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Current Affairs Self-Test - Week 6


The following are excerpts from newpaper articles. Read the excerpts and answer the question below each excerpt.

  1. Excerpt:

    Azure Wireless, a start-up run by founder of failed e-tailer dstore David Gold, plans to roll out a network of 50 access points in Melbourne, in a partnership with iPrimus that will be funded by Hudson Conway.
    Another Australian start-up, Airportal, is keeping its plans a little closer to its chest, but announced a deal yesterday with Asian ISP Yellowspot, which has hundreds of hotspots in Singapore, Malaysia and China.
    Meanwhile Xone launched its network in Sydney on Tuesday. It has three hotspots in the city and plans to launch another eight in the next six weeks.
    Telstra entered the space two months ago when it bought Skynetglobal's network of 50 hotspots - including several in Qantas Club lounges - but remained tight-lipped about plans for expanding the network.

    What kind of networks are these companies dealing with?

  2. Excerpt:

    MICROSOFT'S rivals have accused the company of not living up to its agreement with the US Government...
    ProComp, backed by companies including Oracle, Sun Microsystems and AOL Time Warner, sent a letter to Justice Department antitrust chief Charles A. James and state attorneys general.
    "It cannot be argued that Microsoft made even a good faith effort to comply," said the letter, written by ProComp head Mitchell S. Pettit.
    The US government sued Microsoft in 1995, alleging it illegally used its market power and operating system monopoly to crush competing products like Netscape and Java.

    What was Microsoft's agreement with the US Government in the settlement to their court case?

  3. Excerpts from various articles:

    As mysteriously as it began, blocking ... of the internet search engine Google was suddenly lifted yesterday.
    In its usual secretive way,... made no announcement of the new measures and refused to confirm their existence, or their lifting.

    ... operates a massive firewall that filters out sites containing politically and socially sensitive material and pornography. But the filter is ad-hoc, blocking some content while allowing other material through.
    Research by Harvard University law professor Jonathan Zittrain and law student Benjamin Edelman shows the ABC site is one of the few news media web sites blocked ...
    The CNN site is also blocked, but other site including The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and The New York Times are accessible...


    Which country does the above articles refer to?

  4. Excerpt:

    MORE than 8 per cent of ... have been found to pilfer large amounts of text from the web in a comprehensive survey to detect the level of plagiarism ...
    The survey ... examined 1751 essays chosen at random from 17 subjects ...
    Using web-based detection software, it found 155, or 8.85 per cent, of the essays contained unattributed text copied from other sources that made up 25 per cent or more of the total word count. The report seems certain to lead to sweeping changes in student assessment as early as first semester next year.
    CAVAL was asked to run the pilot project ... because of concerns that the growing availability of material on the web had increased the temptation to plagiarise.

    Who are the culprits of plagiarism found in the study above?

Link to sample answers.

Back to Good News Week page.


Document author: H.L. Hiew, Unit Coordinator
Last Modified: Sunday, 20-Oct-2002 06:13:00 MST
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