Questões de Concurso

Two Meals and Not Always Square

    With budgets tight, states and local governments have been looking at prisons − and prison food − as a place to save money. Three days a week, Georgia now serves inmates only two meals. And across the country, there have been increasing reports of substandard food. This is inhumane. Adequate meals should be a nonnegotiable part of a civilized penal system. It is also bad policy. Researchers have found a connection between poor food quality and discipline problems and violence.
    Georgia has [CONNECTOR] decided to save on staff costs by serving just two meals on Friday, as it already did on Saturday and Sunday. The state says it gives prisoners the same number of calories on days when one meal is skipped. Even if it does − and some prisoners’ advocates are skeptical − it can be oppressive to go so long without eating.
    In Alabama earlier this year, a federal judge ordered the Morgan County sheriff locked up in his own jail for contempt for failing to adequately feed his inmates. Alabama allows sheriffs to keep food money they do not spend, and the sheriff reportedly pocketed more than $200,000 over three years.
    Prisoners’ rights advocates say they are receiving an increasing number of complaints from inmates nationwide who report being served spoiled or inedible food or inadequate portions. Earlier this year, a riot at Reeves County Detention Center in Texas caused heavy damage to a prison building. Inmates said it was prompted in part by poor food.
    Cutbacks in food could violate inmates’ constitutional rights, notes Elizabeth Alexander, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, if they create a substantial risk of serious harm − a particular concern for inmates with diabetes and other illnesses.
    If states and localities want to save money on corrections, they should reduce their prison and jail populations. The United States, which has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, has almost one-quarter of its prisoners. Many are in for nonviolent crimes that could be punished in more constructive, and less costly, ways. If governments decide to put inmates behind bars, they have to give them adequate food − which means no less than three healthy meals a day.

(Adapted from The New York Times, June 20, 2009)

Atenção: Para responder às questões de números 66 a 70, considere o texto a seguir:
Facebook Announces Its Third Pillar “Graph Search” That Gives You Answers, Not Links Like Google
DREW OLANOFF JOSH CONSTINE, COLLEEN TAYLOR, INGRID LUNDEN
Tuesday, January 15th, 2013

    Today at Facebook’s press event, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, announced its latest product, called Graph Search.
    Zuckerberg made it very clear that this is not web search, but completely different.
    He explained the difference between web search and Graph Search. “Web search is designed to take any open-ended query and give
you links that might have answers.” Linking things together based on things that you’re interested in is a “very hard technical problem,”
according to Zuckerberg.
    Graph Search is designed to take a precise query and give you an answer, rather than links that might provide the answer.” For
example, you could ask Graph Search “Who are my friends that live in San Francisco?” Zuckerberg says that Graph Search is in “very early beta.” People, photos, places and interests are the focus for the first iteration of the product.
    Facebook Graph Search is completely personalized. Tom Stocky of the search team explains he gets unique results for a search of “friends who like Star Wars and Harry Potter.” Then, “If anyone else does this search they get a completely different set of results. C  someone had the same set of friends as me, the results would be different [because we have different relationships with our friends].”
    You can also use Graph Search for recruiting. Stocky says if he was looking for people to join the team at Facebook, he could search for NASA Ames employees who are friends with people at Facebook. “If I wanted to reach out and recruit them, I could see who their friends are at Facebook. To refine them I can look for people who wrote they are “founders.”
    Photos is another big part of Graph Search. Results are sorted by engagement so you see the ones with the most likes and comments at the top. For example, Lars Rasmussen, Facebook engineer, searched for “photos of my friends taken at National Parks.” He got a  gorgeous page of photos from Yosemite, Machu Pichu, and other parks.

(Adapted from http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/15/facebook-announces-its-third-pillar-graph-search/)

    CES 2010 Predictions: What Will Be Hot Next Year?
    12.23.09
    The tech industry is gearing up for January's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, but what should we expect? Will recession woes continue to hinder major announcements or will someone surprise us? We asked our analysts to [VERB] a few predictions about [PRON] you can expect to see from CES.
    Laptops – Cisco Cheng
    Laptops and Netbooks at CES 2010 will be riding the coat tails of Intel, which has already announced new processors and chipsets in "Arrandale" (for laptops) and "Pinetrail" (for netbooks). So this year you'll see processor brand names such as Intel Core i7, Core i5, and Core i3 instead of the soon-to-be exiting Core 2 Duos.
    With netbooks, it'll still be the Atom processor, but around it will be a different supporting cast and a more energy efficient one at that, promising over 10 hours of battery life.
    Not all clamshells will have an Intel processor, though. This year's CES 2010 will give rise to a new class of netbooks, called SmartBooks and tablets.
    SmartBooks will run some variant of an ARM processor, with Qualcomm being a heavy favorite. They will not run a Windows operating system (Linux, most likely) and promise to cost as little as $200 per device. The term tablet is similar to SmartBooks in parts and software, only it won't have a physical keyboard, or at least one that's permanently attached. Tablets will take the e-book reader space to the next level and hopefully have more success than MIDs − the previous term for touchenabled netbooks without a keyboard.
    Desktops – Joel Santo Domingo
    The netbook revolution of 2009 has benefitted the desktop space. The same power-saving processors and motherboard chips from netbooks are now showing up in a plethora of ultra small nettop PCs.
    While these desktops do not promise better battery life, they do promise smaller, quieter systems, which can be hooked up to large displays, like the 50-inch HDTV in your living room.
    Don't count "traditional" desktops out though: they're still the go-to PCs in a business setting, particularly since they're less fragile and easier to service than laptops. Besides, traditional workers who live in cubicles don't need the portability of a netbook or notebook PC. They're going to get smaller, but desktops will still be on workers' desks for quite a few years to come.

(Adapted from http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2357541,00.asp)

Is Windows 7 Worth It?
Harry McCracken, PC World
Monday, October 19, 2009 10:00 AM PDT

    Reading about a new operating system can tell you only so much about it: After all, Windows Vista had far more features than XP, [CONJUNCTION] fell far short of it in the eyes of many users. To judge an OS accurately, you have to live with it. Over the past ten months, I've spent a substantial percentage of my computing life in Windows 7, starting with a preliminary version and culminating in recent weeks with the final Release to Manufacturing edition. I've run it on systems ranging from an underpowered Asus EeePC 1000HE netbook to a potent HP TouchSmart all-in-one. And I've used it to do real work, not lab routines. Usually, I've run the OS in multiboot configurations with Windows Vista and/or XP, so I've had a choice each time I turned the computer on: [MODAL] I opt for Windows 7 or an older version of the OS? The call has been easy to make, because Win 7 is so pleasant to use.
    So why wouldn't you want to run this operating system? Concern over its performance is one logical reason, especially since early versions of Windows Vista managed to turn PCs that ran XP with ease into lethargic underperformers. The PC World Test Center's speed benchmarks on five test PCs showed Windows 7 to be faster than Vista, but only by a little; I've found it to be reasonably quick on every computer I've used it on - even the Asus netbook, once I upgraded it to 2GB of RAM. (Our lab tried Win 7 on a Lenovo S10 netbook with 1GB of RAM and found it to be a shade slower than XP; for details see "Windows 7 Performance Tests.").
    Here's a rule of thumb that errs on the side of caution: If your PC's specs qualify it to run Vista, get Windows 7; if they don't, avoid it. Microsoft's official hardware configuration requirements for Windows 7 are nearly identical to those it recommends for Windows Vista: a 1-GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of free disk space, and a DirectX 9-compatible graphics device with a WDDM 1.0 or higher driver. That's for the 32-bit version of Windows 7; the 64-bit version of the OS requires a 64-bit CPU, 2GB of RAM, and 20GB of disk space.
    Fear of incompatible hardware and software is another understandable reason to be wary of Windows 7. One unfortunate law of operating-system upgrades - which applies equally to Macs and to Windows PCs - is that they will break some systems and applications, especially at first.
    Under the hood, Windows 7 isn't radically different from Vista. That's a plus, since it should greatly reduce the volume of difficulties relating to drivers and apps compared to Vista's bumpy rollout. I have performed a half-dozen Windows 7 upgrades, and most of them went off without a hitch. The gnarliest problem arose when I had to track down a graphics driver for Dell's XPS M1330 laptop on my own - Windows 7 installed a generic VGA driver that couldn't run the Aero user interface, and as a result failed to support new Windows 7 features such as thumbnail views in the Taskbar.
    The best way to reduce your odds of running into a showstopping problem with Windows 7 is to bide your time. When the new operating system arrives on October 22, sit back and let the earliest adopters discover the worst snafus. Within a few weeks, Microsoft and other software and hardware companies will have fixed most of them, and your chances of a happy migration to Win 7 will be much higher. If you want to be really conservative, hold off on moving to Win 7 until you're ready to buy a PC that's designed to run it well.
    Waiting a bit before making the leap makes sense; waiting forever does not. Microsoft took far too long to come up with a satisfactory replacement for Windows XP. But whether you choose to install Windows 7 on your current systems or get it on the next new PC you buy, you'll find that it's the unassuming, thoroughly practical upgrade you've been waiting for - flaws and all.

(Adapted from http://www.pcworld.com/article/172602/windows_7_revi...)