Today, about half of all PCs are still not connected to the Web. Getting communications costs down and making all the software simple will bring in those people, And that, in turn, will move us closer to the critical mass that will make the Web lifestyle everyone’s lifestyle .One clement that people interest-mate is the degree to which the hardware and software will improve. Just take one aspect screen technology. Idol my e-mail on a 20-inch liquid crystal display (LCD) monitor .It is not available at a reasonable price yet, but in two years it will be .In ten years, a40-inch LCD with much higher resolution will be commonplace.
The boundary between a television set and a PC will be blurred because even the set-top box that you connect up to your cable or satellite will have a processor more powerful than what we have today in the most expensive PC. This wall, in effect, makes your television a computer.
In traction with the Web also will improve, machine it much easier for people to be involved. Toby the keywords we use to we arch the Web often return to too many articles to sort through, many of them out of context .If you want to learn about the fastest computer chip available, you might ebb up getting responses instead about potato chips being delivered in fast trucks .In the future, we shall be eater speaking or typing sentences into the computer .If you ask about the speed of chips, the result will be about computers, not potatoes. Speech recognition also means that you will be able to call in on a phone and ask if you have any new messages, or check on a flight, or check on the weather.
To predict that it will take over ten years for these changes to happen is probably pessimistic .We usually overestimate what we can do in two years and underestimate what we can do in ten .The Web will be as much a way of life as the car by 2008.Probably before. 549
1. Electronic commerce becomes a new type of commerce when___.
[A] Paper based transactions are moved on to the Web
[B] The efficiency of the existing process is improved by Internet
[C] A Web site offers more obscure goods than a physical store
[D] New buy errs and sellers find each other on the Internet
2. The use of computer will be as common as the use of cars when ___.
[A] Computer and communication become simpler and cheaper
[B] Electronic commerce causes a fundamental change
[C] The boundary between the computer and the TV disappears
[D] Governments began to move administration on-line
3. What currently is the problem with the Web according the passage
[A] Ineffective interaction.
[B] Too much information
[C] Inaccurate response
[D] Severe lack of speed
4. The example of potato chips is cued to illustrate ____.
[A] The defect of computers at the present stage of development
[B] The similarity between a computer chip and a potato chip
[C] The speed of computer chips as compared to potato chips
[D] The irrelevant responses the computer sometimes offers
5. In this passage the author is trying to show that ___.
[A] Everyone will be using computer and the Web by 2008
[B] Computers will be able to recognize speech in 10 years’ him
[C] Changes caused by the Web will arrive sooner than we think
[D] Interaction with the Web will become easier to manage
Text 2
The big Auk grocery retailer TESCO is testing a database, which knows when you like to shop, what’s on the list and how much you are likely to spend. It also knows that three-quarters of a store’s total profits comes from its top 10 percent of customers.
Data mining---the intensive analysis of statistic---is being combined with micro marketing—the targeting of small groups of consumers---to cause big changes in the way we spend. The U. S. retailer Wal-Mart now mails out to customers personalized weekly shopping lists with prices, together with a list of little temptations for their taste, budget and stage in life.
These developments may have profound effects on the way we bank as well on the way we shop. In perhaps six months a customer will be able to arrive at a supermarket, pick up a bar code reader and wander about the shop. Clicking on to whatever he or she wants to buy that week. A member of staff will take the bar code reader. Use it to deliver the goods from the warehouse. while the customer goes off for a coffee or to have their hair done.A 3D body scanner will come into use within a few years. A customer who stands partially clothed in a small room for about 10 seconds, can have haw physical stature mapped to an accuracy of 1 millimeter. Then he or she can shop from home, with a television remote control device, flicking through the latest catalogue of offerings from a retailer.
Fancy that outfit for yourself A click of the button, and there you are, on the television screen, wearing it. Like to see it in another color Click. Just got to have it Another click to call up the Internet banking connection, and you have bought and paid for it, and a courier will deliver tomorrow.
The revolution does not stop there. Mr. Tealeaves, an expert in artificial intelligence and so-called neural networks, can tie together your current preferences. Sprinkle with a little knowledge of how you are likely to age and predict your spending patterns for the rest of your life.
Is it too intrusive---an invasion of privacy “In fact just the opposite,” says Mr. Tealeaves. “People welcome the chance to be given valuable assistance in some of the humdrum chores of our time, and avoid being targeted by the irritations of intrusive advertising. The storeowner will become the friend who gives valuable information to you. ” 416
1. The new method of marketing adopted by TESCO and Wal-Mart concentrates mainly on ____.
[A] The top ten percent of their customers
[B] Banking connections and payments
[C] Lists of personalized shopping advice
[D] Collection and use of customer information
2. “Little temptations for their taste, budget and stage in life” probably means ____ .
[A] Gifts [B] discounts [C] suitable goods [D] bargains
3. The future customer will perhaps be able to .
[A] Select goods electronically and have them delivered
[B] Click on what he wants and take it home right away
[C] Wander in the market and read the bar code
[D] Do shopping and have coffee at the same time
4. The significance of the 3Dbody scanner is that it cans .
[A] Accurately map out your physical stature
[B] Help you try on clothes on your home TV
[C] Design an outfit by the click of a button
[D] Help you flick through the retailer’s catalogue
5. The revolutionary marketing, according to Mr., Relevant, is .
[A] An act of valuable assistance
[B] A triumph of artificial intelligence
[C] An example of intrusive advertising
[D] An invasion of privacy
Text 3
In its most ambitious project to date, Edison, the nation’s largest private operator of public schools, is scheduled to take over Gillespie and 19 other schools in Philadelphia this fall. But just as the company's initial meetings with teachers began there last week, Edison was absorbing blows from a defection by a pillar client in Boston, a scolding by the Securities and Exchange Commission, lawsuits from angry investors and persistent doubts from teachers, parents and students in Philadelphia.
The Boston Renaissance Charter School became one of Edison's first clients when the school was founded in 1995. But a desire to move in a different curricular direction and disappointment with scores on Massachusetts state exams are prompting school officials to vacate their five-year contract with Edison this summer, three years before it was set to expire in 2005. Eighth-graders at Renaissance perform below state and district averages- 69% failed the statewide math test, compared with 54% in the Boston school district and 31% in the state; in English, 22% of Renaissance eighth-graders failed, compared with 20% citywide and 8% statewide. Edison spokesman Adam Tucker concedes that none of us felt test scores were improving as quickly as they should at Renaissance, but he says that a dual management structure in which the school principal reported to both Edison and a local charter-school board was restricting.
But the dissolution of the high-profile Boston contract was just one factor contributing to Edison's bad week. In an informal inquiry concluded last Tuesday, the SEC said that Edison had omitted crucial information from its filings, allowing it to report revenues from 1999 to 2002 that were 41% to 48% higher than it actually generated. The company had been counting teachers' salaries and other expenses paid by its client school districts and charter school boards as revenue, even though none of the cash entered Edison's coffers. Because Edison also reported the funds as expenses, its bottom line was accurate, the SEC said, and the reporting procedure did not violate generally accepted accounting rules. Still, the SEC said, Edison should have told investors how it was tabulating its impressive revenue growth.
Edison investors gave the company an F for not making that effort, trading Edison stock to less than $2 a share, far from its high of $35 in January 2001. They also filed three class actions charging the company with misleading them. Stockholders were equally under whelmed by the Philadelphia contract, which at one point was expected to include as many as 45 schools. Edison's CEO Chris Whittle says the company plans to complete a deal with an unnamed investor in the next few weeks for $30 million to $50 million in new capital, much of it needed to open the 20 Philadelphia schools in September.
For parents and teachers in the city's beleaguered school system, the steady stream of bad news about Edison is perplexing. I thought they were coming to help us, says Tina Rivera, who has a daughter and a grandson in the Philadelphia schools and works as a teacher's aide. It seems they are in dire need of some help themselves. Which of the following is NOT true about Edison’s action in Philadelphia
1. Which of the following is NOT true about Edison’s action in Philadelphia
[A] It includes 20 schools in all, one of which is Gillespie.
[B] It is going to open 20 schools in September.
[C] It is Edison’s most ambitious project.
[D] Both parents and teachers in Philadelphia doubt about this action.
2. The phrase “a pillar client” in the first paragraph refers to
[A]The Securities and Exchange Commission
[B]Edison Investors in Boston
[C]The Boston Renaissance Charter School
[D]Teachers, parents and students in Boston
3. The Renaissance Charter School wanted to quit its contact with Edison NOT because
[A]It is disappointed with the student score.
[B]It is disappointed with Edison’s school management.
[C]The school principal has to report to Edison about management.
[D]The school wanted to make a change in its curricular design.
4. Which of the following is TRUE about Edison’s financial filings
[A]The revenue reported was 52% to 59% lower than the actual figure.
[B]The expense reported was higher than the actual figure.
[C]The report violated accepted accounting rules.
[D]The failure in revenue led to the decline of Edison stock.
5. It can not be inferred from the passage about stockholders that
[A]They are suspicious about the success of Edison’s Philadelphia Contract.
[B]They punished Edison for its dishonesty
[C]They are unsatisfied with Edison’s performance in financial report.
[D]They refused to invest in Edison’s projects any more
Text 4
Sandor, 60, the CEO and founder of Environmental Financial Products, based in Chicago, is one of several innovators who think the key to stopping global warming is to encourage companies to cut greenhouse-gas pollution by making it profitable for them to do so. The trick, contends the economist, who was a pioneer in the development of financial futures contracts at the Chicago Board of Trade, is to create a market in permits to emit greenhouse gases. The power of the free market is that it can restore nature's wealth as it increases financial wealth, Sandor says. Just how much wealth He estimates that a global market in greenhouse gases-released with the burning of oil, coal and other fossil fuels-could amount to hundreds of billions of dollars a year. To begin harnessing those billions in the service of a cleaner planet, Sandor plans by early next year to launch a trading forum called the Chicago Climate Exchange, in what would be the first U.S. marketplace for greenhouse gas emissions. More than two dozen major U.S. companies, including Ford, DuPont and American Electric Power, plus five Mexican and Canadian firms, along with Chicago and Mexico City, have been involved in setting up the exchange and have expressed interest in participating, pending further negotiations. As a group, Sandor says, they represent emissions nearly equal to those of Germany.
The exchange is modeled after the largest and most successful experiment to date involving pollution permits. Under the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act, the U.S. government set a cap, or limit, on sulfur dioxide emissions, a contributor to acid rain, and distributed tradable emissions permits. Companies able to reduce their emissions below the cap could sell their unused permits to others. The Environmental Protection Agency says the program has reduced S02 emissions more than 30% from 1990 levels and cost industry a mere 20% of what the government originally estimated.
The buying and selling of permits for greenhouse gases is permitted under the Kyoto treaty to combat climate change. Despite the rejection of the pact by the U.S., other major governments, including Japan, have ratified it, and trading in permits for carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas, is increasing in Europe. In the U.S., many executives who expect eventually to face more rigorous laws are eager to get experience coping with caps. We really have endeavored to construct a program that will be highly credible and successful-and by success we mean it will reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, says Dale Heydlauff, senior vice president for environmental affairs for American Electric Power and one of Sandor's collaborators. Participation will be voluntary, but firms will be monitored for compliance.
The initial targets for greenhouse-gas reductions seem modest. The project's website proposes reductions of just 2% below 1999 levels, plus an additional 11% cut with each passing year. In contrast, scientists warn we must cut our fossil-fuel addiction by as much as 70% to confront global warming effectively. Even so, the Chicago Climate Exchange will be ahead of U.S. law, and will be a test of corporations' readiness to act on their own. This is the Wright brothers' version of an aircraft, Sandor says. It's not the 747 that exists after 50 years, but it's a start. And that's going to be important to your children and my grandchildren. 552
