Unit 23 A famous person

★Bill Gates 的童年

BILL GATES IN HIS BOYHOOD

As a child—and as an adult as well—Bill was untidy. It has been said that in order to counteract this. Mary drew up weekly clothing plans for him. On Mondays he might go to school in blue, on Tuesdays in green, on Wednesdays in brown , on Thursdays in black, and so on , Weekend meal schedules might also be planned in detail. Everything time, at work or during his leisure time.

Dinner table discussions in the Gate’s family home were always lively and educational. “It was a rich environment in which to learn,” Bill remembered.

Bill’s contemporaries, even at the age, recognized that he was exceptional. Every year, he and his friends would go to summer camp. Bill especially liked swimming and other sports. One of his summer camp friends recalled, “He was never a nerd or a goof or the kind of kid you didn’t want your team. We all knew Bill was smarter than us. Even back then, when he was nine or ten years old, he talked like an adult and could express himself in ways that none of us understood.”

Bill was also well ahead of his classmates in mathematics and science. He needed to go to a school that challenged him to Lakeside—an all-boys’ school for exceptional students. It was Seattle’s most exclusive school and was noted for its rigorous academic demands, a place where “even the dumb kids were smart.”

Lakeside allowed students to pursue their own interests, to whatever extent they wished. The school prided itself on making conditions and facilities available that would enable all its students to reach their full potential . It was the ideal environment for someone like Bill Gates.

In 1968, the school made a decision that would change thirteen-year-old Bill Gates’s life—and that of many of others, too.

Funds were raised, mainly by parents, that enabled the school to gain access to a computer—a Program Data processor(PDP)—through a teletype machine. Type in a few instructions on the teletype machine and a few seconds later the PDP would type back its response. Bill Gates was immediately hooked— so was his best friend at the time, Kent Evans, and another student, Paul Allen, who was two years older than Bill.

Whenever they had free time, and sometimes when they didn’t, they would dash over to the computer room to use the machine. The students became so single-minded that they soon overtook their teachers in knowledge about computing and got into a lot of trouble because of their obsession. They were neglecting their other studies—every piece of word was handed in late. Classes were cut. Computer time was also proving to be very expensive. Within months, the whole budget that had been set aside for the year had been used up.

At fourteen, Bill was already writing short programs for the computer to perform. Early games programs such as Tic-Tac-Toe, or Noughts and Crosses, and Lunar Landing were written in what was to become Bill’s second language, BASIC. 

★骑在羊背上的国家

澳大利亚牧场辽阔，畜牧业十分发达，其中以养羊最为著名。牧羊人对牧场的管理很是精心。为了防止草原退化，他们把牧场分为若干栏，实行分栏放牧。羊群吃完一栏草，再赶入另一栏。一般几百公顷为一栏，栏与栏之间用铁丝网相隔，每栏都打有一两眼水井，安上风车提水，通过水管引入引水槽，这样，羊就可以喝上清洁卫生的“自来水”了。

牧羊人经常骑着摩托车放牧羊群，几只牧羊狗像忠实的卫兵，在羊群旁来回巡视，保护着羊群的安全，羊群在悠闲地吃着青草。澳大利亚的绵羊，体态肥大，羊毛细长而又结实。

在澳大利亚，这样的牧场有10多万个，绵羊的数目比人口要多出10倍以上。羊多，羊毛的产量也多。澳大利亚的羊毛产量和出口一向居世界第一位，所以人们称澳大利亚是“骑在羊背上的国家”。