1990-1999考研英语真题专项整理--阅读

1999Text 1I t s a rough world out there.S tep outside and you couldbreak a leg slipping on your doormat.L ight up the stove andyou could burn down the house.L uckily,if the doormat or stovefailed to warn of coming disaster,a successful lawsuit mightcompensate you for your troubles.Or so the thinking has gonesince the early 1980 s,when juries began holding more companies1iable for their customers misfortunes.Feeling threatened,companies responded by writingever-longer warning labels,trying to anticipate everypossible accident.Today,stepladders carry labels severalinches long that warn,among other things,that you might 一surprise!-fall off.The label on a child s Batman capecautions that the toy“does not enable user to fly.”While warnings are often appropriate and necessary-thedangers of drug interactions,for example-and many arerequired by state or federal regulations,it isn t clear thatthey actually protect the manufacturers and sellers fromliability if a customer is injured.About 50 percent of thecompanies lose when injured customers take them to court.Now the tide appears to be turning.As personal injuryclaims continue as before,some courts are beginning to sidewith defendants,especially in cases where a warning labelprobably wouldn，t have changed anything.I n May,Julie Nimmons,president of S chutt S ports in I llinois,successfully fought alawsuit involving a football player who was paralyzed in a gamewhile wearing a S chutt helmet.We re really sorry he hasbecome paralyzed,but helmets aren t designed to prevent thosekinds of injuries,n says Nimmons.The jury agreed that thenature of the game,not the helmet,was the reason for theathlete，s injury.At the same time,the American L aw I nstitute一 a group of judges,lawyers,and academics whoserecommendations carry substantial weight-issued newguidelines for tort law stating that companies need not warncustomers of obvious dangers or bombard them with a lengthy listof possible ones.uI mportant information can get buried in asea of trivialities,says a law professor at Cornell lawSchool who helped draft the new guidelines.If the moderate endof the legal community has its way,the information on productsmight actually be provided for the benefit of customers and notas protection against legal liability.51.What were things like in 1980s when accidents happened?A Customers might be relieved of their disasters throughlawsuits.B Injured customers could expect protection from thelegal system.C Companies would avoid being sued by providing newwarnings.D Juries tended to find fault with the compensationscompanies promised.52.Manufacturers as mentioned in the passage tend to.A satisfy customers by writing long warnings on productsB become honest in describing the inadequacies of theirproductsC make the best use of labels to avoid legal liabilityD feel obliged to view customers5 safety as their firstconcern53.The case of Schutt helmet demonstrated that.A some injury claims were no longer supported by lawB helmets were not designed to prevent injuriesC product labels would eventually be discardedD some sports games might lose popularity with athletes54.The author s attitude towards the issue seems to beA biasedB indifferentC puzzlingD objectiveText 2In the first year or so of Web business,most of the actionhas revolved around efforts to tap the consumer market.Morerecently,as the Web proved to be more than a fashion,companieshave started to buy and sell products and services with oneanother.Such business-to-business sales make sense becausebusinesspeople typically know what product they re lookingfor.Nonetheless,many companies still hesitate to use the Webbecause of doubts about its reliability.Businesses need tofeel they can trust the pathway between them and the supplier,“says senior analyst Blane Erwin of Forrester Research.Somecompanies are limiting the risk by conducting onlinetransactions only with established business partners who aregiven access to the company s private intranet.Another major shift in the model for Internet commerceconcerns the technology available for marketing.Untilrecently,Internet marketing activities have focused onstrategies to pull customers into sites.In the past year,however,software companies have developed tools that allowcompanies to push information directly out to consumers,transmitting marketing messages directly to targeted customers.Most notably,the Pointcast Network uses a screen saver todeliver a continually updated stream of news and advertisementsto subscribers5 computer monitors.Subscribers can customizethe information they want to receive and proceed directly toa company5 s Web site.Companies such as Virtual Vineyards arealready starting to use similar technologies to push messagesto customers about special sales,product offerings,or otherevents.But push technology has earned the contempt of many Webusers.Online culture thinks highly of the notion that theinformation flowing onto the screen comes there by specificrequest.Once commerc