Software down on the farm

In the world of agribusiness, the key to success is cutting costs. Because farmers have little or no control over the prices they will receive for their crops, their profit often depends on how little they spend on the production side. In the past, much of this cost-cutting depended on experience, guesswork, and just plain luck. However, today, many farmers are using computers to help them run their businesses. In fact, it has been estimated that almost half of all full-time farmers use a computer to help run the farm.

In managing a farm, computer software is used for a wide variety of tasks, ranging from basic accounting to making decisions about crops. One estimate put the number of software packages available to farmers at close to 2,000. Examples of the applications of computer software on the farm are

- ranking milk cows according to volume of milk produced so that less productive cows can be culled, which may result in a significant reduction in feed costs;

- assisting potato farmers in determining when to apply pesticides to their crops and when to irrigate their fields, depending on the temperature and humidity;

- allowing farmers to draw their fields to scale, indicating crops, drainage problems, pest control problems, fertilizer applications, and other pertinent information, some of which can be obtained from satellite photos, about each field.

While the computer produces important information in the planning process, the fanner still must make the final decisions about when to plant, when to harvest, and when to buy and sell. For farmers who are used to paying over $ 100,000 for their equipment, the cost of a personal computer and the associated software is small potatoes compared to the savings it can produce.

LESSON 5

Exercise 5.1

Translate the following words paying attention to affixes.

Divide, division, divided, indivisible, divisibility; access, accessible, accessing, inaccessible, accessibility; connect, connection, connected, connectivity, connecting, disconnected; volatility; regardless; arrange, arrangement, rearrange, arranged; accomplish, accomplishment, accomplishing, accomplished; burn, burning, burnt; rotate, rotation, rotational, rotated, rotating; oxygen, oxide, dioxide, oxidize, oxidation; new, newer, renew, newest, renewal; mount, mounted, mountable, mounting; sequence, sequent,sequential; instance, instantaneous, instant, instantly.

Exercise 5.2

Translate the following sentences paying attention to conditional forms.

1. If the solution is acceptable, the network is reconfigured.

2. If the solution were acceptable, the network would be reconfigured.

3. If the solution had been acceptable, the network would have been reconfigured two days ago.

4. The network will be reconfigured providing the solution is acceptable.

5. The network could be reconfigured if the solution had been acceptable.

6. Had the solution been acceptable, the network could have been reconfigured.

7. Provided the solution was acceptable, they might reconfigure the network

8. They will not reconfigure the network unless the solution is accepted.

9. Were the solutions acceptable, the network could be reconfigured.

10. If I should find an acceptable solution, we would reconfigure the network.

11. I don’t know if the network will be reconfigured.

12. We’d reconfigure the network unless we hadn’t been told not to.

Exercise 5.3

Translate the following sentences paying attention to conditional forms.

1. If more than 20 or 30 processors are used, they end up spending most of their time on notification.

2. One solution would be to use a single shared memory and not to cache data that could be shared.

3. If you‘ve used technologies like Microsoft’s Active Server Pages, you’ll find Java Server Pages (JSP) easy enough to understand.

4. Had Microsoft obeyed the law, we would have had much more innovation and competition over the last seven years.

5. Moreover, much of that lost activity would have focused on the interface between the PC and the Internet – an area where more innovation would have been particularly welcome.

6. Many more people would use Linux operating system if it ran Office, especially an Office no longer subject to Microsoft’s strategy tax.

7. Meanwhile, middleware entrepreneurs could turn to the Office company as a distribution partner, if the Windows company tried to block them, and consumers and developers would be given many more choices.

8. The larger choice among innovations would leave users and developers worse off than if the lawbreaking had never happened.

9. Even if many technologists around the world have a working knowledge of English, if you are trying to sell something to them or support them through a technical crisis, you’ll have more success speaking to them in their own language.

10. The same goes for software, of course, and if you sell software into a global market, you’ll want to customize it to your customer’s requirements.

11. If you had 50 million people who wanted to download LimeWire, they could do it.

12. What would happen, for example, if the recording industry set its sights on LimeWire, as it did on Napster, for copyright violations?

13. Even if the company shuts down, the network it’s helped foster will live on.

14. Provided developers are aware of how VB’s (Visual Basic) error handling works, it’s possible if not easy to make sense of it.

15. If he is logged in on any device, be it desktop computer, cellphone, or PDA, her question will reach him wherever he is, in the office, at home or in between.

16. If unable to do so, such as by finding an alternative processor or network node, it automatically generates an error log and contacts IBM for another solution via Internet or private –network connection.

17. If IBM hasn’t fixed the problem before, human intervention is necessary.

18. Hadn’t antivirus software been set to scan files before they were saved, infection could have occurred.

Text A

MEMORY

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