Basic English [ for Computing 11 страница

Unit 16 Word processing

Task 3

The diagram shows a Microsoft Word 9 7 screen display. The title bar at the top of the screen shows the program you're using and the name of the file, in this case Printer.

Below the title bar is the menu bar. The nine items on this bar each give access to a pull-down menu - File, Edit, View, and so on.

The standard toolbar is next. It contains buttons for the most commonly used commands such as Open documents, Print, and Spelicheck. Each button contains an icon.

The formatting toolbar is below the standard toolbar. You use it to alter the font - that's the typeface - and the style of letters - bold, italic or underlined - and generally to alter the appearance of your document. The bar at the bottom of the screen shows more information about the document you're working on. For example, it shows which page you're on. It's called the status bar. In this example, the user is on page 1.

Unit 17 Databases and spreadsheets

Task 8

1 Cell D two (pause) equals B two plus C two.

2 Cell A seven (pause) Saturday.

3 Cell B five (pause) one thousand and four.

4 Cell C seven (pause) six hundred and fourteen.

5 CellB nine (pause) equals sum B two to B eight.

6 Cell E two (pause) equals D two times seventeen point five per cent.

Unit 18 Graphics and multimedia

Task 3

Extract 1

mark: Right. It's a very simple graphic. It's a square for the wall, a triangle for the roof, two small squares for windows, and a rectangle for the door. (pause)

mark: Right, we'll start with a box shape, a square. Point with the cursor at the image you want in the toolbox. That's the rectangle. Click with your left mouse button. Now move the pointer to the screen. eric: So the cursor turns into that sort

of gun-sight thing. mark: Yeah. Press and hold down Shift. Now drag the pointer to make the square the size you want. Keep your finger on the left button. Then let go. Extract 2

mark: Now you want another square for a window. Just the same way. Point with your cursor, click with the left button, and hold Shift down.

Extract 3

mark: Say you want the next square to be exactly the same as that one, right? Click on the Select box and then drag your cursor over the first window. Make sure it's all included. Now go into the Edit menu. Click on Copy; then on Paste. See how the second window appears? Now click on it and drag it into the house. You can get rid of the dotted lines by clicking outside them.

Extract 4

mark: Now you want a door. So you go back to the rectangle. Click with your left mouse button, drag the "rectangle to the size you want and release the button. eric: You don't need Shift? mark: No, that's for squares, not rectangles.

Extract 5

eric: We want a triangle next.

mark: Click on Polygon. That gives you any angled shape. Start at one corner of the house and draw one side of the roof. Then click on the opposite corner and the lines join up by themselves.

Extract 6

eric: It's a bit steep.

mark: OK, we can rub it out easily. Click on Eraser. Your cursor becomes a little square. You can erase the first roof and make a lower one.

Unit 19 Programming

Task 3

Parti

The circle is a CONNECTOR symbol. It appears when two separate paths through a process come together. It's always empty. You don't find any text, numbers, or symbols in it. Just the circle.

The parallelogram is the INPUT or OUTPUT symbol. It looks like a rectangle with two sloping sides. We use it when data has to be input or output. It contains words like Input or Print.

The ellipse is the START or STOP symbol. It looks like a rounded rectangle. It's used at the beginning and end of a flowchart, so it will contain the word Start or the word Stop.

The diamond shape is the DECISION symbol. It's used whenever a decision has to be made. Often it contains comparison functions such as less than or greater than. It has a Yes or True branch at one comer and a No or False branch at another. The ordinary rectangle is the OPERATION or PROCESS symbol. It indicates the kind of operation. It will contain words like add, subtract, multiply, divide or make equal to.

Task 5

Part 2

This is a flowchart for calculating a tax, called sales tax, which is charged when you buy certain things. The flowchart begins with a Start symbol. Then you input the initial cost of the item. We'll call the initial cost C. Next there's a decision. There are two rates of tax, 15% and 10%. The program must decide which rate to use. We'll call the rate R.

R depends on the initial cost. If the cost is greater than 100, the program follows the Yes route and sets the tax at 15%. Otherwise, the program follows the No route and sets the tax at 10%.

The two different paths, or routes, come together again at the connector symbol and continue along the same route. Then there's an operation. Sales tax is calculated by multiplying the cost, C, by the rate, R. Finally the amount of tax is printed out and the program stops.

Unit 20 Interview: Analyst/ Programmer

Task 2

Parti

interviewer: Who's it for? colin: Basically for young adults with

number problems. interviewer: Oh, I like that, that's good.

colin: (reading from the screen) The fire is 5.4 kilometres away. The fire engine has gone this far. How far is the fire now? iiNTERViEWER: There's a calculator. colin: Yes, you use the calculator to

type in your answer. interviewer: It doesn't do the

calculation for you? colin: No...

interviewer:...but it makes it a bit

more interesting. colin: Yes. Andif you get it wrong... the building burns down. (Oh no!) But, if you get it right, there's an animation of the fire engine putting the fire out. (Oh, I see.) The fire engine moves along and a spout of water appears on the screen. The next picture is the building without a mark on it. (Gosh.)

Task 3

Part 2

colin: We found with some people that there was a lot of stigma about learning how to count again. interviewer: Almost as bad as not

being able to read? colin: Yes, the problem for them was being in a classroom with a teacher. So we designed a program they could use themselves at their own speed. interviewer: How do they use it? colin: In a computing lab. The machines are networked. One contains the data store and an administrative package for the teacher. interviewer: What's in the

administrative package? colin: It allows the teacher to create groups and add students to groups, and it also has stats on their performance. (Oh, right.) Every time a student accesses a module, it records how much they've done, how long they've been at it, and how many times they've called Help.

interviewer: How did you test it? This is an important part of programming, isn't it? colin: Oh, yes. We test the code in- house. You can't debug your own code - you need someone else to look at it. So you give it to a colleague and they try to break it. After that we test the program in schools - three schools with three or four machines as a pilot test. interviewer: What sort of problems

come up? colin: Well, with Dante the graphics caused a lot of problems. Because we were working with state of the art machines, we forgot that schools don't have the same technology. Our graphics looked horrible on a lower- grade machine. We had to rescan and start programming for the simplest machine. interviewer: What about syntax errors?

colin: Syntax errors are typos, generally. If you type PRINT and you hit I too many times, you get PRJDINT. The compiler will catch that. That's the first kind of error, compilation errors. The second type are linking errors. interviewer: Linking errors? colin: A linking error is when you refer to something that isn't there. For example, a line of code in a library. When you use the same function over and over again, you don't write it each time. You refer to a library on the drive. Then you're down to the third type, logic errors. They happen when you're not awake, when you're not thinking properly. For example, you can make the program repeat a section of code until a condition is reached. And if you never reach that condition, it will run and run and run for ever.

Task 4

Part3

interviewer: Is programming quite stressful?

colin: Very. But I'm often asked to fix something on the network. So that gives me a break. We never spend a whole day, 9 to 5, programming. It's impossible.

interviewer: Do you work on paper at all?

colin: Yes, at the design stage it's better to get as far away from computers as you can. We've got a canteen and we go through to the canteen with a pad of paper and cup of coffee and work it out.

interviewer: You say'we'. Do you work as part of a team?

colin: Yes, there's myself and three developers, and two who work on graphics. Dante would have been impossible for one person to write. It

took us six months to develop it properly. It was quite a good project because it was easy to divide up the work. There were the modules to do, the database design, and the database access. There was the client interface and the student interface so people were assigned to different sections. interviewer: How many computer

languages do you normally work in? colin: Normally? C plus plus, we're using Active Server pages which involves HTML and JavaScript. You can use VB, Visual Basic, but if you use Visual Basic you're tying yourself to Microsoft and we want anybody to be able to run our programs. And Dante was written in Delphi. interviewer: How do you keep up? Things are changing amazingly quickly.

colin: I subscribe to two magazines, PCPro and Byte. I also pick up Dr Dobb's Journal when I can. Oh, and at work we subscribe to Microsoft Developer. We get two CDs from them four times a year. It's basically an electronic library with manuals, articles, and everything you need. interviewer: This must take up your

free time as well as work time. colin: Yeah, it does, but I enjoy it, especially at the end of the day when things are beginning to go well. I hate it when you've got to go home, because you might lose it the next day.

Unit 21 Languages

Task 4

line ten, rem averages line twenty, CLS

line thirty, print, open quotes, type nine nine nine to indicate end of data, close quotes line forty, print line fifty, sum equals zero line sixty, counter equals zero line seventy, print, open quotes, please

enter a number, close quotes line eighty, input number line ninety, do while number is not

equal to nine nine nine line one hundred, sum equals sum plus number

line one hundred and ten, counter

equals counter plus one line one hundred and twenty, print, open quotes, please enter the next number, close quotes line one hundred and thirty, input

number line one hundred and forty, loop line one hundred and fifty, average

equals sum divided by counter line one hundred and sixty, print, open quotes, the average of the numbers is colon, space, close quotes, semi-colon, average

line one hundred and seventy, end

Unit 22 Low-level systems

Tasks 4 and 5

Parti

The Central Processing Unit, the CPU, has three main parts: the Control Unit, the Arithmetic and Logic Unit, and Registers. These components are connected to the rest of the computer by buses.

The Arithmetic and Logic Unit, ALU for short, performs arithmetic functions such as ADD and SUBTRACT, and logic operations such as AND, OR, and NOT. The Control Unit makes the computer carry out each instruction of a program in the right order and controls the operation of all hardware, including input and output devices and the other parts of the CPU.

Registers are temporary storage areas for instructions or data. They work under the direction of the control unit. They hold the instructions or data immediately required for an operation, whereas main memory stores data required in the near future. Registers work at high speed.

Tasks 6 and 7

Part 2

A bus is a group of parallel wires which carry electrical signals between different parts of the computer. Some buses are bidirectional. They allow data to flow in either direction. Most computers have three main buses: the data bus, the address bus, and the control bus.

The data bus is a bidirectional bus. It carries data and instructions from the memory to the CPU and from the CPU to memory.

The address bus is a unidirectional bus. Data flows one way only. It carries addresses from the processor to memory. The addresses identify places in the memory where data or instructions may be found or stored. The control bus is bidirectional. It carries instructions to and from the CPU and other parts of the computer. It's a collection of lines which carry different signals. For example, the clock line carries a signal from the clock chip to synchronize the operations of the processor.

Unit 23 Future trends 1

Task 2

Parti

Virtual reality (VR) means using 3-D graphics to create an imaginary world, or virtual world, which surrounds the user.

You need special equipment to use VR. A VR headset or head-mounted display shows graphics on a screen in front of your eyes. As you turn your head, the picture on the screen moves around too, so it feels as if you are in a 3 -D world. A dataglove, or VR glove, is a glove with pressure pads which make your hand feel as if it's picking up objects or touching surfaces. You use a kind of mouse called a VR mouse, 3-D mouse, or virtual mouse to move around in virtual space.

Task 3

Part 2

Virtual reality is already being used in many ways - in medicine, entertainment, and design. But TO is not yet very realistic. As techniques improve, though, VR could seem so real that you could live a virtual life - having many of your experiences through VR. For example, virtual travel systems could take you on a virtual holiday, letting you experience other parts of the world through a VR headset.

Some people even think that VR headsets might be replaced by DNI - Direct Neural Interface - that would stimulate your brain cells to give you a virtual experience. A brain implant would work in a similar way, but would give you special skills, like being able to speak a new language or play an instrument, without having to learn it.

Unit 24 Future trends 2

Task 4

Parti

In the near future all schools and libraries will be linked together to form a National Grid for Learning - just like the electricity grid which connects all consumers. Each pupil will have a palmtop linked to the school network and to die Internet. All pupils from the age of nine will have email accounts. All communications between the Department for Education and schools will be by computer links. Learning and administration will be paper-free. The advantages are obvious. Pupils will have access to a world of learning. The resources available through the Grid will be far greater than any one school can provide. In addition, all pupils will become familiar with information technology at an early stage in their school life.

* Their computer skills will help them when they leave school and enter college or go into work. All study and most jobs in the future will require computer literacy. These developments will equip our pupils for an IT-based future.

Email will allow pupils to communicate easily with other pupils in different parts of the country and in different parts of the world. It will develop communication skills and encourage an international outlook. Finally, by freeing teachers from paperwork, IT will give teachers more time for their real job of inspiring. students.

Task 5

Part 2

There are real dangers in making school education so dependent on computers.

Easy access to online resources will not help pupils to develop original ideas. Instead, they will simply copy and paste text from online encyclopaedias or even download complete essays. More time communicating with machines means less time to communicate with real people. We will produce students who are not good at communicating their ideas to others and working as part of a team. Another danger is that the National Grid might lead to centralization. What I mean is that all schools will have access to the same centrally produced content and will do the same things. We need to encourage schools to develop their own ideas. Experience in the US has shown that greater use of computers has failed to raise educational standards in schools. Instead of buying computers, it's far better to spend the money on teaching reading and numeracy, and on 'hands- on' field trips.

Unit 25 Interview: IT Manager

Tasks 3 and 4

Part 1 Past developments том: Istartedincomputinginl965 on an ICT1904 which was a transistorized machine. Prior to that we shared with another company an old valve machine. The 1904 was a multi-programming machine with no disks and 16k of memory. interviewer: 16k! Was it punched

card input? том: Paper tape input and output. Magnetic tape drives... which we had a lot of trouble with. So I was lucky enough to get into the early stages of computing and see the developments from there. interviewer: When did things really begin to lift off here? When did you see the most rapid growth? том: Eh, oh dear, well, that started from 19 74 when microprocessors came in. Then 1980 brought a big step forward in computing power with the first PCs, and it's just mushroomed since then. Through the eighties there were enormous changes in hardware as more efficient, faster, smaller machines came in. There were staggering changes just in the electrical load. We were dropping by around a megawatt a year in consumption if you took into account the air-conditioning as well as the machine. interviewer: Of course, they had to

be in air-conditioned rooms, том: As the computers became more

powerful, we used less and less power. interviewer: And did the number of

staff involved grow? том: No, it dropped. At the peak we had about, there were about forty of us, but machines got more reliable. interviewer: Were they very

unreliable at first? том: Oh yes, the early days were difficult because the hardware was unreliable. Four hours between crashes. Constant battles with the suppliers. It wasn't until 1980 that we got really reliable machines. Now, of course, we have things like Crays. interviewer: When did you get the

first Cray? том: Oh, it must have been in the early

nineties, I suppose. interviewer: What's the most

significant date for you? том: 1990Iseeasa significant date. 1990 was the change from central computing to distributed computing. PCs on desks rather than central mainframes.

Task 5

Part 2 Future developments interviewer: What do you think is going to happen in the next few years? What do j'ou think will be the big developments in computing? том: I think speech recognition could be big. I think people who don't have very good keyboard skills will want to look at speech recognition. We're going to live in the Web browser environment a lot more. interviewer: Does that mean shared

software of all kinds? том: Yes, I think it means that you'll... you'll access multiple applications through a common interface, based on the sort of Web technology. On the other hand, so much effort is being put into what we're doing now that change is going to be difficult. People are not going to want to change unless there's some good reason for doing so. We're really achieving what most people want to do at the moment. People can send email, they can do their word processing, and things like that. A lot of the new releases are based on just commercial pressure. The companies have to keep on..., like motor cars, they have to have the latest model. Often there's no significant change. In general, things will get cheaper and faster which will improve performance and make software more efficient. interviewer: What about video

conferencing and that sort of thing? том: Well, we have it already. It's OK, if it saves you a journey overseas it's maybe all right, but if it saves you going across town you wouldn't bother. You'd rather go out and see somebody face to face. interviewer.: Teaching, are there any

developments there? том: Computer teaching is still difficult, I think. It's good for reinforcing, it's good for practising, it's good for working on your own. But I don't see computers replacing good teaching. That's still going to be required. Computer teaching may be used more but I don't see it replacing courses.

Unit 26 Issues in computing

Task 3

How can you protect your computer from unauthorized access? Various ways have been developed to ensure that only the right people can access a system. We can divide these methods into three groups: what you have, what you know, and who you are.

What you have

You may have a plastic card, a swipe card, to get into rooms where there are computers. In some companies, workers wear an active badge, an ID card with an embedded chip, which signals where the wearer is at any time. The company knows immediately if an employee enters a computer room.

What you know

Computers are often protected by passwords. You have to know the correct password to enter the system, in the same way that you have to know your personal identification number to get money out of a bank cash machine.

Who you are

Every individual is unique. Some security systems use individual body characteristics. For example, your computer can be protected by a fingerprint recognition system. The computer will only respond when it reads your unique fingerprint. A new product called Facelt uses face recognition to protect individual files. It will only give access to a file if your face matches stored pictures of authorized users. However, beards and spectacles can cause problems. Voice recognition and identification by the retina of the eye are other means to protect access.

Some systems use a combination of these groups. For example, an ID card and a password.

Unit 27 Careers in computing

Task 5

Before I write a program, I have to carry out a feasibility study in the company. The aim is to see whether a new program would be better than the methods they use at present. I have to observe what the users do, speak to them, and make an analysis of their systems. It's very important to speak to the actual users, not just the managers.

My job is to persuade customers that it's worth investing in new computer systems or extending the systems they already have. But it's not enough simply to sell the systems. We have to keep in touch after the sale and make sure things are working well, and to provide any backup the client needs. That's the only way to build up trust with a customer and to get new orders. It's a very competitive market.

I'm called out if there's a fault on the network. We try to solve the problem by phone at first, but if that doesn't work, we have to go and look for ourselves. It could be anything: the software, the server, even the cabling. Sometimes the problem is the userl You have to be good at working out where the problem is.

It's my job to try out new components before they're used in our computers. It's not only how well the components work that matters, they also have to meet health and safety requirements. I need to write reports and make recommendations on my findings. If problems arise after the components have been installed, I'm the person who has to find the solution.

I have to change the specifications for a system into a logical sequence that can be programmed. The language I choose for coding will depend on various factors such as what type of program it is, and where it's going to be used. A lot of testing has to be done and I use the feedback to decide where improvements can be made.

Unit 28 Interview: Systems Manager

Tasks 2 and 3

Parti

interviewer: What sort of company

do you work for? bill: I work for the largest brewer in the UK.

interviewer: And how long have you

worked for them? bill: I've been there for almost twenty-

five years. interviewer: And what's your post

there? What'syour job title? bill: I'm a Systems Manager. interviewer: And what are your duties?

bill: Basically, I look after the systems for the Technical Services division. Technical Services make sure that the beer gets into the glass in good condition. interviewer: OK, so what are your

specific duties? bill: I'm responsible for existing systems and their running, maintenance, and general order. I'm responsible for the systems infrastructure we use - networks, PCs, and other devices - and I'm responsible for new systems development. interviewer: Can you give me an

example of a system? bill: Yes, here's an example of an operational system. We have 2,600 pubs and 350 service engineers. If the beer dispenser stops working in a pub, that's a serious matter for the publican. He or she rings in with the fault. That's logged on the system. We telephone an engineer who goes to the pub, investigates the fault and fixes it, and records details of what he's done on a handheld device he carries with him. The details of all the work he's done that day are downloaded to a PC at the end of the day, and then sent up in the middle of the night to our mainframe system and processed there. The activity is recorded, and the parts used, and how long it took. Our stock database is adjusted, and new parts ordered to make up stock where necessary. Everything is handled by one system. interviewer: You're also responsible

for developing new systems. bill: Nowadays we tend to buy packages or have packages modified to our requirements. interviewer: Why do you buy in systems and not produce them in- house?

bill: It's now standard procedure to buy in. When I started, we would always write our own. But there's so much available now and people expect a high standard of sophistication from a system.

In-house development would take too long and be enormously expensive. interviewer: How do you choose a system?

bill: If you're looking for a system, you see what the market has to offer and you make up a shortlist. You get the shortlisted companies in to make presentations. In addition to a system that meets your needs, you're looking for a company which is financially sound and has a good track-record, and can take you to sites with satisfied customers. You're looking really for a business partner. It's a long-term relationship. The fact that you spend fifty to sixty thousand pounds on the software is almost immaterial compared with the investments you're going to put into your own company, in getting the system commissioned and configured, and working and documented, and everything else.

Part 2

interviewer: How many systems do

you have running? bill: In the whole Beer Division there

are many hundreds of systems. interviewer: It must be enormously complicated, because you'll have programs of all sorts of ages. bill: Yes, we have some systems twenty years old. One problem I have is to ensure that old and new systems can interface. interviewer: How do you protect

your systems? bill: Everything is on the mainframe and it's allbacked up. It's all protected. You can't just go along and change something. It's a protected environment. There are passwords. You need several signatures to change anything. The databases are backed up on cartridges and taken off site to a fireproof store. There are contingency plans and disaster plans so that even if there was a nuclear strike we could be back in business in a couple of weeks.

interviewer: What about the future? Do developments on the hardware side make any difference to your systems? bill: Well, you can hold more information online than you could before. You can have much more history, bigger files, but what is making much more difference to our company is faster communications. We have our own internal email system and there are links from there into the Internet. •interviewer: So the future for you is faster information flow. bill: Yes- which means you don't

need to have so many bits of paper. interviewer: So a paper-free office? bill: There's no such thing and there never will be.

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