The most frightening words in the English
language are, “Our computer is down.” You hear it more and more when you are on
business. The other day I was at the airport waiting for a ticket to Washington
and the girl in the ticket office said, “I’m sorry, I can’t sell you a ticket.
Our computer is down.”
“If your computer is down, just write me
out a ticket.”
“I can’t write you out a ticket. The
computer is the only one allowed to do so.”
I looked down on the computer and every
passenger was just standing there drinking coffee and staring at the black
screen. Then I asked her, “What do all you people do?”
“We give the computer the information about
your trip, and then it tells us whether you can fly with us or not.”
“So when it goes down, you go down with
it.”
“That’s good, sir.”
“How long will the computer be down?” I
wanted to know.
“I have no idea. Sometimes it’s down for 10
minutes, sometimes for two hours. There’s no way we can find out without asking
the computer, and since it’s down it won’t answer us.”
After the girl told me they had no backup(備用) computer, I said. “Let’s
forget the computer. What about your planes? They’re still flying, aren’t
they?”
“I couldn’t tell without asking the
computer.”
“Maybe I could just go to the gate and ask
the pilot if he’s flying to Washington, ” I suggested.
“I wouldn’t know what gate to send you to.
Even if the pilot was going to Washington, he couldn’t take you if you didn’t
have a ticket.”
“Is there any other airline flying to
Washington within the next few hours?”
“I wouldn’t know, ” she said, pointing at
the dark screen. “Only ‘IT’ knows. ‘It’ can’t tell me.”
By this time there were quite a few people
standing in lines. The word soon spread to other travelers that the computer
was down. Some people went white, some people started to cry and still others
kicked their luggage.
1.The best title for the article is
_______.
A.When the Computer Is Down
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B.The Most Frightening Words
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C.The Computer of the Airport
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D.Asking the Computer
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2.What could the girl in the ticket office
do for the passengers without asking the computer?
A.She could sell a ticket.
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B.She could write out a ticket.
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C.She could answer the passengers’ questions.
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D.She could do nothing.
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3.Why do you think they had not a backup
computer?
A.Because it was easy down
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B.Because it was very expensive.
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C.Because it was not advanced enough.
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D.Because it was not as big as the main computer.
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4.The last paragraph suggests that _______.
A.a(chǎn) modern computer won’t be down.
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B.computers can take the place of humans
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C.sometimes a computer may bring suffering to people
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D.there will be great changes in computers
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