D iscussion
Working in pairs discuss the following problems:
What role does the computer play in your everyday life?
Do you think it will be the same in ten years’ time?
Do you use e-mail or the Internet? If you do, what do you use them for?
S upplementary reading
VIDEO GAMES
Video games these days are extremely popular. One in four households in Britain has a Playstation and in 1999 the video game industry made nearly a billion pounds, which was 60 percent more than cinema box office takings.
So, why are video games so popular? Well, they combine very fast moving, well-designed graphical images with very interesting sound design and music. But crucially they’re interactive, so they can change according to what you do from moment to moment, so the computer system concentrates on what you are saying to it, and poses you very interesting challenges and difficulties at very high speed.
The first commercial video game came along in 1971. IT was called Computer Space. Unfortunately it wasn’t very successful because it was a very complicated game involving spaceships and torpedoes and black holes and so forth. The same man who had invented that invented a game called Pong in 1972 and that’s when the video game explosion really took off. It was a very simple tennis game.
The very early video games like Pong just took place on one screen and the boundaries of the screen were the boundaries of the playing area. But then the space in video games started to get larger. The games started to scroll from side to side or up and down, so that the playing area became larger than the total size o one screen. The graphics in games slowly became more colourful and more detailed and then the big innovation took place in the 90’s, which was the invention of full 3D. This meant that you started to control characters who explored fully realized, solid 3D environments. You could wander round landscapes and buildings and look at them from any angle.
I think video games are close to becoming an art form in itself. Certainly, when cinema was only around 30 years old, as video games are today, a lot of people thought films were mindless entertainment and rotted peoples’ brains and were no good. But now we know that cinema is an art form and we have film critics who can analyse films and enhance our enjoyment of them, so in the future it will be true of video games as well. The current research in video games is concentrating on artificial intelligence. People want to play video games that give a greater illusion of interacting with real characters.
Final test
Put the following sentences in the same sequence as the information is arranged in the introductory text (Расположите следующие предложения в той же последовательности как информация представлена в вводном тексте)
1. A. Complexity theory developed by the IBM research center is concerned with the intrinsic computational difficulty of problems.
B. The bow-tie model was proposed to abstract the connectivity properties of the Web.
C. The IBM investigated aggregation algorithms for combining fuzzy information from multiple sources.
D. Other algorithms developed by the IBM include lattice algorithms, online algorithms, and property testing algorithms.
Choose the right English equivalent to the following Russian sentence (Выберите верный английский эквивалент следующему русскому предложению)
Алгоритмические инструменты для исследования сети постоянно усложняются.
2. A. Algorithmic tools for searching the web are becoming increasingly vital.
B. Algorithmic tools for searching the web are becoming more reliable.
C. Algorithmic tools for searching the web are becoming increasingly sophisticated.
Choose the right Russian equivalent to the following English sentence (Выберите верный русский эквивалент следующему английскому предложению)
Because theory cuts across every aspect of computer science, the IBM tends to interact with a large number of other research teams.
3. A. Так как теория полностью соответствует компьютерной науке, IBM взаимодействует с большим количеством исследовательских групп.
B. Так как теория затрагивает все аспекты компьютерной науки,
IBM взаимодействует с большим количеством исследовательских групп.
C. Так как теория идёт в разрез с компьютерной наукой, IBM не склонна сотрудничать с большим количеством исследовательских групп.
Find the equivalents in two languages (Найдите эквиваленты в двух языках)
4. fault-tolerant A. модель выборочного типа
5. sampling model B. произвольный доступ
6. random access C. базовый метод
7. fuzzy information D. нечёткая информация
8. generic method E. отказоустойчивый
F. метод отсечения
Complete the sentences with the proper word (Закончите предложения подходящим по смыслу словом)
9. To overcome NP-hardness the IBM developed good … … .
10. The algorithms are allowed random access to data in the … … .
11. The IBM focuses now on less traditional ways of storing … .
12. It was discovered that the structure of the Web is … .
13. Stochastic models can be used to predict the evolution of the …
14. Algorithms for improving the performance of large scale databases
are … .
15. Massive data set algorithms have to work with very limited main … .
16. To abstract the connectivity properties of the Web there was proposed the … … .
17. The intrinsic computational difficulty is a field of concern of … … .
Choose the right variant (выберите правильный вариант)
18. The running time of the algorithm is of great importance in
A. sampling model B. data stream model C. sublinear model
19. Random access to data is allowed to the algorithm in the
A. sampling model B. data stream model C. sublinear model
20.The algorithm can make one or few passes over the data in the
A. sampling model B. data stream model C. sublinear model
21. At the moment computers have an advantage of speed but they show no sign of
Complexity C. vitality
Intelligence D. reliability
22. In the future computers may have a similar complexity to the human
A. thoughts B. ideas C. Brain
23. The problem of computational resources is touched upon in the IBM’s project
A.”algorithms” C. “complexity”
B.”web” D. “database principles”
24. The aspect of efficient problem solving is discussed in the IBM’s project
A.”algorithms” C. “complexity”
B.”web” D. “database principles
25.To overcome the curse of NP-hardness … algorithms become important.
A. massive data set B. approximation C. aggregation