Answer the questions on the text

1. When was the chair “Organization and Provision of Information protection” organized?

2. What was the reason for its foundation?

3. Information protection is the purview only of the government, isn’t it?

4. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the advances in technology?

5. Why is personal privacy of vital importance?

6. What economic backgrounds does information s protection give?

7. What subjects are the students taught?

8. What hat knowledge and skills does the curriculum provide?

9. What types of professional activity will the future graduates be able to perform?

10. What can you say about the teaching staff?

11. Why have you chosen this profession?

 

You may use the following words and word-combinations:

to influence a person in choosing a profession

be interested in

to follow smb’s advice

be good at something/ doing something.

 

Pretend one of you (Student A) is a school - graduate who cannot decide what he is going to be, but he is interested in computers and programming and another one (Student B) is a BSTU student. His speciality is Provision and Organization of Information protection. The student is trying to convince the school - graduate that his future job is very interesting and necessary.

Student A asks him for details about the institute, curriculum, training staff, etc.

Speak on the topic “Our Speciality is Organization and Provision of Information protection”.

Part II

Прочитайте и переведите текст. На основе данного материала составьте 1) рассказ о роли компьютеров в современной жизни; 2) диалоги на темы: «Ваш друг (подруга) делится с вами опытом работы с компьютером»; «Покупка компьютера».

The fundamentals: hardware and software

A computer consists of a screen, a keyboard and a boxlike case with the “brains” of the system. For most tasks you'll also need a printer and, perhaps, a pointing device called a mouse. This equipment is called hardware.

By itself, the hardware is like a cassette player without tapes. A computer needs programs, or software, which usually includes one or more computer disks and a printed instruction manual.

The price depends mainly on the hardware’s brain power — the type of processor and the size of its memory. How much power do you need? That depends on the software you'll use. In general, words and numbers demand less from a computer than pictures and sound.

Sufficient power is important because a computer works interactively. With hardware that isn’t up to the job, you might have to wait 30 seconds for an on-screen thesaurus to look up a word. But with the right system the entry would appear instantly.

 

point – указывать

device – устройство, прибор

brain – мозг

size – размер

sufficient – достаточный

be up to – быть пригодным, подходящим

thesaurus – тематический словарь, энциклопедия, справочник

look up – искать

entry – запись

 

Answer the questions.

1. What components does computer consist of?

2. The computer needs tapes, doesn’t it?

3. What is usually included in the software?

4. What does the price mainly depend on?

5. Why is sufficient power important?

 

Read the text and answer the question: What one should do before buying a computer?

 

Preliminary decisions

Before you shop, it's wise to gain familiarity with computers and software. Ask a friend to demonstrate the programs he (she) uses; check out the computers at local stores. Then consider these questions: What do you plan to do with it? If your family is like most, you probably expect to do word processing and financial record-keeping. If you have kids, add educational activities and games to the list. Even models under $1,000 can perform those basic tasks. But software features involving complex pictures or sound may demand a setup that costs $1,500 or more.

Perhaps you’d like to try an online service, like Prodigy, CompuServe or America Online. They offer electronic mail (E-mail), games, shopping, news, encyclopedias and electronic editions of magazines. Extra power isn’t necessary to go on-line, but you’ll need a modem that connects your computer to others via telephone wires. Expect to pay $50 to $350 for the modem and software; online services cost about $35 to join, plus $5 to $15 per month for basic use.

The hot news in computers is multimedia software that's capable of blending text, moving pictures and sound. With a multimedia encyclopedia you don't just read about lions, you see them bounding through the jungle and hear them roar. If you want multimedia capability, you’ll need a CD-ROM (Compact disk – Read Only Memory) drive, plus additional equipment for sound and extra power and memory. A computer equipped for multimedia software costs $1,500 to $3,000 and up.

Can you get a basic computer and add multimedia capability later? In theory, yes. But it’s often difficult to blend older components with new ones. Also, high costs for labor and parts often make it cheaper to buy a new computer than to upgrade an old one.

 

gain familiarity with – познакомиться с…

store = “shop”

kids = “children”.

feature – черта, особенность

involve – вовлекать

True, false or don’t know.

1. Modern online service offers E-mail, games, news, encyclopedias, etc.

2. To go on line only a telephone and a computer are required.

3. It’s reasonable not to buy a computer with a built-in modem.

4. The novelty in computers is multimedia software.

5. A computer equipped for multimedia service is inexpensive.

 

Macintosh or IBM-compatible?

Macintoshes and IBM-compatibles dominate the computer world. Conventional wisdom has been that IBM-compatibles (made by Radio Shack, Compaq, Packard-Bell and others, as well as by IBM) offer the best value, while the Mac (made only by Apple) is more friendly. The gap has narrowed – Apple has slashed prices and better software has made IBM-compatibles easier to use.

Macs are simple to use and all the software works the same way. Once you learn how to print with one program, you know how to print with any other Mac program. IBM-compatibles have a system called Windows, which also uses icons and a mouse, but it doesn't function as seamlessly.

If you’re looking for options, however, IBM and its clones have a clear advantage: nearly all business computers (except those for graphic design and music) and more than 75 percent of home computers are IBM-compatibles. Consequently, much more software is produced for IBM-compatibles.

 

Desktop or laptop?

A desktop computer occupies two or three times the space of a typewriter and its at least twice as heavy. Laptops compress a keyboard, screen and processor into a package the size and weight of a big-city telephone directory. This can be valuable if you have a small workspace or need to move your computer frequently. But laptop screens are not as easy to read and the keyboard is limited. Finally, portability comes at a price: laptops cost from 15 to 75 percent more than equivalent desktops. And if your child drops a laptop, repairing it could be almost as costly as buying a new one.

 

Savy shopping

Computers are sold by discount stores, by specialty chains, and by individual computer stores. Mail-order prices tend to be lowest, but shopping locally allows you to ask questions and compare systems.

 

Try before yon buy

See that the monitor is easy to read and doesn’t flicker. Assess the feel and layout of the keyboard. Make sure the components don't emit annoying hum.

 

Look at computers in all price ranges

If you’re not familiar with the wonders they can perform, you may be impressed by a sluggish one.

 

Check the bottom line

The sticker price doesn’t always include a monitor, keyboard or other essentials.

 

Don’t hesitate to bargain

Request a discount on a printer or modem, or ask for extras like a free mouse or software package.

 

Ask about the warranty

Not only the length, but whether service is provided on-site. Otherwise you may have to take the computer to a repair facility. Also inquire about free classes, telephone support and other services

Set up the computer promptly after you buy and try the software. You want to discover any problems before the warranty runs out.

 

 

PART III

ADDITIONAL TEXTS

 

COMPUTER VIRUSES

A bit of history

2 November 1988 Robert Morris younger (Robert Morris), graduate student of informatics faculty of Cornwall University (USA) infected a great amount of computers, connected to Internet network. This network unites machines of university centres, private companies and governmental agents, including National Aeronautics Space Administration, as well as some military scientific centres and labs.

Network worm has struck 6200 machines that formed 7,3% computers to network, and has shown, that UNIX not okay too. Amongst damaged were NASA, LosAlamos National Lab, exploratory centre VMS USA, California Technology Institute, and Wisconsin University (200 from 300 systems). Spread on networks ApraNet, MilNet, Science Internet, NSF Net it practically has removed these network from building. According to "Wall Street Journal", virus has infiltrated networks in Europe and Australia, where there were also registered events of blocking the computers.

Here are some recalls of the event participants:

Symptom: hundreds or thousands of jobs start running on a Unix system bringing response to zero.

Systems attacked: Unix systems, 4.3BSD Unix & variants (e.g.: SUNs) any sendmail compiled with debug has this problem. This virus is spreading very quickly over the Milnet. Within the past 4 hours, it has hit > 10 sites across the country, both Arpanet and Milnet sites. Well over 50 sites have been hit. Most of these are "major" sites and gateways.

Method: Someone has written a program that uses a hole in SMTP Sendmail utility. This utility can send a message into another program.

Apparently what the attacker did was this: he or she connected to sendmail (i.e., telnet victim.machine 25), issued the appropriate debug command, and had a small C program compiled. (We have it. Big deal.) This program took as an argument a host number, and copied two programs – one ending in VAX.OS and the other ending in SunOS - and tried to load and execute them. In those cases where the load and execution succeeded, the worm did two things (at least): spawn a lot of shells that did nothing but clog the process table and burn CPU cycles; look in two places – the password file and the internet services file – for other sites it could connect to (this is hearsay, but I don't doubt it for a minute). It used both individual.host files (which it found using the password file), and any other remote hosts it could locate which it had a chance of connecting to. It may have done more; one of our machines had a changed superuser password, but because of other factors we're not sure this worm did it.

All of Vaxen and some of Suns here were infected with the virus. The virus forks repeated copies of it as it tries to spread itself, and the load averages on the infected machines skyrocketed. In fact, it got to the point that some of the machines ran out of swap space and kernel table entries, preventing login to even see what was going on!

The virus also "cleans" up after itself. If you reboot an infected machine (or it crashes), the /tmp directory is normally cleaned up on reboot. The other incriminating files were already depleted by the virus itself.

4 November the author of the virus – Morris – come to FBI headquarters in Washington on his own. FBI has imposed a prohibition on all material relating to the Morris virus.

22 January 1989 a court of jurors has acknowledged Morris guilty. If denunciatory verdict had been approved without modification, Morris would have been sentenced to 5 years of prison and 250 000 dollars of fine. However Morris' attorney Thomas Guidoboni immediately has lodged a protest and has directed all papers to the Circuit Court with the petition to decline the decision of court... Finally Morris was sentenced to 3 months of prisons and fine of 270 thousand dollars, but in addition Cornwall University carried a heavy loss, having excluded Morris from its members. Author then had to take part in liquidation of its own creation.

 

What is a computer virus?

It is an executable code able to reproduce itself. Viruses are an area of pure programming, and, unlike other computer programs, carry intellectual functions on protection from being found and destroyed. They have to fight for survival in complex conditions of conflicting computer systems. That's why they evolve as if they were alive.

Yes, viruses seem to be the only alive organisms in the computer environment, and yet another their main goal is survival. That is why they may have complex crypting/decrypting engines, which is indeed a sort of a standard for computer viruses nowadays, in order to carry out processes of duplicating, adaptation and disguise.

It is necessary to differentiate between reproducing programs and Trojan horses. Reproducing programs will not necessarily harm your system because they are aimed at producing as many copies (or somewhat-copies) of their own as possible by means of so-called agent programs or without their help. In the later case they are referred to as "worms".

Meanwhile Trojan horses are programs aimed at causing harm or damage to PC's. Certainly it's a usual practice, when they are part of "tech-organism", but they have completely different functions.

That is an important point. Destructive actions are not an integral part of the virus by default. However virus-writers allow presence of destructive mechanisms as an active protection from finding and destroying their creatures, as well as a response to the attitude of society to viruses and their authors.

As you see, there are different types of viruses, and they have already been separated into classes and categories. For instance: dangerous, harmless, and very dangerous. No destruction means a harmless one, tricks with system halts means a dangerous one, and finally with a devastating destruction means a very dangerous virus.

But viruses are famous not only for their destructive actions, but also for their special effects, which are almost impossible to classify. Some virus-writers suggest the following: funny, very funny and sad or melancholy (keeps silence and infects). But one should remember that special effects must occur only after a certain number of contaminations. Users should also be given a chance to restrict execution of destructive actions, such as deleting files, formatting hard disks. Thereby virus can be considered to be a useful program, keeping a check on system changes and preventing any surprises such as of deletion of files or wiping out hard disks.

It sounds quite heretical to say such words about viruses, which are usually considered to be a disaster. The less person understands in programming and virology, the greater influence will have on him possibility of being infected with a virus. Thus, let's consider creators of-viruses as the best source.