大学英语 A4.docVIP

大学英语 A4 一、阅读理解 1、 Theres a great story about an old Finnish woman who, without quite realizing it, was using her cell-phone to access the Internet and track her citys public transit system. When asked why she used the wireless Internet so frequently, she replied, What are you talking about? I dont know anything about this wireless Internet stuff. I just know the bus is here. Regardless of whether you want to admit it, a lot of us are like that old Finnish woman. When it comes to new mobile applications, many of us do not realize the capability and power that we hold, literally, in our hands. What we are looking at today is the mobile Internet in its infancy. Now that using the Internet from home or work has saturated much of society, the next logical step is to be able to use the Net when you are far away from your desktop or laptop. Speech recognition is one way to do this, and there are a number of services, collectively called the voice Web, that will make this possible. All you do is to use a phone or wireless device to call a phone number, and speak commands to an intuitive system. It will then give you the information youre seeking, using either a synthesized voice or an audio file. In the United States and Europe, the hot technology for wireless devices is called WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), which is being considered as the world standard. WAP is supported by major phone companies including Nokia, Motorola and Ericsson, and is simply a means of transmitting information, much like HTML which is a means of communicating on the Internet. Currently, wireless Internet connections may give you news, sports scores, stock quotes, and the weather if youre lucky. But if youve ever used this technology, you know its slow, costly and doesnt seem worth the time and effort, if it works at all. All of this technology points to easier living. Perhaps youll need to find a restaurant for an occasional business meeting.