【Native Speaker每日综合训练—31系列】【31-11】经管

olivia瓜瓜

Official weibo: http://weibo.com/u/3476904471
   
除夕即将来临，瓜瓜抱大礼回家心早已经按捺不住了，。提前在这祝大家春节快乐，但也要注意每逢佳节胖三斤~~谨记，谨记。

今天给大家一个视频和两篇文章。
*视频是 Laurie Santos 对猴子的经济行为研究结果，挺有趣的，就是语速有些快，无下载音频，有文本。
*速度是关于三个小众软件公司的生存现状~~沙发会有基本的公司简介。*越障是关于是《比尔盖茨夫妇2014年公开信》的摘要，由于篇幅原因选了摘要，有兴趣的童鞋可以在最后链接原网站完整版公开信。

《比尔盖茨夫妇2014公开信》：http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/en#section=home

Part I: Speaker

Article 1    

Laurie Santos: A monkey economy as ours

[Rephrase1]

[Speech, 20:15]

Script：

Source： TED
http://www.ted.com/talks/laurie_santos.html

olivia瓜瓜

Part II: Speed        

                          
Article 2   
           

Dropbox and Uber: Worth Billions, But Still Inches From Disaster

[Time 2]

Dropbox went dark over the weekend.

According to the company, the widespread outage was the result of a bug it introduced while updating the hundreds of computer servers that drive its massively popular file-sharing service. But the problem was bigger than that. The San Francisco-based startup not only faced countless complaints from users across the net, it was forced to deflect rumors that the service was hacked, something that turned out to be a hoax.

On one level, a dust-up like this is just part of life as a startup. Things go wrong, people get upset, problems are solved, lessons are learned. But the stakes are higher when you’re Dropbox — or any other tech startup that has ascended to the misty heights of the billion-dollar club. This weekend’s Dropbox outage, along with recent problems for Uber and Snapchat, show just how close such companies skate to complete disaster — not because of anything they necessarily did wrong, but because of the very nature of their businesses.

In those tender days between two-scrappy-founders-in-an-apartment and established business, these burgeoning outfits have hundreds of millions of dollars invested in their future, and that future is far from certain. In an age when people can so easily abandon one web service for another, a single screw-up is all it can take to bring things crashing down for good. And the best of these companies know it.

The most successful tech giants — think Google and Facebook — have been able to insulate themselves from the big SNAFU by performing well for long enough that we become inescapably dependent on them. For many of us, Gmail would have to delete our entire accounts before switching became even plausible anymore. But even for billion-dollar companies still in a period of massive growth, such cushions aren’t always there to catch them. If they fall, the landing could still be hard.

[314 words]

[Time 3]

Do One Thing, Do It Best

In an interview with WIRED this past fall, Dropbox co-founder Drew Houston acknowledged that his company has almost no margin for error. If Dropbox accidentally destroyed just one person’s file, he said, it could erode the trust of all its users. “This is like the same sort of genre of problem as the code that you use to fly an airplane. Even if it’s a little bug, it’s a big problem.”

The risk for Dropbox is that at its core, it essentially does only one thing: It syncs your files across all your devices. On the one hand, this single-mindedness has brought Dropbox its tremendous success. Founded in 2007, the company concentrates on doing thing and doing it well. But that strength is also its greatest vulnerability — Dropbox is not diversified. Many other companies large and small now offer much the same service. If Dropbox loses your trust by messing up the one thing you thought it did best, you could easily switch your allegiance to another company.

This is like the same sort of genre of problem as the code that you use to fly an airplane. Even if it’s a little bug, it’s a big problem’ — Drew Houston

In my several years using the service, I have never had a file lost or corrupted. Its tool for uploading photos from mobile devices is a breeze. And like the best-designed products, it works so effectively that it fades into the background.

This weekend, it didn’t work. But files weren’t lost or destroyed, the company says. It’s just that people couldn’t reach them. “Your files were never at risk during the outage,” Dropbox engineer Akhil Gupta wrote. The databases affected, he said, “do not contain file data.”

Rather than diversifying, Houston has worked to hire some of the smartest talent in tech, including the inventor of the Python programming language, to find the best answers and buffer against problems like this weekend’s outage. So far, that seems to have paid off.

This weekend’s blip won’t put many people off Dropbox. If they’re like me, users have come to rely heavily on Dropbox for quickly storing and sharing files and generally getting work done. And Dropbox has created a strong well of trust from which it can draw. If it had branched into other services at the expense of its core syncing service, you can bet that trust wouldn’t be there.
[438 words]

[Time 4]
How Uber Goes Under

Uber, the ride-sharing startup, is facing its own moment of crisis. Over the past months, many people — and many news stories — have complained about the company’s “surge pricing,” where it raises fares during times when lots of people want a ride, such as during snowstorms and over holidays. Now, a different kind of anger has surfaced: Paris-based blog Rude Baguette reports that, in France, protestors are attacking Uber cars, throwing eggs, slashing tires, and breaking windows. Uber confirmed the attacks.

The violence comes as the French government attempts to address complaints that app-based car services like Uber are undermining the traditional taxi industry. The U.S. taxi industry feels similar ill-will toward Uber for undermining its business model, but it has turned to the courts and city councils to protect its interests.

‘If you are unreliable, customers just disappear. The thing is that nowhere in any of the press are you hearing about us being unreliable’  — Travis Kalanick

Surge pricing and conflict with taxi services might seem like separate issues. But both reflect the consequences of Uber’s choice to stake its success, like Dropbox, to an unbending vision of doing one thing exceptionally well. It too is not diversified. Uber could make the recent complaints go away fairly quickly. It could drop surge pricing. And it could acquiesce and change its service in cities where government and industry have come out against it. But Uber doesn’t do either of these things, because in the eyes of its outspoken CEO Travis Kalanick, backing down would compromise the foundation of his business: to provide a great ride.

Surge pricing, according to Uber, is intended to stimulate supply and curb demand to ensure the two match. Otherwise, the logic goes, would-be riders are left stranded without a car. Last month, during the height of the backlash against Uber over fares reported at seven times the usual during a New York snowstorm, Kalanick told WIRED that the bad publicity his company faced over surge pricing would pale compared to the impact of Uber not being able to offer a ride at all.
[360 words]

[Time 5]

“If you are unreliable, customers just disappear,” he said. “The thing is that nowhere in any of the press are you hearing about us being unreliable.”

If rides don’t come through, or are slow to arrive, the reason for Uber’s existence disappears. Kalanick is a professed admirer of Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, an Uber investor. Amazon now does a lot of things well, but if it stopped delivering the products people ordered from the site quickly and accurately, it would fold. Uber sees itself as offering a similar level of service for rides. If it backed down, if the rides stopped showing up, in Uber’s eyes, it would be like the Amazon box you ordered not arriving on your doorstep.

This is also why Uber believes it can’t compromise once it begins to offer its services in a new city, or a new country, like France. It strives to work with regulators to accommodate its existing service rather than changing how it works. As a company, Uber is as much a designer of algorithms as a provider of rides. On the streets, Uber guides cars to certain places at certain times. Back at its San Francisco headquarters, teams of mathematicians and data scientists are figuring out how to guide them. And the math is hard enough without additional constraints.

Yes, the constraints still come. A new French law that requires drivers to wait 15 minutes between taking a reservation and picking up a passenger. But the company has shown a defiant reluctance to put constraints on itself.

Such stubbornness is often seen as arrogance: the hotshot, elitist startup that believes it’s above the rules. But Uber has made the choice that getting bashed on Twitter — or by City Hall — isn’t as bad as customers opening up the app and seeing no rides on the map. The first threat is manageable. The second is existential — customers just open up another ride-sharing app to see if an Uber competitor has cars instead.
[315 words]


[Time 6]
Snapchat Disappears

Snapchat’s moment of weakness was more acute, and the company appeared to deal with it the worst. Recently, a group of hackers exploited a known security hole in the private messaging service, leaking the phone numbers of millions of users. Snapchat co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel faced a barrage of withering criticism for failing to apologize quickly for the incident and the sometimes peevish posture the company has taken in the wake of the leak.

For a company whose whole business is based on privacy, such a breach is a serious threat to its livelihood — not least because so many others are now angling to offer similar services.

The cautionary tale here is Friendster. As the startup that was Facebook before Facebook, Friendster was the one of the first companies to gain genuine traction in what was then widely called “Web 2.0.” But then it stopped working the way people wanted it to. It didn’t even screw up that badly — accounts of its demise describe fairly typical management and technical issues. But even this can bring down a startup in a digital world that moves so quickly. Facebook arrived and also did the one thing Friendster did — connecting people — but better. And for Friendster, it was too late.

For Snapchat, a meaningful apology isn’t about good manners. It’s about showing it appreciates the gravity of its violation of trust. As is making sure it doesn’t happen again. As with Dropbox and Uber, Snapchat has earned the love of its users by doing one thing they love really well. Take that thing away, and the love goes with it.
[286 words]

Source :  Wired
http://www.wired.com/business/2014/01/dropbox-uber/

olivia瓜瓜

Part III: Obstacle

Article3       
Three Myths on the World's Poor

        Bill and Melinda Gates call foreign aid a phenomenal investment that's transforming the world.

[Paraphrase 7]

By almost any measure, the world is better off now than it has ever been before. Extreme poverty has been cut in half over the past 25 years, child mortality is plunging, and many countries that had long relied on foreign aid are now self-sufficient.
Our Developing World

By almost any measure, write Bill and Melinda Gates, the world is better off now than ever before, in part thanks to foreign aid. By 2035, they predict there will be almost no poor countries left in the world. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

So why do so many people seem to think things are getting worse? Much of the reason is that all too many people are in the grip of three deeply damaging myths about global poverty and development. Don't get taken in by them.

MYTH ONE: Poor countries are doomed to stay poor.

They're really not. Incomes and other measures of human welfare are rising almost everywhere—including Africa.

Take Mexico City, for instance. In 1987, when we first visited, most homes lacked running water, and we often saw people trekking on foot to fill up water jugs. It reminded us of rural Africa. The guy who ran Microsoft's MSFT +0.67%   Mexico City office would send his kids back to the U.S. for checkups to make sure the smog wasn't making them sick.

Today, Mexico City is mind-blowingly different, boasting high-rise buildings, cleaner air, new roads and modern bridges. You still find pockets of poverty, but when we visit now, we think, "Wow—most people here are middle-class. What a miracle." You can see a similar transformation in Nairobi, New Delhi, Shanghai and many more cities around the world.

In our lifetimes, the global picture of poverty has been completely redrawn. Per-person incomes in Turkey and Chile are where the U.S. was in 1960. Malaysia is nearly there. So is Gabon. Since 1960, China's real income per person has gone up eightfold. India's has quadrupled, Brazil's has almost quintupled, and tiny Botswana, with shrewd management of its mineral resources, has seen a 30-fold increase. A new class of middle-income nations that barely existed 50 years ago now includes more than half the world's population.

And yes, this holds true even in Africa. Income per person in Africa has climbed by two-thirds since 1998—from just over $1,300 then to nearly $2,200 today. Seven of the 10 fastest-growing economies of the past half-decade are in Africa.

Here's our prediction: By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world. Yes, a few unhappy countries will be held back by war, political realities (such as North Korea) or geography (such as landlocked states in central Africa). But every country in South America, Asia and Central America (except perhaps Haiti) and most in coastal Africa will have become middle-income nations. More than 70% of countries will have a higher per-person income than China does today.

MYTH TWO: Foreign aid is a big waste.

Actually, it is a phenomenal investment. Foreign aid doesn't just save lives; it also lays the groundwork for lasting, long-term economic progress.

Many people think that foreign aid is a large part of the budgets of rich countries. When pollsters ask Americans what share of the budget goes to aid, the most common response is "25%." In fact, it is less than 1%. (Even Norway, the most generous nation in the world, spends less than 3%.) The U.S. government spends more than twice as much on farm subsidies as on international health aid. It spends more than 60 times as much on the military.

One common complaint about foreign aid is that some of it gets wasted on corruption—and of course, some of it does. But the horror stories you hear—where aid just helps a dictator build new palaces—mostly come from a time when aid was designed to win allies for the Cold War rather than to improve people's lives.

The problem today is much smaller. Small-scale corruption, like a government official who puts in for phony travel expenses, is an inefficiency that amounts to a tax on aid. We should try to reduce it, but we can't eliminate it, any more than we can eliminate waste from every government program—or from every business, for that matter. Suppose small-scale corruption amounts to a 2% tax on the cost of saving a life. We should try to cut that. But if we can't, should we stop trying to save those lives?

We've heard plenty of people calling to shut down aid programs if one dollar of corruption is found. But four of the past seven governors of Illinois went to prison for corruption, and no one is demanding that Illinois's schools be shut down or its highways closed.

We also hear critics complain that aid keeps countries dependent on outsiders' generosity. But this argument focuses only on the most difficult remaining cases still struggling to be self-sufficient. Here is a quick list of former major aid recipients that have grown so much that they receive hardly any aid today: Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, Thailand, Mauritius, Botswana, Morocco, Singapore and Malaysia.

Aid also drives improvements in health, agriculture and infrastructure that correlate strongly with long-run growth. A baby born in 1960 had an 18% chance of dying before her fifth birthday. For a child born today, it is less than 5%. In 2035, it will be 1.6%. We can't think of any other 75-year improvement in human welfare that would even come close. A waste? Hardly.

MYTH THREE: Saving lives leads to overpopulation.

Going back at least to Thomas Malthus in 1798, people have worried about doomsday scenarios in which food supply can't keep up with population growth. This kind of thinking has gotten the world in a lot of trouble. Anxiety about the size of the world population has a dangerous tendency to override concern for the human beings who make up that population.

Letting children die now so they don't starve later isn't just heartless. It also doesn't work, thank goodness.

It may be counterintuitive, but the countries with the most death have among the fastest-growing populations in the world. This is because the women in these countries tend to have the most births too.

When more children survive, parents decide to have smaller families. Consider Thailand. Around 1960, child mortality started going down. Then around 1970, after the government invested in a strong family planning program, birthrates started to drop. In the course of just two decades, Thai women went from having six children on average to having just two. Today, child mortality in Thailand is almost as low as it is in the U.S., and Thai women have an average of 1.6 children. This pattern of falling death rates followed by falling birthrates applies for the vast majority of the world.

Saving lives doesn't lead to overpopulation. Just the opposite. Creating societies where people enjoy basic health, relative prosperity, fundamental equality and access to contraceptives is the only way to a sustainable world.

More people, especially political leaders, need to know about the misconceptions behind these myths. The fact is, whether you look at the issue as an individual or a government, contributions to promote international health and development offer an astonishing return. We all have the chance to create a world where extreme poverty is the exception rather than the rule.

—This piece is adapted from the forthcoming annual letter of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, of which the authors are co-chairs. Mr. Gates is the chairman of Microsoft. To receive the annual letter, sign up at gatesletter.com.

[1280 words]

Source: WSJ

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304149404579324530112590864

http://annualletter.gatesfoundation.org/en  

olivia瓜瓜

Backgroud

Uber is a venture-funded startup and Transportation Network Company based in San Francisco, California that makes a mobile application that connects passengers with drivers of vehicles for hire and ridesharing services. The company arranges pickups in dozens of cities around the world.

Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, and client software. Dropbox allows users to create a special folder on each of their computers, which Dropbox then synchronizes so that it appears to be the same folder (with the same contents) regardless of which computer is used to view it. Files placed in this folder also are accessible through a website and mobile phone applications.

Snapchat is a photo messaging application ("app") developed by Evan Spiegel and Robert Murphy, then Stanford University students. Using the app, users can take photos, record videos, add text and drawings, and send them to a controlled list of recipients. These sent photographs and videos are known as "Snaps". Users set a time limit for how long recipients can view their Snaps (as of December 2013, the range is from 1 to 10 seconds), after which they will be hidden from the recipient's device and deleted from Snapchat's servers.


outage 中途暂停运营

Time2：1m49s

Thetech company are invested millions dollar，but their future are uncertain，not because they do something wrong，but because the nature of these business.

Time3:1m

Dropbox is not diversified,a little bug for it may be huge disaster.

Time3+: 1m

This weekend,the dropbox cease to work,although this case  wont put many people out of the dropbox,but the trust of the users at the stake.

Time4: 2m05s

The Uber, the another app company face the surge pricing press and the government against issues. But the ceo,wont do any compromise.

Time5: 2m09s

Uber view it’s business as the Amazon’s delivery,if it cant reach the customer,there has no reason to existence for Uber.

So Uber will above many rules .  

Time6: 1m30s

The primary business for snapchat is privacy，when it is taken away，the user‘s trust disappear.

疏离无罪

Interesting topic~~~谢谢瓜瓜，小年夜幸苦了

Speaker:There are two possibility of the origins of our human mistakes:1 enviornment is designed badly 2 our minds are designed badly. To find out the answer,an experiment was made through observing monekys.Researchers taught monekys to use money and exchange can make species smarter.Then facing the same two risky and safe options,monkeys made the same decisions as human did.So,to some extent,the answer may be that our minds are designed badly.But if we can recognize our limitions and figure out our potential,we can overcome errors and be better.

01:39
Dropbox,Uber,Snapchat and other tech companies like these are close to disaster,not for complaints from customers or hackings but for its nature.Today,it's easy for users to abandon one web service to another.

01:42
Dropbox becomes successful because the company forcuses on its core business,but its strength is also its vulnerability,the company is not diversified.And if the company lost customer's trust,it will fall quickly.Recently customer can not reach their files in dropbox.

01:29
Uber is also suffering problems as Dropbox.Surge pricing and conflict with taxi services are two main problems.

01:16
If you are unreliable, customers just disappear.Uber is troubling to offer services in new city or new country.There are many constraints.

01:20
Snapchat is in bigger trouble.The company was attacked by hacked and lost millions of data.It's a disaster to a company whose principle is privacy.And the company didn't deal this risk well.

06:20
Main Idea:3 myths about the poverty.
The world is better off now.Some people think it is worse because of 3 myths.
1 Poor countries are doomed to stay poor. This is totally wrong.Mexico City is a good example.People should redraw the global picture of poverty.
2 Foreigh Aid is a big wast. But actually,foreigh aid is a phenomenal invest.It just a little part of the budget of a rich country.And nowadadys corruption is not a heavy problem.Only in extreme situation,those poor countries can not be self-sufficient.
3 Saving lives leads to overpopulation. Actually,the fact is opposite.The birthrate will raise when the deathrate of child raise.When more children survive, parents decide to have smaller families.
More people, especially political leaders, need to know about the misconceptions behind these myths.

sherlock1992

板凳板凳~~~谢谢瓜瓜，小年夜幸苦了

Speed
1'53"
2'11"
1'47"
1'34"
1'28"

苏错

谢谢瓜瓜~~~辛苦了哟~~

Speaker:
Some mistakes we make are actually predictable.
But where did those mistakes come from?
Use Holly as the prefect case to found out which explantions is more
possible.
Speed:
Time2:1'32
Time3:1'36
Time4:1'25
Time5:1'14
Time6:1'23
Obstacle:6'42
Three myths~

Talitha

thank you
2:1'47
The San Francisco-based startup not only faced countless complaints from users across the net, it was forced to deflect rumors that the service was hacked, something that turned out to be a hoax.

3:2'56:
-author interviewed the co-founder of Dropbox.
-he said Dropbox can not have any error
-Dropbox is not very diversified.
-do one thing, but do it best.

4:3'10:
-Uber was complained by customers.
-CEO of Uber does not want to compromise
-Uber is same as Dropbox. It does one thing but does it excellently.

5:2'18
-Uber targets to provide the same excellent service as the Amazon.
-It does not willing to open up new market in new cities because it afraid it reduce the quality of service.

6:1'45
-snapchat leaked out many users 's phone number.
-CEO quickly apologize in public
-friendster was before facebook but facebook did a better job in connecting people

7:8'7
-three myths about the foreign aid
1:the world is becoming a better place. Many poor countries are getting richer. By 2035 Bill said 90% of countries will be out of poverty
2: countries receive foreign aid become more self sufficient
3:foreign aid will not make the world overpopulated. when mortality drop, the birth rate will also drop.

ieveline

Speaker
smart and doom...
People tend to make same errors.
reaons:
The things are too complicate to understand, then messed up
our mndsare messed up.

Monkey experiment
created monkey money, and create monkey markets
monkey wants better food by using monkey

give monkey the same finacial inssues
people make risky choice in lose avsion
in experiment, monkey choose risk as peole do in reality

it is the nature of peopleto make bad choices
men is the only speice overcome (their bad thing)...

Speed
1--02:03
high risks are exist in the high-tech companies

2--02:08
High tech company, such as Dropbox, has lots of similar competors.
Any small mistake it makes could make a big problem-- lost the trust from its customer

3--02:18
Uber rises the price to give better service.

4--01:52
The only way to survival is keep provide the service as promised

5--01:36
Only one mistake could be a life-or-death problem

Obstacle--07:00
By 2035, there will be almost no poor countries left in the world.
Foregin aids are not waste, but helps a lot in the past to countries in every aspects,
Saving lives doesn't lead to overpopulation. Just the opposite

MAGGIEHE1993

谢谢楼主~~~新年快乐~。先占个
艰难的补完了作业。一天没写天天补作业啊TT
Speaker: The speaker started the speech by stating that humans are notably smart but can also make silly mistakes over and
         over again. The speaker raised two possible explanations, one is the environment factor and the other is our minds.
         Then the speaker and her team went on a study of monkey to see if it is our mind that lead us to make silly decisions
         once again. They started by studying the financial decisions of monkeys and it turns out that monkeys make the gain
         and loss decisions just as humans do. As a result, the speaker concludes that it is our mind that lead us to make
         certain decisions. She also recommended that we should accept the deficiencies of our mind and make good use of them.

time2: 2min 21"
       Dropbox introduced a bug while updating hundreds of computer servers and received countless complaints.

time3: 2min 54"
       Dropbox has tried to do its best on syncing files across all people's devices. But this only focus has caused great damage
       to the company as well as brought tremendous success.

time4: 3min 09"
       Surging prices and undermining the traditional taxi industry have raised customer's complaints about Uber. But Uber does not
       want to change its business idea and remains its business pattern unchanged.

time5: 2min 31"
       Uber regards customers most important to their business and they want to ensure that customers can receive the best service
       that they offer. Nothing can be worse than losing customers and forcing them to Uber's competitors and Uber is not going to
       change its business strategy in France.

time6: 1min 54"
       Snapchat's private messaging device was hacked and it failed to deal with the accident properly. The writer thought it was
       important for companies to do the right thing when something unexpected happened. Also he gave an example of Friendster and
       Facebook and claimed that it is important to seize business opportunity.

Obstacle: 9min 50"
          An annual letter from the Bill&Melinda Gates Foundation states that the world is better off now than ever before. Then the
          letter gives three myths about global poverty and development.
          Myth one is that the poor countries are doomed to stay poor.
          The fact is not. Incomes and other measures of human welfare are actually rising over the years. Then the writer took and
          example of the Mexico City. It is much better than is was in the old days. Also the average incomes in some developing countries
          are rising over the years.
          Myth two is that the financial aid is a waste of money. This is also not true. Actually the financial aid only occupies a very small part of the government expenditure. Also the           writers of the letter think that it is almost impossible
          to avoid corruption in the use of money, but we should not stop financial aid just because of the corruption. What's more, a lot of
          countries which used to receive financial are developing quite well and do not need any financial aid anymore.
          Myth three is that the financial aid will lead overpopulation of the world. This is again not true. Studies show that when children have a high death
          rate when they are young, the women of the country tend to have more babies. And if children can survive longer, women tend to have
          less children and the writers gave the example of Thailand to confirm this idea.