题目内容
听力原文：W: Hi, Sam, I hate to bother you but I wonder if I could have a word with you？
M: Sounds so serious. What's up？
W: Well, the landlord just informed me that he's going to increase our rent by two hundred. I'm wondering how you feel about it.
M: How do I feel about it No way! in our tenancy agreement, it says he will have to give us a notice three months in advance if he wants to increase the rent.
W: Yeah, that's right! It's gotta be three months later. Well, I think he realizes his rental fee is below the market rate and he must be feeling a bit ripped off when he could be charging a couple hundred extra. What do you think Sam？
M: Good question. I'm not sure either. The location we're at now is quite convenient. Close to the grocery and near the subway. It'll be hard to find another location like this one.
W: I wonder whether he'll allow room for negotiation. Perhaps a hundred dollars instead of two. Maybe he might be more willing to give a bit if we speak to him right way.
M: Well, be seems to be a nice guy to talk to. But what if be refuses？ Would you go for two then？
W: Well, I guess I would, since it'll be hard to find such a convenient location. Besides, It's close to my school-and it's close to my school and I can sleep a little later
M: Ha! I figured that's what you'd be concerned about. Well, I have to give it some serious thought. I'm not sure I can afford to cough up an extra hundred a month just to make sure I can sleep in an extra 15 minutes. W: Didn't you get your loan recently？ That'll cover what you need. Besides, if you could just stop spending so much on cafeteria snacks you'd have lots of money to spare.
M: Yeah, but I'm thinking of getting a new laptop.
W: Well, I tell you, there aren't a lot of apartments that are cheaper, even with this new increase.
M: I know, so when does he want us to come back on this？
W: He told me to let him know this weekend.
M: Sure, by then I should be able to make up my mind.
(20)
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A．They had lived too long in the city.B．They were not familiar with the American custo
Section B
Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A, B, C and D. You should decide on the best choice.
As colleges and universities send another wave of graduates out into the world this spring, thousands of other job seekers with liberal-arts degrees like Martin's find themselves in a similarly difficult situation. True enough, this is an era of record-breaking lows in unemployment. But technology companies, which are contributing the lion's share (最多的部分) of new jobs, are simultaneously declaring a shortage of qualified workers.
It's no surprise that high-tech companies rarely hire liberal-arts graduates. The need for technical expertise is so universal that even retailers are demanding such skills. "Company-wide, we're looking for students with specific information-systems skills", says David McDearmon, director of field human resources at Dollar Tree Stores. "Typically we avoid independent-college students who don't have them".
Fortunately for Martin, some invaluable help was at hand when he needed it. The Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges, a network of 15 liberal-arts colleges in the state, has teamed up with local companies to bridge the learning gap faced by its members' graduates. VFIC invited 30 companies to link the needs of businesses with the skills being taught in college classrooms. With grants from corporate sponsors VFIC asked 20 information-technology managers to help its members create an exam, based on the work students will be expected to do in the real world, to test and certify their technological proficiency.
The result, Tek. Xam, is an eight-part test that requires students to design a website, build and analyze spreadsheets(电子数据表), research problems on the Internet and demonstrate understanding of legal and ethical issues. Says Linda Dalch, president of VFIC: "If an art-history major wants a job at a bank, he needs to prove he has the skills. That's where this certificate can help". This year 245 students at VFIC's member colleges have gone through the program. The long-term hope is that Tek. Xam will win the same kind of acceptance as the LSAT or CPA for law or accounting students. "To know a student has taken the initiative and passed could mean that less training is needed", explains John Rudin, chief information officer at Reynolds Metals, one of the corporations that helped create the test.
All this begs an important question: Has the traditional liberal-arts curriculum become outdated？ College presidents naturally argue that the skills their schools provide are invaluable. A B.A. degree, says Mary Brown Bullock of Atlanta's Agnes Scott College, "gives graduates the ability to reinvent themselves time and time again... and the knowledge and thinking skills that transcend a particular discipline or time frame".
Martin is finding that to be the truth. "It would be nice to have computer classes on my transcript(成绩单)", he says, but Tek. Xam has armed him with the power to learn those skills on his own-- and a certificate to show he has done so. He's now waiting to hear when his job as a network-upport assistant for a large Boston firm will start.
What can be the best title for this article？
Focus on what you do best. This age-old strategy has worked well for RealNetworks, Microsoft's main competitor in multimedia software for the Internet. Now, the smaller Seattle-based firm is trying a novel way to contain the software giant. On October 29th, it released the underlying recipe, or source-code, of its RealPlayer software and will soon do the same for its other programs-- giving away a big chunk of its intellectual property.
This may sound like a desperate echo of 1998, when Netscape, struggling in Microsoft's choke holding, published the source-code of its web browser (an initiative that yielded few real results until this June, when the first serious new version of the open-source browser, Mozilla, was released). Yet RealNetworks is not playing defense. It is trying to encourage the creation of a common multimedia software structure for every kind of file format and device, thus defeating Microsoft's ambitions in this promising market.
The firm hopes that others in the industry (volunteer programmers, media firms and hardware makers) will take the code, called Helix DNA, improve it and make it run on new devices, such as mobile phones and home stereos, turning RealNetworks' software into an industry standard. Clever licensing terms are supposed to ensure that this standard does not split and that the firm still makes money.
Individual developers, universities and other non-profit organizations can modify the software as they please, and even redistribute it for free, so long as they also publish the source-code for their changes. This is a sort of payment in kind, for RealNetworks is then allowed to use these contributions. Finns, on the other hand, must pay royalty fees if they distribute mom than lm copies of the code. They also have to make sure that their software works with other Helix DNA products. The software's development community already has 2,000 members. And several hardware makers back the effort. But there are risks. Afraid of piracy(盗版), media groups are suspicious of anything that might be related to hackers (although they also do not want to depend on, and pay for, technology controlled by Microsoft). The self-created competition could also hurt RealNetworks if customers decide its commercial products, which will be based on the open source-code but with extra features, are not worth paying extra for.
RealNetworks' move is another sign that the software industry is going hybrid. Mixing elements of proprietary software, where the source-code is tightly controlled, with open-source programs enables firms to expand a market, harvest the ideas of others and, they hope, still make money. Even Microsoft is edging this way: it recently announced that partners can now look at-- but not modify or re-use-- the source-code for Passport, its controversial digital-identity service.
By what way does RealNetworks attempt to prevent Microsoft's ambitions？
A．The man enjoyed the beauty of the evening sky from his plane.B．The man had a time bo
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