题目内容
According to the Gartner Group, a US high-technology consultant agency, nearly a quarter of all worldwide companies have not yet started work on plans to solve the year 2000 programs problems.
This means most of these organizations will effectively be unable to fix their systems in time.
The Gartner Group, which said last year that the millennium bomb rehabilitation would cost between US $300 billion and US $600 billion worldwide, also said in the report published this month that only 50 percent of companies that had projects to eliminate the bug planned to test their corrected systems.
Dangerous policy
Experts said this was a dangerous policy, because correcting computer programs often introduced new flaws.. Testing was essential.
The millennium computer bomb is a legacy from shortcuts by software writers, who in the name of economy expressed years with just the final two digits rather than four.
When clocks tick past midnight on December 31, 1999, many unrectified computers and chips will interpret the double zero as 1900.
This will turn many computer programs to mush, Unchecked, many public utilities, assembly lines, bank teller machines, traffic lights and lifts/nay shut down.
Some experts say the problem has been grossly exaggerated by software companies seeking to scare customers into buying the latest, bug-free products.
But Graham Titterington, consultant at London Consultancy Ovum, does not share this optimistic view.
The situation is pretty critical. Most companies are doing something, but are they doing enough？ He said in an interview.
Titterington also said that for the vast majority of businesses there was no external check on the effectiveness of their remedial work.
Running out of time
Mitul Mehta, senior European research manager at Frost & Sullivan in London, said time was running out for many companies.
"Companies now could just have to run the risk of crashing and be fixed later,” Mehta said.
"Some crucial areas apart from computers are not getting enough attention. I don't think networking companies have their act together — meaning manufacturers of routes, switches and network equipment like Bay and Cisco,. these kinds of companies," Mehta said.
He said. "Anybody looking at their systems now is probably too late anyway."
Critical situation
In its report, Gartner Group millennium research director, Lou Marcoccio, said that of the 15,000 companies and government agencies surveyed 23 percent, had not started millennium bomb projects. Of these, 86 per cent were small companies which would not have a chance to correct their systems unless they began immediately, Marcoccio said.
The Gartner report said most Western European companies and the United States had made good progress. Germany was a notable laggard.
"Eastern Europe, Russia, India, Pakistan, Southern Asia, Japan, most of South America, most of the Middle East and Central Africa all lag behind the United States by more than 12 months. Most of Western Europe is six months behind the United States, except for Germany which is 12 months behind, and France, which is eight to 10 months behind. The US Government has the lead on all other national governments by an even wider margin than the companies in those countries. Most government agencies are significantly behind the United States," the report said.
Which of the following countries lags behind the United States by the largest margin？
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The BBC Hong Kong correspondent says the crowded camps have become havens for Vietnamese racketeers and there are frequent outbreaks of gang warfare with rival groups from different parts of Vietnam attacking each other with homemade weapons. Our correspondent says the tragedy is bound to highlight again the crowded and violent conditions in which the more than 50-thousand Vietnamese refugees live in Hong Kong.
According to the news, the Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong live in______.
Which of the following statements is TRUE according to the interview？
I was walking in the park with a friend recently, and his cell phone rang, interrupting our conversation. There we were, walking and talking on a beautiful sunny day and -- poof! -- I became invisible, absent from the conversation.
The park was filled with people talking on their cell phones. They were passing other people without looking at them, saying hello, noticing their babies or stopping to pet their puppies. Evidently, the untethered electronic voice is preferable to human contact.
The telephone used to connect you to the absent. Now it makes people sitting next to you feel absent. Recently I was in a car with three friends. The driver shushed the rest of us because he could not hear the person on the other end of his cell phone. There we were, four friends zooming down the highway, unable to talk to one another because of a gadget designed to make communication easier.
Why is it that the more connected we get, the more disconnected I feel？ Every advance in communications technology is a setback to the intimacy of human interaction. With e-mail and instant messaging over the Internet, we can now communicate without seeing or talking to one another. With voice mail, you can conduct entire conversations without ever reaching anyone. If my mom has a question, I just leave the answer on her machine.
As almost every conceivable contact between human beings gets automated, the alienation index goes up. You can't even call a person to get the phone number of another person anymore. Directory assistance is almost always fully automated.
Pumping gas at the station？ Why say good-morning to the attendant when you can swipe your credit card at the pump and save yourself the both.
Making a deposit at the bank？ Why talk to a clerk who might live in the neighborhood when you can just insert your card into the ATM？
Pretty soon you won't have the burden of making eye contact at the grocery store. Some supermarket chains are using a self-scanner so you can check yourself out, avoiding those annoying clerks who look at you and ask how you are doing.
I am no Luddite. I own a cell phone, an ATM card, a voice-mall system, an e-mail account. Giving them up isn't an option -- they're great for what they're intended to do. It's their unintended consequences that make me cringe.
More and more, I find myself hiding behind e-mall to do a job meant for conversation. Or being relieved that voice mail picked up because I didn't really have time to talk. The industry devoted to helping me keep in touch is making me lonelier -- or at least facilitating my antisocial instincts.
So I've put myself on technology restriction: no instant messaging with people who live near me, no cell-phoning in the presence of friends, no letting the voice mall pick up when I'm home.
What good is all this gee-whiz technology if there's no one in the room to hear you exclaim, "Gee whiz？"
Saying "the unuttered electronic voice is preferable to human contact", the author is ______.
It can be inferred that ______.
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