Shorty, a man of forty, had gone into town. He had said he would be back before two. He had told Walt to watch the boats and the shop. There were no people around. They had all gone out on the lake to fish.
So Walt went to work on one of the boats. From there he could hear the telephone if it rang. And he could watch the door.
It was a little after two when the stranger came. Walt saw him stop by the shop. The stranger looked in for a minute. Then he went down to the boats. He was a big man in a coat.
Walt called to him, "Do you want something, sir?"
The stranger looked at Walt and said, "No, thanks." Then the stranger moved slowly away. As he went on, he looked at the boats one by one.
Walt sat there with his eyes on the back of the stranger's coat. He thought, "I can smell something as I smell that storm. I hope Shorty comes back soon."
The story happened ______.
A.on the lake at night
B.by the lake in the afternoon
C.along the river in spring
D.near the river in summer
Berners-Lee regards today's Web as a rebellious adolescent that can never fulfill his original expectations. By 2005, he hopes to begin replacing it with the Semantic Web—a smart network that will finally understand human languages and make computers virtually as easy to work with as other humans.
As envisioned by Berners-Lee, the new Web would understand not only the meaning of words and concepts but also theological relationships among them. That has awesome potential. Most knowledge is built on two pillars: semantic and mathematics. In number-crunching, computers already outclass people. Machines that are equally admit at dealing with language and reason won't just help people uncover new insights; they could blaze new trails on their own.
Even with a fairly crude version of this future Web, mining online repositories for nuggets of knowledge would no longer force people to wade through screen after screen of extraneous data. Instead, computers would dispatch intelligent agents, or software messengers, to explore Websites by the thousands and logically sift out just what's relevant. That alone would provide a major boost in productivity at work and at home. But there's far more.
Software agents could also take on many routine business chores, such as helping manufacturers find and negotiate with lowest-cost parts suppliers and handling help-desk questions. The Semantic Web would also be a bottomless trove of eureka insights. Most inventions and scientific breakthroughs, including today's Web, spring from novel combinations of existing knowledge. The Semantic Web would make it possible to evaluate more combinations overnight than a person could juggle in a lifetime. Sure scientists and other people can post ideas on the Web today for others to read. But with machines doing the reading and translating technical terms, related ideas from millions of Web pages could be distilled and summarized. That will lift the ability to assess and integrate information to new heights. The Semantic Web, Berners-Lee predicts, "will help more people become more intuitive as well as more analytical. It will foster global collaborations among people with diverse cultural perspectives, so we have a better chance of finding the right solutions to the really big issues—like the environment and climate warming".
Had he liked, Berners-Lee could have
A.created the most important innovation in the 1990s.
B.accumulated as much personal wealth as Bill Gates.
C.patented the technology of Microsoft software
D.given his brainchild to us all.
A dark cloud is a ______ of rain.
A.mark
B.signal
C.sign
D.symbol