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can be used for almost any purpose. And perhaps the languages of tomorrow will be
more natural with the invention of quantum and biological computers.
Task 1. Render the resulted text into English (about 6-7 sentences).
Task 2. Make a Computer Language history graphic.
Read and identify the topic of the text.
On-board and on-line
1. Businessmen will no longer have the luxury of escaping from their office by
flying off on a trip. The airlines are going to bring their office to them in seat 3A,
and those e-mails are going to have to be answered, like it or not. Such is the coming
revolution in onboard flying. A recent poll of 3,000 frequent travellers reported that
60% use a laptop in flight. The 100 million e-mail messages per day today will grow
to five billion by 2005, according to Forrester Research, and the number of people
online today will triple. The bottom line is that people want e-mail and Internet in
flight, and the airlines that provide it seem set to retain their business.
2. Past efforts at online onboard services have involved problems like laptop lockup,
slow connections, limited coverage, high access charges, poor message security,
unfamiliar user interfaces and too few access channels.
3. New technologies are becoming available, including higher bandwidth and better
connection protocols. Sending e-mails from aircraft cabins will become
commonplace. Meanwhile, suppliers are jostling for position in what they perceive
as a huge potential market.
4. One might make a guess that the market will be bigger than current satcom
services, which suffer from the "night" syndrome — there are limited times when
one can call business partners, usually during daylight hours, while e-mails and
Internet are not time sensitive. Currently satcom services account for around $10
million a year in revenues. Bets are that onboard e-mail and Internet services will far
exceed that figure.
5. No single supplier can provide the complete solution by themselves. A group of
companies will be needed to provide a complete and seamless solution. Over the past
six months, a number of joint ventures have been gelling among satellite
manufacturers and operators, airborne radio/avionics companies, broadcasters and
programmers, and airlines.
6. There are two main thrusts in this activity: relaying broadcast entertainment
material to aircraft in flight; and providing a route "to the seat" for Internet traffic.
They do not of course have to be delivered and shown in real time. For Internet
traffic, the assumption has to be that every passenger seat will eventually be capable
of generating an individual data stream. But e-mails and Web pages can always be
batched and distributed later by the onboard server. Traffic will be distributed to
seats via the existing in-flight entertainment (IFE) system wiring, by pulsed infra-red
(Bluetooth technology) or even by (very) local loop wireless. Both constitute
services that are readily available on the ground. The only new thing is their
provision for aircraft.
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