It was late in the afternoon, and I was putting the final touch on a piece of writing that I was feeling pretty good about. I wanted to save it, but my cursor had frozen. I tried to shut the computer down, and it seized up altogether. Unsure of what else to do, I yanked(用力猛拉)the battery out. Unfortunately, Windows had been in the midst of a delicate and crucial undertaking. The next morning, when I turned my computer back on, it informed me that a file had been corrupted and Windows would not load. Then, it offered to repair itself by using the Windows Setup CD. I opened the special drawer where I keep CDs, but no Windows CD in there. I was forced to call the computer company’ s Global Support Centre. My call was answered by a woman in some unnamed, far-off land. I find it annoying to make small talk with someone when I don’ t know what continent they’ re standing on. Suppose I were to comment on the beautiful weather we’ ve been having when there was a monsoon at the other end of the phone? So I got right to the point. “My computer is telling me a file is corrupted and it wants to fix itself, but I don’t have the Windows Setup CD. “ “So you’re having a problem with your Windows Setup CD. “ She has apparently been dozing and, having come to just as the sentence ended, was attempting to cover for her inattention. It quickly became clear that the woman was not a computer technician. Her job was to serve as a gatekeeper, a human shield for the technicians. Her sole duty, as far as I could tell, was to raise global stress levels. To make me disappear, the woman gave me the phone number for Windows’ creator, Microsoft. This is like giving someone the phone number for, I don’ t know, North America. Besides, the CD worked; I just didn’ t have it. No matter how many times I repeated my story, we came back to the same place. She was calm and resolutely polite. When my voice hit a certain decibel(分贝), I was passed along, like a hot, irritable potato, to a technician. “You don’t have the Windows Setup CD, ma’ am, because you don’t need it, “ he explained cheerfully. “ Windows came preinstalled on your computer!“ “But I do need it. “ “ Yes, but you don’ t have it. “ We went on like this for a while. Finally, he offered to walk me through the use of a different CD, one that would erase my entire system. “Of course, you’ d lose all your e-mail, your documents, your photos. “ It was like offering to drop a safe on my head to cure my headache. “You might be able to recover them, but it would be expensive. “ He sounded delighted. “And it’ s not covered by the warranty(产品保证书)!“ The safe began to seem like a good idea, provided it was full. I hung up the phone and drove my computer to a small, friendly repair place I’ d heard about. A smart, helpful man dug out a Windows CD and told me it wouldn’ t be a problem. An hour later, he called to let me know it was ready. I thanked him, and we chatted about the weather, which was the same outside my window as it was outside his.

The speech is mainly about the organization of the company.Good morning! Um. . . As Managing Director of our company I’ve been asked to say a few words to you today about the way the company is organized. So what I’ve done is to make a sort of table. .. you know. . . to show how it is all arranged. It’s in your books. Can you find it? OK. Now, not all companies are organized in the same way, of course. They all have more or less the same bits and pieces, but they put them together in different ways. In fact, some Managing Directors are always changing the organization, which can be very disturbing for everybody else and sometimes causes awful hold-ups. Sometimes it’s necessary, of course, like when you start making something different or join up with another company or something. Anyway, I think the organization of my company is fairly typical, so let’s take a look at how we have organized it. At the top of the scheme, above me, is the Board of Directors. Their job is to administrate the company, make general policies, and so on. There are two kinds of directors, actually. One kind is what we call non-executive directors, which means that they are not full-time employees. They are the sort of people who have some standing in various parts of the business world and are in a position to help the company to succeed. They only appear when there are meetings of the Board, and some of them are on the boards of other companies at the same time. But the second lot of directors—the executive directors—are full-time employees of the company. Most of them are managers of our various departments, and you’ll be meeting them later. The absolute head of the company, of course, is the Chairman of the Board. He is appointed by the Board, and his job is to take the chair at meetings of the shareholders and the Board of Directors, and to represent the company’s interests at outside functions. He does not take much part in the running of the business. He leaves me to get on with the job. Mind you, not all chairmen are like that. Our last one was a real pain, always wanted everything done his own way and he kept on interfering. . . but anyway, that’s what the top slot in the scheme is for. Then there’s me, the Managing Director, or MD for short—as long as you don’t think I’m a doctor of medicine, ha ha. . . Um. . . Now, my job is to coordinate the policies decided by the directors and see that they are carried out. I do this through the various managers of departments—departmental managers. At the moment I’ve got six, and there are slots for them along the line underneath me in your scheme. I don’t think they are in any particular order, so we’ll start from the left and walk across. Actually, they’re all going to come and tell you about their jobs. So I’ll just say a few words. And. . . Right. The first one is. . . TRUE FALSE

What should one do if he wants to work more efficiently at his low point in the morning?Do you find getting up in the morning difficult and painful? This might be called laziness, but Dr. Kleiman has a new explanation. He has proved that everyone has a daily energy cycle. During the hours when you labor through your work you may say that you’re “hot“. That’s true. The time of day when you feel most energetic is when your cycle of body temperature is at its peak. For some people the peak comes during the forenoon. For others it comes in the afternoon or evening. No one has discovered why this is so. The possible explanation is that one is at his temperature-and-energy peak in the evening. Much family quarreling ends when husbands and wives realize what these energy cycles mean, and which cycle each member of the family has. You can’t change your energy cycle, but you can learn to make your life fit it better. Habit can help, Dr. Kleiman believes. Maybe you’re sleepy in the evening but feel you must stay up late anyway. Counteract your cycle to some extent by habitually staying up later than you want to. If your energy is low in the morning but you have an important job to do early in the day, rise before your usual hour. This won’t change your cycle, but you’ll get up and work better at your low point. Get off to a slow start which saves your energy. Get up with a leisurely yawn and stretch. Sit on the edge of the bed a minute before putting your feet on the floor. Avoid the trouble for clean clothes by laying them out the night before. Whenever possible, do routine work in the afternoon and save tasks requiring more energy or concentration for your sharper hours. Change his energy cycle. Overcome his laziness. Get up earlier than usual. Go to bed earlier.

Recent surveys show that Japanese youth have become a “Me Generation“ that rejects traditional values. “Around 1980 many Japanese, 【C1】______young people abandoned the values of economic success and began【C2】______for new sets of values to【C3】______them happiness, “ writes sociologist Yasuhiro in Comparative Civilizations Review. Japanese youth are placing more importance on the individual’ s pursuit of【C4】______and less on the values of work, family, and society. Japanese students seem to be losing patience with work, 【C5】______their counterparts in the United States and Korea. In a 1993【C6】______of college students in the three countries, only 10% of the Japanese regarded【C7】______as a primary value compared with 47% of Korean students and 27% of American students. A greater【C8】______of Japanese aged 18 -24 also preferred easy jobs【C9】______heavy responsibility. The younger Japanese are showing less concern for family values as they pursue an inner world of private satisfaction. Data collected【C10】______the Japanese government in 1993 shows that only 23% of Japanese youth are thinking about supporting their aged parents, in contrast【C11】______63% of young Americans. It appears that many younger-generation Japanese are【C12】______both respect for their parents【C13】______a sense of responsibility to the family. Author Yoshizaki attributes the change【C14】______Japanese parents’ over-indulgence of their children, material affluence, and growing【C15】______for private matters. The shift【C16】______individualism among Japanese is most pronounced among【C17】______very young. According to 1991 data【C18】______the Bunka Center of Japan, 50% of Japanese youth aged 16 -19 can be labeled “ self-centered“ compared with 33% among【C19】______aged 25-29. To earn the self-centered label, the young people responded positively to【C20】______ideas as “ I would like to make decisions without considering traditional values“ and “I don’t want to do anything I can’t enjoy doing.

What’s the main purpose of the talk?Yesterday we discussed the problem of rising prices, or, in the economist’s terms, inflation. We noted that, during periods of inflation, all prices and incomes do not rise at the same rate. Some incomes rise more slowly than the cost of living, and a few do not rise at all. Other incomes rise more rapidly than the cost of living. We concluded that persons with fixed incomes, for example, the elderly who depend upon pensions, and persons with slow-rising incomes as, for example , an employee with a salary agreed to in a long-term contract, will be most seriously affected by inflation. Please remember that while their dollar incomes, stay the same, the cost of goods and services rises, and in effect, real income decreases, that is, they are able to purchase less with the same amount of money. We also talked about the fact that stockholders and persons with business interests and investments would probably benefit most from inflation, since high prices would increase sales receipts, and profits would likely rise faster than the cost of living. And now, before we begin today’s lecture, are there any questions a-bout the term, inflation or any of the examples given in our discussion so far? To introduce the concept of inflation. To discuss the causes of inflation. To review yesterday’s lecture on inflation. To argue in favor of inflation.

What does George Orwell do?Today it’s my turn to give the presentation. As we agreed last week, I’m going to introduce George Orwell, a famous English writer. George Orwell was born in India on 25 June, 1903, but his family moved back to England four years later. He went to school in Sussex where he was very unhappy and then in 1917 he entered the famous English public school, Eton. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he did not go to university after this, but joined the Indian Imperial Police in 1922 and went to Burma. He disliked his job as a policeman and in 1927, after five years, he returned to England. He spent much of the following three years getting to know the poor and exploited in both London and Paris, and he also wrote articles for the newspapers, and poems. During all his life he hated political and social injustice and much of his writing was concerned with this, trying to enlighten and change society through his books. In 1933 his first book, Down and out in Paris and London, was published, about his time amongst the poor in these two places. In 1936 he married Eileen O’Shaughnessy and later that year, in July, he travelled to Spain as a war correspondent. While there, he joined the Republicans and fought for them against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. The following year he was seriously wounded in the throat and he returned to England in July 1937. In 1938 his sixth book, Homage to Catalonia, about his time in Spain, was published. In 1940 he became a correspondent with the BBC. Immediately after the Second World War, in 1945, one of his most famous books, Animal Farm, was published. He became very ill with tuberculosis in 1948. But he managed to write the book 1984, a pessimistic novel about the future. It was published a year later in 1949. He died on 23 January 1950. Well, that’s all about his life story. Now shall we concentrate on his famous book Animal Farm’? A literary critic. A war correspondent. A volunteer in the Spanish Civil War. A novelist.

Where did rice originate?As you know, many big changes happened after Christopher Columbus and other Europeans came to the Americas 500 years ago. Today I’m going to talk about a change in the world diet the way people cooked and ate. Five hundred years ago, there was a big change in the diet of people all over the world. Let’s talk about the diet in Europe 500 years ago. One important food was meat. Europeans ate many kinds of meat, including beef, lamb, goat, and pork. Europeans also ate dairy products, milk and cheese made from the milk of cows and goats. The Europeans ate several different grains: Most people ate wheat, and some people ate rice, which came first from Asia. Now, let’s look at the diet in the Americas about 500 years ago. The diet of the native American was quite different from the diet of the Europeans. This is because the European meats, dairy products, and grains didn’t exist in the Americas. However, the native Americans ate some food that didn’t exist in Europe. The native Americans ate different vegetables, such as potatoes and tomatoes. They ate different grains, such as corn. They ate different meat, such as turkey and other wild birds. They also used spices such as chocolate and hot chili peppers. None of these foods existed in Europe 500 years ago. Now let’s talk about the big change in the world diet 500 years ago, after Columbus and the Europeans went to the Americas. After Europeans went to the Americas, the diet of the native Americans changed a lot. When the Europeans went to the Americas, they took many new kinds of food with them. The Europeans gave some of the food, the meat, dairy products, and grains to the native Americans and then the native Americans started to use the European food in their cooking. As a result, the diet in the America’s today is very different from their diet 500 years ago. For example, if you go to a country like Mexico, you can see that the traditional Mexican food uses a lot of beef, pork, cheese, wheat, and rice, all foods that came from Europe with Columbus. After the Europeans returned to Europe from the Americas, there was also a big change in the diet of people in Europe and the rest of the world. When the Europeans returned to Europe, they took many new kinds of food back from the Americas. They took back the vegetables, grains, and spices that they found in the Americas. Little by little, people all over Europe started using the new foods in their cooking, and then the foods spread around the world to Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Some of the new food spread very quickly around the world. One example is the chili pepper. You may be surprised to know that 500 years ago, the chili pepper didn’t exist in many countries that are famous today for their hot and spicy food made with chilies. Actually, we think that the first chili pepper was taken to Spain by Columbus in 1493, when he returned from the Americas. After only 100 years, chili peppers had spread all around the world. They grow easily in warm weather. The only place that the chili pepper did not become popular was Northern Europe, probably because it is too cold to grow chili peppers easily. Although chili peppers spread quickly, other foods from the Americas spread very slowly. Potatoes are a good example. It took about 250 years for the potatoes to spread around the world. The reason it took so long is that Europeans thought that potatoes were poisonous. The potato looked a lot like a very poisonous plant that grew in Europe. People were afraid to eat potatoes! For a long time, people only used potatoes to feed their pigs. But slowly, people started using potatoes as food for themselves. Today, of course, potatoes have been very popular in many diets, especially in Northern Europe and North America. So the next time you sit down for dinner, think about the history of the food you are eating, maybe it was a part of the great change in the diet of people all over the world.

With the widespread computers, there is an increase in the number of people making use of Internet. Some people believe that Internet will bring great benefits to people while others think Internet may cause depression. Write an article about it to clarify your own points of view towards this issue.

As long as her parents can remember, 13-year-old Katie Hart has been talking about going to college. Her mother, Tally, a financial-aid officer at a California University, knows all too well the daunting thing of paying for a college education. Last year the average yearly tuition at a private, four-year school climbed 5.5 percent to more than $ 17, 000. The Harts have started saving, and figure they can afford a public university without a problem. But what if Katie applies to Princeton(she’ s threatening), where one year’ s tuition, room and board—almost $34, 000 in 2007—will cost more than some luxury cars? Even a number cruncher like Tally admits it’ s a little scary, especially since she’ 11 retire and Katie will go to college at around the same time. Paying for college has always been a hard endeavor. The good news: last year students collected $ 74 billion in financial aid, the most ever. Most families pay less than full freight. Sixty percent of public-university students and three quarters of those at private colleges receive some form of financial aid—mostly, these days, in the form of loans. But those numbers are not as encouraging as they appear for lower-income families, because schools are changing their formulas for distributing aid. Eager to boost their magazine rankings, which are based in part on the test scores of entering freshmen, they’ re throwing more aid at smarter kids—whether they need it or not. The best way to prepare is to start saving early. A new law passed last year makes that easier for some families. So-called 529 plans allow parents to sock away funds in federal-tax-free-investment accounts, as long as the money is used for “qualified education expenses“ like tuition, room and board. The plans aren’ t for everyone. For tax reasons, some lower and middle income families may be better off choosing other investments. But saving is vital. When’ s the best time to start? “Sometime, “ says Jack Joyce of the College Board, “between the maternity ward and middle school. “ Aid packages usually come in some combination of grants, loans and jobs. These days 60 percent of all aid comes in the form of low-interest loans. All students are eligible for “unsubsidized“ federal Stafford loans, which let them defer interest payments until after graduation. Students who can demonstrate need can also qualify for federal Perkins loans or “subsidized“ Staffords, where the government pays the interest during school. Fortunately, this is a borrower’ s market. “ Interest rates are at their lowest level in the history of student loans, “ says Mark Kantrowitz, publisher of Finaid. Kantrowitz expects rates to fall even further when they’ re reviewed this summer. Traditional scholarships, academic or athletic, are still a part of many families’ planning. Mack Reiter, a 17-year-old national wrestling champion, gets so many recruiting letters he throws most away. He’ 11 almost certainly get a free ride. Without it, “we would really be in a bind, “ says his mother, Janet. For everyone else, it’ s worth the effort to pick through local and national scholarship offerings, which can be found on Web sites like college-board, com.

It was late in the afternoon, and I was putting the final touch on a piece of writing that I was feeling pretty good about. I wanted to save it, but my cursor had frozen. I tried to shut the computer down, and it seized up altogether. Unsure of what else to do, I yanked(用力猛拉)the battery out. Unfortunately, Windows had been in the midst of a delicate and crucial undertaking. The next morning, when I turned my computer back on, it informed me that a file had been corrupted and Windows would not load. Then, it offered to repair itself by using the Windows Setup CD. I opened the special drawer where I keep CDs, but no Windows CD in there. I was forced to call the computer company’ s Global Support Centre. My call was answered by a woman in some unnamed, far-off land. I find it annoying to make small talk with someone when I don’ t know what continent they’ re standing on. Suppose I were to comment on the beautiful weather we’ ve been having when there was a monsoon at the other end of the phone? So I got right to the point. “My computer is telling me a file is corrupted and it wants to fix itself, but I don’t have the Windows Setup CD. “ “So you’re having a problem with your Windows Setup CD. “ She has apparently been dozing and, having come to just as the sentence ended, was attempting to cover for her inattention. It quickly became clear that the woman was not a computer technician. Her job was to serve as a gatekeeper, a human shield for the technicians. Her sole duty, as far as I could tell, was to raise global stress levels. To make me disappear, the woman gave me the phone number for Windows’ creator, Microsoft. This is like giving someone the phone number for, I don’ t know, North America. Besides, the CD worked; I just didn’ t have it. No matter how many times I repeated my story, we came back to the same place. She was calm and resolutely polite. When my voice hit a certain decibel(分贝), I was passed along, like a hot, irritable potato, to a technician. “You don’t have the Windows Setup CD, ma’ am, because you don’t need it, “ he explained cheerfully. “ Windows came preinstalled on your computer!“ “But I do need it. “ “ Yes, but you don’ t have it. “ We went on like this for a while. Finally, he offered to walk me through the use of a different CD, one that would erase my entire system. “Of course, you’ d lose all your e-mail, your documents, your photos. “ It was like offering to drop a safe on my head to cure my headache. “You might be able to recover them, but it would be expensive. “ He sounded delighted. “And it’ s not covered by the warranty(产品保证书)!“ The safe began to seem like a good idea, provided it was full. I hung up the phone and drove my computer to a small, friendly repair place I’ d heard about. A smart, helpful man dug out a Windows CD and told me it wouldn’ t be a problem. An hour later, he called to let me know it was ready. I thanked him, and we chatted about the weather, which was the same outside my window as it was outside his.

Women’ s minds work differently from men’ s. At least, that is what most men are convinced of. Psychologists view the subject either as a matter or frustration or a joke. Now the biologists have moved into this minefield, and some of them have found that there are real differences between the brains of men and women. But being different, they point out hurriedly, is not the same as being better or worse. There is, however, a definite structural variation between the male and female brain. The difference is in a part of the brain that is used in the most complex intellectual processes—the link between the two halves of the brain. The two halves are linked by a trunkline of between 200 and 300 million nerves, the corpus callosum. Scientists have found quite recently that the corpus callosum in women is always larger and probably richer in nerve fibers than it is in men. This is the first time that a structural difference has been found between the brains of women and men and it must have some significance. The question is “What?“ , and, if this difference exists, are there others? Research shows that present-day women think differently and behave differently from men. Are some of these differences biological and inborn, a result of evolution? We tend to think that is the influence of society that produces these differences. But could we be wrong? Research showed that these two halves of the brain had different functions, and that the corpus callosum enabled them to work together. For most people, the left half is used for wordhanding, analytical and logical activities; the right half works on pictures, patterns and forms. We need both halves working together. And the better the connections, the more harmoniously the two halves work. And, according to research findings, women have the better connections. But it isn’t all that easy to explain the actual differences between skills of men and women on this basis. In schools throughout the world girls tend to be better than boys at “language subjects“ and boys better at maths and physics. If these differences correspond with the differences in the hemispheric trunkline, there is an unalterable distinction between the sexes. We shan’ t know for a while, partly because we don’ t know of any precise relationship between abilities in school subject and the functioning of the two halves of the brain, and we cannot understand how the two halves interact via the corpus callosum. But this striking difference must have some effect and, because the difference is in the parts of the brain involved in intellect, we should be looking for differences in intellectual processing.

Does the publisher of Douglas Starr’s excellent Blood—An Epic History of Medicine and Commerce actually expect to sell many copies? Whoever chose the title is certain to scare off the squeamish, and the subtitle, which makes the effort sound like a dry, dense survey text, has really done this book a disservice. In fact, the brave and curious will enjoy a brightly written, intriguing, and disquieting book, with some important lessons for public health. 【R1】______ The book begins with a historical view on centuries of lore about blood—in particular, the belief that blood carried the evil humors of disease and required occasional draining. As recently as the Revolutionary War, Bloodletting was widely applied to treat fevers. The idea of using one person’s blood to heal another is only about 75 years old— although rogue scientists had experimented with transfusing animal blood at least as early as the 1600s. The first transfusion experiments involved stitching a donor’s vein(in early cases the physician’s)to a patient’s vein. 【R2】______ Sabotaged by notions about the“purity“of their groups’ blood, Japan and Germany lagged well behind the Allies in transfusion science. Once they realized they were losing injured troops the Allies had learned to save, they tried to catch up, conducting horrible and unproductive experiments such as draining blood from POWs and injecting them with horse blood or polymers. 【R3】______ During the early to mid-1980s, Starr says, 10, 000 American hemophiliacs and 12, 000 others contracted HIV from transfusions and receipt of blood products. Blood banks both here and abroad moved slowly to acknowledge the threat of the virus and in some cases even acted with criminal negligence, allowing the distribution of blood they knew was tainted. This is not new material. But Starr’s insights add a dimension to a story first explored in the late Randy Shilts’s And the Bond Played On. 【R4】______ Is the blood supply safe now? Screening procedures and technology have gotten much more advanced. Yet it’s disturbing to read Starr’s contention that a person receiving multiple transfusions today has about a 1 in 90, 000 chance of contracting HIV—far higher than the“one in a million“ figure that blood bankers once blithely and falsely quoted. Moreover, new pathogens threaten to emerge and spread through the increasingly high-speed, global blood-product network faster than science can stop them. This prompts Starr to argue that today’s blood stores are“ simultaneously safer and more threatening “than when distribution was less sophisticated. 【R5】______ A. The massive wartime blood drives laid the groundwork for modern blood-banking, which has saved countless lives. Unfortunately, these developments also set the stage for a great modern tragedy—the spread of AIDS through the international blood supply. B. There is so much drama, power, resonance, and important information in this book that it would be a shame if the squeamish were scared off. Perhaps the key lesson is this: The public health must always be guarded against the pressures and pitfalls of competitive markets and human fallibility. C. In his chronicle of a resource, Starr covers an enormous amount of ground. He gives us an account of mankind’s attitudes over a 400-year period towards this “precious, mysterious, and hazardous material“ ; of medicine’s efforts to understand, control, and develop blood’s life-saving properties;and of the multibillion-dollar industry that benefits from it. He describes disparate institutions that use blood, from the military and the pharmaceutical industry to blood banks. The culmination is a rich examination of how something as horrifying as distributing blood tainted with the HIV virus could have occurred. D. The book’s most interesting section considers the huge strides transfusion science took during World War II. Medicine benefited significantly from the initiative to collect and supply blood to the Allied troops and from new trauma procedures developed to administer it. It was then that scientists learned to separate blood into useful elements, such as freeze-dried plasma and clotting factors, paving the way for both battlefield miracles and dramatic improvement in the lives of hemophiliacs. E. Starr’s tale ends with a warning about the safety of today’s blood supply. F. Starr obtained memos and other evidence used in Japanese, French, and Canadian criminal trials over the tainted-blood distribution.(American blood banks enjoyed legal protections that made U. S. trials more complex and provided less closure for those harmed.)His account of the French situation is particularly poignant. Starr explains that in postwar France, donating blood was viewed as a sacred and patriotic act. Prison populations were urged to give blood as a way to connect more with society. Unfortunately, the French came to believe that such benevolence somehow offered a magical protection to the blood itself and that it would be unseemly to question volunteer donors about their medical history or sexual or drug practices. Combined with other factors, including greed and hubris, this led to tragedy. Some blood banks were collecting blood from high-risk groups as late as 1990, well into the crisis. And France, along with Canada, Japan, and even Britain, stalled approval and distribution of safer, American heat-treated plasma products when they became available, in part because they were giving their domestic companies time to catch up with scientific advances.

Which game... is sold well? 【P1】______ allows gamers to select games with equal-caliber opponents? 【P2】______ is probably frightening? 【P3】______ offers some more ways to destroy what the players have built? 【P4】______ seems difficult to save the game? 【P5】______ has no easy track for the game? 【P6】______ enables players to construct buildings in different styles? 【P7】______ has detailed and spectacular racing environments? 【P8】______ enables players to make up their own stories? 【P9】______ allows gamers to challenge other players in team-based multiplayer games on Xbox Live and System Link? 【P10】______ A Like your motorcycle games big, Bold, and beautiful? All those superlatives and more apply to Motocross Madness 2, the sequel to one of the most funny(if not the most realistic)motocross simulations ever created. This sequel improves on the original by offering larger racing environments, more modes of play, and much more detailed graphics. The environments now have a full complement of trees, cacti, Bushes, and other solid objects to smack into, and some game modes even introduce highway traffic into the mix. There’s nothing like jumping over a moving semi on your way to the finish line. The new Pro Circuit career mode adds a lot of replay-ability(and long-term strategy)to the game, and fun multiplayer modes like tag offer a refreshing break to standard racing when playing online. On the downside, all the new graphical goodness requires some advanced computer hardwares. While a 3-D accelerator isn’t required, that’s a little like saying your car doesn’t need an engine because you can still push it. With a decent 3-D card, at least a 350 MHz processor, and plenty of RAM, however, the game really comes to life. Those of you with 3-D audio cards are also in for a treat, as it becomes possible to tell where other riders are just by listening. It took time to get used to Motocross Madness 2’s complete over-the-topphysics. Hitting even a minor jump launches the bike straight up into the air, and bigger hills can leave you staring down at the treetops for over five seconds. It’s a little ridiculous, But once we gained some familiarity with the tracks it virtually made the game a lot of fun. More air time means more chances to perform outrageous aerial stunts, from the Tail Grab to the back-bending Cordova. Unfortunately, it also means unfortunate encounters with trees which are much harder to avoid. If you buy sports games based only on their ability to realistically portray the sports they are simulating, Mo-tocross Madness 2 will disappoint. For those of you who like big air, Big stunts, enormous open environments, and lots of challenging arcade action, this game is better than its predecessor in every way. B SimCity 3 , 000 is back, and it’s bigger than ever! Maxis pulled out all the stops for this new version of the bestselling game, adding enough new customized graphics to recreate cities from all over the world. The new European and Asian building sets serve up hundreds of new buildings that match the architecture of these diverse environments. From the Great Wall to the Berlin Wall, it’s in there. Of course, you can still mix and match—freedom to manage a city as you choose has always been the name of this game. No addition to the SimCity family would be complete without some new methods for destroying your creations, and SimCity 3, 000 Unlimited has four more devastating disasters than the old version. You can recreate the movie Armageddon by unleashing large chunks of flaming space debris, smite your populace with a buzzing swarm of locusts, destroy seaports and coastal developments with a whirlpool, or uncork some toxic clouds. The Building Architect, formerly available as a free download, is now packed on the CD-ROM. This 3-D architectural program lets users set up the buildings of their dreams, from dilapidated outhouses to towering skyscrapers to works of modern art that are intended for pure decoration. Don’t worry if you don’t feel like using this powerful tool to create things yourself—the game comes with dozens of new ways to make your cities unique, and you can always head to the SimCity Exchange to download imaginative add-ons created by other users. The infinite expand-ability and infinite replay-ability of this game should keep would-be mayors completely occupied until they move to the suburbs of the Sims. C Want to live forever? Get a taste for what it’s like with Vampire: The Masquerade Redemption, the first computer role-playing game based on the tremendously popular dice-and-paper and live-action RPG from White Wolf Game Studio. Die-hard fans will grumble a bit at some of the translation concessions from book to hard drive. The vampiric disciplines in particular are less flexible and occasionally more hassle than they’re worth—sure, you can turn into a wolf, But you can’t return to your natural form until the time limit expires. Still, these limitations don’t interfere with the gameplay, which is fast moving, challenging, and genuinely creepy. Graphics and sounds are well designed, and along with the plot they evoke the mood of gothic horror that has made Vampire so popular. The single-player mode locks you into the story line of Christof, a medieval crusader who blunders into immortality at the fangs of an ancient Brujah vampire. Christof s damnation and search for redemption lead him from the Prague of the Dark Ages to modern New York City. Multiplayer options include local area network and Internet play as well as the ability to make and run your own stories for other players. The manual is beautiful and helpful, a rare combination. Clearly, the designers took their cue from White Wolf, as evidenced by the clarity of text and carefully chosen illustrations. Though Redemption is really worth playing, gamers should be warned that the save-game feature is irritating and often beyond the player’s control and that the installation requires at least 720 MB(and up to 1.3 GB!). Despite these flaws, the game is still wicked fun and merits plenty of praise. D Counter-Strike, the world’ s most popular online action game and first-person shooter for the PC, makes its console debut exclusively on Xbox and Xbox Live. Counter-Strike for Xbox features single-player missions, taking place over a gritty realistic counterterrorist world. It allows gamers to challenge other players in team-based multiplayer games on Xbox Live and System Link. Counter-Strike for Xbox will be the most graphically advanced version of the game to date, showcasing the technical prowess of Xbox, including immersive and intense multiplayer action on Xbox Live. In addition, players will benefit by strategizing and communicating with their teammates via the Xbox Live Communicator headset. Features: Intense Xbox Live multiplayer action: Gamers can battle real players throughout the world with Xbox Live, strategizing and communicating with up to 15 other players. A unique player-ranking system will allow gamers to select games with equal-caliber opponents, while Xbox Live helps ensure cheat-free playing fields. Xbox enhancements and exclusives: Players will be treated to new graphically enhanced missions from Counter-Strike; Condition Zero, as well as new, exclusive content designed only for Xbox. Realistic counterterrorist experience; Players will experience a deep and involving counterterrorism world, where danger abounds. Lead an elite team through the jungles of Asia, the cold regions of Eastern Europe, and the unbearable humidity of Colombia. Real-life weapons and gadgets: Players can choose from more than 25 real-life weapons, including shotguns, sniper rifles, pistols, and other military artillery. Downloadable content: New downloadable content will be available via Xbox Live.

Why did the author shut down her computer abruptly?

Which of the following is the author’ s opinion about the woman at the Global Support Centre?

According to the passage, the solution offered by the technician was______.

“It was like offering to drop a safe on my head to cure my headache“ in the last but one paragraph means that______.

It can be inferred from the passage that the differences between the Global Support Centre and the local repair shop he in all the following EXCEPT______.