四級考試閱讀主旨題解題技巧實戰實例

四級考試閱讀主旨題解題技巧實戰

There were two interesting news items in the paper a few years ago . One was about a man who received a bill from the telephone company for 999,999for three month! The other was about a man who received 2,000 a month ---for doing nothing.

The connection between the two news items is simple: computer the best invention of the 20th century. The telephone bill came from a computer which made a terrifying mistake that was only 23.36. The other item was not so amusing. A man walked into the unguarded computer room of a large packaged food company and expertly programmed the computer to pay him 2,000 a month for raw meat which he supplied to the company. Of course he never sent the meat, but he certainly received the money. The computer wrote out a bill, and even signedit. It was only a random check that uncovered the trick. It could be happening in thousands of other companied all over the world.

Computers are not the magical workers that some people say they are. They make mistakes, theyre sometimes slower than human beings and theyre easily fooled. The US used to conscript people with the help of a computer. The army sent out a card, which had to be filled in and sent back. It was easy to avoid being called up simply by spreading candle-waxon on the card. The computer couldnt read the card and did nothing with it.

Its in our everyday life that computers cause many problems. Lets get back to using people instead of computers, before a mistake that we cant put right.