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考研英语阅读理解有一部分是截取自报刊文章,因此考生在复习备考的过程中要注意提高报刊文章的阅读能力,把握时事阅读。下面新东方在线小编分享历年真题同源的30篇报刊文章,附有注释和解析,希望考生认真阅读,提高对此类文章的阅读能力和增加相关词汇量。
考研英语阅读真题同源报刊文章30篇(29)
Doughnut adjust your set
HAVE you ever seen anything on television that made you shout or shake your
fist in anger at the screen? Televisions are, of course, unable to respond to
such reactions. But that could be about to change. Controlling your television
and other homeentertainment devices using voice commands or gestures is
starting to become possible thanks to a new generation of controllers.
Consider, for example, the controller that went on sale last month with
Nintendo’s Wii games console. In place of the usual (sometimes baffling)
combination of buttons and joysticks, the Wii has a motionsensitive controller.
The console can determine how the controller is moving in space and what it is
pointing at, and uses that information to control what is happening on screen.
Depending on the game, the controller becomes a warrior’s sword or a golf
club.
For some games, the controller connects up via a cable to a second, smaller
handset called the "Nunchuk" after the weapon favoured by Bruce Lee in his
martialarts movies (two batons linked by a chain). It is then possible to use
one controller for movement, and the other to fire weapons or use items. The
number of buttons on both controllers has been reduced to a minimum, as Nintendo
hopes to draw in new customers who find existing games consoles too complicated.
But whether the Wii will introduce a generation of grandmothers to the joys of
karate games remains to be seen.
This living room overload is likely to get worse as telecoms operators
launch a new generation of television over broadband services, using a
technology called IPTV. This will make possible thousands of channels,
downloadable programs and films, plus messaging, internet access and games. It
will also involve the biggest and most complicated controllers ever seen. "The
experience isn’t as good as it could be," says Michael Cai of Parks Associates,
a consultancy. So some companies believe a new approach is needed.
Other companies have looked at using speechbased controllers in the living
room. One firm, Promptu, developed a voice control system for American cable
operators and tested it in conjunction with Motorola, which makes set top boxes.
But it has now decided to reposition the technology as a voicebased navigation
system for mobile phones. A simpler approach is taken by the In Voca
voiceactivated remote control. It is a universal remote control that can
recognise 50 separate commands spoken by up to four separate users, from "lower
volume" to "Cartoon Network".
A recent entry to the field is Apple Computer, a firm renowned for
designing elegant, easytouse products. In 2007 it will launch a new device,
called the iTV, that acts as a bridge between a television and a computer. It
has a deliberately simple remote control that, like Apple’s iconic iPod
musicplayer, involves just one button and one wheel. Steve Jobs, the company’s
boss, boasts that it is "very Apple". Might his company be the one to solve the
remotecontrol confusion?
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