GAMECOCK Nick McDonald, a third-year media arts student with an emphasis in audio, uses file sharing to download music from time to time. New patch required for network computers BY JON TURNER THEHAMECOCK USC students were faced with an ultimatum Wednesday afternoon to patch their Windows oper ating systems after Microsoft announced it had found another security hole. Shortly after noon, Microsoft Corp. said it had dis covered the new vulnerability in Windows versions 2000 through XP. At 4:34 p.m. the same day, a post went up over the USC General Announcement Service that said: "There are new Windows RPC vul nerauuiues. u you uo nui paicn in me next /a nours, you will be disconnected from the network.” Ronni Wilkinson, the information technology' se curity officer at USC Computer Services, said the ul timatum was issued mainly as a warning of what could happen. "It was an attention-getter, mostly," she said. Wilkinson said the hole in Windows security was . just as dangerous as the one that nearly crippled the university network during the first weeks of school. "It's so close to the old one that they can just make a minor change in the Blaster or Nachi worms and it'll be just the same-as last time," Wilkinson said. But Wilkinson was impressed by the speed with which students and teachers responded to the mes sage. "On the computer network, out of 18,000, there are only 2,800 left to be patched," she said, "It may come ♦ VIRUS, SEE PAGE 3 Stiff competition PHOTO BY JOHNNY HAYNES/THE GAMECOCK USC’s Kenny Irons gets wrapped up by a swarm of UGA players. See page 10 for full story. Fire alarms temporarily evacuate Russell House BY ALEXIS STRATTON THK GAMECOCK Fire alarms evacuated the Russell House for over an hour Saturday night starting at 7:14 p.m. Police and fire departments ar rived soon after, taping off the en trances to the building and search ing for the cause of the alarm. Within 30 minutes, a steam cloud began to form around the back entrance to Pandini’s, be tween the food stores and the of fices that make up the Russell House's West Wing. According to Pandini's super visor Anthony Irick, steam had been coming out of the building since 11 a.m. The suspected cause of the steam was a broken steam line in the basement. Irick said they would have to wait for USC's maintenance to come and fix the problem before they let everyone back in. Police officials would not com ment on the exact nature of the problem. Irick said Saturday night that Pandirii's, which was scheduled to close at 8 p.m.. would not reopen before then and that they "still had a bunch of cleaning to do." Heather Casey, a second-year education major who arrived to the Russell House after the alarm began, said she didn't understand why the whole student union re ► FIRE, SEE PAGE 3 Index Comics and Crossword 9 Classifieds __ 12 Horoscopes 9 Letters to the Editor 6 Online Poll 6 ^ Police Report 2 Weather TODAY TOMORROW -T &■ High 85 High 83 Low 66 Low 67 In This Issue ♦ NEWS Hispanic Heritage Month starts today. A schedule of events is inside. Page 2 ♦VIEWPOINTS Brian Ray says that when drinking, anything can happen. Page 6 ♦ THE MIX Web sites allow students to buy, sell and search for textbooks - often at cheaper prices. Page 7 ♦ SPORTS The USC football team’s errors and penalties cost them an upset of the Georgia Bulldogs. Page 10 SG looks to extend Readership Program BY ADAM BEAM THE CAMECOCK USC’s Student Government wants to bring free newspapers to campus, but first has to find a way to pay for them. On Sept. 8, SG initiated a four week free trial of the USA Today College Readership Program, de signed to get more students read ing newspapers. The program provides free copies of three newspapers ~ USA Today, The State and The New York Times. The papers are available at Bates House, Capstone, the business j building and the Towers lobby. A full-fledged program provid ing thousands of newspapers a day will cost about $30,000 a semester - too expensive for SG to handle. A smaller version, about 800 papers a day, will run $12,000 a semester. SG President Katie Dreiling said SG has agreed to foot the bill for the first year until it figures out a way to keep it going. All billing is handled through USA Today, and the school is only charged for the number of papers students use. Dreiling said SG would be looking at sponsorships for the program and hopes that eventu ally the administration will split the bill with them. Don Greiner, dean of Undergraduate Affairs, said the administration supports the pro gram, but, like SG, can’t afford to give it any funding. "The issue is the budget, of course, and if the budget ever straightens out and improves, then this readership program will be another beneficial initiative for the students," he said. Greiner said there is no timetable for the administration to fund the program and that the funding depends on the state leg islature. The USA Today program dates ba'ck to 1997. when Penn State University President Graham Spainer wanted to provide news papers for his students. Spainer wanted the newspapers to be free, available at convenient locations and offer a variety of publica tions. Spainer approached USA Today with the idea, and the read ership program was born. Sandy Williams, account man ager for USA Today in South Carolina, said it isn’t unusual for student governments to fund the program. ♦ READERSHIP, SEE PAGE 3