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BTS IRIS – SUJET TYPE No 1 (fabriqué avant l'épreuve nouvelle formule de 2004) Durée : 2 h - Dictionnaire non autorisé Think information highway with an express lane 1 [While engineers tinker with (1) the Internet's core framework, some university researchers looking for more speed are developing separate systems that parallel the Internet. Thus, data-intensive applications like video conferencing, brain imaging and global climate research won't have to compete with e-mail and e-commerce. 2 Some applications are so data-intensive that they are "simply impractical to do on the current Internet," said Tracy Futhey, chairwoman of the National LambdaRail. The project offers for its members dedicated high-speed lines so data can "get from point A to point B and not have to contend with the other traffic." 3 LambdaRail recently completed its first optical connection from San Diego to Seattle to Pittsburgh to Jacksonville, Fla. (2). Work on additional links is planned for next year.] 4 Undersea explorer Robert Ballard has used another network, Internet2, to host (3) live, interactive presentations with students and aquarium visitors from the wreck of the Titanic, which he found in 1985. 5 The Internet's bandwidth can carry only "lousy" video and "can't compete with looking out the window," Ballard said. But with Internet2, "high-definition zoom cameras can show them the eyelids." 6 Internet2, with speeds 100 times the typical broadband service at home, is now limited to selected universities, companies and institutions, but researchers expect any breakthroughs (4) to ultimately migrate to the main Internet. 7 While Internet2 and LambdaRail seek to move data faster and faster, researchers with the World Wide Web Consortium are trying to make information smarter and smarter. Semantic Web is a next-generation Web designed to make more kinds of data easier for computers to locate and process. 8 Consider the separate teams of scientists who study genes, proteins and chemical pathways. With the Semantic Web, tags are added to information in databases describing gene and protein sequences. One group may use one scheme and another team something else; the Semantic Web could help link the two. Ultimately, software could be written to process the data and make inferences that previously required human intervention. 9 Change doesn't come easily, however. For instance, the IPv6 numbering system was deemed an Internet standard about five years ago, but the vast majority of software and hardware today still runs on the older IPv4, which is rapidly running out of room. 10 And the Internet faces general resistance from old-world forces that want to preserve their current ways of doing things: Companies that value profit over greater good. Copyright holders who want to protect their music and movies. Governments that seek to censor information or spy on its citizens. 11 In early August, the Federal Communications Commission declared that Internet-based phone calls should be subject to the same type of law enforcement surveillance as cell and landline phones. That means that Internet service providers would have to design their systems to permit police wiretaps (5). 12 Jonathan Zittrain, a professor with Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, fears a slippery slope (6). As these outside pressures meddle with the Net's open architecture, he said, there's less opportunity for experimentation and for innovation. Copyright 2004 Associated Press. (1) to tinker with : bricoler - (2) Fla. = Florida - (3) to host : héberger - (4) breakthrough : innovation, percée - (5) wiretaps : écoutes téléphoniques - (6) slippery slope : pente glissante
1 - COMPRÉHENSION
2 - TRADUCTION - Traduire en français de « While engineers tinker... » jusqu’à « for next year ». 3 - QUESTIONS - Answer the following questions in English, using elements from the text: A/ What is LambdaRail? B/ What is Internet2? C/ What is the Semantic Web? D/ What’s your idea of a successor to the present Internet? (Use expressions like : It should be + adj., It should have + noun, It should + verb) (80 words +/-)
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© Christian Lassure - English For Techies
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