单选题In the text, the author is primarily concerned with

单选题{{B}}Text 1{{/B}} When Melissa Mahan and her husband visited the Netherlands, they felt imprisoned by their tour bus. It forced them to see the city according to a particular route and specific schedule--but going off on their own meant missing out on the information provided by the guide. On their return home to San Diego, California, they started a new company called Tour Coupes. Now, when tourists in San Diego rent one of their small, brightly coloured three-wheeled vehicles, they are treated to a narration over the stereo system about the places they pass, triggered by Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite technology. This is just one example of how GPS is being used to provide new services to tourists. "What we really have here is a technology that allows people to forget about the technology," says Jim Carrier of IntelliTours, a GPS tourism firm which began offering a similar service over a year ago in Montgomery, Alabama. The city is packed with sites associated with two important chapters in American history, the civil war of the 1860s and the civil-rights movement a century later. Montgomery has a 120-year-old trolley system, called the Lightning Route, which circulates around the downtown area and is mainly used by tourists. On the Lightning Route trolleys, GPS-triggered audio clips point out historical hotspots. Other firms, such as CityShow in New York and GPS Tours Canada in Banff, Canada, offer hand-held GPS receivers that play audio clips for listening to while walking or driving. In South Africa, Europcar, a car-rental firm, offers a device called the Xplorer. As well as providing commentary on 2 000 points of interest, it can also warn drivers if they exceed the local speed limit. If such services prove popular, the use of dedicated audio-guide devices could give way to a different approach. A growing number of mobile phones have built-in GPS or can determine their locations using other technologies. Information for tourists delivered via phones could be updated in real time and could contain advertisements. "Location-based services", such as the ability to call up a list of nearby banks or pizzerias, have been talked about for years but have never taken off. But aiming such services at tourists makes sense--since people are more likely to want information when in an unfamiliar place. It could give mobile roaming a whole new meaning.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} If open-source software is supposed to be free, how does anyone selling it make any money? It's not that different from how other software companies make money. You'd think that a software company would make most of its money from, well, selling software. But you'd be wrong. For one thing, companies don't sell software, strictly speaking; they license it. The profit margin on a software license is nearly 100 percent, which is why Microsoft gushes billions of dollars every quarter. But what's the value of a license to a customer? A license doesn't deliver the code, provide the utilities to get a piece of software running, or answer the phone when something inevitably goes wrong. The value of software, in short, doesn't lie in the software alone. The value is in making sure the soft- ware does its job. Just as a traveler should look at the overall price of a vacation package instead of obsessing over the price of the plane ticket or hotel mom, a smart tech buyer won't focus on how much the license costs and ignore the support contract or the maintenance agreement. Open-source is not that different. If you want the software to work, you have to pay to ensure it will work. The open-source companies have refined the software model by selling subscriptions. They roll together support and maintenance and charge an annual fee, which is a healthy model, though not quite as wonderful as Microsoft's money-raking one. Tellingly, even Microsoft is casting an envious eye at aspects of the open-source business model. The company has been taking halting steps toward a similar subscription scheme for its software sales. Microsoft's subscription program, known as Soft- ware Assurance, provides maintenance and support together with a software license. It lets you up- grade to Microsoft's next version of the software for a predictable sum. But it also contains an implicit threat: If you don't switch to Software Assurance now, who knows how much Microsoft will charge you when you decide to upgrade? Chief information officers hate this kind of *'assurance", since they're often perfectly happy running older versions of software that are proven and stable. Microsoft, on the other hand, rakes in the software-licensing fees only when customers upgrade. Software Assurance is Microsoft's attempt to get those same licensing fees but wrap them together with the service and support needed to keep systems running. That's why Microsoft finds the open-source model so threatening: open-source companies have no vested interest in getting more licensing fees and don't have to pad their service contracts with that extra cost. In the end, the main difference between open-source and proprietary software companies may be the size of the check you have to write.

单选题Noel Heath and Glenroy Matthew are probably

单选题Millions of dollars often depend on the choice of which commercial to use in launching a new product. So you show the commercials to a (1) of typical consumers and ask their opinion. The answers you get can sometimes lead you into a big (2) . Respondents may lie just to be polite. Now some companies and major advertising (3) have been hiring voice detectives who test your normal voice and then record you on tape (4) commenting on a product. A computer analyzes the degree and direction of change (5) normal. One kind of divergence of pitch means the subject (6) Another kind means he was really enthusiastic. In a testing of two commercials (7) children, they were. vocally, about equally (8) of both. but the computer reported their emotional (9) in the two was totally different. Most major commercials are sent for testing to theaters (10) with various electronic measuring devices. People regarded as (11) are brought in off the street. Viewers can push buttons to (12) whether they are interested or bored. Newspaper and magazine groups became intensely interested in testing their ads for a product (13) TV ads for the same product. They were interested because the main (14) of evidence shows that people (15) a lot more mental activity when they read (16) when they sit in front of the TV set. TV began to be (17) "a low-involvement" (18) . It is contended that low involvement means that there is less (19) that the ad message will be (20) . Notes: commercial 广告。pitch 音调。

单选题Banish soft drinks from school vending machines. Cut down on Happy Meals. Load school lunches with fruits and vegetables. Pull the plug on the television and shove kids outdoors. Those are some of the weapons that schools, doctors and parents wield to prevent overweight kids from packing on more pounds. But there's another possibility: Surgically implant an inflatable silicone band around the top of the stomach to restrict food intake. That way, people eat smaller meals. Banding works for many adults. Now Allergan Inc. , a maker of the band, is asking the Food and Drug Administration to approve its device for morbidly obese adolescents as young as 14. You may or may not find this hard to stomach. We suspect your response will depend on your view of the causes of obesity, teen and otherwise. If you think losing weight is only a matter of will power, then you probably will figure this is another stab at a quick-fix that can't work for long. But here's why we can't dismiss it. Chicago is a national epicenter for childhood obesity. From toddlers to teens, Chicago's children far exceed national averages for obesity. An obese teen faces a lifetime of increased health risks. The band surgery wouldn't be for the girl who wants to shed 25 pounds to fit into a dancing party dress. This would be for the morbidly obese—adolescents 100 pounds or more overweight. The surgery is safe and effective for adults. In limited trials, it has helped obese teens. A 2010 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found banding surgery to be far more effective than diet and exercise programs in helping teens shed significant poundage. Of 25 patients who got the surgery, 21 lost more than half their excess weight. By contrast, only three of 25 teens on a supervised dieting and exercise program lost that much weight. The prospect of such surgery on a teen should give pause to parents and doctors. But let's remember that this is envisioned as a last resort for teens who are 100 pounds or more overweight. Before they're cleared for surgery, kids would have to show they diligently tried other weight loss methods. That they could stabilize their weight in preparation for surgery. And that they're ready to follow through with psychological counseling and other after-surgery programs. Parents and kids need to know: There is no quick, pain-free way around diet and exercise as a weight control. Pills, gastric surgery and other shortcuts may help some for a while. But even surgery likely won't be effective for long if you don't change the way you think about food and about controlling portions. Yes, we share concerns that once doctors start ratcheting up the numbers of these surgeries, they won't stop at the small numbers of extremely overweight teens. But that's for doctors and parents to monitor. The FDA should allow the band to be marketed for adolescents, to give them a chance at a normal, healthy life.

单选题The onset of a new generation of computer attacks was marked by ______.

单选题{{B}}Text 3{{/B}} European farm ministers have ended three weeks of negotiations with a deal which they claim represents genuine reform of the common agricultural policy (CAP). Will it be enough to kick off the Doha world trade negotiations? On the face of it, the deal agreed in the early hours of Thursday June 26th looks promising. Most subsidies linked to specific farm products are, at last, to be broken--the idea is to replace these with a direct payment to farmers, .unconnected to particular products. Support prices for several key products, including milk and butter, are to be cut-that should mean European prices eventually falling towards the world market level. Cut-ting the link between subsidy and production was the main objective of proposals put forward by Mr. Fischler, which had formed the starting point for the negotiations. The CAP is hugely unpopular around the world. It subsidizes European farmers to such an extent that they can undercut farmers from poor countries, who also face trade barriers that largely exclude them from the potentially lucrative European market. Farm trade is also a key feature of the Doha round of trade talks, launched under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in November 2001. Developing countries have lined up alongside a number of industrial countries to demand an end to the massive subsidies Europe pays its farmers. Several Doha deadlines have already been missed because of the EU's intransigence, and the survival of the talks will be at risk if no progress is made by September, when the world's trade ministers meet in Cancun, Mexico. But now even the French seem to have gone along with the deal hammered out in Luxembourg. Up to a point, anyway. The package of measures gives the green light for the most eager reformers to move fast to implement the changes within their own countries. But there is an escape clause of sorts for the French and other reform-averse nations. They can delay implementation for up to two years. There is also a suggestion that the reforms might not apply where there is a chance that they would lead to a reduction in land under cultivation. These 1et-outs are potentially damaging for Europe's negotiators in the Doha round. They could significantly reduce the cost savings that the reforms might otherwise generate and, in turn, keep European expenditure on farm support unacceptably high by world standards. Mote generally, the escape clauses could undermine the reforms by encouraging the suspicion that the new package will not deliver the changes that its supporters claim Close analysis of what is inevitably a very complicated package might confirm the sceptics' fears.

单选题From the first paragraph we know ______.

单选题The scourge that's plaguing cruise lines--and causing thousands of tourists to rethink their holiday travel plans--didn't start this year, nor did it even start on a ship. It began, as far as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) can tell, in Norwalk, U. S., in October 1968, when 116 elementary school children and teachers suddenly became iii. The CDC investigated, and the cause was discovered to be a small, spherical, previously unclassified virus that scientists named, appropriately enough, the Norwalk virus. Flash forward 34 years, and Norwalk-like viruses ( there's a whole family of them) are all over the news as one ocean liner after another limps into port with passengers complaining of nausea and vomiting. The CDC, which gets called in whenever more than 2% of a vessel's passengers come down with the same disease, identified Norwalk as the infectious agent and oversaw thorough ship cleaning--which, to the dismay of the owners of the cruise lines, haven't made the problem go away. So are we in the middle of an oceangoing epidemic? Not according to Dave Forney, chief of the CDC's vessel-sanitation program. He sees this kind of thing all the time; a similar outbreak on sever al ships in Alaska last year got almost no press. In fact, he says, as far as gastrointestinal illness goes, fewer people may be getting sick this year than last. Norwalk-like viruses, it turns out, are extremely common--perhaps second only to cold viruses-and they tend to break out whenever people congregate in close quarters for more than two or three days. Oceangoing pleasure ships provide excellent breeding grounds, but so do schools, hotels, camps, nursing homes and hospitals. "Whenever we look for this virus," says Dr. Marc Widdowson, a CDC epidemiologist, "we find it." Just last week 100 students (of 500) at the Varsity Acres Elementary School in Calgary, Canada, stayed home sick. School trick? Hardly. The Norwalk virus had struck again. If ocean cruises are your idea of fun, don't despair. This might even be a great time to go shipping for a bargain. The ships have been cleaned. The food and water have been examined and found virus free. According to the CDC, it was probably the passengers who brought the virus aboard. Of course, if you are iii or recovering from a stomach bug, you might do everybody a favor and put off your travel until the infectious period has passed (it can take a couple of weeks). To reduce your chances of getting sick, the best thing to do is wash your hands--frequently and thoroughly-- and keep them out of' your mouth. One more thing: if, like me, you are prone to motion sickness, don't forget to pack your Drama mine.

单选题The phrase "the latency period" (Paragraph 3) probably means