问答题.SECTION A MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS In this section there are four passages followed by fourteen multiple choice questions. For each multiple choice question, there are four suggested answers marked A, B, C and D. Choose the one that you think is the best answer and mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET TWO. PASSAGE ONE (1)On July 7th, I was traveling in London. I was having breakfast at a hotel very near Liverpool Street Station when the first explosion was detonated. Hearing the sirens and seeing London's emergency personnel respond to the bombings brought back vivid memories of the events of Sept. 11, 2001. (2)People have not forgotten Sept. 11, 2001. Americans can still recall exactly where they were and what they were doing on that fateful day. But it's understandable that some remember it as historical fact, lacking the painful impact and immediacy they originally felt. If we allow a dimming of purpose—to eliminate terrorism—these terrorist attacks in London serve as another chilling reminder that we're still at war. (3)Something constructive emerges from these tragic, horrible and unexplainable attacks. It is the message that we must remain vigilant in opposing an enemy who intentionally targets innocent civilians. (4)Since Sept. 11, 2001, the civilized nations of the world have remained mostly united in opposing these despicable, wanton acts of terror. We have had some great successes in that effort. We have arrested perpetrators and plotters, and we have foiled planned attacks. We have reduced the power and scope of those who despise freedom and democracy. (5)The effort must continue. As we learned Thursday—and in Madrid and Bali—the enemies of freedom have not lost their resolve. We must not lose ours. (6)Ultimately, the only real defense from terrorist attacks is being able to find out about them in advance. Intelligence gathering has improved but needs to be even stronger, including consistently improving human intelligence and patrol. Police and ordinary citizens must be alert and encouraged to convey information. (7) Once a terrorist incident does occur, there's no such thing as a perfect response. By definition, a terrorist attack means people are being hurt or killed. But by studying the response to past attacks, we can better prepare to handle those in the future. (8)London is one of the most secure cities in the world, steeped in years of dealing with terrorism. The city's preparation and resolve was evident on Thursday. I am very impressed by London's reaction to the bombings. Both the emergency personnel and the citizens seemed prepared. The first responders were rapid, well-directed, organized and professional, in accordance with obviously well-tested plans. (9)As for the citizens, at least a dozen people told me in one way or another, "We knew this was going to happen; it was just a question of when." (10)That is not only a realistic assessment; it also is a mindset that just might save lives. Political, business and community leaders are sometimes reluctant to talk about terrorism or stage drills to prepare their response because they don't want to frighten or upset people. But that's a mistake. People react to emergencies more effectively when they're not shocked by them. (11)Tony Blair and London Mayor Ken Livingstone have made preparedness a priority, and their efforts clearly paid off during Thursday's response to the attacks. (12)There's another benefit to preparing for terrorism in advance. Part of the damage the terrorists hope to inflict is the emotional reaction in the wake of the destruction. The reason it's called "terrorism" is that they want fear and its debilitating effects to linger long after the smoke has cleared. (13)By preparing citizens for the possibility of a terrorist attack, leaders can help minimize the emotional response in the wake of the destruction. (14)Finally, Thursday's attacks demonstrate that we must remain committed to confronting and eliminating terrorism. There are those who assert that the efforts to eliminate terror are somehow provoking the terrorists. That is wrong. The terrorists have been attacking innocent people long before Sept. 11, 2001, or the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq. (15)Seeing Prime Minister Blair speak so forcefully, with President Bush, President Jacques Chirac and other world leaders right behind him, was encouraging. Let's remember the unity the world shared after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. (16)Free nations can and will disagree. But let us always remember that free people must be steadfast and resilient in defending our way of life. PASSAGE TWO (1)Researchers who picked up and analyzed wild chimp droppings said on Thursday they had shown how the AIDS virus originated in wild apes in Cameroon and then spread in humans across Africa and eventually the world. Their study, published in the journal Science, supports other studies that suggest people somehow caught the deadly human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) from chimpanzees, perhaps by killing and eating them. (2)"It says that the chimpanzee group that gave rise to HIV...this chimp community resides in Cameroon," said Beatrice Hahn of the University of Alabama, who led the study. "But that doesn't mean the epidemic originated there because it didn't," Hahn, who has been studying the genetic origin of HIV for years, said in a telephone interview. (3)"We actually know where the epidemic took off. The epidemic took off in Kinshasa, in Brazzaville." Kinshasa is in the Democratic Republic Congo, formerly Zaire, and faces Brazzaville, in Congo, across the Congo River. Studies have traced HIV to a man who gave a blood sample in 1959 in Kinshasa, then called Leopoldville. Later analysis found the AIDS virus. (4)In people, HIV leads to AIDS but chimps have a version called simian immune deficiency virus (SIV) that causes them no harm. Humans are the only animals naturally susceptible to HIV. AIDS was only identified 25 years ago. The virus now infects 40 million people around the world and has killed 25 million. Spread in blood, sexual contact and from mother to child during birth or breastfeeding, HIV has no cure and there is no vaccine, although drug cocktails can control it. (5)And like so many new infectious, AIDS appears to have been passed to humans from animals they slaughtered. SIV has been found in captive chimps but Hahn wanted to show it could be found in the wild too. Her international team got the cooperation of the government in Cameroon and they hired skilled trackers. (6)"The chimps in that area are hunted. It's certainly impossible to see them. It is hard to track them and find these materials," she said. But the trackers managed to collect 599 samples of droppings. Hahn's lab found DNA, identified each individual chimp and then found evidence of the virus. (7)"We went to 10 field sites and we found evidence of infection in five. We were able to identify a total of 16 infected chimps and we were able to get viral sequences from all of them," Hahn said. Up to 35 percent of the apes in some communities were infected. Not only that, they could find different varieties, called clades, of the virus. (8)"We found some of the clades were really, really very closely related to the human virus and others were not," she said. Chimps separated by a river were infected with different clades, Hahn said. And a river may have carried the virus into the human population. "So how do you get from southern Cameroon to the Democratic Republic of Congo?" Hahn asked. "Some human must have done so. There is a river that goes from that southeastern corner of Cameroon down to the Congo River." (9)Ivory and hardwood traders used the Sangha River in the 1930s, when the original human-to-human transmission is believed to have happened. Hahn's study suggests the virus passed from chimpanzees to people more than once. "We don't really know how these transmissions occurred," Hahn said. (10)"We know that you don't get it petting a chimp, or from a toilet seat, just like you can't get HIV from a toilet seat. It requires exposure to infected blood and infected body fluids. So if you get bitten by an angry chimp while you are hunting it, which could do it." (11)Hahn's study only applies the HIV group M, which is the main strain of the virus responsible for the AIDS pandemic. "It's quite possible that still other (chimpanzee SIV) lineages exist that could pose risks for human infection and prove problematic for HIV diagnostic and vaccines," her team wrote. PASSAGE THREE (1)After thirty years of married happiness, he could still remind himself that Victoria was endowed with every charm except the thrilling touch of human frailty. Though her perfection discouraged pleasures, especially the pleasures of love, he had learned in time to feel the pride of a husband in her natural frigidity. For he still clung, amid the decay of moral platitudes, to the discredited ideal of chivalry. In his youth the world was suffused with the after-glow of the long Victorian age, and a graceful feminine style had softened the manners, if not the natures, of men. At the end of that interesting epoch, when womanhood was exalted from a biological fact into a miraculous power, Virginius Littlepage, the younger son of an old and affluent family, had married Victoria Brooke, the grand-daughter of a tobacco planter, who had made a satisfactory fortune by forsaking his plantation and converting tobacco into cigarettes. While Virginius had been trained by stern tradition to respect every woman who had not stooped to folly, the virtue peculiar to her sex was among the least of his reasons for admiring Victoria. She was not only modest, which was usual in the nineties, but she was beautiful, which is unusual in any decade. (2)In the beginning of their acquaintance he had gone even further and ascribed intellect to her; but a few months of marriage had shown this to be merely one of the many delusions created by perfect features and noble expression. Everything about her had been smooth and definite, even the tones of her voice and the way her light brown hair, which she wore la Pompadour, was rolled stiffly back from her forehead and coiled in a burnished rope on the top of her head. (3)A serious young man, ambitions to attain a place in the world more brilliant than the secluded seat of his ancestors, he had been impressed at their first meeting by the compactness and precision of Victoria's orderly mind. For in that earnest period the minds, as well as the emotions, of lovers were orderly. It was an age when eager young men flocked to church on Sunday morning, and eloquent divines discoursed upon the Victorian poets in the middle of the week. He could afford to smile now when he recalled the solemn Browning class in which he had first lost his heart. How passionately he had admired Victoria's virginal features! How fervently he had envied her competent but caressing way with the poet! (4)Incredible as it seemed to him now, he had fallen in love with her while she recited from the more ponderous passages in The Ring and the Book. He had fallen in love with her then, though he had never really enjoyed Browning, and it had been a relief to him when the Unseen, in company with its illustrious poet, had at last gone out of fashion. Yet, since he was disposed to admire all the qualities he did not possess, he had never ceased to respect the firmness with which Victoria continued to deal in other forms with the Absolute. (5)As the placid years passed, and she came to rely less upon her virginal features, it seemed to him that the ripe opinions of her youth began to shrink and flatten as fruit does that has hung too long on the tree. She had never changed, he realized, since he had first known her; she had become merely riper, softer, and sweeter in nature. (6)Her advantage rested where advantage never fails to rest, in moral fervor. To be invariably right was her single wifely failing. For his wife, he sighed, with the vague unrest of a husband whose infidelities are imaginary, was a genuinely good woman. She was as far removed from pretence as she was from the posturing virtues that flourish in the credulous world of the drama. The pity of it was that even the least exacting husband should so often desire something more piquant than goodness. PASSAGE FOUR (1)Doppelganger, a San Francisco-based startup is launching a virtual world today that's part nightclub, part billboard. The steady shift of advertising dollars online has entrepreneurs scrambling to come up with business models that will help them capture part of the bounty. So far, most of the attention has been on the search advertising gold-rush that propelled Google from puny startup into a behemoth worth $115 billion. (2)But there are other forms of advertising besides search, and for its virtual world, The Lounge, Doppelganger has settled on a product-placement model popularized by Hollywood, where advertisers pay up to have their products featured in movies and TV shows. Music label Interscope Records has already signed up for a trial to have Doppelganger build a virtual club for its Pussycat Dolls band within The Lounge. (3)"The Lounge has interesting advertising potential," says Gartner media analyst Mike McGuire. "Doppelganger's effort to tie the real world metaphors to a virtual world is very clever. From the perspective of music labels and bands, it's a very attractive opportunity to engage the MySpace crowd." (4)Doppelganger is far from the first virtual world to launch. Second Life, There.com, and others have been around for years, and even the mighty Google is believed to be preparing its own virtual world. But founder Andrew Littlefield, a former engineer at BEA Systems, isn't just trying to attract the MySpace crowd—he's actively taking some pages from MySpace's playbook. (5)First, Littlefield is building the service around social networking and instant messaging. Doppelganger users will be able to import their AIM buddy lists into the service, giving them a ready-made set of virtual friends—and helping Doppelganger recruit new users through existing social connections. (6)Second, Doppelganger is focusing on music, much as MySpace did in its early years. Like MySpace, which let users sign up to be "friends" of their favorite bands to keep up with CD releases and concert tours, Doppelganger is creating content for music fans. But instead of just Web pages, Doppelganger is building 3-D club environments where a band's music plays and users make their "avatars," or virtual characters, dance and chat. (7)The two-year-old company has 30 employees and $11 million in venture financing from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Trident Capital, backers of hits like eBay-owned Skype and Time Warner's Mapquest. (8)According to Littlefield, Doppelganger's testers seem to be hooked. "This is clearly the new instant messaging," says Littlefield. "We have some beta users who log on right after school and stay logged on through the wee hours of the morning." That kind of attention is particularly alluring to advertisers and marketing folks who have been scrambling to figure out ways to capture the attention of teens that seem to increasingly rune out TV. (9)The Pussycat Dolls' club is in itself one big advertisement for the band, but there are also opportunities to place ads for other products in the environment. In a demo of The Lounge, a movie trailer for Warner Bros. upcoming Superman film played. Eventually, Doppelganger plans to sell music downloads and other band-related goods directly within The Lounge—a source of revenues that could supplement product placement. (10)"Doppelganger has to figure out a quick way for folks to buy physical things," says McGuire. The big question, as Doppelganger launches The Lounge, is whether they'll draw enough interest to gain a critical mass of users and attract mass-market advertisers. After all, no one likes to go to an empty nightclub.1. The terrorist attack in London conveys to us the message that ______.(PASSAGE ONE)
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】 根据题干中的terrorist attack in London和message定位到第3段。 第3段最后一句提到,在反对蓄意以无辜平民为袭击目标的敌人时,必须保持警醒。文中的remain vigilant与B项中的be on the alert同义,故B正确。 细节题。选项A(伦敦市民并不感到痛苦)在原文中并没提到,文中只提到有些美国人对9.11事件没有了最初感受到的痛苦冲击和紧迫;选项C在原文中也没提及;选项D与第4段第2句所提到的已经取得了一些成就不符。 [参考译文] PASSAGE ONE (1)星期四那天我在伦敦游览。我正在距离利物浦街地铁站很近的一家旅馆吃着早饭,突然,第一枚炸弹被引爆了。听到警笛声响起,看到伦敦的紧急救援人员针对连环爆炸事件展开救援行动,2001年9月11日发生的事件鲜活地浮现于脑海。 (2)人们没有忘记2001年9月11日。美国人仍能够清楚地回忆起在那个灾难的日子他们所处的位置和正在做的事情。但在一些人的记忆中,这只是一个历史事件,而没有他们最初感受到的痛苦冲击和紧迫性,这是可以理解的。如果我们听任消除恐怖主义的决心日益减弱,那么发生在伦敦的这些恐怖袭击再一次严峻地提醒我们,我们与恐怖主义的斗争仍在继续。 (3)在这些悲惨的、可怕的和难以解释的袭击中,也出现了建设性的事情。那就是一种启示:我们在反对蓄意以无辜平民为袭击目标的敌人时,必须保持警醒。 (4)自2001年9月11日以来,世界上的文明国家在对抗这些卑劣的、恣意妄为的恐怖行为过程中基本保持了团结。在反恐的行动中,我们取得了一些伟大的成功。我们抓获了恐怖袭击的实施者和策划者,也挫败了一些有预谋的袭击行动。我们削弱了那些轻视自由和民主的人的权力和范围。 (5)我们必须继续努力反恐。从星期四发生的事情以及马德里和巴厘岛的事件我们得知,敌人并没有丧失他们的顽固图谋。我们也不可以丧失我们的坚定决心。 (6)说到底,抵御恐怖袭击的唯一有效办法是,能够提前发现恐怖主义分子的蛛丝马迹。情报搜集工作已经得到改善,但仍须进一步加强,这其中包括不断加强人员情报和巡逻工作。警方和普通市民必须保持警惕,同时也必须鼓励他们交流信息。 (7)一旦恐怖事件真正发生,任何对其做出的反应行动都不能达到完美的程度。从定义上看,恐怖袭击意味着有人正在遭到伤害或杀害。但通过研究对过去袭击所做出的反应,我们能够在将来更好地处理这些情况。 (8)伦敦是世界上最安全的城市之一,多年来专注于应对恐怖主义。这座城市为此所做的准备及其应对恐怖主义的决心在周四是显而易见的。伦敦对连环爆炸所做出的反应给我留下了非常深刻的印象。紧急救援人员和市民都似乎有所准备。第一时间做出反应的人员动作迅速、有良好的指导、组织得当、非常内行,符合显然很好验证过的方案。 (9)至于市民,至少有十几个人以这样或那样的方式告诉我:“我们知道这样的事情会发生;那只不过是个时间问题。” (10)这不仅仅是一种现实的评估,这还是一种可拯救生命的精神状态。政界、商界和社会团体领袖们有时不愿谈及恐怖主义,也不愿进行实战演练以做好应对恐怖袭击发生的准备,因为他们不想让人们受到惊吓或扰乱。但这是错误的。人们在不为紧急事件感到震惊的情况下,才能更有效地对其做出反应。 (11)托尼·布莱尔和伦敦市长肯·利文斯通都把做好防范准备作为优先考虑的事情,在星期四对恐怖袭击做出的救援反应行动中,他们的努力显然取得了良好的效果。 (12)事先做好对恐怖主义的防范准备工作还有一个好处。恐怖分子希望造成的损害之一是他们的破坏行动给人们带来的情绪上的反应。把它叫做“恐怖主义”的原因就是他们想要使恐惧及其使社会衰落的影响在硝烟散尽之后仍长期存在下去。 (13)让市民为可能发生的恐怖袭击做好准备,领导者们能够帮助将破坏给人们带来的情绪反应降低到最小程度。 (14)最后,星期四的恐怖袭击表明我们必须继续致力于反击和消灭恐怖主义。有人声称消灭恐怖主义的努力正在激怒恐怖主义分子,这种观点是错误的。在2001年的9.11事件、阿富汗战争或伊拉克战争之前,恐怖主义分子就一直在袭击无辜的人。 (15)看到布菜尔首相的演讲如此有说服力,看到布什总统、希拉克总统和其他世界各国领导在背后支持布莱尔总统,这真是让人欢欣鼓舞。让我们记住在9.11事件后世界的团结。 (16)自由的民族可能有,也会有不同意见。但是让我们永远铭记这一点——自由的民族必须坚定而开朗地捍卫我们的生活方式。 PASSAGE TWO (1)本周四搜集和分析野生黑猩猩粪便的研究人员说,他们已经证实艾滋病病毒源自喀麦隆的野生黑猩猩,然后传播到非洲,人身上,最终扩散到全世界。他们的研究报告发表在《科学》杂志上,证实了其他的一些研究结果。以前的研究认为,人们通过某种途径,也许是猎杀和食用黑猩猩,从黑猩猩身上感染了致命的人类免疫缺陷病毒(HIV)。 (2)“研究报告说,HIV来源于黑猩猩群……这个黑猩猩群体栖息于喀麦隆,”主持该项研究的阿拉巴马大学的比特里丝·哈恩如是说。“但是,那并不是说这个传染病就一定始于那里,因为情况并非如此,”哈恩在接受电话采访时说。多年来,哈恩一直致力于研究HIV的基因源。 (3)“实际上我们知道传染从何处开始。它是从金沙萨和布拉柴维尔开始的。”金沙萨位于以前的扎伊尔,现在的刚果民主共和国境内,隔着刚果河,对面就是刚果的布拉柴维尔。研究已经将HIV病源追溯到1959年还叫做利奥波德维尔的金沙萨一位提供血样的男子身上。后来,经过分析发现了艾滋病病毒。 (4)在人体中,HIV会滋生出艾滋病。但是,黑猩猩身上带有一种称为(SIV)的变体,这种病毒对它们没有任何伤害。人类无疑是易受HIV感染的唯一动物。艾滋病在26年前才得到确认。现在全球有4000多万人被感染,2500万人因此丧生。HIV通过血液、性接触和分娩或母乳喂养进行传染。虽然鸡尾酒疗法能有效控制HIV,但仍没有根治的疗法,也没有疫苗。 (5)像许多新的传染病一样,艾滋病似乎是从人类屠杀的动物身上传染到人类身上的。在圈养的黑猩猩身上已经发现了SIV病毒,但是,哈恩希望证实在野生的黑猩猩身上也能找到此病毒。她的国际研究小组得到了喀麦隆当地政府的合作,而且他们雇用了熟练的野生动物追踪者。 (6)“当地的黑猩猩遭到了猎杀。想见到它们无疑是不可能的。追踪它们和找到这些材料很艰难,”她说。但是,追踪者还是设法收集到了599个粪便采样。哈恩实验室获得了DNA样本,确认了每只黑猩猩,找到了病毒的证据。 (7)“我们去了10个现场,在5个现场找到了传染的证据。我们能确认被传染的黑猩猩的总数为16只。而且,我们获得了它们所有的病毒序列,”哈恩说道。一些群体中高达35%的黑猩猩受到感染。不仅如此,他们还找到了称为进化枝的不同病毒变种。 (8)“我们发现有些进化枝真的与人类的病毒密切相关,而另一些则不然,”她说。被一条河流隔开的黑猩猩感染了不同的病毒进化枝,哈恩称。而且,病毒可能是通过一条河流传染给了人类的。“因此,你如何知道病毒是从喀麦隆南部扩散到刚果民主共和国的呢?”哈恩问道。“一些人一定传染过这种病毒。有一条河流从喀麦隆的东南角流进刚果河。” (9)象牙和硬木商人在20世纪30年代把桑加河作为交通要道,这段时间被认为是最初的人与人之间的病毒传染期。哈恩的研究显示:病毒不止一次从黑猩猩身上传染到人身上。“我们的的确确不知道这些传染究竟是如何发生的,”哈恩承认。 (10)“众所周知,你抚摸黑猩猩或使用马桶座都不会感染病毒,就像你不会从马桶座上感染HIV一样,除非你接触已感染的血液和体液。因此,如果你在猎杀黑猩猩时被愤怒的黑猩猩咬了,那样就有可能感染。” (11)哈恩的研究只适用于HIV的M群,它是导致艾滋病传染的主要菌株。“很有可能仍然存在着其他(黑猩猩SIV)菌株。它们可能具有传染给人类的危险,而且在对HIV的诊断和疫苗的研制方面非常棘手,”她的研究小组在报告中写道。 PASSAGE THREE (1)经过了30年的幸福婚姻,他仍能时常提醒自己,维多利亚除了缺乏那么一点点令人心动的人性脆弱以外,拥有一切美妙的品质。尽管她的完美减少了乐趣,尤其是爱情的乐趣,经过长时间的生活,作为一个丈夫,他渐渐为她天性中的保守感到骄傲。虽然陈腐的道德已经没落,他却仍然坚守遭到怀疑的骑士风范。他年轻的时候,漫长的维多利亚时代的余晖仍未散去;如果说优雅的女性化风尚没有软化男人们的本性,那它也软化了他们的举止。在这个有趣的年代行将结束的时候,人们对女性的赞美已不再停留在对女人的自然属性的赞美上,而是近乎把女人作为神明来膜拜。在这个时候,弗吉尼亚斯·里托尔培奇,一个古老富有家庭中的小儿子,和维多利亚·布鲁克结婚了。维多利亚是一个大烟草种植园主的孙女,这个种植园主因不再种植烟草而是把烟草做成卷烟而发了财。尽管严格的传统教育使弗吉尼亚斯尊重所有不甘堕落甚至做蠢事的女性,女性独有的美德并不是他爱慕维多利亚的原因。她不仅谦虚——这个品质在90年代很普遍,她还非常美丽,这在任何年代都是不常见的。 (2)在他们相识之初,他甚至还认为她才华出众。但是个月的婚姻生活证明了这不过是完美的外表和高贵的言辞带来的众多错觉之一。她的一切都是那么安详平淡,那么不事张扬,甚至包括她说话的声调和她选择的发式;她梳的是高卷式发型,淡褐色的头发从前额向后紧紧地卷过去用一根光亮的头绳盘绕在头顶上。 (3)那是一个凡事都严肃认真的年代,甚至恋人的情感和头脑都是有条理的。弗吉尼亚斯就是这样一个严肃的年轻人,他梦想有朝一日能在世上赢得辉煌的地位,远胜于他名声不旺的祖先。他们第一次见面的时候,他就发现维多利亚不仅思想有条理,而且思维缜密精确,因而留下了深刻的印象。在那个年代,满怀激情的年轻男子星期天早晨都涌向教堂;每个星期三牧师们绘声绘色地讲述维多利亚时代的诗歌。现在他回想起在讨论诗人布朗宁的严肃课堂上,自己竟然春心萌动,不禁哑然失笑。他那时是多么醉心于维多利亚清纯的容颜,而看到她对布朗宁的诗心领神会,爱不释手时,他又是多么妒忌! (4)现在看起来真是难以置信,他居然是在她背诵《戒指和书》中非常沉闷的段落时爱上她的。尽管他从来没有真正喜欢过布朗宁的诗,他还是在那时爱上了她。当这个杰出的诗人与他的“幽冥”诗终于不再时兴的时候,他感到如释重负般的轻松。可是,对维多利亚继续以其他形式信奉绝对真理所表现出的坚定精神,他向来无比钦佩,因为他总是钦佩他所没有的所有品质。 (5)随着平静岁月的流逝,维多利亚美丽的容颜开始渐褪;他似乎觉得她年轻时的成熟思想也开始变得不再锋芒毕露,就像果实在树上挂得过久。他意识到自从他第一次见到她,她从来没有改变过;她只是变得更加成熟、温婉和甜美。 (6)她优于别人的地方在于她的精神热诚,这种优势牢不可破。作为妻子,她唯一的缺点就是能在任何时候都不做错事。臆想对妻子有不忠行为的丈夫总会有种淡淡的不安,正是带着这种不安他叹息道,他的妻子是一个真正的好女人。她没有一点虚饰,也没有一点在这个容易轻信的世界上所流行的那种伪善。但遗憾的是,即使是最不挑剔的丈夫也时常会渴望一点更为活泼有趣的东西,而不仅仅是善良。 PASSAGE FOUR (1)今天,总部设在旧金山的新创企业Doppelganger公司推出了一个虚拟世界,好似夜总会,又像广告栏。网上广告投入的稳步增长使得企业家们纷纷采用各种商业模式,以便从中为自己争得一杯羹。迄今为止,人们的注意力大多集中在搜索引擎广告的淘金热上,这种方法曾帮助Google从一家弱小的新创企业成长为一家价值1150亿美元的巨型公司。 (2)不过,除了搜索引擎之外,还存在其他的广告形式。Doppelganger公司就在其虚拟世界“休闲吧”中采用了好莱坞流行的植入式广告,即由广告客户付钱出资让其产品出现在电影或电视节目之中。音乐品牌Interscope唱片公司已决定尝试请Doppelganger公司在“休闲吧”中为旗下的小野猫乐队建造一个虚拟俱乐部。 (3)“‘休闲吧’的广告潜力令人关注,”加特纳公司的媒体分析师迈克尔·麦奎尔认为,“Doppelganger公司将现实生活中的意象结合到虚拟世界中,此举非常聪明。从唱片公司和乐队的角度来讲,这是一个吸引MySpace社区网站人群的绝佳机会。” (4)Doppelganger公司决非首个问世的虚拟世界。“第二生命”There.com等其他虚拟世界已有多年的历史,就连强大的Google公司据说也准备推出自己的虚拟世界。然而,Doppelganger公司创始人、曾担任BEA系统公司工程师的安德鲁·利特菲尔德希望做到的不仅仅是吸引MySpace网站人群——他还在积极学习在MySpace网站内容方面的某些做法。 (5)首先,利特菲尔德推出了以社交和实时通信为主心的服务。Doppelganger公司的用户们将可以在该服务中导入他们的AIM好友名单,从而使用户在虚拟世界里拥有一批现成的朋友——这也有助于Doppelganger公司利用现有的社会关系来招募新用户。 (6)其次,Doppelganger公司将重点放在音乐方面,这与MySpace网站的早期做法非常相似。正如MySpace网站让用户根据各自喜爱的乐队组成朋友圈,跟踪CD唱片发行和巡回演唱会的情况,Doppelganger公司也针对歌迷们设计了一些内容。但Doppelganger公司不是单纯推出各种网页,而是营造一个三维的俱乐部环境,那里有乐队演奏音乐,用户们可以创建自己的“神之化身”或虚拟角色,也可以跳舞、聊天。 (7)这家成立两年的公司拥有30名员工,并从德丰杰公司和三叉戟资本公司获得了1100万美元的风险融资,这两家公司曾资助过风靡一时的eBay旗下的Skype和时代华纳旗下的Mapquest等公司。 (8)据利特菲尔德说,在试用阶段用户们对Doppelganger公司推出的内容非常着迷。“这无疑是一种新的实时通信方式,”利特菲尔德说道。“我们有一些测试版用户一放学就登录网站,直到凌晨方才离开。”如此的用户关注度对广告客户和市场营销人士是极具魅力的,这些人正试图通过各种方法来吸引对电视似乎越来越不感兴趣的青少年的注意力。 (9)“小野猫”俱乐部本身就是为该乐队做宣传的一大广告,而其他产品也可以在这个环境中找到广告宣传的机会。在“休闲吧”演示版中就播放了华纳兄弟公司即将上映的《超人》电影广告片。Doppelganger公司最终希望能直接在“休闲吧”中销售音乐下载以及其他与乐队相关的产品——成为植入式广告之外的一项新的收入来源。 (10)“Doppelganger公司必须迅速找出一种方法让人们购买实物产品,”麦奎尔认为。随着“休闲吧”的推出,Doppelganger公司现在所面临的一大问题就是能否吸引足够多的用户形成中坚力量、并博得大众市场广告客户的青睐。不管怎样,没人愿意光顾一家空空荡荡的夜总会。