A first look at computers

LESSON 1

Exercise 1.1

Translate the following words paying attention to affixes.

Intelligence, intelligent, intellective, intelligible; store, storage, storing, storable, stored, storeroom; symbol, symbolic, symbolism, symbolized; instruction, instruct, instructing, instructed, instructor, instructive; utilize, utility, utilization, utilizing, utilized; install, installed, installation, reinstalling; direct, directly, director, misdirection, directive, directed; operate, operation, operative, operator, operating, operational; regard, disregard, regardless, regarding, regarded; remember, remembered, remembrance, remembering; replace, place, replacing, replaceable, replacement, replaced; human, humanity, humanly, inhuman, humanitarian; consider, considering, considerable, considerably, consideration, reconsideration; real, reality, unreal, realize, realizing; determine, determinant, determination; efficient, efficiency, efficiently, inefficient, effect; combine, combined, combination, recombined; distant, distance, distantly.

Exercise 1.2

Translate the following paying attention to word combinations

According to the article, thanks to the article, in addition to the article, in spite of the article, on account of the article, due to the article, instead of the article, by means of the article, owing to the article, as far as the article is concerned, in order to publish the article, as soon as the article is published, as far as I understand, this article as well as the previous one deals with, both the article and the text, either the article or the text, neither the article nor the text, such an interesting article, the article is so interesting, in terms of, only the article, the only article, also, although, though, through, hence, however, on the one hand, by no means, other than; the higher the speed, the more traffic will pass.

Exercise 1.3

Translate the following sentences paying attention to word combinations

1. Currently, though, the technology is too immature for many companies to adopt it.

2. However it will be a challenge for such tools to keep up with the demanding and changing requirements of designers working on many types of analog circuits.

3. Nonetheless, he predicted, other companies will jump into the market for automated analog-circuit-design tools.

4. By contrast, a GUI test case requires interleaving the oracle invocation with the test case execution because an incorrect GUI state can lead to an unexpected screen, which in turn can make further test case useless.

5. Moreover, we saw that users often mailed, printed, saved, and even translated Web content – activities that a desktop interface can easily support, but not the limited interface of very small devices.

6. Thus, rather than simply transforming pages for smaller screens, the direction should be to transform the Web browsing interaction into two separate modes: navigating to and acting on the content.

7. Unfortunately, because of the labor required, only a small fraction of Web content is manually authored for any particular device.

8. However, although scaling can reduce scrolling, it also reduces readability and ease of use.

9. m-Link is both simple to use and powerful, its simplicity coming from the navigation interface.

10. Web interaction for phonetops (Internet-enabled cell phones) has, so far, been a secondary concern.

11. Yet overall, most Web content providers are neither equipped nor have the desire to do this tailoring.

12. For the most part, automated techniques to address the feature gap between desktop and phonetop rely on the notion of transducing – translating HTML and images into formats compatible with small devices.

13. A transforming system modifies both the content and the structure, or experience of interacting with the content, as well as transducing to the appropriate markup language.

14. A blade server, on the other hand, carries only the absolute essentials: a small motherboard with processor, memory, and networking circuitry, and maybe a hard drive.

15. The promise of blades, however, lies not so much in their hardware, as in the software used to manage them.

16. What a blade server can access also depends on its connections, of course, but those in turn depend on the enclosure’s connections – and they can be changed with mere mouse clicks, rather than by physically rearranging cables.

17. The real breakthrough of blades, therefore, is the ease with which they can be installed, configured, and, especially, reconfigured.

18. You could associate the blade with, say, the human resources network and a neighboring blade with backup storage device.

19. The enclosure’s networking and switching components would act as traffic cops that appropriately direct data from the blades to the outer world and vice versa.

20. Then there are a couple of unexpected – and rather unwelcome – surprises that have frustrated many customers.

Text A

A FIRST LOOK AT COMPUTERS

The feature common to all smart machines is their use of computer technology to supply "intelligence." A computer is a machine that stores and manipulates symbols using instructions from a human user. All computers are built around tiny pieces of silicon called computer chips, which utilize miniaturized electronic circuitry to carry out instructions from the user. When one of these computer chips is installed in a machine, such as a VCR or a fax machine, and is programmed to direct the machine's operations, the chip is referred to as a microprocessor.

We often encounter computers in the form of a terminal linked to a large centralized computer, or sitting on our desk in the form of a personal computer. Regardless of the form in which we find it, remember that the computer is a special type of tool—a very powerful mind tool that extends but does not replace the human mind. We have long used tools to ease our physical labors. In fact, the aim of the Industrial Revolution was to enhance production by using tools and machines to increase human physical productivity. Now the computer can do the same thing for our mental labors.

As examples of easing mental effort by using the computer, consider five tools commonly used in offices everywhere—the calculator, the typewriter, the file cabinet, the drafting table, and the telephone. All these tools are to some extent being replaced or enhanced by the computer; in the process, the human effort is reduced through the power of the computer.

Like a calculator, the computer can perform calculations. But the real power of the computer is its capability to allow the user to determine the effect of changes in the data or of changes in the assumptions underlying the calcu­lations. Similarly, computers can be used to create and revise documents with far greater ease than the standard typewriter. Computers can actually be used to develop professional-typeset-quality documents ready for publication. While it will be a long time before all storage of information on paper is ended, com­puters can now store information much more efficiently than filing cabinets, and computers allow the user to retrieve needed items of information without search­ing through many file folders. Drafting tables are also rapidly being replaced by computers that enable the user to either draw freehand or combine figures from a figure library to create a complete drawing. Finally, fax machines have now made it possible not just to talk over the telephone but also to send text and drawings over telephone lines to distant points.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14