Exercises

1. Translate the following international lexical units without using a dictionary.

A personal computer; a text; a machine; graphics; a modem, communication/telephone lines; technology; a credit card; millions of bits; a program; telephone service; Internet provider.

2. Find in the text the English equivalents of the following Russian words and word-combinations.

Доступ к; вид компьютера; текстовые файлы; графические возможности; возможности большого объема памяти; подключиться к интернету; измеряется в; говорить по телефону; сеть связанных между собой компьютеров.

3. Do you know what these words stand for? Find the Russian equivalents of these words. Explain their meanings.

E-mail; the Internet; WWW; IBM; MAC; modem; BPS; ISDN; ISP; IAP.

4. Answer the questions.

1) What are the three things necessary to get on-line?

2) What area of the Internet has color, sound, full-motion video and graphics?

3) What is the most common and efficient way to connect your computer to communication lines?

4) How can a modem be attached to your computer?

5) What is the speed of a modem measured in?

6) For black and white text communications the speed of a modem is not important, is it?

7) Why is a fast modem necessary to receive data from the Web?

8) Do most modems come with communications software or not?

9) What will you have to do if you want to upgrade to a faster modem?

10. Reliable phone service is necessary to connect your computer to the “host” computer, isn’t it?

11) What is the advantage of using such a form of Internet connection as ISDN?

12) What means can offer less expensive Internet access?

13) What else must you pass through in order to gain access?

5. Speak on getting on-line according to the following plan.

1) The computer;

2) The modem;

3) A connection to your “host”;

4) Internet service provider (Internet access provider).

Text 3 person-to-data electronic communication

The Internet is a veritable storehouse of data; the amount of information available is quite extraordinary and growing every day. In seconds you can access any of the great libraries in universities to create bibliographies, check references, obtain articles and to retrieve texts.

The information you need is there, and the Internet has the tools to help you locate what you want and then retrieve it. For locating entries in information storage centers around the world, one of the easiest and more interesting “tools” is GOPHER. This fellow will offer you the data that you are looking for, or tell you where to find it. Certain “gopher holes” (universities) specialize in particular kinds of information. For example, if you are interested in materials related to teaching English, you will want to check out the TESL/TEFL gopher at the City University of New York. If you are not sure that you have access to gopher, try typing the word GOPHER at your e-mail system prompt, you might be pleasantly surprised to find that you can just step into gophering.

Another data-retrieval tool on the Internet is ftp (file transfer protocol), which is one of the original Internet tools and therefore not particularly user-friendly. It is worth learning to use this method of obtaining articles, data and even whole books from the Internet, but ftp takes time and patience to learn and you need special access to it.

The newer Internet tools like Mosaic and World Wide Web are easier to use than the older methods (such as ftp) and allow the user access to color, graphics, full-motion video and so forth. The disadvantage of these new resources is that unlike gopher and ftp, Mosaic and World Wide Web require fairly sophisticated equipment that most users (and many universities) do not have yet. It may be many years before the regular Internet surfer will routinely be able to use these wonderful tools from home.