Test yourself 1 страница

Match the following key terms to the appropriate definition:

A.

1. Management information system (MIS)

2. Information technology

3. Hierarchical model

4. Network model

5. Query language

6. Database management system (DBMS)

7. Data model

a. A system that gathers, condenses, and filters data until it becomes information, and then makes it available on time, and in a useful form, for use in decision making at various levels of management within an organization.

b. A description of a way to structure and manipulate the data in a database.

c. A collective term for computer and communication hard­ware and system-and-application software.

d. The means to question the database in free-form English.

e. Arranging records into a tree structure.

f. Arranging records into a linked list called a directed graph.

g. The means to formulate commands that permits the user to perform such data manipulation.

h. A storage subsystem, a modelling and manipulation sub­system, and an interface between the DBMS and its users.

B.

1. Relational model

2. Table

3. Structured query language (SQL)

4. Data independence

5. Object model

6. Key field

7. Form

8. Sorting

9. Distributed database

10. File server

11.Database server

a. A set of rows and columns.

b. The ability of a database to exist independently of specific applications.

c. Arranging records into entities that can store both data and procedures.

d. A database in which different parts of the database reside on physically separate computers.

e. The means to identify the names and characteristics of the fields within a record.

f. Arranging records into table structure.

g. Software that services requests to a database across a network.

h. Software that provides access to files across a network.

i. Rearranging the records in a database according to a set of predefined criteria.

j. A field that eliminates the problem of duplicate records.

k. A query language for manipulating data in a relational database.

True/False:

12. Historically, the role of MIS has been to use information in strategic ways.

13. Relational databases were developed before hierarchical databases.

14. In theory, databases should exist independently of the specific applications.

15. A DBMS is confined to storing words and numbers.

16. The structural part of a data model specifies how data should be represented.

17. A query language is similar to a programming language.

18. Maintaining the consistency of hierarchical databases in different applications is a simple matter.

19. A goal of distributing databases is accessing information without regard to where the infor­mation is stored.

Multiple Choice:

20..Which of the following is not a part of a database management system

a. A storage subsystem.

b. A modelling and manipulation subsystem.

c. A communications subsystem.

d. An interface.

22. The hierarchical model creates relationships among data by

a. Creating linked lists with pointers.

b. Creating two-dimensional tables.

c. Structuring data into rows and columns.

d. Structuring data into an inverted tree.

23. The most popular database model today is

a. Relational.

b. Hierarchical.

c. Network.

d. Object-oriented.

24. In the relational model, fields are represented by

a. Linked lists.

b. Pointers.

c. Vertical columns.

d. Horizontal rows.

25. Which of the following is not a basic data-manipulation operation.

a. Retrieving information.

b. Modifying the database.

c. Deleting old information from the database.

d. Sorting the database.

26. Distributing databases is an evolutionary step because

a. Client/server computing is no longer in use.

b. Data should exist at the location at which they are being used.

c. They are often based on a mainframe-centric model.

d. They cannot replace one central computing facility.

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

1. Read and discuss the article. Do you agree or disagree with the author? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

IS TECHNOLOGY MAKING US INTIMATE STRANGERS?

Cell phones and beepers keep us in touch, but they also keep us from the best of ourselves and others. Every day when I walk out of my house I feel surrounded. Surrounded by mere civilians so loaded down with the latest equipment that any military commander would be envious. Cell phones, beepers, headsets, watches that both tell time and give good e-mail— devices that allow you to keep up and keep track. and that keep you tethered to the daily grind. America is on the move, utterly self-absorbed, multi-tasking, busy, busy, busy.

So what's the matter with me, daring to go about the streets without any of these things, a dinosaur sorely out of step with the times? Frankly, I worry about the freedom we give up, the time to think and reflect, the time to consider where we've been in order to see where we are — or want to be — going. For many people, these are painful things they don’t necessarily want to dwell on. Self-reflection is far different — and far more difficult — than self-absorption but the pain that self- absorption can inflict on others is acute. Last summer, on as lovely an evening as one can hope for in central Virginia, I was at my daughter’s lacrosse practice. Standing next to me was a father more intent on the cell-phone conversation he was having (which did not sound terribly pressing) than on watching his daughter play. Time and again, she would look toward him, craving his attention but he never saw her.

Now some confessions are in order. I've had e-mail only for a little more than a year, and I worry that I'm starting to become obsessed with it. In the intoxicating game of popularity that we all play, e-mail has presented another way for others, to reach out to us. If someone hasn't left us a phone message or a fax, there is always the chance that an e-mail awaits. I can't even finish this essay without checking — three times already — to see if another one came through. I have also checked my stocks and a favorite Web site — all because they are there and are so tantalizinglv available. I am not proud of my lack of discipline but there-you have it. Nor am I proud of the fact that when I read to my 6-year- old daughter at night I sometimes reach for the phone when it rings, only to have her admonish me — "Daddy, don't!" a sharp rebuke for being so quick to interrupt our sacred time together.

Speaking of which, do you remember when you and your friends would go to the beach to swim and sun and take leave of your lives for an afternoon or longer? These days, I go to the beach and see teenagers come out of the water and instantly_get on their cell phones. They can’t imagine a life without a cell phone, and they can't imagine coming to the beach without it. In their view of the world, I am just a guy from the old days. Nonetheless, I still say: why not step back and view all this progress from a different angle? Instead of trying to figure out ways to do a hundred things at once, why not slow things down? After all, the greatest gift you can offer another person is your ability to listen, to let that person feel that you are intent on what he or she is saying, that you have all the time in the world. (The individuals I know who can do that are few, but they stand out conspicuously in my mind.) Through interviewing people I write about, I have come to learn how much people yearn to be understood, how much they want and need to be able to explain themselves. Technology, for the most part, creates the illusion of intimacy. As marvelous as it can be, it also, foils us. It keeps us from the best of ourselves and enables us to avoid others. It makes us into intimate strangers.

To me the most-splendid thing about a place like New York City, where I lived for a long time, is that you can walk the streets day after day, year after year and always see something new, something that will astonish or touch you. It may be a detail on a building, or the way the light hits the magnificent public library at a particular time, or even the moment when your doorman has an extra spring in his step. But if you're not open to these things, if you're too busy walking down the street glued to your phone and cut off from all that is around you, you're going to miss something. It may seem intangible and, therefore, unimportant, but those somethings have a way of adding up.

2. Read and discuss the article. Do you support or oppose the idea of replacing traditional printed newspapers with electronic ones?

ALL THE NEWS THAT‘S FIT TO CLICK

You can't carry a computer as easily as you can a newspaper, but you'll find a lot of other things to like about online newspapers.

More than 100 daily papers in the United States and Canada publish electronic editions. You can connect with them using your computer, a modem and an Internet browser.

Online newspapers have the most up-to-date news.

Electronic newspapers also allow you to instantly learn more about a news story through hypertext links.

Ever wish you had saved a newspaper article after you threw it away? With electronic newspapers, you can go online and find old articles you need for class discussions, reports or your own personal use.

Will traditional newspapers ever disappear? Not likely — electronic newspapers are just one more way to reach more people.

3. Read and discuss the article.

COMPUTERS ARE GETTING CHIC By Brad Stone

In the late eighties of the 21^st century, when scholars are scripting the definitive history of the PC, these last few years of high-octane growth may actually be depicted as the Dark Ages. Historians will marvel at how we toiled in front of monolithic, beige BUBs (big ugly boxes), suffering under the oppressive glare of cathode-ray tubes while our legs scraped against the 30-pound towers beneath our desks.

They may also mark 1999 as the start of the PC renaissance, when manufacturers finally started to get it: design matters. This holiday season, computer shoppers will enjoy unprecedented variety in shapes, sizes and colors- and not just in Apple's groundbreaking line of translucent iMacs and iBooks. Nearly every major PC maker now has innovative desktop designs on the way to market; from hourglass-sculpted towers to flat-panel displays. Among industrial designers, who still think the PC has a long way before you'll want to display it on your mantle, the only question is, what took so long? "The PC industry has ridiculed design for a long time," says Hartmut Esslinger, founder of Frog Design. "They have not respected their customers and have underestimated their desires."

PC makers are finally catching on—and it's partly out of desperation. Manufacturers used to sell computers by trumpeting their techno bells and whistles, like processor and memory. But since ever faster chips have given us more power on the desktop than we could ever possibly use, computer makers have been competing on price—a strategy that has dropped most units below $1,000 and slashed profits. Last week IBM limped from the battlefield, announcing it would pull its lagging Aptiva line from store shelves and sell it only on the Web. Competing only on price "made an industry shakeout inevitable," says Nick Donatiello, president of the marketing-research firm

It’s Steve Job’s resurgent Apple that has shown the way out. The iMac's Popsicle colors and curvy figur have demonstrated that consumers are willing to pay more for a stylized design and a no-hassle connection to the Internet. Since the iMac's debut last year, Apple has sold 2 million units, though lately it has underestimated demand, resulting in costly shortages of the iBook and the new version of the iMac.

Nevertheless, other companies are following Apple, some more subtly than others.

In August low-cost computer maker eMachines debuted an all-in-one box PC sheathed in translucent blue plastic, dubbed eOne. Apple promptly sued over the design similarity. Last week Gateway introduced its £799 Astro, which squeezes the whole computer behind a 15-inch monitor. It's still that familiar coffee-stained beige, though clip-on colored handles will go on sale next-year. And Austin-based PC maker Dell plans to unveil a black hourglass-shaped slimtower line of computers, called WebPC, later this fall.

There's also a design upheaval going on at the high end of the price spectrum, where manufacturers can still eke out a respectable profit. Sony's latest Vaio Slimtop, announced last week, boasts a flat-panel display and a gray tower with violet trimmings. Sony used pricier notebook components to create the desktop device, which is 70 percent smaller than a normal computer and weighs a feathery 12 pounds.

And that's only the beginning. Chip makers such as Intel are creating new specs for circuit boards that will shrink PC sizes by getting rid of support for old "legacy" technologies, like floppy disk drives. At its de­veloper's forum this summer, Intel invited design firms to present concepts based on the blueprints.

One came back with a.computer shaped like a leopard-skin ottoman. The BUBs better watch out.

1. Read and discuss the article.

IS THE PC BOOM OVER by BRAD STONE

It was strangely quiet in the PC and laptop aisles of the Union Square CompUSA in San Francisco last week. One patron was playing solitaire on a $2,600 Sony VAIO desktop. A few others were watching "Terminator 2" on a flashy flat panel screen. No one was shopping for a new computer. "When I got here four months ago, you didn't have five minutes to yourself, says salesperson Steen Lucas. "Now, there's nothing going on."

Wall Street seems to agree. In the past few weeks, profit warnings from PC makers Apple and Dell and chipmaker Intel have sent PC stocks diving in an already gloomy market. Apple is now down 65 percent since Labor Day; Dell 37 percent. PCs are also stagnating on store shelves: shipments in the United States were up only 03 percent in the first half of this year, and Apple recently announced a steep $300 rebate on its much-hyped Mac Cube. Is the PC market an engine of the Internet economy and an indicator of our overall economic health starting to sputter? The PC firms themselves don't think so. Each had an excuse ranging from weakness in the European market to consumer jitters about the economy, for what Apple CEO Steve Jobs dismissed as a "speed bump." But some analysts paint a more disturbing picture. They say the industry has reached saturation. Most consumers and businesses already own computers and replace them only once every few years.

Not that long ago, Americans couldn't buy PCs fast enough. The industry has enjoyed a robust 15 to 20 percent growth rate since the mid-90s, and today, 57 percent of households own a computer, according to Odyssey, a (market) research firm. But the unwired minority will be a hard nut to crack, says Gartner Dataquest analyst Martin Reynolds. "We're looking at households that have very limited resources or have

no need for a PC" As a result, data firm IDC scaled back its predictions for growth in the US market and now thinks sales this year will increase by only 12 percent—while Reynolds speculates growth could stop altogether within two years. Another factor contributing to the slowdown is that even the cheapest PCs today have the memory and processing muscle to run most software and connect to the Net. Consumers are therefore buying cheaper models, which translates into a lower average selling price and meeker profits. Gateway CEO Jeff Weitzen said as much last week. He announced his company had actually met earnings estimates, but he credited non-PC sources of revenues like consumer-training programs and Internet access, which now account for half the company's profits. "There is no doubt that the traditional PC industry, where we just pushed the latest and greatest hardware...out the door is rapidly changing," he said. In other words, the PC business is a pretty volatile place to be these days.

5. Read and discuss the article. Express your opinion on the issue using specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

NET PROFIT

Staying ahead for Bill Gates means looking ahead, craning further and further into the unknown. He is bored by the temporal; he spends his life in the future, and he can't wait to get there, racing through his schedules, anticipating problems and questions, talking over the slow responses of people around him.

He details the miracles of the future in his book: the wonder of the wallet-sized PC that will make cash redundant; of telecommuters and video-conferencing; of hiring entertainment, ordering shopping, making friends, playing Scrabble without meeting another person; of pen-based computers that recognise handwriting and software that can 'remember' like an assistant.

This is a world where we will be able to select how the movie ends and speak to its characters; where electronic 'agents', like spirit guides, will lead us by the hand through cyberspace; where we can summon up a Picasso, hold a sick baby before a screen for diagnosis, commit our whole lives to the system so that when we are accused we can say, in Gates's words, 'Hey Buddy, I have a documented life.'

The Internet, he enthuses, will even vet our friends in a dangerous world; randomness will be a mere memory. 'I think this is a wonderful time to be alive,' Gates says. 'There have never been so many opportunities to do things that were impossible before. It is the best time ever to start new companies, advance sciences such as medicine that improve the quality of life. He wants the world to share his optimism and he sees his book as a way of inviting everyone to join the discussion 'about how we should be shaping the future'. 'The network will draw us so together, if that's what we choose, or let us scatter ourselves into a million mediated communities. Above all, the information highway will give us the choices that can put us in touch with entertainment, information and each other.'

Most transforming of our personal lives will be the wallet PC, a combination of purse, credit card, universal entry ticket and best friend. We will no longer need to carry keys, cash, cameras, concert tickets, cellular phone - all will be contained in one small computer.

'Rather than holding paper money, the new wallet will store unforgeable digital money,' says Gates, who likens it to his boyhood Swiss army penknife. There will be no queues at airports, theatres or anywhere one is expected to show a ticket. The wallet will connect to the venue's system and prove that we have paid.

So where does Gates see himself when he's 70? He couldn't imagine. If the future is where he wants to be, old makes no sense to him. 'Are you asking where I'll be if I'm dead by then?'

Cyberheaven?

6. Read and discuss the article. Do mobile phones make it easier or more difficult to deceive people about your location, activities and intentions? Express your opinion on the issue, use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

YOUR CHEATING PHONE Like many technologies, the mobile phone makes possible new kinds of deception-and new ways to catch out the dishonest. Call someone from a mo­bile phone, for example, and you can pre­tend to be anywhere. But if someone calls you, the ringing tone they hear before you answer depends on which country you are in—and may reveal your location. Hong Kong businessmen, for example, once did not dare to leave their mobile phones switched on while visiting sleazy Macau, because the change in ringing tone could betray them. After the ringing tone for Macau was changed to sound like Hong Kong's, however, they could safely leave their phones on, and roam­ing revenues soared.

.As mobile phones become more so­phisticated, the possibilities for decep­tion-and for exposing it-are increasing. The latest handsets have high-resolution cameras and satellite positioning, which can prove embarrassing to anyone who lies about their location and is then asked to produce a picture or a satellite fix to prove it. Nemesysco, an Israeli firm, has developed voice-stress analysis software that can, it claims, turn a mobile phone into a rudimentary lie detector. And new "third generation" (3G) mobile phones support video calling, though few people are using it so far.

Jakob Nielsen, a specialist in computer interfaces, worries that all this technol­ogy has made its users too accountable. "You don't want your phone to start squealing on you," he says. "Sometimes you might want to take a call by the pool, or in your pyjamas." He need not worry: there is a constant stream of new ways to facilitate phone-based deception.

For example, Liviu Tofan and Razvan Dragomirescu, the founders of Simeda, a German mobile-services firm, wondered whether "blue screen" technology from the television and movie industries, which is used to add fake backgrounds behind presenters and actors, could be applied to mobile video-telephony. Us­ers could then appear to be at the office while lounging on the beach.

When this proved to be too techni­cally difficult, the pair came up with an audio version of their idea instead, called SounderCover. It allows users of certain Nokia handsets to play pre-recorded bursts of traffic noise, airport announce­ments or other sounds in the background during a conversation. Specific sounds can be assigned to different people in the phone's address book, and triggered when they call. But despite its slo­gan—"Hide behind sound, make it your alibi"-Mr Tofan says most customers use SounderCover for fun. Many create their own sounds, such as a shoot-out or a love scene, to play tricks on their friends.

Mobile-phone deception is not limited to tricking people at the other end of the line. Two ser­vices offered by American oper­ators, Cingular's Escape-A-Date and Virgin Mobile's Rescue Ring, allow customers to prearrange a call at a given time, to enable them to get out of a disastrous dinner date or boring meeting. With Cingular's service, for exam­ple, the phone rings and a recorded voice says: "Hey, this is your Escape-A-Date call. If you're looking for an excuse, I got it. Just repeat after me, and you'll be on your way. 'Not again! Why does that always happen to you? All right, I'll be right there.' Now tell 'em that your room-mate got locked out, and you have to go let them in. Good luck!" (Never believe anyone who tries that excuse, then.)

Both fake background noises and fake emergency calls still require you to be a convincing liar, however. Some people find it difficult to lie in person. One sur­vey, carried out by Freever, a mobile-ser­vices firm, found that 45% of Britons had lied about their whereabouts by text message, and 22% would rather text than phone when faking an illness. If you are bad at telling lies yourself, why not out­source the job to someone else?

That is the idea behind "alibi clubs", in which a group of people agree to provide fake alibis for each other. For example, the "Alibi and Excuse Club" was set up last year at SMS.ac, a mobile-chat com­munity. It has since attracted over 6,800 members, though this correspondent's request for someone to provide an excuse to help extend his copy deadline did not produce a response. But a spokesman for SMS.ac recounts several colourful stories told about the club: one member needed an excuse when a baseball game made him late for a party, for example, while another wanted to take a day off from work to go to the beach.

James Katz, a professor of video communications at Rutgers Uni­versity, says alibi clubs are a cute idea and may have some oddball uses, but will only ever appeal to a tiny minority. And even if the tall stories told about such clubs are to be believed-some of them, like the tale of a woman who supposedly broke off her engagement via an alibi club, sound suspiciously like urban legends-the problem remains that the lies told are only ever as convincing as the people who tell them.

Given the limitations of these various mobile-phone deception schemes, perhaps what is needed is a more profes­sional approach: a fee-based service that uses trained actors to deliver plausible, pre-scripted and even personal­ised alibis. That would surely be more convincing than clunky techno­logical tricks or networks of dubious strangers. No doubt an entrepreneur somewhere is already drawing up a business plan for a new firm: Alibis, Inc.

7. Read and discuss the article. Do you agree that games are important for children? What is your attitude to computer games? Do you support or oppose the idea that computer games affect children’s health badly? Express your opinion on the issue, use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

GAME PRINCIPLES RESEARCH CENTRE (GPRC) is the group of researchers, whose attention is concentrated on the phenomena of the socio-cultural reality connected to GAME practices, GPRC considers, that both game practices of the past and the present always rendered positive influence on the human being. In a society they carried out functions of training, psychotherapy and entertaining, socializing the person. Today the interest to game practices has increased strongly, that makes their complex research more urgent. Special interest represents a phenomenon of computer games. Tremendously extended market of computer games forces the researchers to pay attention to its quality because the influence of game software on human mind is ambiguous. The research of the computer game problem is possible only at solid methodological base and scientific approach.

Computer and children health. We should especially note the problem: computer and children. Nowadays in the world there is a powerful industry of computer games. A huge number of companies compete for the superiority (and subsequently for significant profits) on the market, creating beautiful and fascinating, cunning and intricate, aggressive and bloodthirsty games for boys and girls of all ages. Owing to their anatomic and physiological features, children are the most sensitive to external influences. They devote all their free time to games with a great pleasure. In this connection we should remember about a great danger. Children are in much lesser degree than adults capable to control their conduct and being carried away they can't tear themselves away from a display, where thrilling events are taking place. But their mentality is very unstable; therefore, exorbitant passion for computer games can become a reason of very severe consequences: exaggerated excitability, decrease in school results, a child becomes capricious, uncontrollable, ceases to be interested in anything except a computer. In its influence on a child organism a computer game resembles a drug.

In Japan and England doctors discovered a disease of a new kind among some children who were keen on computer games since early age - video game epilepsy syndrome. The symptoms of this disease are headaches, prolonged spasms of face muscles, and dysfunction of eyesight. The syndrome, although not leading to the fading of mental capabilities, contributes to the forming of typical to epilepsy negative character features, such as suspiciousness, hypochondria, hostile and aggressive attitude towards relatives, impetuosity and irascibility.

It does not follow from all said above that a child can't be allowed to use a computer at any chance, but parents should very strongly measure out computer time, especially in the case when there are no devices for protection against a negative impact of torsion fields.

It should be noted that in recent times there was the appearance of religious literature about a negative impact of TV sets and computer equipment. Children psychologies and psychiatrist consider that the main children diseases in the XXI century will be the diseases connected with a negative impact of TV sets and computers. Television encodes the behavior of a child or teenager by different means, voluntarily and not, making him or her live according to the laws of screen world.

Psychogenic influence on a human can be produced by different means, for example, with the help of color. Many scientists researched the influence of colors on mentality. Lusher's test - one of the most widespread and reliable tests. An examinee is proposed to choose a favorite color from a variety, then - from the rest again the favourite color and so on. Making the comparative analysis, scientists obtain conclusions about psycho-emotional condition of a human and about his or her health. The same Lusher solved one more task: presenting colors to a human according to the specific program, he changed his or her emotional and physical condition. Thus, if a special color spectrum is used for a game, then a lot can be obtained...

Дата добавления: 2015-01-03