1 . When almost everyone has a mobile phone, why are more than half of Australian homes still paying for a landline (座机)?
These days you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in Australia over the age of 15 who doesn’t own a mobile phone. In fact plenty of younger kids have one in their pocket. Practically everyone can make and receive calls anywhere, anytime.
Still, 55 percent of Australians have a landline phone at home and only just over a quarter (29%) rely only on their smartphones according to a survey (调查). Of those Australians who still have a landline, a third concede that it’s not really necessary and they’re keeping it as a security blanket — 19 percent say they never use it while a further 13 percent keep it in case of emergencies. I think my home falls into that category.
More than half of Australian homes are still choosing to stick with their home phone. Age is naturally a factor (因素)— only 58 percent of Generation Ys still use landlines now and then, compared to 84 percent of Baby Boomers who’ve perhaps had the same home number for 50 years. Age isn’t the only factor; I’d say it’s also to do with the makeup of your household.
Generation Xers with young families, like my wife and I, can still find it convenient to have a home phone rather than providing a mobile phone for every family member. That said, to be honest the only people who ever ring our home phone are our Baby Boomers parents, to the point where we play a game and guess who is calling before we pick up the phone (using Caller ID would take the fun out of it).
How attached are you to your landline? How long until they go the way of gas street lamps and morning milk deliveries?
1. What does paragraph 2 mainly tell us about mobile phones?| A．Their target users. | B．Their wide popularity. |
| C．Their major functions. | D．Their complex design. |
| A．Admit. | B．Argue. |
| C．Remember. | D．Remark. |
| A．They like smartphone games. | B．They enjoy guessing callers’ identity. |
| C．They keep using landline phones. | D．They are attached to their family. |
| A．It remains a family necessity. |
| B．It will fall out of use some day. |
| C．It may increase daily expenses. |
| D．It is as important as the gas light. |
2 . Cloud computing will be in use by about 80 percent of about 600 companies. The trend suggests that data management and storage are moving to cloud computing sellers on a large scale.
Touting(兜售)cloud computing as a way to get rid of the costs of buying and maintain in on-site information-technology equipment, sellers offer it in the form of Software AsA. Service(SAAS), a delivery model in which software applications are delivered to customers over a web-based network. SAAS can serve the needs of entire companies through huge, web-based platforms. As cloud computing rapidly bccomes the delivery channel for software developers of all shapes and sizes to get their products to market, offering applications in a cloud is now the rule not the exception. A. relatively small number of sellers are able to offer SAAS to big companies that want company-wide cloud computing, and only the sellers need apply. Although market-share data are hard to come by, the list of company’s large enough to offer cloud-computing on this scale is short: Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Salesforce, Rackspace and not many others.
The concentration of data and virtual (虚拟)computing in the hands of relatively few sellers raises an important risk for their customers if the Internet-based systems of any one seller are hacked, the result could be security problems across entire industries in which their customers do
Can this small group of cloud-computing sellers effectively respond to the needs of their customers to quickly fix such a problem and, most importantly, cut off the damage to these companies' own customers? Don't think such things can't happen. If hackers can penetrate the Department of Defense, the risk that they will penetrate Microsoft or google cannot be ruled out Compromise of just one of these sellers---even one with a modest market share---possibly could shut down, at least temporarily, a sizable part of the U. S. economy.
1. What can cloud computing do？| A．Reduce the cost of computers. |
| B．Provide software service. |
| C．Market various products. |
| D．Help companies design websites. |
| A．It works under SAAS. |
| B．It covers a large part of market-share. |
| C．Most companies can provide it. |
| D．Most sellers apply for it. |
| A．To warn people of the hackers' power. |
| B．To show relationship between it and microsoft. |
| C．To give an example of the country's loss. |
| D．To present the real picture of the U.S.economy. |
| A．The Unthinkable risks of the cloud. |
| B．Cloud Computing and Smart Sellers. |
| C．SAAS and changing Companies. |
| D．The Cloud Computing Age. |
•584 Asians •124 Africans
•95 Eastern and Western Europeans •84 Latin Americans
•55 former Soviets (including Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, and other national groups)
•52 North Americans •6 Australians and New Zealanders
The people of the village would speak:
•165 Mandarin •86 English
•83 Hindu/Urdu •64 Spanish
•58 Russian •37 Arabic
The above list covers the mother tongues of only half the village.
One-third of the people in the village are children, and only 60 are over the age of 65. Just under half of the married women in the village have access to modern equipment.
This year 28 babies will be born. Ten people will die, 3 of them for lack of food, 1 from cancer. Two of the deaths will be of babies born within the year. With the 28 births and 10 deaths, the population of the village next year will be 1,018.
In this village of 1,000 persons, 200 people receive 75 per cent of the income; another 200 receive only 2 per cent of the income.
About one-third
Of the 670 adults in the village, half cannot read nor write.
The village has a total yearly budget, public and private, of over $3 million—$3,000 per person if it is distributed evenly. Of the total 3 million:
$181,000 goes to weapons and warfare
$159,000 to education
$132,000 to health care
These weapons are under the control of just 100 of the people. The other 900 are watching them with deep anxiety, wondering whether they can learn to get along together.
1. Which of the following problems is NOT mentioned in the text?
| A．Environment. | B．Marriage. |
| C．Poverty. | D．Education. |
| A．use | B．buy | C．produce | D．try |
| A．Nearly one-third of Asian people speak Mandarin in the village. |
| B．About 8. 25 per cent of the people speak Mandarin in the village. |
| C．About 16. 5 per cent of the people speak Mandarin in the village. |
| D．Nearly all the Mandarin-speaking people are from Asia in the village. |
| A．a peaceful world | B．good education |
| C．better health care | D．a life without anxiety |
