Text 4
With the prevalence of interactive electronic media, a man alone in his own home will never have been so well placed to fill the inexplicable mental space between birth and death. Computer games and surfing the web will make the existential problem a thing of the past. Isn't that great! In this promising scenario it seems only right that books should be pushed more and more into those moments, say, of travel, that people still don't quite know what to do with.
In spite of all this, given the perceived dumbing down of such a world, when people do read they'll no doubt want to feel they are reading something serious. For although the collapse of pretty well all collective illusions - religious and political - will have persuaded most people to turn their mental energies to problems exclusively technical and their emotions to the harmlessly superficial, still it's hard to forget that qualities like wisdom and insight once carried considerable prestige. It would be nice to think one had them. And of course those qualities tended to be associated with something called literature. Result? You're going to find fewer books presenting themselves as mass market stories and more taking up literary pretensions.
Translators can only benefit from this desire for the seemingly sophisticated. We can look forward to lots of fantastic foreign stories, which are enthusiastically sustained by the overall concept of 'the global village'. Much of this will be awful and some wonderful, but don't expect the press or the organizers of prizes to offer you much help in making the appropriate distinctions between superior and inferior stuff. They will be chiefly engaged in creating celebrity, the greatest enemy of discrimination, but a vital prop(支柱) for the confused consumer. However, the sharper readers will establish their own book list, something worth looking forward to.
Meanwhile, every ethnic grouping the world over will be seen to have a great writer of their own-a phenomenon that will lead to a new kind of provincialism, more historical than geographical, where only the strictly contemporary is admired. Universities will include novels written only last year, while the achievements of ten or only five years ago will quite reasonably be forgotten.
In short, you can't go too far wrong when predicting more of the same things. But there is a positive side to this -- the inevitable reaction against it. What we would like to see happen in the world of literature-publishers seeking less to generate celebrity through advertising, newspapers and magazines giving space to reflective serious readings -- are rather unlikely. But dullness never quite darkens the whole planet. In their own fashion, a few writers will always be looking for new departures.
36. According to the author, people want to feel they are reading something serious because______.
A. they have turned their mental energies to technical problems.
B. wisdom and insight once carried substantial prestige.
C. they have not been persuaded into giving up certain qualities.
D. collective illusions have collapsed.
37. What does the author say about “celebrity” in the field of literature?
A. It is the greatest enemy of personal discriminations.
B. It is generated by publishers through advertising and by organizers of prizes.
C. It helps sharper readers establish their own reading lists.
D. It is a prop for all the consumers.
38. According to the passage, which of the following statements is true?
A. The prevalence of interactive electronic media helps a man alone at home to stop thinking about the meaning of life and death.
B. Books are supposed to be pushed more into moments people cannot handle.
C. Qualities like wisdom and insight tend to be forgotten.
D. Universities are inclined to include novels older than 5 years.
39. What is the author’s attitude towards the new kind of “provincialism” (Line2, paragraph 4)?
A. negative B. positive C. subjective D. optimistic
40. According to the author, what is the prospect of the literary world?
A. The publishers will reduce the cost of advertising.
B. Newspapers and magazines will give space to serious literature.
C. Publishers will stop generating celebrity.
D. There are difficulties as well hopes with the future of literature.
Part B
Directions:
The following paragraphs are given in a wrong order. For Questions 41-45, you are required to reorganize these paragraphs into a coherent article by choosing from the list A-G to fill in each numbered box. The first, the fourth and the last paragraphs have been placed for you in Boxes. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1 (10 points)
[A] And it’s not just servers in the back office that can benefit from virtualization. Modern desktop and even laptop computers have more than enough power these days to run virtualization software. Both the VMWare Server and Microsoft’s Virtual PC 2007 are ideal for installing virtual machines on an Intel- or AMD-based PC.
Protection against spyware is no better. Until recently, however, the problem was more of an annoyance than a threat. But spyware is changing into something more horrible—with identity theft being the main objective. Meanwhile, protection against these attacks—cheating e-mails that try to get users to provide passwords and other crucial data—is even less effective. By one estimate, it costs Americans between $500m and $1 billion annually.
[C] A better idea is to adopt something called virtualization—a technique that’s been around for ages, but has only lately come back into fashion. Virtualization provides a way of hiding a computer’s resources—its central processor, operating system, network controller, and storage devices—behind a software curtain. The idea is to give users (not to mention nefarious strangers) the impression they have control of the machine, when really they are dealing with a fake machine created entirely in software.
[D] Security firms reckon some 2.3 million “bots” are currently online. While suppliers of anti-virus software have every reason to magnify the claim, the fact remains that only four out of five computers connected to the internet have such software installed. And less than half those have their software updated on time.
[E] Keep out! Either will allow you to run a “guest” operating system inside one of these virtual machines. The guest can be another copy of Windows, which can then be left exposed to attack by viruses and other malware circulating around the internet, while the actual computer remains hidden behind the curtain, free from infection. After you’ve finished surfing the web, the virtual machine and its copy of the operating system can be discarded and a fresh set re-established the next time you switch on the computer.
[F] Even among those that do, the software typically catches no more than 70% of the viruses, worms, Trojan horses and key-stroke loggers probing them continuously. Malware—Malicious software designed to take over computers—mutates faster than A-V software. Insiders reckon protection is generally one to two months behind.
[G] One answer, of course, is to disconnect your computer from the internet completely, and never to accept any form of portable media from anyone. That way, your computer will never get infected, nor will it be turned into a zombie ready to do the illicit bidding of some scam artist, identity thief, mail spammer or child pornographer. But it will also be next to useless.
[H] Hacking used to be done by kids for kicks or bragging rights. Nowadays, it’s big business for organised crime, often out of reach of the law, on the far side of the world. Connect an unprotected personal computer to the internet for more than 15 seconds and it will almost certainly be attacked by a virus or worse. That’s how ruthlessly effective the army of malicious robots, dispatched by criminals to scour the net for vulnerable computers, has become.
H 41. 42. B. 43. .44. A 45.
With the prevalence of interactive electronic media, a man alone in his own home will never have been so well placed to fill the inexplicable mental space between birth and death. Computer games and surfing the web will make the existential problem a thing of the past. Isn't that great! In this promising scenario it seems only right that books should be pushed more and more into those moments, say, of travel, that people still don't quite know what to do with.
In spite of all this, given the perceived dumbing down of such a world, when people do read they'll no doubt want to feel they are reading something serious. For although the collapse of pretty well all collective illusions - religious and political - will have persuaded most people to turn their mental energies to problems exclusively technical and their emotions to the harmlessly superficial, still it's hard to forget that qualities like wisdom and insight once carried considerable prestige. It would be nice to think one had them. And of course those qualities tended to be associated with something called literature. Result? You're going to find fewer books presenting themselves as mass market stories and more taking up literary pretensions.
Translators can only benefit from this desire for the seemingly sophisticated. We can look forward to lots of fantastic foreign stories, which are enthusiastically sustained by the overall concept of 'the global village'. Much of this will be awful and some wonderful, but don't expect the press or the organizers of prizes to offer you much help in making the appropriate distinctions between superior and inferior stuff. They will be chiefly engaged in creating celebrity, the greatest enemy of discrimination, but a vital prop(支柱) for the confused consumer. However, the sharper readers will establish their own book list, something worth looking forward to.
Meanwhile, every ethnic grouping the world over will be seen to have a great writer of their own-a phenomenon that will lead to a new kind of provincialism, more historical than geographical, where only the strictly contemporary is admired. Universities will include novels written only last year, while the achievements of ten or only five years ago will quite reasonably be forgotten.
In short, you can't go too far wrong when predicting more of the same things. But there is a positive side to this -- the inevitable reaction against it. What we would like to see happen in the world of literature-publishers seeking less to generate celebrity through advertising, newspapers and magazines giving space to reflective serious readings -- are rather unlikely. But dullness never quite darkens the whole planet. In their own fashion, a few writers will always be looking for new departures.
36. According to the author, people want to feel they are reading something serious because______.
A. they have turned their mental energies to technical problems.
B. wisdom and insight once carried substantial prestige.
C. they have not been persuaded into giving up certain qualities.
D. collective illusions have collapsed.
37. What does the author say about “celebrity” in the field of literature?
A. It is the greatest enemy of personal discriminations.
B. It is generated by publishers through advertising and by organizers of prizes.
C. It helps sharper readers establish their own reading lists.
D. It is a prop for all the consumers.
38. According to the passage, which of the following statements is true?
A. The prevalence of interactive electronic media helps a man alone at home to stop thinking about the meaning of life and death.
B. Books are supposed to be pushed more into moments people cannot handle.
C. Qualities like wisdom and insight tend to be forgotten.
D. Universities are inclined to include novels older than 5 years.
39. What is the author’s attitude towards the new kind of “provincialism” (Line2, paragraph 4)?
A. negative B. positive C. subjective D. optimistic
40. According to the author, what is the prospect of the literary world?
A. The publishers will reduce the cost of advertising.
B. Newspapers and magazines will give space to serious literature.
C. Publishers will stop generating celebrity.
D. There are difficulties as well hopes with the future of literature.
Part B
Directions:
The following paragraphs are given in a wrong order. For Questions 41-45, you are required to reorganize these paragraphs into a coherent article by choosing from the list A-G to fill in each numbered box. The first, the fourth and the last paragraphs have been placed for you in Boxes. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1 (10 points)
[A] And it’s not just servers in the back office that can benefit from virtualization. Modern desktop and even laptop computers have more than enough power these days to run virtualization software. Both the VMWare Server and Microsoft’s Virtual PC 2007 are ideal for installing virtual machines on an Intel- or AMD-based PC.
Protection against spyware is no better. Until recently, however, the problem was more of an annoyance than a threat. But spyware is changing into something more horrible—with identity theft being the main objective. Meanwhile, protection against these attacks—cheating e-mails that try to get users to provide passwords and other crucial data—is even less effective. By one estimate, it costs Americans between $500m and $1 billion annually.
[C] A better idea is to adopt something called virtualization—a technique that’s been around for ages, but has only lately come back into fashion. Virtualization provides a way of hiding a computer’s resources—its central processor, operating system, network controller, and storage devices—behind a software curtain. The idea is to give users (not to mention nefarious strangers) the impression they have control of the machine, when really they are dealing with a fake machine created entirely in software.
[D] Security firms reckon some 2.3 million “bots” are currently online. While suppliers of anti-virus software have every reason to magnify the claim, the fact remains that only four out of five computers connected to the internet have such software installed. And less than half those have their software updated on time.
[E] Keep out! Either will allow you to run a “guest” operating system inside one of these virtual machines. The guest can be another copy of Windows, which can then be left exposed to attack by viruses and other malware circulating around the internet, while the actual computer remains hidden behind the curtain, free from infection. After you’ve finished surfing the web, the virtual machine and its copy of the operating system can be discarded and a fresh set re-established the next time you switch on the computer.
[F] Even among those that do, the software typically catches no more than 70% of the viruses, worms, Trojan horses and key-stroke loggers probing them continuously. Malware—Malicious software designed to take over computers—mutates faster than A-V software. Insiders reckon protection is generally one to two months behind.
[G] One answer, of course, is to disconnect your computer from the internet completely, and never to accept any form of portable media from anyone. That way, your computer will never get infected, nor will it be turned into a zombie ready to do the illicit bidding of some scam artist, identity thief, mail spammer or child pornographer. But it will also be next to useless.
[H] Hacking used to be done by kids for kicks or bragging rights. Nowadays, it’s big business for organised crime, often out of reach of the law, on the far side of the world. Connect an unprotected personal computer to the internet for more than 15 seconds and it will almost certainly be attacked by a virus or worse. That’s how ruthlessly effective the army of malicious robots, dispatched by criminals to scour the net for vulnerable computers, has become.
H 41. 42. B. 43. .44. A 45.