Зразок білетів Зразок білету (Англійська мова) частина 1 читання (reading)

Computers have become so necessary to modern living that it is difficult to believe that they are a (0) __F__. Undoubtedly, they have proved to be (1) _____, but they also have their disadvantages. For one thing, they have added to our already large number of crimes.

Hacking was the first computer crime that most of us became aware of. By using their computing expertise, people known as hackers can gain (2) _____ and make use of the data which they find there. They may, for example, get hold of lists of the names of their competitors' clients and use these to build up their own businesses, or they may use hacking as a form (3) _____to find out a rival company's plans. Other hacking activities may be more obviously criminal, in that hackers may log on to financial data in someone else's computer and either alter it illegally or use it for fraudulent purposes.

The possibility of serious financial fraud has been greatly increased by the modern practice of purchasing goods through the Internet. Apparently, the use of credit cards to pay for such purchases has led to (4) _____with a great many people being swindled out of a great deal of money. Banks are working hard to improve online security and to provide safeguards for customers, but fraudsters are working just as hard to improve their crooked techniques.

Many computer users worry in case their systems are affected by computer viruses. The people who introduce such bugs into other people's computer programs (5) _____, but may be doing so as an act of mischief or spite. The motive does not really matter to the people whose data has been deleted or altered or whose files have been corrupted. Unfortunately, there is a constant stream of new developments in the fraud industry associated with computers. All computer users must be on their guard.

HARD DISK DRIVE

In the early days of computing, an information record of a computer' s memory content was kept on punched cards similar to the way in which an automated piano stores the keynote sequences on a piano roll. Later, magnetic tape was used to store electronic signals, and is still the favoured means of economically backing up the contents of hard drives. However, accessing information sequentially stored on tape is slow since the electronic data must be input through a fixed head in a single pass.

Hard disk drives solve this problem by incorporating a spinning platter on which magnetic data can be made accessible via a moving head that reads and writes information across the width of the disk. It is analogous to the way in which a person can choose to play a particular track on a CD player by causing the arm to move the head across the disk. The CD player is, in fact, necessarily similar in design to a hard drive, although there are significant differences in speed of data access.

Most modern hard drives incorporate several platters to further reduce the time spent seeking the required information. Also, some newer drives have two heads; one for reading, and a second head for writing data to disk. This separation of tasks enables much higher densities of magnetic information to be written on the platter, which increases the capacity of the hard drive.

There are three important ways in which the capacity of hard disks has been increased. First, the data code itself has been tightened with express coding techniques. Second, as previously noted, the head technology has been improved; and third, the distance between the heads and the platters has been greatly reduced. It is hard to believe, but the head can be made to pass over the magnetised platter at distances of less than 1 microinch (the width of a typical human hair is 5000 microinches). This is achieved by means of a special protective coating applied to the platter. Each of these three improvements enables speedier access to the data.

There are serious questions being raised about the direction of the future of electronic storage media. Some researchers claim that it would be wiser to invest more time and money in setting up systems for streaming data across networks of computers from centralised banks of information storage. This would avoid the need for each personal computer user to have his or her own copy of a software program resident on a local hard drive. Personal data files could be kept at a central storage unit, and be suitably protected from disaster by a failsafe backup system.

As the Internet becomes ever more pervasive, and the speed of access to other machines increases across our telephone lines, it might be possible to do away with local storage systems altogether.

Almost everyone with or without a computer is aware of the latest technological revolution destined to change forever the way in which humans (0) __B__, namely, the Information Superhighway, best exemplified by the ubiquitous Internet. Already, millions of people around the world are (11) _____ by computer simply by having a modem and an address on the 'Net', in much the same way that owning a telephone links us to almost anyone who pays a phone (12) _____. In fact, since the computer (13) _____ are made via the phone line, the Internet can be envisaged as a network of (14) _____ telephone links. It remains to be seen in which (15) _____ the Information Superhighway is headed, but many believe it is the educational hope of the future.

The World Wide Web, an enormous (16) _____ of Internet addresses or sites, all of which can be accessed for information, has been mainly responsible for the increase in interest in the Internet in the 1990s. Before the World Wide Web, the 'Net' was comparable to an integrated collection of computerised typewriters, but the (17) _____ of the 'Web' in 1990 allowed not only text links to be made but also graphs, (18) _____ and even video. A Web site consists of a '(19) _____ page', the first screen of a particular site on the computer to which you are connected, from where (20) _____ can be had to other subject related 'pages' at the site and to thousands of other computers all over the world. This is achieved by a process called 'hypertext'. By (21) _____ with a mouse device on various parts of the screen, a person connected to the 'Net' can go travelling, or '(22) _____' through a web of pages to locate whatever information is required.

Anyone can set up a site; promoting your club, your institution, your company's products or simply yourself, is what the Web and the Internet is all about. And what is more, information on the Internet is not owned or (23) _____ by any one organisation. It is, perhaps, true to say that no-one and therefore everyone owns the 'Net'. Because of the relative freedom of access to information, the Internet has often been criticised by the media as a potentially hazardous tool in the hands of young computer (24) _____. This perception has proved to be largely false however, and the vast majority of users both young and old get connected with the Internet for the dual purposes for which it was intended – discovery and (25) _____.