Тексты для самостоятельной работы по иностранному языку по специальности Прикладная информатика

САМОСТОЯТЕЛЬНАЯ РАБОТА ДЛЯ СТУДЕНТОВ СПЕЦИАЛЬНОСТИ ПРИКЛАДНАЯ ИНФОРМАТИКА

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TEXT. TODAY'S ASTONISHING COMPUTERS

Not long ago computers were not very reliable and comparatively slow in operation. Since then, several generations of complex electronic computing equipment have been developed, each being significantly better than the one before it. Almost every day a new use is found for these astonishing devices to help man.

We know a computer to be a complex electronic device that can store and process vast quantities of information. Following instructions, computing equipment will perform calculations such as addition, subtrac­tion, multiplication and division, and provide the answers to a large vari­ety of problems in a tiny fraction of time.¹

A computer is known to be the "heart" of an electronic data process­ing system,² other parts of equipment being auxiliary.

There are two main types of computing equipment — digital and analogue. They work differently and yield different results. The digital computer is performing a much broader range of functions than the ana­logue one.

The analogue computer, as its name implies, produces analogues or parallels of the process to be described or the problem to be solved. Both the digital and the analogue computers must be "programmed". This means they must be set up in such a way that they can produce a result from the information fed into them, and the information itself must be organized so that it can be handled by the machines. These de­vices working by electronic impulses perform at fantastic speed and with great precision.

Looking to the future, computer makers see no end to the things they would like to accomplish. The computer of the future seems to be developed by using bionics — biological functions of plants and ani­mals — as a guide in designing electronic circuits.

Nowadays computer makers are working at the problem of introduc­ing small computers into our everyday life making them personal. They are trying to develop a computer that will understand human language.

Each new generation of computers opens up new possibilities for ba­sic and applied research.

Notes on the Text

1. tiny fraction of time — очень короткий период времени

2. data processing system — система обработки информации

accomplish v — осуществлять precision n — точность

auxiliary a — вспомогательный process v — обрабатывать

data n — данные, информация range n — диапазон

describe v — описывать reliable a — надежный

digital a — цифровой set up (set) v — организовывать

generation n — поколение yield v — выдавать; производить

plant л — растение

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Text A: «WHAT IS A COMPUTER?»

The term computer is used to describe a device made up of a combination of electronic and electromechanical (part electronic and part mechanical) components. Com­puter has no intelligence by itself and is referred to as hardware. A computer system is a combination of five elements:

• Hardware

• Software

• People

• Procedures

• Data/information

When one computer system is set up to communicate with another computer system, connectivity becomes the sixth system element. In other words, the manner in which the various individual systems are connected — for ex­ample, by phone lines, microwave transmission, or sat­ellite — is an element of the total computer system.

Software is the term used to describe the instructions that tell the hardware how to perform a task. Without software instructions, the hardware doesn't know what to do. People, however, are the most important compo­nent of the computer system: they create the computer software instructions and respond to the procedures that those instructions present.

The basic job of the computer is the processing of in­formation. Computers accept information in the form of instruction called a program and characters called data to perform mathematical and logical operations, and then give the results. The data is raw material while informa­tion is organized, processed, refined and useful for deci­sion making. Computer is used to convert data into in­formation. Computer is also used to store information in the digital form.

Vocabulary:

characters — символы

data — данные

decision — решение

device — устройство

hardware — оборудование

instruction — команда

intelligence — разум

manner — манера, способ

microwave — микроволновая

procedures — процедуры, операции

purpose — цель

raw — необработанный, сырой

to come to life — оживать

to connect — соединять

to convert — превращать, преобразовывать

to create — создавать

to evaluate — оценивать

to refer to as — называть что-либо

to refine — очищать

to respond — отвечать

transmission — передача

various — различные

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Text B: «HARDWARE»

What is hardware? Webster's dictionary gives us the following definition of the hardware — the mechanical, magnetic, electronic, and electrical devices composing a computer system.

Computer hardware can be divided into four catego­ries:

1) input hardware

2) processing hardware

3) storage hardware

4) output hardware.

Input hardware

The purpose of the input hardware is to collect data and convert it into a form suitable for computer process­ing. The most common input device is a keyboard. It looks very much like a typewriter. The mouse is a hand held device connected to the computer by small cable. As the mouse is rolled across the mouse pad, the cursor moves across the screen. When the cursor reaches the desired location, the user usually pushes a button on the mouse once or twice to signal a menu selection or a command to the computer.

The light pen uses a light sensitive photoelectric cell to signal screen position to the computer. Another type of input hardware is optic-electronic scanner that is used to input graphics as well as typeset characters. Micro­phone and video camera can be also used to input data into the computer. Electronic cameras are becoming very popular among the consumers for their relatively low price and convenience.

Processing hardware

The purpose of processing hardware is retrieve, inter­pret and direct the execution of software instructions provided to the computer. The most common components of processing hardware are the Central Processing Unit and main memory.

The Central Processing Unit (CPU) is the brain of the computer. It reads and interprets software instructions and coordinates the processing activities that must take place. The design of the CPU affects the processing power and the speed of the computer, as well as the amount of main memory it can use effectively. With a well-designed CPU in your computer, you can perform highly sophisti­cated tasks in a very short time.

Memory is the system of component of the computer in which information is stored. There are two types of computer memory: RAM and ROM.

RAM (random access memory) is the volatile compu­ter memory, used for creating loading, and running pro­grams and for manipulating and temporarily storing data;

ROM (read only memory) is nonvolatile, non-modifiable computer memory, used to hold programmed in­structions to the system.

The more memory you have in your computer, the more operations you can perform.

Storage hardware

The purpose of storage hardware is to store computer instructions and data in a form that is relatively permanent and retrieve when needed for processing. Storage hardware serves the same basic functions as do office fil­ing systems except that it stores data as electromagnetic signals. The most common ways of storing data are Hard disk, floppy disk and CD-ROM.

Hard disk is a rigid disk coated with magnetic mate­rial, for storing programs and relatively large amounts of data.

Floppy disk (diskette) - thin, usually flexible plas­tic disk coated with magnetic material, for storing com­puter data and programs. There are two formats for floppy disks: 5.25" and 3.5". 5.25" is not used in mod­ern computer systems because of it relatively large size flexibility and small capacity. 3.5" disks are formatted 1.4 megabytes and are widely used.

CD-ROM (compact disc read only memory) is a com­pact disc on which a large amount of digitized read-only data can be stored. CD-ROMs are very popular now be­cause of the growing speed which CD-ROM drives can provide nowadays. Output hardware

The purpose of output hardware is to provide the user with the means to view information produced by the com­puter system. Information is output in either hardcopy or softcopy form. Hardcopy output can be held in your hand, such as paper with text (word or numbers) or graphics printed on it. Softcopy output is displayed on a monitor.

Monitor is a component with a display screen for view­ing computer data, television programs, etc.

Printer is a computer output device that produces a paper copy of data or graphics.

Modem is an example of communication hardware — an electronic device that makes possible the transmission of data to or from computer via telephone or other communication lines.

Hardware comes in many configurations, depending on what the computer system is designed to do. Hard­ware can fill several floors of a large office building or can fit on your lap.

Vocabulary:

amount — количество

capacity — вместительность

circuitry — эл. цепи

CPU, microprocessor — микропроцессор

hard disk — жесткий диск, «винчестер»

input hardware — устройства ввода данных

keyboard — клавиатура

lap — колени

modem — модем

mouse — устройство для перемещения объектов на экране, «мышь»

output hardware — выходные устройства отображе­ния информации

printer — принтер

processing hardware — устройства обработки данных

RAM — ОЗУ (оперативное запоминающее устройство)

ROM — ПЗУ (постоянное запоминающее устройство)

CD-ROM — накопитель на компакт-дисках (CD)

scanner — сканер

sensitive — чувствительный

sophisticated — сложный

storage hardware — устройства хранения данных

temporarily — временно

temporary — временный

the purpose — цель

tier — ярус

to affect — влиять

to connect — соединять

to convert — преобразовывать

to direct — управлять

to execute — выполнять

to interpret — переводить

to provide — обеспечивать

to reach — достигать

to retrieve — извлекать

to roll — катать, перекатывать

volatile — летучий, нестойкий, временный

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The Internet began the 1970s as a way to send information from one computer to another . It was only used by people who worked in governments and universities. But in the 1990s, it suddenly began to be more popular.

In the early 1990s, a British man called Tim Berners-Lee invented the “Web”. With the Web it was much easier to find information on the Internet, and to move from one part of the Internet to another. By the end of the 1990s, millions of people around the world were using the Web for many different things: for example, shopping, playing games and studying.

In the first half of the 1990s, it was clear that the Internet and the Web were changing the world for ever. Hundreds of new companies started on the Internet. They knew that the Internet was growing, and that it offered an easy way to “ Internet start-up” companies because they seemed to be the future. However, by the end of the 1990s there were too many of these companies. They could not all be successful, and many of them went out of business. Now, only the best of the Internet start-up companies are making money.

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The construction of this machine was begun with aid from the government. For 20 years however little progress was achieved. In 1833 Babbage changed his plans for another computing machine which he called an analytical engine. This was to consist of three parts: (1) the "store", where numbers were to be stored or remembered;(2) the "mill" where arithmetical operations were to be performed on numbers taken from the store and (3) the "sequence mechanisms" which would select the proper operation.

Once, Countess of Lovelace, the daughter of the great English poet, Lord Byron, Augusta Ada Byron saw that computing machine. As she was a brilliant mathematician, she was the first who highly appreciated the idea put into the Babbage`s automatic computer. She wrote to him later that she was greatly impressed by his invention. They continued to work together for some years. Probably, it was somewhere in 1840, may be later, but they cooperated up to 1850. (She died in 1852 when she was only 37.) Nowadays she considered to be the first programmer in the world. But the first and second Babbage`s machines were not completely constructed although small parts of them were. Both Babbage and his son, who also tried to carry out his father`s ideas, died without seeing the result of their work. The failure to construct those machines was because of the absence of sufficiently accurate machine tools and of mechanical and electrical devices that finally became available around 1900-1910.

Another of the historical developments of automatic machines was about 1886. Dr. Herman Hollerith decided to experiment with cards with punched holes and with electrical devices to detect the holes and count them. He realized that cards bearing human language were hot readable by the machine; but cards could be prepared using a machine language, a language of punched holes. Hollerith`s experiments and machines were successful, and have led to a great development of machines using punched cards for business, accounting and statistical purposes’. These machines, punched card calculating machines, have become a base of business calculations and reports all over the world. The first automatic digital computer that worked was a machine called the Complex Computer, constructed in 1939. Dr. George R. Stibitz, an engineer, noticed around him a lot of troublesome arithmetic multiplying and dividing complex numbers, numbers which electrical engineers find necessary for analyzing alternating electrical circuits.

countess - графиня

troublesome- досадный, хлопотный

for analyzing alternating electrical circuits – для анализа электрических цепей переменного тока

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The first machine which would add numbers mechanically was invented by the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal in 1642. It contained geared counter wheels (12) which could be set at any one of ten positions from 0 to 9. Each gear had a little tooth for nudging (13) the next counter wheel when it passed from 9 to 0 so as to carry 1 into the next column.

Some 30 years later, in 1673, another mathematician, G.W. Leibnitz, invented a device which would control automatically the amount of adding to be performed by a given digit, and in this way he invented the first multiplying machine.

Pascal’s and Leibnitz’s machines and their improved successors have given rise to electric-powered but hand-operated adding machines and desk calculating machines which are found throughout offices today.

The idea of an automatic machine which would not only add, subtract, multiply, and divide but perform a sequence of steps automatically, was probably first conceived in 1812 by Charles Babbage, a professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, England. Babbage intended that his machine should compute the values of the tabulated mathematical functions and print out the results. No attention would be needed (14) from the human operator, once the starting data and the method of computation had been set into the machine.

9. about 300 B.C. - около 300 года до нашей эры

10. A.D.- нашей эры

11. cipher [‘saife] – шифр, шифровка

12. geared counter wheels – зубчатые, счетные колесики

13. for nudging – для выталкивания

14. No attention would be needed - Никакого внимания не требовалось

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In 1946 an automatic electronic digital computer was built. This machine used instead of relays standard radio tubes and parts, and aimed for high speed. It was ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator). It contained 20 registers where numbers of 10 decimal digits could be stored or accumulated. It could add numbers at the rate of 5,000 additions per second. It also contained a multiplier which would carry out from 360 to 500 multiplications per second, a "divider-square-rooter", and other units.

From 1952 the addition speed of computers has gone to more than 100,000 additions per second. The multiplication speed has risen to more than 10,000 per second. The amount of storage capacity, or memory, has changed from 72 storage registers to millions of registers. The reliability of automatic computer has increased to the point where a billion and ten billion operations take place between errors. Besides, automatic checking has been built into computer so that no wrong results are allowed out.

The description of the history of invention and construction of computers and data processors is only part of the story. What caused this development?

There have been two trends in the causes for this development. One is the growth of scientific and engineering knowledge. Take for example astronomy. Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein expressed general laws for the behavior of heavenly bodies. But the actual calculations for knowing where to look in the sky to see any particular heavenly body at any particular time have to be carried out numerically. Furthermore, the laws were general and in simple form, ignoring many uncomfortable details. Take for example calculations for particular heavenly bodies were specific and had to take into account many uncomfortable details. Take for example calculating the orbit of the moon: the bulge of the earth at the equator, where the earth is wider than it is at the poles, has an effect on the orbit or the moon, and this has to be calculated in order to predict to the minute and second where the moon will be at any particular time. Such calculations are laborious. Similar laborious calculations occur in electrical engineering, in physics, in chemistry, in nucleonic, and elsewhere.

The other main trend is from world of business. Here enormous quantities of records and calculations are required in order that business may function.

The growth of a great civilization has produced an enormous growth in the information to be handled and operated with. This provides the push, the energy, for the development of the electronic computers.

laws for the behavior of heavenly bodies – законы поведения небесных тел

to take into account – принимать во внимание

the bulge of the earth at the equator – выпуклость земли на экваторе

effect - влияние

enormous - огромный

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Young people often know more about computing and the Internet than older people. For this reason, some very young people have had a lot of success with Internet start-up companies Tom Hadfield began using computers at the age of two. When he was twelve, he began putting football scores on the Internet, just because he liked football. This soon became a business called Soccernet. During the 1998 World Cup, 300,000 people visited the Soccernet website every day. In 1999, Tom and his father sold 60 per cent of Soccernet to Disney for 15 million pounds. Tom and his father also started another Internet company called Schoolsnet, which has information for students and teachers. Thanks to the Internet, Tom Hadfield became a very successful businessman before he left school!

Today, almost every company in the world has got a website on the Internet. Each site has got a special name and you use this to visit the site. In the early 1990s, before most companies had really thought about the Internet, some people got web addresses with the names of famous companies-for example, Panasonic and Hertz. These people were not part of the companies; they were hoping to sell the web addresses to the companies for a lot of money one day in the future. This was called ‘cyber-squatting’. Since 1999, new international laws have made cyber-squatting impossible.

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FROM CALCULI TO MODERN COMPUTER

Although, the first modern automatic computers began to work in 1944, the story of the development of ideas, devices, and machines entering into that automatic computer goes back a long time into the past. Problems of calculating with numbers, and recording numbers, have pressed upon human beings for more than five thousand years.

Probably the first of the ideas to deal with numbers is the idea of using small objects, such as pebbles seeds, or shells, to count with, to supplement the fingers.

People, however, find it troublesome to count only in units - it takes too much time and effort. So early a second idea appears: the idea of composing a new unit equal to ten of the old units. The source of this idea is clearly the fact that a man has ten fingers; with this idea you could designate 87 by referring to all the fingers of 8 men, and then 7 more fingers on one more man. In order to deal with numbers in their physical form of counted objects, a third idea appears: a specialized, convenient place upon which to lay out the counted objects. Such a place may be a smooth piece of ground, slab of stone, or a board.

It becomes convenient to mark off areas on the slab according to the size of unit you are dealing with - you have one area for ordinary units, one area for tens, one area for hundreds, and so on. These developments gave birth to the abacus,(1) the first computing machine. This device consisted of a slab divided into areas, and a supply of small stones for use as counters or objects to keep track of numbers (2). The Greek word for slab was abax, and the Latin word for the small stones was calculi, and so the first computing machine, the abacus was invented, consisting originally of a slab and counting stones, and later on, a frame of rods strung with beads,(3) for keeping track of numbers while calculating.(4)

The system of numbering and the, abacus go hand in hand together. The abacus is still the most widely used computing machine in the world.

Then appeared the Arabic positional notation for numerals (5) which reached Western Europe in the 1200’s. Just as the small counting stones or calculi could be used in any area on the slab, so (6) the digits 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 could be used in any position of a numeral. Just as the position on the slab answered the question as to whether units, tens, hundreds, etc., were being counted, (7) so the place or column or position of the digit (as in 4786 with its four places) answered the question as to what kinds of units were there being counted. And - this was the final key idea - just as a place on the slab could be empty, (8) so the digit 0 could mark “none” in place of column of a number.

1. abacus ['aebakas] - счеты

2. to keep track of numbers – удерживать

след чисел

3. a frame of rods strung with beads - рамка из прутьев, на которые нанизаны бусинки

4. while calculating - при вычислении .

5. positional notation for numerals - позиционная система счисления цифр

6. Just as .... , so ...- точно также как…, так и ...

7. as to whether units, ... were being counted - относительно того, подсчитывались ли единицы, ..

8. empty - пустой, свободный

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Internet users can be anywhere in the world; they just need a computer and a telephone. For this reason, it is often difficult to control what happens on the Internet. In January 1999, an American University student called Shawn Fanning invented a piece of software that could copy music. In May of the same year, he started a company called Napster. Internet users could visit Napster and copy their favorite music. Suddenly, they did not need to buy CDs. Of course, the music companies were not very happy about this. A lot of musicians were also unhappy, because people could get their music free. In the end, Napster agreed to pay money to the music companies and musicians.

The Internet is not only important for business. It is also a cheap way to make contact with people from all over the world. A lot of people visit ‘chat rooms’ : in a chat room, you can ‘talk’ to other Internet users and read their answers on your computer immediately. There is even a special king of language which people use to save time. For example, they write ‘HAND’ to mean ‘Have A Nice Day’; or they write ‘LOL’ when they find something funny. There are also special ways to show feelings: for example,  means ‘I’m happy’, and  means ‘I’m sad’.

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