2. 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...

"It seems like computerization gave rise to one more misfortune - passion for the Internet", - is announced in "Canadian Medical Association Journal". Doctor Yang observed 496 patients, 396 of them had unhealthy passion for the Internet. She noted that in its nature this phenomenon resembles alcoholism or irresistible craving for gambling. In the journal it is underlined that those who have a computer at home are under the greatest risks.

As experience shows, the ideas of protection against a negative influence of torsion fields of PC displays and other electronic equipment are accepted with difficulty. However, one should not forget that there are the numerous proofs of a negative influence of PC displays on users even in the presence of protective devices in the form of filters of different modification. The science should deal with explanation of the mentioned facts, because, as I. I. Pavlov said, "facts are the air of science". Even if they are beyond the conceptions worked out by science.

The traditional reasons are conditioned by the conceptions formed in the science and relate not only to the problems of users' protection against PC displays negative impact but as well to practically all incipient branches of scientific knowledge. The American scientific sociologist Kun in his book "The structure of scientific revolutions" shows that wide scientific community begins to accept experimental results which are beyond the generally accepted theoretical concepts, as a rule, after appearance of hypotheses, concepts, theories, in whose framework their scientific interpretation is possible. Until this, paradoxical facts are ignored; scientists do not take them into account in their activity.

The spread of new ideas goes, as a rule, simultaneously with the appearance of a new generation of scientists who are free from the burden of past, obsolescent concepts, and they become thus the bearers of the ideas of a new paradigm.