И.С. Гудилина, Л.Б. Саратовская, Л.Ф. Спиридонова - English Reader in Computer Science, страница 14

III. Discussion problems:

1. How is computer technology shaping the world in your opinion?

2. How may computer technology benefit the lives of the world population in future?

3. Do you agree with all the ideas and statements of the article?

Unit 2

What Makes a Good Systems' Designer?

Philip Edwards, a Toronto-based independent designer of large-scale computer systems has analyzed what makes a good systems designer. Drawing on his own experience and that of colleagues involved in designing or hiring designers, Edwards presents a description of the necessary attributes for people working in this area.

One quality that Edwards sees as essential to systems designers is the ability to visualize a number of alternatives simultaneously. Designers should be able to look at a variety of possible solutions to a problem, mentally changing components of these solutions while keeping track of the effects of these changes on other parts. Mentally testing a number of solutions to the design problem involves making use of all technology currently available and finally reaching a state of harmony when the correct solutions are (bund. A colleague of Edwards sees a problem in a unique or unconventional way - and brainstorming - quickly generating large numbers of new ideas - as essential to the designing process. Although these kinds of thinking may be more usually associated with the arts than with computer specialties, Edwards stresses that creativity and imagination are critical to the systems designer.

Another key part of successful designing, Edwards says, is the ability to understand users' needs as they-really are, instead of as users themselves describe them. Many end-users of the system are not computer experts. Therefore, their descriptions of their needs may very well be incorrect. Good designers are able to see the system from the perspective of the user who will benefit without becoming side-tracked by the users' own, possibly mistaken descriptions of the desired system. One colleague Edwards spoke to stressed that in job interview situations, designers will describe their successful systems in terms of the user requirements they have satisfied rather than in terms of inputs and outputs. Designers focus on user needs, while those concerned with inputs and outputs are probably programmers or systems analysts, he says.

Another requirement that resembles those of an artistic field is the ability to communicate via visual images and not just words. Good designers can usually show the essence of their system in simple drawings, diagrams, or just doodles. In addition, they are usually articulate, often having both good speaking and writing skills.

Others Edwards spoke to emphasized that designers need to be able to break down the larger problem into smaller, more manageable parts. Each problem of system design is made up of simpler ones, so that an important part of the designer's task is to be able to analyze what those components are, come up with solutions for them, and make those solutions work together as an integrated whole.

Flexibility is also important. Edwards stresses that designers have to be able to recognize when to drop an idea that isn't working and move on to something else. In other words, designers should not be so faithful to a favorite idea that they overlook its failings.

Edwards points out that some computer systems research and development departments emphasize teamwork. As an example, he cites Applied Research of Dallas, where the company tries to assemble a group with complementary skills to solve design problems. In small groups of people with varying talents, designers need to be able to make use of the abilities of others in the creation of the system. One person working alone is less likely to see - and have all the necessary skills to solve - all aspects of a problem.

According to Edwards, then, good systems designers can visualize a number of possible solutions simultaneously, can think about problems in a unique way; can see the requirements of the system from the user's point of view; have the ability to communicate through drawings, writing, and speaking; know how to break down a problem into small flexible, manageable parts; and can work well with others. But can they cook and sew?

NOTES:

1. to visualize (v.) — мысленно представлять себе, рисовать в воображении

2. while keeping track of— одновременно прослеживая ...

3. unconventional way — нетрадиционный путь

4. brainstonning (adj.) — зд. блестящий, великолепный

5. key part — зд. важное качество

6. to become side — tracked by — идти по боковому (неправильному) пути

7. rather than — скорее чем ...

8. via — (лат.) через

9. a doodle (n.) — закорючка, "кривулька"

10. to be articulate — быть ясным, отчетливым, хорошо составленным

11. an integrated whole — единое целое

12. to drop an idea — оставить идею

13. to overlook (v.) — не обращать внимания, не придавать значения

I. Answer the following questions:

1. Which qualities does Philip Edwards consider as the most essential ones of a system' designer?

II. Give the main ideas of the text in logic order.

III. Discussion problems:

1. Do you agree with Philip Edwards?

2. Could you describe a computer design specialist?

3. Can you give any convincing examples of such people?

Unit 3

Bill Gates' Challenge Now: Running Microsoft.

When William Henry Gates, chairman of Microsoft Corp., leaves his Wash. office on a business trip, he deliberately sets out for the airport a few minutes later than he should. He says: «I like pushing things to the edge. That's where you often find high performance.» Gates generally makes his planes with only a minute or two to spare. In larger ways, his near-perfect performance in one dazzling decade in business has made him the yuppie Chuck Yeager, pushing the envelope not of space but of software.

Gates, who does so many things so well, is more remarkable than better-known princes of high-tech like Steven Jobs. He is not only a technological visionary who can dream of software applications years ahead but a marketing strategist who prices his products for the mass market, not only и charismatic leader who keeps his 1,200 employees challenged but a tough CEO who fires his first president after 11 months. Beyond that, his overall whiz-kid intelligence puts him at the head of any class.

Microsoft, with sales of $100 million in its 11th year, began as a college boy's bluff. In 1975, Gates was a Harvard sophomore who preferred late-night poker, hard-core ducking and such sentimental reading as A Separate Peace and The Catcher in the Rye to his studies. When his boyhood friend: Paul Alien showed him an ad in Popular electronics for the Altair, a build-it-yourself computer, the pair immediately rang up MITS, its Albuquerque manufacturer. With schoolboy bravado, they announced that Gates had already adapted the computer language BASIC for the machine. He had not, but after four frantic weeks, he did. Says Gates: "One little mistake would have meant the program wouldn't have run. The first time we tried it was at MITS, and it came home without a glitch."lt also changed the course of Gates' life: he quitted Harvard and with Alien formed Microsoft to create a line of software products.

Growth has been remarkably smooth and steady. In fact, Gates has financed his company's expansion completely out of earnings. The next great risk of Gates' career came when he set out to develop the operating system for IBM's new PC. His MS-DOS has since become the industry standard, "We bet all our resources on that system," he recalls. He also helped design Radio Shack's Model 100, the first truly portable computer; he produced MSX systems software, the soul of a new series of Japanese machines; and more recently, he released Windows, the much delayed program that allows various applications to appear on the screen at once. Last January Miscrosoft launched its most ambitious project, the long-term development of CD-ROM, a compact disk that can hold any kind of computerized information - musical, textual or visual. During all this warp-speed activity Gates took his company public in March, making his own shares - 40% of the outstanding total - worth $390 million as of June 1.

Microsoft's master views nonwork warily. He puts in 65-hour weeks but no longer pulls all-nighter as he did in the early days. In the first five years of Microsoft he took only two vacations, of two to three days each. Now he permits himself seven or eight days off a year plus some weekends. About twice a month he sees a San Francisco friend, Ann Winblad, 35, who also founded her own software company with three partners. She recently sold out for $15.5 million. This spring he took his most extravagant holiday to date, renting a 56-foot sailing vessel with crew for four days off Australia. Says Gates, somewhat apologetically: "We'd just gone public, and I was sort of pampering myself."

Relaxing is not at all Gates' style. He believes that bad habits in one segment of life — say, personal finance - can spill into others. So Microsoft's $175,000-a-year chief executive is a financial conservative. He has no debts and invests only in stocks he knows well. In the early '80s, he ran a $40,000 ante up to $1 million by investing in undervalued technology stocks, including Apple. In 1983 he bought his $780,000, II-room house with its 30-foot-long indoor swimming pool with those profits. In 1981, the last year of his partnership with Alien, he made more than $1 million and paid $500,000 in taxes. Says Gates, who was too busy running bis company to bother about sheltering his income: "I got a letter from Reagan thanking me for paying all that money."

Gates grew up in the family of a prominent Seattle lawyer and his wife. "The software business is very American," he says. "The original technological advances were all made here. The largest markets are here. And the atmosphere that allowed it all to happen is here. That's how our original customers, including IBM, could be so open-minded about buying from a 25-year-old guy. They may have thought it was crazy at the time, but they said, 'Hey, if he knows so much about software, maybe he knows even more." And he did.

NOTES:

1. to push the things to the edge — двигать вещи на острую кромку

2. dazzling decade — ослепительное десятилетие

3. yuppie Chuk Yeager — молодой Чак Игер (yuppie - young hippie)

4. better-known princes of high tech — более известные авторитеты высоких технологий

5. a technological visionary — мечтатель

6. a charismatic leader CEO — главное должностное лицо, управляющий высшего ранга

7. to fire — увольнять кого-либо

8. bluff (n.) — разг. обман, блеф

9. Harward sophomore — амер. студент-второкурсник Гарвардского университета

10. The Catcher in the Rye — популярный роман Дж. Селинджера "Над пропастью во ржи" (1951)

11. to quit — амер. увольняться с работы

12. it саmе home without a glitch — это удалось без проблем.

13. to set out to — зд. собираться сделать, намереваться

14. warp-speed activity — многосторонняя деятельность

15. warily (adv.)—осторожно, осмотрительно

16. nighter — полуночник, лунатик

17. sailing vessel with crew — судно с командой

18. to pamper (v.)—баловать, изнеживать

19. an ante (n) — доля, часть

20. undervalued — недооцененный

I. Answer the following questions:

1. What are the most remarkable stages of Bill Gates' career?

2. Which Bill Gates' projects were the most significant?

3. How does Bill Gates view nonwork?

4. Why is he called "a conservative" in the article?

5. What is his life style?

II. Give the main ideas of the text in logic order.

III. Discussion problems:

1. What is Bill Gates' fantastic success in your opinion due mostly to?

2. Have you read his book "The Road Ahead"?

3. Do you know anything about his future projects?

Unit 4

Thinking Machines

As we know, computers have memories and can solve problems, but they can't really mink. That is, no machine has the capacity to reason and learn as we humans do. They can't learn to recognize a particular person, for example, from an angle they've never seen before the way even a baby can. They can't make anything but yes-no decisions or solve problems based on fuzzing or incomplete information. And they certainly can't independently figure out how to solve problems without specific instructions from human programmers. Or can they? Computer scientists researching the possibilities of artificial intelligence are bringing all these limitations into question, as they create computers that approximate the way humans think.

The latest "thinking machines" are known as neural-net computers. The idea is based on understanding how human brains function to give us what we know as intelligence. Limited though this understanding is, it has already given computer scientists some remarkable results. In the brain, when one neuron is stimulated, it "fires," or stimulates a network of other neurons. Those neurons, in turn, excite others so that one signal instantly spreads over a large area of the brain. There are probably some 10 billion neurons in the brain; me number of links between them is 1,000 times that many.

Computers designed in the traditional way work very differently from human brains. The basic idea is to have physically separate memory and processor within the computer and link them so that they can communicate.

Neural-net computers, as their name suggests, work more like our brains. In this new design, me computer has many processors, all linked with each other in a large number of combinations. TRW Inc. has developed a neural-net computer with 250,000 processors joined by 5.5 million connections, and Robert Hecht-Nielsen, director of the company's Artificial Intelligence Center says that the company has already designed systems that have 100 million processing elements. Even neural-net computers built on a much smaller scale can perform in startingly intelligent ways. Terence J. Sejnowski of Johns Hopkins University together with Geoffrey E. Hinton and Scott E. Fahlman of Camegie-Mellon and IBM's Scott E. Kirkpatrick created a neural-net computer with 200 linked processing elements. The machine has the potential to teach itself to read aloud, to recognize images, and to change speech into text.

Other examples of neural-net computers that are already in operation include TRW's machine developed for the Pentagon's DARPA - Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - to aid a conventional computer in recognizing images. But the company believes that this computer could also be used to make quality inspections in factory settings.