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A.speculation risk
B.deflation risk
C.inflation risk
D.foreign exchange risk
A.Proofreading slips of the pen and improper format.
B.Covering too many topics just within one section.
C.Using long sentences with a complex grammatical form.
D.Employing a number of unfamiliar words and concepts.
A.they were made of iron
B.they coul not last long
C.they were the only pitonshe could afford to buy
D.they were too soft to bearthe climber's weight
选出应填入下面一段英语中______内的正确答案。
WLANs are increasingly popular because they enable cost-effective connections among people, applications and data that were not possible, or not cost-effective, in the past. For example, WLAN-based applications can enable fine-grained management of supply and distribution(1)to improve their efficiency and reduce(2). WLANs can also enable entirely new business processes. To cite but one example, hospitals are using WLAN-enabled point-of-care applications to reduce errors and improve overall(3)care. WLAN management solutions provide a variety of other benefits that can be substantial but difficult to measure. For example, they can protect corporate data by preventing(4)through rogue access points. They help control salary costs, by allowing IT staffs to manage larger networks without adding staff. And they can improve overall network management by integrating with customers' existing systems, such as OpenView and UniCenter. Fortunately, it isn't ne essary to measure these benefits to justify investing in WLAN management solutions, which can quickly pay for themselves simply by minimizing time-consuming(5)and administrative chores.
Paras. 4-8
If the evolutionary pressures of the marketplace are making EQ, not IQ, the hot ticket for business success, it seems likely that individuals will want to know how to cultivate it. I have a modest proposal: Embrace a highly personal practice aimed at improving these four adaptive skills.
Raising consciousness. I think of this as thinking differently on purpose. It's about noticing what you are feeling and thinking and escaping the conditioned confines of your past. Raise your consciousness by catching yourself in the act of thinking as often as possible. Routinely take note of your emotions and ask if you're facing facts or avoiding them.
Using imagery. This is what you see Olympic ski racers doing before entering the starting gate. With their eyes closed and bodies swaying, they run the course in their minds first, which improves their performance. You can do the same by setting aside time each day to dream with passion about what you want to achieve.
Considering and reconsidering events to choose the most creative response to them. When a Greek philosopher said 2,000 years ago that it isn't events that matter but our opinion of them, this is what he was talking about. Every time something important happens, assign as many interpretations to it as possible, even crazy ones. Then go with the interpretation most supportive of your dreams.
Integrating the perspectives of others. Brain research shows that our view of the world is limited by our genes and the experiences we've had. Learning to incorporate the useful perspectives of others is nothing less than a form of enlarging your senses. The next time someone interprets something differently from you--say, a controversial political event— pause to reflect on the role of life experience and consider it a gift of perception.
EQ is the hot ticket for business success, and here is a list of four adaptive skills to cultivate EQ. (Para. 4)
E-Business
电子商务
There is no universally accepted definition of e-Business, but here we assume that it embraces all aspects of buying and selling products and services over a network. The essential characteristics of e-Business are that the dealings between two parties, be it business to consumer or business to business, are online transactions, and that the key commodity being traded is information.
Figure 1 The Essential Elements of an Electronic Business
In effect, we see e-Business as the gateway to a deal—it is a transaction that may, but doesn't necessarily have to, lead to the delivery of a physical product. There are several commonly used names for e-Business, the most popular being e-Commerce and e-Trade. Some of the more academic treatises attempt to distinguish the terms (for instance, e- Commerce is sometimes limited to the buying and selling of goods and the flows of associated information and funds; e-Trade can be viewed as covering only supplier to supplier transactions). We have used such terms as synonyms here, and we take them as referring to the same thing.
Figure 1 gives some idea of how the key elements fit together. It should be said that the perspective is intended to be general, and should fit business to business trade as well as the case where individual consumers interact with an online business. So you can "daisy chain"[1]the picture, such that someone who takes the role of supplier to one set of customers may also take the role of customer to a different supplier further back in the chain. In any case, they all have to be on a shared network, work from the same catalogue, have some means of delivering goods, and be able to settle up after the transaction.
THE WHISTLE STOP TOUR
So far, we have described e-Business in broad terms as a mass market capability that is enabled by a combination of the Internet's global reach and the vast resources of traditional Information Technology. Given this, it should come as no surprise[2]that it is a multi faceted beast or, potentially, a many headed monster. Many of those facets are technical, but others are not.
To get a grasp on the overall scope and nature of the e-Business proposition, this section looks at the constituent parts of trading over a network. There is a lot more detail on each of these areas later on. For now, though, we have the surfer's guide.
The Marketplace
Before we think about business, we should first think about the market where that business is conducted. So, what is an electronic market？ It can be viewed as direct parallel of the familiar shop, store or emporium. It is, in essence, a virtual trading area where deals are struck over a network. The "shop front" is the computer and the server is the warehouse. In fact, there is an electronic analogue of virtually all of the items you'd find in a conventional market—including bogus traders, inferior goods and dubious bargains.
The size and scope of the marketplace is, however, a little different from the familiar high street model. In e-Business, unlike many other areas of high technology, size really does not matter. It is quite possible to conduct a large volume of business over a wide area with little overhead. The "information smallholder" can compete on an equal footing with the multinational corporation. In fact, it is often not that easy to distinguish between the two. People who have encountered Amazon. com on the Internet probably have no idea how it compares in size with, say, W. H. Smith, who have bookshops in most large towns in the UK, or Blackwells, who position themselves as global suppliers of academic books[3].
To be an effective player—as well as the basic technology to enter the market you need a brand, some content, service support and a means of fulfilment (i. e. delivering the goods). This does not imply that all have be owned. An e-Business that looks like a cogent entity to the consumer may in reality be a host of co operating suppliers. One supplier might provide the online content and another the application hosting. The delivery vans might be contracted from the Post Office or Federal Express, and they might deliver a set of products branded by someone completely different. In this respect, the electronic market is a more complex beast than the traditional one of manufacturer, retailer and wholesaler.
Furthermore, the nature of e-Business lends itself to more than one trading model. For instance, the age old idea of a marketplace owned by oneorganisation, populated by authorised traders is quite tenable. This model can be extended to add the idea of having "guilds" that control standards within their particular area.
There are many other trading models, such as conventional auction and then there is barter—e-Business draws on a lot of history! All have their merits and are suitable to a certain type of trading. Most online trading models have a physical dual, some don't.
Whatever the market looks like, it can often becategorised by the dominant party. In seller driven markets, it is the large, dominant vender who sets the price, not really for negotiation; in a buyer driven markets there are many people selling into the market, and a small number of dominant buyers who take best bids, for example, UK supermarkets are often accused of having undue influence—downwards—on the price of agricultural produce. It iS these dynamics that determine the appropriate technology for e-Business. There are also open markets in which the buyer and seller negotiate, or a free market, where the behaviour of the market itself sets prices. Insurance brokering is an example of this, as are the optimization packages used for pricing and selling airline seat capacity.
e-Shops
The electronic shop can be thought of as the "look and feel[4]" of the screen that fronts the customer. Just as with high street stores, the aim is to entice the customer to browse and ultimately, to buy.
Although unlikely to supplant real world shops, the online variety can provide features that seem likely to promote their growth. As well as being readily available and easy to search, they can provide some measure of masscustomisation. For instance, the made to measure shirtmaker, Charles Tyrwhitt has an online shop that can apply a buyer's previously entered measurements and preferences as it mails each order from the Jermyn Street shop. Every customer is thus treated as an individual, but there is capacity to cater for a mass market.
The fundamental prerequisite for presenting products and services online in the e- Business world is the catalogue. These are central, and are the electronic equivalent of a shop's shelves, goods, special offers and departments. The catalogue is the onlinerepresentation of what is "for sale" (or more correctly, what is available for trading).
It is important to appreciate that there are different scales of catalogue. They range from a set of web pages and a simple script that allows orders to be taken through mid range catalogue products that arecharacterised by a pre-defined structure of product categories and sub categories, up to large scale corporate catalogues that are customisable. In this last case, there is usually back end integration with inventory, stock control and ordering systems.
Another important point about catalogues is that they are different for buyers and for sellers. The former is a virtual directory that allows the buyer to look at and judge a range of competing products from a number of different suppliers. The latter is a structured set of information that represents what a particular supplier has to sell. The technology used to represent these different types of catalogue has to match, that is, it either has to beoptimised for one seller and multiple buyers, or vice versa. More on this later.
One further differentiation in catalogues that should be made is that of business to business as opposed to business to consumer. The consumer oriented catalogues tend to be stronger on presentation, as they usually have to sell on the basis of eye appeal. The business catalogues are more focused on quick access to another business' needs, and these tend to be high volume and fairly routine. For instance, many supermarkets issue stock replenishment orders from their automated stock control systems they buya lot of carrots on a regular basis!
In short, the distinction between consumer and business oriented catalogues is akin to food mart against delicatessen.
Payment
So to the core of any business (and e-Business is no exception )—profit. Trade, commerce and business only exist to satisfy the needs and desires of the participants. This means one party getting something they want in exchange for something the other party wants; and usually it is money that fuels the desire to trade.
By its very nature, e-Business needs to emulate in some way the customary direct exchange of cash for goods. Attitudes to the use of different payment mechanisms are changing and vary when considering Europe, the US, Asia Pacific or the whole world. A priority in establishing an e-Business is to put in place an acceptable mechanism for payment. There are many technical options, and to choose appropriately, factors such as scale and acceptability all need to be carefully examined.
By way of illustration, there are various scales of payment to be considered: items such as books are regularly purchased electronically, and it is common for a single customer to buy a single book and pay with a single credit card transaction (probably in the ＄10 range). However, the cost of processing credit card transactions is quite high, and may not be economical for the purchase of small value items such as consumer reports or individual music tracks, which would typically be in the ＄110 range. Technologies exist for handling these small value payments (known as "micropayments"), and lumping them together into single credit card transactions. The range below ＄1 is often referred to as the area of "nanopayments". Such payments may represent, for example, the price of viewing an individual Internet page of information.
Not only are different technologies required to aggregate these various categories of small scale payments, but also the e-Business will need to put in place different strategies for such things as handling account queries and dealing with bad debts. For instance, a sensible way of dealing with lost nanopayments would be to write off the debts and blacklist the offenders—the cost of recovering the debt would be too high.
Settlement
It is all very well taking: a "virtual" payment for goods or services offered over the Internet but, at some point, this must be converted into dollar bills, Euros, or some other tangible form of money. Hence, we need a gateway between the virtual world and the real world—a payments gateway. This can be effected with automated connection to Merchant acquirers[5], direct debits, or other systems.
Of course, traditional settlements are not mandatory. In the past, people have used all kinds of different objects to represent money: leaves, sticks, beads and even bits of metal or pieces of printed paper! In the electronic world there are additional possibilities, such as token based systems, where you first buy a number of tokens, in your chosen currency, and are then free to spend them on goods which are priced in tokens. An example of this is web "beanz" which are rather like on line loyalty card points. Electronic wallets and smart cards provide another alternative. Some of these types of electronic cash are fully portable, whereas others retain your wallet on your PC or on a server.
Presentation
As with catalogues, the way in which online products and services are presented depends upon the market. For the electronic shop, the art of window dressing is not really one that has transferred online as yet. Already the ease of use of online systems is coming under the scrutiny of consumer watchdogs such as Which？ Magazine, who report a significant impact of true presentation quality.
When there are many suppliers, the look and feel of the shop will make a big difference, as will the ease of use. In much the same vein, business to business transactions will need to be reliable and easy to use, in their own way.
The design of online information is very much in its infancy, but there are some basic guidelines for getting the right presence and operation for the job in hand. Navigational dead ends, inconsistent and out of date information, lack of an overall information map, frustrating and non intuitive structures and poor search/browse capabilities all put customers off. The electronic window dresser is one of a number of new skills being driven by e-Business.
One of the interesting twists to presenting what you have to offer online is that it is possible to find out exactly what each customer has looked at, what they purchased and when. This would consume a huge amount of time and video to do in a conventionalshop, but consists of little more than analysing system logs for an e-Business. Information about individual customers, their browsing and buying patterns, is an important piece of feedback on how to go about presenting your goods.
Security
In the "real" world you go into a shop to make somejudgement from its location, size, type of premises, how long it has been there, and so on, and you hand over cash in return for goods which you carry away. The risks are very small, and even if things do go wrong, you can usually exchange the faulty goods. You know where to go back to and who to talk to. If you don't get satisfaction you can even, as a last resort, make a scene, standing in the middle of a busy store, telling an assistant, as loudly as you are able, how badly you have been treated, can elicit rapid solutions to your problems.
When trading over the Internet, things are not so simple, the dream of the virtual trader can suddenly become a nightmare. For example, how do consumers know that the company they are dealing with is reputable, and is what it purports to be？ Conversely, how does the trader know that the consumer is not using stolen credit card details？
Furthermore, how do both parties ensure that their transaction takes place privately without someone else snooping on it or, even worse, tinkering with the transaction details while they are in transit across the network？ And when things go wrong as they inevitably do, what sorts of mechanism are there to ensure that both parties fulfill their obligations？
Secret codes have long been used to ensure the privacy of, information that must be sent byuntrusted carriers or public networks, in 1660, it was said that such codes were certainly for use by English aristocrats communicating with the exiled King Charles. In e- Business, the principle is the same, although the codes need to be a lot stronger because the potential eavesdroppers are sophisticated, and are assumed to have access to powerful computers and software.
There are many ways of establishing a secure communications link. Basically, for two people to be able to communicate using a code, they must "share a secret", and this secret must be denied to everyone else. The problem is how a trader and a consumer whowill probably never meet agree on a secret code that cannot be guessed by anyone else. The answer is to use a type of coding which employs a so called "asymmetric code". This is one in which the message is encoded using one key and decoded using a different key. In this instance, getting a copy of the encoding key, the so called "public" key, does not allow you to decode the message for that you need the other, "private", key.
Even if a link is secure, you need to know that it is the one you wanted. So, when you access an Internet site that calls itself First National Bank, you want to be sure that it is truly what it purports to be before you engage in a financial transaction with it. The way this is done is to have the site certified by a "trusted third party", who checks the authenticity of the site and provides certified copies of that site's "public key" for communicating securely. There are a number of types of certificates that are issued by such trusted third parties, each with its own level of trustworthiness and area of application.
Finally, what happens if something goes wrong？ There has to be some means of checking who promised what to whom, and when. The concept of non repudiation proving that a deal was struck is one that needs to be transferred into the world of e-Business. Thisis where verifiable records, and digital signatures fit.
A successful e-Business should consider and have viable policies, approaches and, solutions to all of the above issues. In addition, there is the small but important practicality that a certain amount of infrastructure has to be established before you can actually begin to trade online. The established mechanism for inter company transactions is known as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI[6]). There are established standards, and an established body of know how in how to link to the fulfillment, inventory and other back end systems that make it possible to automate the end to end e-Business process, from ordering through to delivery. The "behind the scenes[7]" aspects are an important part of the overall picture, and will be explained fully as we unfold our story.
Notes
[1] daisy chain: 串级链。
[2] Given this, it should come as no surprise: 假如情况是这样，…也不会令人吃惊。
[3] W. H. Smith, who have bookshops in most large towns in the UK, or Blackwells, who position themselves as global suppliers of academic books. W. H. Smith是英国的书店名。Blackwells是全球最大的学术书供应商。
[4] look and feel: 品质，观感。
[5] Merchant acquirers: (在线)收单会员，验证机构。
[6] Electronic Data Interchange(EDI): 电子数据交换(机)。
[7] behind the scenes: 在后台，在幕后。
Choose the best answer for each of the following:
Do you want to improve your skills and boost your job prospects？
Would you like to give an edge to your university application？
Would you like to study where and when you want - even just using a laptop？
Would you like to set your own timetable？
Then a Direct course is the one for you! Direct offers online courses in many areas including computing, business and finance. No previous computer experience is required.
Learning with Direct
Direct is not a lonely experience - it's learning in a virtual classroom.
* You will be given an online tutor and have online tutorials. These will be completely confidential. You log on with a secure password.
* You can chat with other students on your course in informal chat rooms.
* You can join online discussion forums and seminar groups at pre-arranged times.
Join the e-learning revolution!
Courses available
Business (Marketing, Management, Customer care, Selling)
Finance and Accounting
Computing
- Word processing
- Spreadsheets
- Presentation preparation
- Web design
By the end of each course you will have earned a Direct Certificate and you will have gained three credits towards your diploma.
Plans for expansion
By the end of next year we will have set up a full range of desktop computers right here in the Centre, so that even if you do not have one at home, you can still learn with Direct.
To register simply come to the Direct Centre when we’re open.
Direct Centre opening times
Monday - Friday 2 p.m. – 8 p.m.
Saturday – 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Or
telephone us on: 020 5667 824
e-mail us on: DIRECT@mamo.co.uk
1.The passage is written for the purpose of ______.
A.informing the reader of Direct Courses
B.introducing how to apply for Direct Courses
C.arguing for Direct Courses
2.Which of the following is NOT true about the Direct？ ()
A.It offers a great variety of courses.
B.It’s an e-learning experience.
C.It requires you to be skilled in computer.
3.Bases on the passage, we can infer that if we learn with Direct, we can______.
A.meet the tutors on line
B.have no contact with other students
C. join the discussion forums and seminar groups anytime
D. study English well
4.We can infer from the passage that if we want to learn with Direct, ____.
A.we must buy a laptop
B.we needn’t have our own computers
C.we need several computers at home
5.According to the passage, if we want to register for Direct, we’d better _____.
A.make an appointment beforehand
B.go simply to the Direct centre every morning
C.go simply to the Direct centre during their opening hours
Part 2 Paragraph Organization and Development [40 points]
Questions 6-8 are based on the following task. (15 points)
Read the following paragraphs. Choose the best answer to each question. Write your answer A,B or C on the Answer Sheet.
A new generation of communications technologies is upon us. They have changed workplace communication, providing many options for sending a message. (6)_______.
Email is so pervasive in organizations that it has become the default choice for communication. People still call each other at work, but sending an email to someone in the next cubicle is common. It's no surprise that most people believe email is used too often instead of face-to-face communication.
(7)_______.For short messages and quick questions, these channels are ideal, Of course, with smart phones, email may give you an instant response as well, but this varies by organizations and people. As you probably know, the real value of IMing is“presence awareness”-you know someone is available to respond immediately. Although some people consider IM an annoying interruption at work, people who use JM are at the office report fewer disruptions and believe that TM saves time and provides timely, relevant information. One analyst predicts that in the next few years, a vast majority of the employees will use TM as their primary communications tool.
Perhaps the more interesting technologies for communication are social media. Web 2.0, which encourages online interaction, has opened the door for people to participate on the web. This is quite different from the one-way communication of the early Internet, when companies would post brochure-like website for people to consume.
The real value of social media for companies is the opportunity to connect with people online.(8)________.To promote interaction, companies use Web 2.0 technologies, for example, blogs, wikis, video, and social networking sites. These tools are used on the Internet, on a company,5 intranet and on extranets. The Fortune Global 100 companies are using social media actively. Seventy-nine percent are using at least one of four main social platforms-Twitter, videos, Facebook and blogs to communicate with customers. Of these tools, Twitter is the most frequently used and has proved useful for companies.
6. Choose the thesis statement ().
A. Depending on the type of messages, you may choose from a variety of communications technologies.
B. As business tools, mobile technologies are useful for reporting news and connecting with customers.
C. Technology is blurring many forms of communication-oral and written, face-to-face and online.
7. Choose the topic sentence for the paragraph ().
A. Texting has been considered too informal for communicating at work.
B. Instant messaging may be considered rude in front of other people.
C. Instant messaging (IM) and texting are becoming increasingly popular at work.
8. Choose the bridge sentence ().
A. Social networking sites are for people who share common interests.
B. Multi-communication is said to be an effective way.
C. Social media is about the conversation.
Computer Office System
计算机办公系统
Computer office systems are computers and their peripheral equipment is used to create, store, process, or communicate information in a business environment. This information can be electronically produced, duplicated, and transmitted.
The rapid growth of the service sector of the United States economy beginning in the mid 1970s has furnished a new market for sophisticated office automation. With the increasing incorporation of microchips and microcircuitry into office equipment[1], the line between the computer and other equipment has blurred.
At the same time, computers either stand alone or as part of a network and specialized software programs are taking over tasks such as facsimile transmission-or FAX, voice mail, and telecommunications that were once performed by separate pieces o.f equipment. In fact, the computer has virtually taken the place of typewriters, calculators, and manual accounting techniques and is rapidly taking over graphics design, production scheduling, and engineering design as well.
During the first half of the 20th century, financial and other numerical record keeping tasks were performed manually or by bookkeeping machines, billing machines, tabulating equipment, and other types of electromechanical accounting devices. In the 1950s, such machines were increasingly replaced by mainframe computers-large, very expensive, high speed machines that required trained operators as well as a special temperature regulated facility to prevent overheating. Use of these machines today is limited to large organizations with heavy volume data processing requirements. Time sharing, allowing more than one company to use the same mainframe for a fee, was instituted to divide the cost of the equipment among several users while ensuring that the equipment is utilized to the maximum extent.
Mainframes with remote terminals, each with its own monitor, became available in the mid 1970s and allowed for simultaneous input by many users. With the advent of the minicomputer, however, a far less expensive alternative became available. The transistor and microelectronics made manufacture of these smaller, less complex machines practicable. Minicomputers, the first of which entered general business use in the early 1960s, are now widespread in commerce and government. Terminals linked to the central processing unit (CPU) are under the direct control of the individual user rather than centralized staff. In recent years, however, it is the microcomputer, or personal computer (PC), that has come to play the principal role in most office workplaces.
Desktop PCs have become increasingly affordable as a result of industry wide adoption of the architecture of the PC introduced in 1981. Although it has become feasible to provide virtually every office worker with a PC, it is more cost effective for PC users to share files and common peripherals such as printers, facsimile boards, modems, and scanners. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, many companies began programs of linking or networking multiple PCs into a unified system.
The local area network (LAN) was created in response to the need for a standardized system of linking computers together in a company. The most common method used to connect computers to a network is by means of coaxial cables. Newer generation networks use fiber optical connections. When computers are not in close physical proximity, networks may use microwave radio or infrared radiation to link the computers. Microwave radio requires a dish antenna for transmission and reception; infrared radiation requires a lens for transmission and a mirror and lens for reception. Other methods used for wide area networking include telephone and communications satellite linkage.
The need for computer connectivity has established the usefulness of the peripheral device known as the modem. Modems permit two computers to communicate by telephone in order to access databases, transmit files, upload and download facsimile transmissions, and send and receive electronic mail. Early transmission speeds using this equipment were relatively slow—300 baud[2]. Some modems now operate at speeds of more than 50,000 baud and have error checking and data compression features.
Text materials in typed or printed form can be input directly into a computer by means of a scanner. To read text, optical character recognition (OCR) software must first be used to convert printed documents electronically into computer readable files. Scanners obviate the need to rekey printed text in order to input it; they can also be used to input graphic material.
Computer Printers
A considerable volume of office computer output is via the printer. Among the earliest printers used with PCs in business offices were daisy wheel and thimble printers, so called because of the shape of their printing elements[3]. Although their type quality was comparable to that of a typewriter, they were slow and could accommodate only text, not graphic materials. As a result, they have been supplanted in most offices by dot-matrix, ink jet, and laser printers.[4]The dot matrix printer may have a 9 or 24 pin print head. The pins impact the paper through a ribbon, creating patterns of dots in the shape of letters and numbers in multiple fonts and type sizes. The ink jet printer, an advance over the dot matrix, provides both high resolution (the higher the resolution, the better the print quality) and quiet operation. The laser printer represents an even greater advance. Similar in technology to a photocopier[5], it offers speed, high resolution of 300 dots or more per inch, ability to reproduce complex graphics, and silent operation—all of which make it virtually essential for desktop publishing.
Electronic Mail (E-mail)
E-mail has become a key part of the communication networks of most modern offices. Data and messages can be transmitted from one computer to another using telephone lines, microwave links, communications satellites, or other telecommunications equipment. The same message can be sent to a number of different addresses. E-mail is sent through a company's own LAN or beyond, through a nationwide or worldwide communications network. E-mail services use a central computer to store messages and data and to route them to their intended destination. With a subscription to a public E-mail network, an individual PC user needs only a modem and a telephone to send and receive written or vocal messages. Because of the huge amount of E-mail that can be generated, systems have been developed to screen mail[6]for individual users.
Voice Mail
A specialized type of E-mail system, voice mail, is a relatively simple, computer linked technology for recording, storing, retrieving, and forwarding phone messages. It is called voice mail, or voice messaging, because the messages are spoken and left in a voice mailbox. The telephone doubles as a computer terminal, but instead of presenting the information on a computer screen, the system reads it over the phone line, using prerecorded voice vocabulary. The systems are based on special purpose computer chips and software that convert human speech into bits of digital code. These digitized voices are stored on magnetic disks, from which they can be instantaneously retrieved. Callers are offered a menu of choices, and the messages they select are played; they can leave messages in voice mailboxes, or they can access huge computer databases.
Desktop Publishing
Desktop Publishing is the use of a computer and specialized software to combine text and graphics to create a document that can be printed on either a laser printer or a typesetting machine. Desktop publishing is a multiple step process involving various types of software and equipment. The original text and illustrations are generally produced with software such as word processors and drawing and painting programs and with photograph scanning equipment and digitizers. The finished product is then transferred to a page makeup program, which is the software most people think of as the actual desktoppublishing software. This type of program enables the user to lay out text and graphics on the screen and see what the results will be: for refining parts of the document, these programs often include word processing and graphics features in addition to layout capabilities. As a final step, the finished document is printed either on a laser printer or, for the best quality, by typesetting equipment.
Notes
[1] With the increasing incorporation of microchips and microcircuitry into office equipment: incorporation of sth. into sth. else = to incorporate sth. into sth. else, 意为“将……结合进……”。本句可译为：随着微型芯片和微型电路越来越多地进入办公设备，计算机与其他设备之间的界线已不那么分明了。
[2] baud：波特(通信中的符号传输速率单位，每秒传输一个符号称为1波特)。
[3] Among the earliest printers used with PCs in business offices were daisy wheel and thimble printers, so called because of the shape of their printing elements．本句为倒装句，原句应为：Daisy wheel and thimble printers were among the earliest printers used with PCs in business offices... "so called" 为形容词，引出状语，表示伴随情况，对主语进一步说明。
[4] dot-matrix, ink jet, and laser printers：点阵，喷墨，激光打印机。
[5] Similar in technology to a photocopier，...: similar to...: 与……类似或相似；类似于……。此处由形容词短语做状语，表示原因。
[6] to screen mail：筛选或过滤邮件。
Choose the best answer for each of the following:
A.by using auxiliary words
B.by using different word order
C.by using different verb forms
D.by using time adverbs
