polunina_ln_bobrovskaia_im_priroda_nauka_tekhnologii

4. Give the words the following nouns formed from.

5. Make the sentences with the following words using them as nouns and as verbs.

6. Put questions to the words or word expressions in the bold type.

1.The Internet consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope.

2.The origins of the Internet reach back to the 1960s.

3.The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used in everyday speech without much distinction.

4.Many computer scientists describe the Internet as a ‘prime example of a large-scale, highly engineered, yet highly complex system’.

5.ICANN is governed by an international board of directors.

LANGUAGE IN USE

7. Read the text and fill in the gaps with the correct prepositions.

For Facebook, the First Half Billion Were Easy

Facebook may have secured its place (1) … the top of the world’s list (2) … social networking sites with yesterday’s announcement that it passed the 500-million user mark. But industry watchers think that signing (3) … the next 500 million Facebook users may be a lot harder.

Facebook is easily the dominant social networking site, eclipsing traditional rivals like Myspace along with multiple emerging competitors. But (4) … the same time, 2010 hasn’t been an easy year

(5) … the company, dealing (6) … users angered over the site’s privacy policies and controls. Just this week, a survey showed that (7) … general, Facebook’s legions of users are unhappy with the site.

The privacy issues were among those cited (8) … analysts in suggesting that Facebook may have a tougher time gaining its second half billion users.

“Five hundred million is an amazing feat that no one would have predicted from Facebook’s Harvard dorm days,” said Hadley Reynolds, an analyst at IDC. “They’ve obviously cracked the code on social networking (9) … making it more fun and more useful and more integrated into life than any (10) … their predecessors.

“But from here it gets tougher,” he added. “Their growth will slow,

132

and if they continue to make inept changes (11) … their product and their policies, they could make it slow down faster.”

Augie Ray, an analyst with Forrester, said Facebook has to successfully complete a hefty to-do list to remain as popular as it is now. “This will require more focus (12) … internationalization, continued innovation, but also an eye toward the concerns consumers have voiced about the platform,” Ray said.

(By Sharon Gaudin, Computerworld, July 22, 2010)

8. Read the text and fill in the gaps with the appropriate articles where necessary.

Future Trends

The amount of information on (1) … Web continues to grow rapidly, as does the number of users around (2) … world and the amount of online commerce. Several research efforts are underway to generate new methods that search the Web for (3) … information, new methods for restricting access to intellectual property, and new technologies that will permit live Webcasts similar to television broadcasts.

Although most Web pages still use (4) … HTML language, extensions and alternative technologies have been proposed. The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is becoming popular for (5) … business-to-business communication. Unlike HTML, in which the meaning of all tags is pre-determined, XML allows companies that use it to define their own tags. For example, (6) … publisher and a bookstore might choose to define their own tags for information about authors, titles, and publication dates for (7) … information they exchange. Similarly, an automaker and (8) … dealership might choose to define their own unique tags for models, body styles, and price. XML definitions are only meaningful to (9) … parties involved.

Other alternative forms are also emerging. (10) … Wireless Markup Language (WML) is designed to be used with small wireless devices such as (11) … Web-enabled cell phones. Several scripting languages are available, including ECMA Script (which was originally called

133

JavaScript) and Visual Basic. Scripting is gaining importance as more sites use animation.

Another Web technology expected to gain importance is known as (12) … Content Distribution Network (CDN) or mirroring. A CDN consists of multiple sites around (13) … world that all contain (14) … same information. When a user requests (15) … page, the CDN directs the request to (16) … closest copy. The largest Web sites already use CDN technology.

Higher-speed Internet transmission facilities, known as broadband, are also helping improve (17) … response times. Broadband technologies include Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL), which works over telephone wiring, and cable modems, which work over cable TV wiring. Each technology allows data to flow from an Internet service provider to (18) … user’s computer hundreds of times faster than traditional dialup modems.

(Adapted from Microsoft Encarta, 2008)

9. Read the text and fill in the gaps with the appropriate words from the table below.

Dell Offers Free Web Browser Security Tool

Dell, through its Kace unit, is making (1) … free Web browser security software that works by creating a protective ‘sandbox’ on the desktop to isolate the user’s desktop from malware or other harmful actions that might be (2) … browsing the Web. “Browsers, we all know, are a big (3) …,” says Bob Meinhardt, president of Dell Kace, the systems management vendor acquired by Dell earlier this year.

Calling it simply Secure Browser, Dell Kace executives (4) … the free browser security software works somewhat along the lines of that seen with browser sandboxing technology from GreenBorder Technologies, which was (5) … by Google in 2007, and integrated into the Google Chrome product. Bob Kelly, senior product manager of Dell Kace, says Kace derives its technology, which it likes (6) … ‘application virtualization,’ from its acquisition of the company Computers in Motion two years ago.

The Dell Kace Secure Browser tool is said to use (7) … of re-

134

direction so that browser activity is (8) … to an alternate area of the computer to isolate and contain harmful code. The 10MB security software, available for (9) … from Dell’s Kace site, is based on the (10) … Firefox browser and Adobe Flash and Reader Plug-Ins.

The security tool also lets the user create what are called whitelists and (11) … of Web sites allowed to be visited. In a managed environment, the Dell Kace browser security software can be included as a managed application with the Dell Kace K1000 v5.1 Management Appliance, (12) … used in midto large enterprises.

(By Ellen Messmer, Computerworld, July 19, 2010)

SPEAKING

10. Read the text, compare Firefox with other web browsers and discuss its advantages and disadvantages.

Firefox

Any browser that was to successfully challenge IE6’s market dominance would have to be far and away the best browser on offer. Netscape 6 was decent, but didn’t cut it. The Mozilla suite, on which Navigator 6 was based, is excellent but aimed at developers and unwieldy for most user’s needs. The web needed a browser that was

135

fast, lightweight, and did everything IE does, but better. That browser is Firefox.

Firefox is a browser designed from scratch to be secure, fast and customisable. It is the safest browser available, as it doesn’t contain many of the more obvious vulnerabilities that IE has, such as ActiveX components so often used to install spyware on IE-users’ machines. Firefox is still under very active development by a huge community of volunteer coders, many of whom worked at Netscape in its heyday. If a vulnerability is found, it is corrected and an update made available in days, sometimes hours. This means Firefox cannot fall into the same trap that IE did – receiving no updates for years and having its various security holes get exploited by thousands of hackers and virus writers.

Firefox uses the same powerful rendering engine (code named “Gecko”) which is found in all Mozilla products. This means it has superb support for all those things we web developers love. Its rendering is accurate and fast, and it has advanced stylesheet support up the proverbial ‘wazoo’. DOM support is present and accounted for.

Firefox has an open architecture which allows the installation of themes and extensions. Themes, like ‘skins’ in many other applications, give the browser a whole new look. Extensions are even better – anyone can write one to make the browser do something special, like check your Gmail account when you open the browser, or block all ads. Of particular use to any webmaster is the web developer toolbar, which is essential.

All that is obviously really great, but the things that you’ll notice first about Firefox are features like tabbed browsing which reduces your desktop clutter by keeping all of your open webpages within one Firefox window. Firefox was also the first browser to offer popup blocking by default. Once you’ve used either of these features, you will not ever want to go back.

(Shannon, R. Browser Review, www.yourhtmlsource.com)

11. Read the text about mental effects of the Internet and express your own opinion.

Mental effects

The effect of the Internet on the human brain has been studied a great deal. Nicholas Carr asserts that the Internet reduces the deep

136

thinking that leads to true creativity. He also says that hyperlinks and overstimulation means that the brain must give most of its attention to short-term decisions. Carr also states that the Internet overwhelms the brain and hurts long-term memory. He points out that the high number of stimuli on the Internet leads to a very large cognitive load, which can make it more difficult to remember what one has read.

Psychologist Steven Pinker, however, argues otherwise. He points out that people have control over what they do, and that research and reasoning never came naturally to people. He says that, “Experience does not revamp the basic information-processing capacities of the brain” and asserts that the Internet is actually making people smarter.

(Abridged from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia)

WRITING

12. What do the following abbreviations mean?

DOM

HTML

CDN

URL

IP

IE

VoIP

LAN

IRC

ICQ

VPN

HTTP

FTP

Wi-Fi

WWW

KEY WORDS

access, application, attachment, blog, browser, chat, connect to the

137

Internet, data, data transfer, domain, download, e-mail, exchange, hacker, hyperlink, hypertext, identifier, interconnect, Internet, Internet provider, link, modem, network (social, local, private), online, packet switching, protocol, resource, search engine, service, spyware, standard, traffic, website, wireless

SUPPLEMENTARY READING

Electronic mail

(1)Electronic mail or e-mail is a widely used Internet application that enables individuals or groups of individuals to quickly exchange messages, even if they are separated by long distances. A user creates an e-mail message and specifies a recipient using an e-mail address, which is a string consisting of the recipient’s login name followed by an @ (at) sign and then a domain name. E-mail software transfers the message across the Internet to the recipient’s computer, where it is placed in the specified mailbox, a file on the hard drive. The recipient uses an e-mail application to view and reply to the message, as well as to save or delete it. Because e-mail is a convenient and inexpensive form of communication, it has dramatically improved personal and business communications.

(2)In its original form, e-mail could only be sent to recipients named by the sender, and only text messages could be sent. E-mail has been extended in two ways, and is now a much more powerful tool. Software has been invented that can automatically propagate to multiple recipients a message sent to a single address. Known as a mail gateway or list server, such software allows individuals to join or leave a mail list at any time. Such software can be used to create lists of individuals who will receive announcements about a product or service or to create online discussion groups.

(3)E-mail software has also been extended to allow the transfer of nontext documents, such as photographs and other images, executable computer programs, and prerecorded audio. Such documents, appended to an e-mail message, are called attachments. The standard used for encoding attachments is known as Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME). Because the Internet e-mail system only transfers

138

printable text, MIME software encodes each document using printable letters and digits before sending it and then decodes the item when e- mail arrives. Most significantly, MIME allows a single message to contain multiple items, enabling a sender to include a cover letter that explains each of the attachments.

(4) Today it can be important to distinguish between internet and internal e-mail systems. Internet e-mail may travel and be stored unencrypted on many other networks and machines out of both the sender’s and the recipient’s control. During this time it is quite possible for the content to be read and even tampered with by third parties, if anyone considers it important enough. Purely internal or intranet mail systems, where the information never leaves the corporate or organization’s network, are much more secure, although in any organization there will be IT and other personnel whose job may involve monitoring, and occasionally accessing, the e-mail of other employees not addressed to them.

(Microsoft Encarta, 2008)

1. Read the text and decide whether the following statements are TRUE, FALSE or there is NO such INFORMATION in the text.

2. Decide which part of the text (1, 2, 3, 4) contains the following information.

1. E-mail systems use special software to transfer various attachments with a message.

139

2.A mailbox is the directory in which e-mail messages are stored.

3.Give the answer to the following question.

Why is e-mail so popular?

1.E-mail allows to transfer the message across the Internet.

2.E-mail is now a much more powerful tool.

3.E-mail is a convenient and inexpensive form of communication that enables people to quickly exchange messages.

4.E-mail system uses Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions.

4. What is the main idea of the text?

1.People use e-mail application on the computers to view and reply to the message, as well as to save or delete it.

2.E-mail is an important communications service available on the Internet.

3.Individuals can send different nontext documents via e-mail.

4.E-mail application can automatically propagate to multiple recipients a message sent to a single address.

140