The miracle silicon chip represents a development in the technology of mankind that over the past few years has acquired the force and significance associated with the development of hand tools or the discovery of the steam engine. Just as the Industrial Revolution took over an immense range of tasks from men's muscles and enormously expanded productivity, so the microcomputer is rapidly assuming huge burdens of tedious work from the human brain and thereby expanding the mind's capacities in ways that man has only begun to grasp. With the chip, remarkable achievements of memory and execution become possible in everything from farms to banks to corporate offices.

A . Chipkill B . Hot Spare Memory C . Memory Mirroring D . Memory ProteXio

A . London/South Wales B . the Oxford/the Cambridge C . London/the Cambridge D . Glasgow/Edinburgh

The valley's business ecology depends on failure the same way the tree-covered hills around us depend on fire it wipes out the old growth and creates space for new life. The valley has always been in danger of drowning in the unwelcome waste products of success too many people, too expensive houses, too much traffic, too little office space and too much money chasing too few startups. Failure is the safety valve, the destructive renewing force that frees up people, ideas and capital and recombines them, creating new revolutions. Consider how the Internet revolution came to be. After half a decade of start-up struggles, for example, hundreds of millions of Hollywood dollars were going up in smoke. It all seemed like a terrible waste, but no one noticed that the collapse left one very important byproduct, a community of laid-off C++ programmers who were now expert in multimedia design, and out on the street looking for the next big thing. These media geeks were the pioneer of the dot-com revolution. They were the Web's business pioneers, applying their newfound media sensibilities to create one little company after another. Most of these start-ups failed, but even in failure they advanced the new medium of cyberspace. A few geeks, like Silicon Graphics founder Jim Clark, succeeded and utterly changed our lives. In 1994 Clark was unemployed after leaving the company be founded, doggedly trying to develop a new interactive-TV concept. He approached Marc Andreessen, the co developer of Mosaic, the first widely used Internet browser, in hope of persuading Andreessen to help him design his new system. Instead, Andreessen opened Clark's eyes to the Web's potential. Clark promptly tossed his TV plans in the trash, and the two co-founded Netscape, the cornerstone of the consumer-Web revolution. Like the interactive-TV refugees and generations of innovators before them, the dot-comers are already hatching new companies. Many are revisiting good ideas executed badly in the 1990s, while others are striking out into entirely new spaces. This happy chaos is certain to mature into a new order likely to upset an establishment, as it delivers life-changing wonders to the rest of us. But this is just the start, for revolutions give birth to revolutions. So let's hope for more of Silicon Valley's successful failures. What is implied in the first sentence？ A．The Silicon Valley blamed its failure on the success of Wall Street. B．The Silicon Valley is also noted for its complex ecological web. C．The Silicon Valley takes a vain pride in its overabundant successes. D．The Silicon Valley would benefit from the collapse in certain ways.

Doctors aren't clamoring to chat with patients online for free; they spend enough unpaid time on the phone. Only 1 in 5 has ever E-mailed a patient, and just 9 percent are interested in doing so, according to the research firm Cyber Dialogue. "We are not stupid," says Stifling Somers, executive director of the Silicon Valley employers group. "Doctors getting paid is a critical piece in getting this to work." In the pilot program, physicians will get $ 20 per online consultation, about what they get for a simple office visit. Doctors also fear they'll be swamped by rambling E-mails that tell everything but what's needed to make a diagnosis. So the new program will use technology supplied by Healinx, an Alameda, Calif-based start-up. Healinx' s "Smart Symptom Wizard" questions patients and. turns answers into a succinct message. The company has online dialogues for 60 common conditions. The doctor can then diagnose the problem and outline a treatment plan, which could include E-mailing a prescription or a face-to-face visit. Can E-mail replace the doctor's office？ Many conditions, such as persistent cough, require stethoscope to discover what's wrong and to avoid a malpractice suit. Even Larry Bonham, head of one of the doctor's groups in the pilot, believes the virtual doctor's visits offer a "very narrow" sliver of service between phone calls to an advice nurse and a visit to the clinic. The pilot program, set to end in nine months, also hopes to determine whether online visits will boost worker productivity enough to offset the cost of the service. So far, the Internet's record in the health field has been underwhelming. The experiment is "a huge roll of the dice for Healing", notes Michael Barrett, an analyst at Internet consulting firm Forester Research. If the "Web visits" succeed, expect some HMOs (Health Maintenance Organizations) to pay for online visits. If doctors, employers, and patients aren't satisfied, figure on one more E-health start-up to stand down. The Silicon Valley employers promote the E-health program for the purpose of ______. A．rewarding their employees B．gratifying the local hospitals C．boosting worker productivity D．testing a Sophisticated technology

A．Y B．N C．NG

A．advances in new technologies will lead to great changes of society B．the single invention, the chip, will lead to great changes in society C．the future picture of the world can only be imagined by looking back D．the use of personal computer and factory robots will be widespread

A．A. catalogued B．B. underwent C．C. inherited D．D. furnished

A．Nothing B．Anything C．Something D．Everything