II. Explain in your own words what the phrase 'this shared delusion' describes?

III. Fill in the gap with the correct word derived from the words in brackets.

I've never understood the 1) _____ (to believe) that talking to your computer is a Good Thing. It seems to me to be 2) _____ (total) misguided. In fact, so-called 'natural communication' with a computer would 3) _____ (appearance) to be about as unnatural as you can get. People and computers inhabit 4) _____ (difference) worlds. Ever if you succeed in ordering your computer about, it'll never laugh at your jokes, make sarcastic 5) _____ (to comment), tell you the latest gossip or do any of the other things that make real human conversation such fun.

Then there's that awful prospect of an office full of people 6) _____ (to talk) to their machines. Quite apart from the noise generated, most people are bound to feel pretty ridiculous talking to something so 7) _____ (obvious) non-human.

I doubt very much, though, whether people in modern society are capable of speaking 8) _____ (clear) and unambiguously enough to a computer. Most of us don't have servants to boss around any more, and changes in the way we work mean that office managers are no longer used to giving crisp orders and 9) _____ (expectation) them to be obeyed.

There's no doubt that controlling a computer by speaking to it only works if you 10) _____ (imitation) an army drill sergeant. You have to 11) _____ (avoidance) all those 'could you's' and 'would you mind's' that most of us use when we're trying to get someone to do something they don't really want to do. Since this will be nigh on impossible for most of us, we'll end up with machines never doing what we 12) _____ (real) want and making all manner of mistakes in the process. We'll probably even be unable to pull the plug out when we've given up trying.

IV. Read and translate the text. Put ten questions to the text. Render it in English. Text b

Motherboards

The motherboard is the main circuit board inside the PC which holds the processor, memory and expansion slots and connects directly or indirectly to every part of the PC. It's made up of a chipset (known as the "glue logic"), some code in ROM and the various interconnections or buses. PC designs today use many different buses to link their various components. Wide, high-speed buses are difficult and expensive to produce: the signals travel at such a rate that even distances of just a few centimetres cause timing problems, while the metal tracks on the circuit board act as miniature radio antennae, transmitting electromagnetic noise that introduces interference with signals elsewhere in the system. For these reasons, PC design engineers try to keep the fastest buses confined to the smallest area of the motherboard and use slower, more robust buses, for other parts.

This section focuses on basic functionality and layout - the motherboard's various interfaces, buses and chipsets being covered elsewhere.

V. Translate the following sentences paying attention to the Predicates and define their tense forms.

1. Early PCs used the AT form factor and 12in wide motherboards. 2. The sheer size of an AT motherboard caused problems for upgrading PCs and did not allow use of the increasingly popular slim line desktop cases. 3. These problems were largely addressed by the smaller version of the full AT form factor, the Baby AT, introduced in 1989. 4. Whilst this remains a common form factor, there have been several improvements since. 5. All designs are open standards and as such don't require certification. 6. A consequence is that there can be some quite wide variation in design detail between different manufacturers' motherboards.