单选题{{B}}Passage Two{{/B}} It is often difficult for visitors to understand Americans' lack of desire for privacy. They are not a nation of walled gardens and closed gates. Their yards normally run into one another without fences；they often visit one another's homes without being invited or telephoning first; they leave their office doors open while they work. Their lack of desire for privacy probably results from their history as a nation. America is a big country. There have never been walled cities in the United States, nor was there the need for Americans to protect themselves from neighboring states. During the early years, America had so few settlers that neighbors were very important; they were not to be shut out by doors and fences. Neighbors offered protection and helped in the hard work of settling the land. They depended upon each other. From the nation's early history has come the desire for openness rather than privacy. Visitors will notice this desire in a number of small ways; there may be rooms in American homes that do not have doors or that have glass walls. If you notice that people forget to close your door when they leave your room, do not think that this is rude, help them to learn that you would like it to be closed, or else become accustomed to new ways. In either case, be patient with the differences.

单选题The market is a concept. If you are growing tomatoes in your backyard for sale you are producing for the market. You might sell some to your neighbor and some to the manager of the local supermarket. But in either case, you are producing for the market. Your efforts are being directed by the market. If people stop buying tomatoes, you will stop producing them. If you take care of a sick person to earn money, yon are producing for the market. If your father is a steelworker or a truck driver or a doctor or a grocer, he is producing goods or service for the market. When you spend your income, you are buying things from the market. You may spend money in stores, supermarkets, gas stations, and restaurants. Still you are buying from the market. When the local grocer hires you to drive the delivery truck, he is buying your labor in the labor market. The market may seem to be something abstract. But for each person or businessman who is making and selling something, it"s very real. If nobody buys your tomatoes, it won"t be long before you get the message. The market is telling you something. It"s telling you that you are using energies and resources in doing something the market doesn"t want you to do.

单选题There was one thought that air pollution affected only the area immediately around large cities with factories and heavy automobile traffic. At present, we realize that although these are the areas with the worst air pollution, the problem is literally worldwide. On several occasions over the past decade, a heavy cloud of air pollution has covered the east of the United States and brought health warnings in rural areas away from any major concentration of manufacturing and automobile traffic. In fact, the very climate of the entire earth may be infected by air pollution. Some scientists consider that the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the air resulting from the burning of fossil fuels (coal and oil ) is creating a "greenhouse effect"— conserving heat reflected from the earth and raising the world's average temperature, If this view is correct and the world's temperature is raised only a few degrees, much of the polar ice cap will melt and cities such as New York, Boston, Miami, and New Orleans will be in water. Another view, less widely held, is that increasing particular matter in the atmosphere is blocking sunlight and lowering the earth's temperature—a result that would be equally disastrous, A drop of just a few degrees could create something close to a new ice age, and would make agriculture difficult or impossible in many of our top farming areas. Today we do not know for sure that either of these conditions will happen (though one recent government report drafted by experts in the field concluded that the greenhouse effect is very possible). Perhaps, if we are lucky enough, the two tendencies will offset each other and the world's temperature will stay about the same as it is now. Driven by economic profits, people neglect. the damage on our environment caused by the "advanced civilization". Maybe the air pollution is the price the human beings have to pay for their development. But is it really worthwhile?

单选题Good ______! I hope you'll win the race.

单选题{{B}}Passage Three{{/B}} Mr. Smith gave his wife ten pound for her birthday — ten pretty pound notes. So the day after her birthday, Mrs Smith went shopping. She queued for a bus, got on and sat down next to an old lady. After a while, she noticed that the old lady's handbag was open. Inside it she saw a wad of pound notes exactly like the one her husband had given her. So she quickly looked into her own bag — the notes were gone! Mrs Smith was sure that the old lady who was sitting next to her had stolen them. She thought she would have to call the police; but, as she disliked making a fuss and getting people into trouble, she decide to take back the money from the old lady's handbag and say nothing more about it. She looked round the bus to make sure nobody was watching, then she carefully put her hand into the old lady's bag, took the notes and put them in her own bag. When she got home that evening, she showed her husband the beautiful hat she had bought. "With the money you gave me for my birthday, of course." She said proudly. "Oh? What's that, then?" he asked, as he pointed to a wad often pound notes on the table.

单选题Little did we (expected) that he (would) (fulfill) his task (so rapidly). A. expected B. would C. fulfill D. so rapidly

单选题—Do you know ______? —They moved here soon after their son was born. A. when would the Greens move here B. when the Greens moved here C. when did the Greens move here D. when the Greens would move here

单选题The talk between the countries has been conducted in a friendly, cordial ______.

单选题Television ______ a strong ______ children.

单选题The entertainment industry and technology companies have been warring for years over the dazzling ability of computers and the Internet to copy and transmit music and movies. A crucial battle ended this week with a ruling by America's Supreme Court in favour of copyright holder and against two companies that distribute peer-to-peer (P2P) software, which lets users share files online with others. The court's decision, though ostensibly a victory for content providers, is nevertheless unlikely to stamp out file sharing -- much of which will continue from outside America -- or stop the technological innovation that is threatening the current business models of media firms. The court was asked to decide whether two firms, Grokster and StreamCast, were liable for copyright infringement by their customers. Two lower courts had said that the firms were not liable, citing a 1984 ruling in favour of Sony's Betamax video recorder. This held that a technology firm is immune from liability so long as the device concerned is "capable of substantial noninfringing uses". The court did not reinterpret the 1984 decision in light of the Internet. Instead the justices ruled that the case raised a far narrower issue: whether Grokster and StreamCast induced users to violate copyrights and chose not to take the simple steps available to prevent it. Such behaviour would make the firms clearly liable for copyright infringement and end their immunity, even under the Betamax standard. The court reasoned that there were sufficient grounds to believe that inducement occurred, and sent the case back to lower courts for trial. Although the Grokster decision will probably not squelch innovation as much as many tech firms fear, it should certainly make IT and electronics firms more cautious about how they market their products --and quite right, too. But the Supreme Court's narrow ruling makes this unlikely -- in- deed, the justices noted the technology's widespread legitimate use. Yet their decision will surely embolden the entertainment industry to pursue in court any firms that they can claim knowingly allow infringement. This could kill off some small innovative start-ups. On the other hand, the ruling could also provide legal cover for tech firms with the wit to plaster their products with warnings not to violate the law. But judged from a long-term perspective, this week's victory for copyright holders seems likely to prove a Pyrrhic one. The Internet and file sharing are disruptive technologies that give consumers vastly more ability to use all sorts of media content, col0yrighted or not. Surely entertainment firms must devise ways to use this technology to sell their wares that will also allow copyright to be protected. So long as technology continues to evolve in ways that enable legitimate content sharing, piracy will also probably continue to some degree. Happily, in this case the piracy seems to have prompted content fir-rug to compete by offering better fee-based services. The challenge for content providers is to use new technology to create value for customers, and to make those who use content illegally feel bad about it.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} Prince Klemens Von Metternich, foreign minister of the Austrian Empire during the Napoleonic era and its aftermath, would have no trouble recognizing Google. To him, the world's most popular web-search engine would closely resemble the Napoleonic France that in his youth humiliated Austria and Europe's other powers. Its rivals—Yahoo!, the largest of the traditional web gateways, eBay, the biggest online auction and trading site, and Microsoft, a software empire that owns MSN, a struggling web portal—would look a lot like Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Metternich responded by forging an alliance among those three monarchies to create a "balance of power" against France. Google's enemies, he might say, ought now to do the same thing. Google announced two new conquests on August 7th. It struck a deal with Viacom, an "old" media firm, under which it will syndicate video clips from Viacom brands such as MTV and Nickelodeon to other websites, and integrate advertisements into them. This makes Google the clear leader in the fledgling but promising market for web-video advertising. It also announced a deal with News Corporation, another media giant, under which it will pro-vide all the search and text-advertising technology on News Corporation's websites, including My Space, an enormously popular social-networking site. These are hard blows for Yahoo! and MSN, which had also been negotiating with News Corporation. Both firms have been losing market share in web search to Google over the past year—Google now has half the market. They have also fallen further behind in their advertising technologies and networks, so that both make less money than Google does from the same number of searches. Safa Rashtchy, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, a securities firm, estimates that for every advertising dollar that Google makes on a search query, Yahoo! makes only 60-70cents. Last month Yahoo! said that a new advertising algorithm that it had designed to close the gap in profitability will be delayed, and its share price fell by 22% , its biggest-ever one-day drop. MSN is further behind Google than Yahoo! in search, and its parent, Microsoft, faces an even more fundamental threat from the expansionist new power. Many of Google's new ventures beyond web search enable users to do things free of charge through their web browsers that they now do using Microsoft software on their personal computers. Google offers a rudimentary but free online word processor and spreadsheet, for instance. The smaller eBay, on the other hand, might in one sense claim Google as an ally. Google's search results send a lot of traffic to eBay's auction site, and eBay is one of the biggest advertisers on Google's network. But the relationship is imbalanced. An influential re-cent study from Berkeley's Haas School of Business estimated that about 12% of eBay's revenues come indirectly from Google, whereas Google gets only 3% of its revenues from eBay. Worst of all for eBay, Google is starting to undercut its core business. Sellers are setting up their own websites and buying text advertisements from Google, and buyers are using its search rather than eBay to connect with sellers directly. As a result, "eBay would be wise to strike a deep partnership with Yahoo! or Microsoft in order to regain a balance of power in the industry," said the study's authors, Julien Decot and Steve Lee, sounding like diplomats at the Congress of Vienna in 1814.

单选题The red dot on the police map shows ______.

单选题Currently, the American armed forces are the largest professional military on the planet. Other (1) have professional soldiers, (2) not as many as the United States. For thousands of years, it was (3) that professional soldiers were superior to (4) timers. But (5) most of history, few nations could (6) an army of professionals, at least not on a permanent basis. It washt (7) the late 20th century that countries began to (8) large, permanent, all-volunteer armed forces that were carefully (9) and trained for combat. Britain was the first, when it phased out conscription in 1962. In 1975, the United States followed (10) . For over a century, conscription has been seen (11) the way to remain (12) strong without breaking the bank. But the conscripts did not stay in uniform long enough to get really good at fighting. Britain and American were the first two nations to realize that conscription was so (13) that the voters would pay extra to 14 a professional force. Within a decade, an army of professionals begins to pay (15) . The professionals are not only more (16) on the battlefield, but are also, if carefully (17) (for education and aptitude) more likely to constantly develop better ways to (18) This produces a tremendous battlefield (19) It doesn't make you (20) , but it does make you very difficult to defeat.

单选题Experts say the space rock is probably ______ more than $ 30,000. A. weighty B. costly C. valuable D. worth