01-04-2020-Oxford_English_for_Infomation_Technology (1171844), страница 36
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Whenwe know how the brain works, we'll beable to recreate its operation using thepowerful computers which will've beendeveloped even before this date.Speaker B The most important differenceat the moment between computers andbrains is that computers work in serialand brains work in parallel.
This meansthat we can do incredible amounts ofprocessing compared to what acomputer can achieve running forweeks, or even months. What'sinteresting is not so much that thebrain is fast, it's the fact that itoperates in parallel. If you look at theway a signal flows down neurons, theydon't move extraordinarily quickly. Butthere are billions of them doing it all atonce, whereas in a computereverything has to be done one thingafter another.Many people say we will never havean intelligent computer. They say it'snot possible to have a computer thatthinks.
My own view is that it ispossible but not with computers asthey are today. If we start havingparallel computers, only then I feel willwe even start to approach the kind ofcomputing power necessary to beginto make a start to reproducing some ofthe higher functions of the humanbrain. But we'll never be able toprogram in human emotions, moralresponsibility and the uniqueness ofthe individual.Speaker C What people really don'trealise is the accelerating speed ofchange.
They think that a hundredyears from now we'll have made ahundred years of progress at today'srate. But we'll see a hundred years ofprogress at today's rate in twenty-fiveyears because the speed of technicalprogress is accelerating. Right nowwe're doubling the rate of technicalprogress every decade so the nextdecade will mean twenty years ofprogress; and the following decade willbe like forty. We'll make two thousandyears of progress at today's rate thiscentury. Things are changing faster andfaster.Erm, we already have computersthat run factories and computers whichhelp to build other computers. It's onlya matter of time before these artificialchildren of ours are able to outdo us.They will think faster than we do.
Theywill make smarter decisions than wedo. Who then will be the masters - usor the machines? If we play it right,machines will look after us. If we get itwrong, machines may replace us. Andit could happen sooner than weimagine.UNIT 25Electronic Publishing1 Telecommunications engineerI need information quickly; it's a vital partof my life. Every technology book in myspecialism is out of date before it getsprinted so I don't buy technical books.
Igo straight to the research groups whopublish on the Web. Electronic booksmake good sense to me. Publishingsomething like a laser printer manual isjust a waste of paper. What we need is anelectronic version available anywhere andupdated regularly.2 AuthorWhat I like about it is my books areavailable all over the world. They'reavailable in countries where Englishlanguage books are hard to get. It doesn'tmatter if you live in Beijing or BuenosAires, people can read my booksanywhere.3 An e-publisherIt's much cheaper to publishelectronically than to print. It means wecan take risks. We can publish books atraditional publisher wouldn't publishbecause they have a smaller readership.By 2005 ten per cent of titles will bepublished electronically.
And by 2025electronic publishing will have caught upwith traditional publishing.4 Developer of an ebook readerOur reader is the size of a paperback. Itholds about 200 books at a time. You candownload books over the Internet in afew minutes and you can read for twentyhours before recharging the battery.There's a back light so you can read inany lighting conditions. The print size canbe adjusted to any size you like. Pop it ina plastic bag, and you can read it in thebath.
I'm confident it will replace all thethrowaway books we read when wetravel, textbooks that date very quickly,technical books that are out-of-date assoon as they're printed. It's just right forschools. Children have to carry far toomany books. An ebook can hold about150,000 pages of text so you could haveall of your schoolbooks for a year in apaperback-sized package.5 Keen readerI've tried it, it's not complicated. I paid adollar for the first chapter of StephenKing's book and another dollar because Iwanted to read the next chapter. But thenI thought...
there's the time on theInternet trying to get to the site, there'stime taken to download it and all thattime I'm paying just for being on theInternet. Then there's the printing costsbecause I don't like reading off acomputer screen. It's not cheap. Andbesides I like the look and the feel ofbooks and the fact that you can takethem anywhere and who's going to steala paperback?And another thing. Paper lasts from 50to 500 years. Most electronic storagemedia are obsolete in ten to twentyyears. Magnetic tape stretches, CDsdelaminate. Printed books are still thebest way to preserve knowledge.Glossaryof computing terms and abbreviationsdatabase program developed by theMicrosoft Corporationnoun C [12, 13, 14, 20] aregistration for a user of a networksystem. It is used for controllingaccess to the system.noun C[7] the window in a WIMP system thatis currently being used.
It is usually ontop of any other open windows.noun C [2] theset of conductors that carry thememory address signals betweendifferent parts of a computer systemnoun U [16, 23]abbreviation for asymmetric digitalsubscriber line. A form of DSL that hasa different bandwidth for the upstreamand the downstream.noun U [2] abbreviationfor accelerated graphics port. A videobus interface that allows the use of afast video card and allows the use ofthree-dimensional graphics.noun U [3, 23, 24] abbreviationfor artificial intelligencenoun C [2, 9] a setof precise rules or instructions forsolving a problemnoun C [7] thealternative key on a computerkeyboard that changes the function ofthe other keys when it is held downnoun C [14] text displayed in awebpage as an alternative to a graphicwhen the facility for displayinggraphics is not available or is switchedoffnoun U [13] thename of a well-known search enginewebsitenounC [11, 16] a type of signal that can takeany value between a maximum and aminimumnoun C [22] a personwhose job is a combination of systemsanalysis and computer programmingnoun C [20] a slangterm for an eccentric socially ineptperson with little or no fashion senseand having an obsessive interest in ahobby or subjectadj [12]prevents the build up of staticelectricitynoun C/U [12, 19, 20] acomputer program or set of programsused to detect, identify and removeviruses from a computer systemnoun U [25] the commonname for Apple ComputerIncorporated, a well-known producer ofcomputers that introduced the WIMPinterface on computers such as theApple MacintoshnounC [6, 25] a family of personal computersproduced by Apple Computer Inc.noun C [23] a very smallself-contained computer programnoun C[3, 5, 6, 18, 21, 22, 25] see applicationsprogramnoun C [11] the only part of a networkcommunications process that a usersees.
It prepares a message forsending over a network by convertingthe message from human-readableform into bits and attaching a headeridentifying the sending and receivingcomputers.nounC [12] a path available for a particulartype of application data to enter orleave a network systemnoun C [8] acompany that makes applicationsprograms available over the Internetusually charging a fee for access toprogramsnoun C/U [6, 8, 22] acomputer program designed to beused for a particular purpose, e. g. awordprocessor spreadsheet ordatabase programnoun C [22] a personwho writes applications programsusing a computer languagenoun C [5]the general specification of a systemnoun C [19] adigital bit stored with a file indicating ifthe file has been backed up since itwas last editednoun C [19] a system used for storinginfrequently-used data in a way thatdoes not provide the user withimmediate accessnoun U [3, 21, 23, 24] anarea of computing concerned withdeveloping computer programs thatperform tasks that can normally onlybe done using human intelligencenoun U [11, 18] acronym forAmerican Standard Code forInformation Interchange.
A standardcharacter encoding scheme.noun C [8, 22]abbreviation for application serviceprovidernoun C [21] a low-levelcomputer language that usesmnemonics rather than only numbersmaking it easier than machine code forhumans to read and writeadj [16, 23]having a different signal bandwidth ineach direction, i. e. the bandwidth forsending is different from thebandwidth for receivingadj [11, 12]not synchronised, i. e.
occurring atirregular intervalsnoun U [6]abbreviation for American Telephoneand Telegraph Company. One of theworld's largest IT suppliers.noun U[17] the name of a well knowncompany that produces computergraphics cardsnoun C [2, 3, 16, 19]common abbreviation for automaticteller machine. The type of machineused by banks for enabling customersto withdraw money from their bankaccounts.noun U[18] a process that checks the identityof a user or an objectnoun C [23] agraphical icon that represents a realperson in a cyberspace systemnoun C [16] thecommon name for a bearer channel inan ISDN systemverb [5, 19] to store acopy of data on a storage device tokeep it safenoun C [11, 15]the main transmission path handlingthe major data traffic connectingdifferent LANs togethernoun C [14] theserver part of a client-serverconfiguration that provides a serviceon a network at the request of a clientnoun C[11, 17, 19, 20, 24, 25] the process ofstoring a copy of data on a storagedevice to keep it safe / the term usedfor the copied datanoun C[8, 13, 16, 20, 23, 24] the range offrequencies that can be transmittedover a communications channelnoun C [2, 3, 10, 23] asequence of vertical parallel lines usedto give items a unique identificationnumbernoun C [10] an optical input device thatuses the reflection of a light beam toread barcode labelsnoun U [22, 25] acronymfor Beginners' All-purpose SymbolicInstruction Codenoun U [13] aprocess in which all the data iscollected and processed together in abatch rather than one at a time as theybecome availablenoun C[25] the name of one of the firstmicrocomputers produced in theUnited Kingdom and used in schools.Its development was sponsored by theBritish Broadcasting Corporation.noun C[16] the common name for the part ofan ISDN line that carries the datanoun U[21] a simple high-level computerlanguage often used for teachingprogrammingnoun C [9] thecommon name for a bi-directionalframe in an MPEG compressed filenoun C [9] a type ofimage frame used in MPEGcompression.
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