After the meal, Diane and her friends
A. sat and talked.
B. saw a film.
C. walked by the water.
听力原文:Friend: I tried to phone you yesterday.
Diane: Oh, sorry. I was busy all day and then I went to London in the evening for a meal with some friends.
Friend: Did you take your car?
Diane: I left it at home. Parking's such a problem. But the underground was closed for repairs so I had to take the bus. It was quite slow.
Friend: Did you go to your favourite Spanish restaurant?
Diane: I was hoping to try some Mexican food but my friends booked a table in a Chinese place.
Friend: Was it expensive?
Diane: Quite cheap actually, and the food was very good — but it's only a small restaurant so a lot of people had to wait for tables — and it was quite noisy.
Friend: You didn't stay there and talk afterwards then!
Diane: We went for a walk along the river. It was too late for the cinema.
Friend: Didn't you get wet? It reined here all evening.
Diane: The wind was very cold but it stayed dry.
Friend: And then it snowed during the night!
Diane: That was after I got home. But I had a really good evening!
Listen to Diane talking to a friend about a trip to London.
For questions 11-15, tick (√) A, B or C.
You will hear the conversation twice.
Diane went to London by
A. car.
B. bus.
C. underground.
Taking charge of yourself involves putting to rest some very prevalent myths. At the top of the list is the notion that intelligence is measured by your ability to solve complex problems; to read, write and compute at certain levels; and to resolve abstract equations quickly. This vision of intelligence asserts formal education and bookish excellence as the true measures of self fulfillment. It encourages a kind of intellectual prejudice that has brought with it some discouraging results. We have come to believe that someone who has more educational merit badges, who is very good at some form. of school discipline is "intelligent. " Yet mental hospitals are filled with patients who have all of the properly lettered certificates. A truer indicator of intelligence is an effective, happy life lived each day and each present moment of every day.
If you are happy, if you live each moment for everything it's worth, then you are an intelligent person. Problem solving is a useful help to your happiness, but if you know that given your inability to resolve a particular concern you can still choose happiness for yourself, or at a minimum refuse to choose unhappiness, then you are intelligent. You are intelligent because you have the ultimate weapon against the big N. B.D. --Nervous Break Down.
"Intelligent" people do not have N. B. D. 's because they are in charge of themselves. They know how to choose happiness over depression, because they know how to deal with the problems of their lives.
You can begin to think of yourself as truly intelligent on the basis of how you choose to feel in the face of trying circumstances. The life struggles are pretty much the same for each of us. Everyone who is involved with other human beings in any social context has similar difficulties. Disagreements, conflicts and compromises are a part of what it means to be human. Similarly, money, growing old, sickness, deaths, natural disasters and accidents are all events which present problems to virtually all human beings. But some people are able to make it, to avoid immobilizing depression and unhappiness despite such occurrences, while others collapse or have an N, B. D. Those who recognize problems as a human condition and don't measure happiness by an absence of problems are the most intelligent kind of humans we know; also, the most rare.
According to the author, the conventional notion of intelligence measured in terms of one's ability to read, write and compute ______.
A. is a widely held but wrong concept
B. will help eliminate intellectual prejudice
C. is the root of all mental distress
D. will contribute to one's self fulfillment
Apple is hardly alone in the high-tech industry when it comes to duff gadgets and unhelpful call centers, but in other respects it is highly unusual. In particular, it inspires an almost religious fervor among its customers. That is no doubt helped by the fact that its corporate biography is so closely bound up with the mercurial Mr. Jobs, a rare showman in his industry. Yet for all its flaws and quirks, Apple has at least four important wider lessons to teach other companies.
The first is that innovation can come from without as well as within. Apple is widely assumed to be an innovator in the tradition of Thomas Edison or Bell Laboratories, locking its engineers away to cook up new ideas and basing products on their moments of inspiration. In fact, its real skill lies in stitching together its own ideas with technologies from outside and then wrapping the results in elegant software and stylish design. The idea for the iPod, for example, was originally dreamt up by a consultant whom Apple hired to run the project. It was assembled by combining off-the-shelf parts with in-house ingredients such as its distinctive, easily used system of controls. And it was designed to work closely with Apple's iTunes jukebox software, which was also bought in and then overhauled and improved. Apple is, in short, an orchestrator and integrator of technologies, unafraid to bring in ideas from outside but always adding its own twists.
This approach, known as "network innovation", is not limited to electronics. It has also been embraced by companies such as Procter & Gamble, BT and several drugs giants, all of which have realized the power of admitting that not all good ideas start at home. Making network innovation work involves cultivating contacts with start-ups and academic researchers, constantly scouting for new ideas and ensuring that engineers do not fall prey to "not invented here" syndrome, which always values in-house ideas over those from outside.
Second, Apple illustrates the importance of designing new products around the needs of the user, not the demands of the technology. Too many technology firms think that clever innards are enough to sell their products, resulting in gizmos designed by engineers for engineers. Apple has consistently combined clever technology with simplicity and ease of use. The iPod was not the first digital-music player, but it was the first to make transferring and organizing music, and buying it online, easy enough for almost anyone to have a go. Similarly, the iPhone is not the first mobile phone to incorporate a music-player, web browser or e-mail software. But most existing "smartphones" require you to be pretty smart to use them.
Apple is not alone in its pursuit of simplicity. Philips, a Dutch electronics giant, is trying a similar approach. Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, perhaps the most Jobsian of Europe's geeks, took an existing but fiddly technology, internet telephony, to a mass audience by making it simple, with Skype; they hope to do the same for internet television. But too few technology firms see "ease of use" as an end in itself.
What is the main idea of the passage?
A. To show that Apple is the leader in innovation.
B. To share Apple's experience in pursuing innovation.
C. To introduce the history of Apple's development.
D. To introduce Apple's competitive edge in digital industry.