Silicon valley

Technology trends may push Silicon Valley back to the future. Carver Mead, a pioneer in integrated circuits and a professor of computer science at the California Institute of Technology, notes there are now workstations that enable engineers to design, test and produce chips right on their desks, much the way an editor creates a newsletter on a Macintosh. As the time and cost of making a chip drop to a few days and a few hundred dollars, engineers may soon be free to let their imaginations soar without being penalized by expensive failures. Mead predicts that inventors will be able to perfect powerful customized chips over a weekend at the office—spawning a new generation of garage start-ups and giving the U.S. a jump on its foreign rivals in getting new products to market fast. ‘We’ve got more garages with smart people,’ Mead observes. ‘We really thrive on anarchy.’

And on Asians. Already, orientals and Asian Americans constitute the majority of the engineering staffs at many Valley firms. And Chinese, Korean, Filipino and Indian engineers are graduating in droves from California’s colleges. As the heads of next-generation start-ups, these Asian innovators can draw on customs and languages to forge tighter links with crucial Pacific Rim market. For instance, Alex Au, a Stanford Ph.D. from Hong Kong, has set up a Taiwan factory to challenge Japan’s near lock on the memory-chip market. India-born N. Damodar Reddy’s tiny California company reopened an AT&T chip plant in Kansas City last spring with financing from the state of Missouri. Before it becomes a retirement village, Silicon Valley may prove a classroom for building a global business.

词汇

• much the way
• drop / drɒp / If a level or amount drops or if someone or something drops it, it quickly becomes less. 使迅速下降; 迅速下降
• thrive / θraɪv / If you say that someone thrives on a particular situation, you mean that they enjoy it or that they can deal with it very well, especially when other people find it unpleasant or difficult. 喜欢; 从容应对 (尤指别人不喜欢或认为困难的事)
• anarchy / ˈænəkɪ / If you describe a situation as anarchy, you mean that nobody seems to be paying any attention to rules or laws. 无政府状态
• constitute / ˈkɒnstɪˌtjuːt / If something constitutes a particular thing, it can be regarded as being that thing. 构成
• drove / drəʊv / a herd of livestock being driven together (被驱赶着一起前进的)畜群
• draw on If you draw on or draw upon something such as your skill or experience, you make use of it in order to do something. 利用
• forge / fɔːdʒ / If one person or institution forges an agreement or relationship with another, they create it with a lot of hard work, hoping that it will be strong or lasting. 努力地缔造
• Rim / rɪm / The rim of a circular object is its outside edge.
• lock on
• prove / pruːv / If something proves to be true or to have a particular quality, it becomes clear after a period of time that it is true or has that quality. 证明是

How to grow old

Some old people are oppressed by the fear of death. In the young there is a justification for this feeling. Young men who have reason to fear that they will be killed in battle may justifiably feel bitter in the thought that they have been cheated of the best things that life has to offer. But in an old man who has known human joys and sorrows, and has achieved whatever work it was in him to do, the fear of death is somewhat abject and ignoble. The best way to overcome it-so at least it seems to me—-is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river–small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past boulders and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue. And it, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will be not unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do, and content in the thought that what was possible has been done.

词汇

• grow old
• oppress / əˈprɛs / To oppress people means to treat them cruelly, or to prevent them from having the same opportunities, freedom, and benefits as others. 压迫
• justification / ˌdʒʌstɪfɪˈkeɪʃən / A justification for something is an acceptable reason or explanation for it. 正当的理由
• abject / ˈæbdʒɛkt / You use abject to emphasize that a situation or quality is extremely bad. 糟糕透顶的 [强调]
• impersonal / ɪmˈpɜːsənəl / If you describe someone’s behaviour as impersonal, you mean that they do not show any emotion about the person they are dealing with. 不受个人感情影响的
• ego / ˈiːɡəʊ, ˈɛgəʊ / Someone’s ego is their sense of their own worth. For example, if someone has a large ego, they think they are very important and valuable. 自我价值感
• vitality / vaɪˈtælɪtɪ / If you say that someone or something has vitality, you mean that they have great energy and liveliness. 活力
• weariness /‘wɪrɪnɪs/ temporary loss of strength and energy resulting from hard physical or mental work
• boulder / ˈbəʊldə / A boulder is a large rounded rock. 圆形巨石
• content / ˈkɒntɛnt / If you are content, you are fairly happy or satisfied. 满意的

Banks and their customers

When anyone opens a current account at a bank, he is lending the bank money, repayment of which he may demand at any time, either in cash or by drawing a cheque in favour of another person. Primarily, the banker-customer relationship is that of debtor and creditor–who is which depending on whether the customer’s account is in credit or is overdrawn. But, in addition to that basically simple concept, the bank and its customer owe a large number of obligations to one another. Many of these obligations can give rise to problems and complications but a bank customer, unlike, say, a buyer of goods, cannot complain that the law is loaded against him.

The bank must obey its customer’s instructions, and not those of anyone else. When, for example, a customer first opens an account, he instructs the bank to debit his account only in respect of cheques drawn by himself. He gives the bank specimens of his signature, and there is a very firm rule that the bank has no right or authority to pay out a customer’s money on a cheque on which its customer’s signature has been forged. It makes no difference that the forgery may have been a very skilful one: the bank must recognize its customer’s signature.

For this reason there is no risk to the customer in the modern practice, adopted by some banks, of printing the customer’s name on his cheques. If this facilitates forgery it is the bank which will lose, not the customer.

• repayment / rɪˈpeɪmənt / The repayment of money is the act or process of paying it back to the person you owe it to. 偿还
• in favour of 受益人
• primarily / ˈpraɪmərəlɪ / You use primarily to say what is mainly true in a particular situation. 主要地
• in credit
• debit / ˈdɛbɪt / A debit is a record of the money taken from your bank account, for example, when you write a cheque. 借方
• loaded / ˈləʊdɪd / If you say that something is loaded in favour of someone, you mean it works unfairly to their advantage. If you say it is loaded against them, you mean it works unfairly to their disadvantage. 有偏向的 [表不满]
• in respect of concerning
• specimen / ˈspɛsɪmɪn / A specimen of something is an example of it which gives an idea of what the whole of it is like. 样本
• forge / fɔːdʒ / If someone forges something such as paper money, a document, or a painting, they copy it or make it so that it looks genuine, in order to deceive people. 伪造 (纸币、文件或画作等)
• in the practice of
• complication / ˌkɒmplɪˈkeɪʃən / A complication is a problem or difficulty that makes a situation harder to deal with. 使情况复杂化的因素