Misery may love company, but this was ridiculous. More than a

million IBM stockholders last week took a nightmare ride on a stock they

had long trusted. IBM had been sliding all year, recent hitting 10-year 【M1】________

lows. But after the company announced Tuesday that it would, among

other things, slash another 25,000 jobs, the stock took a historic rise. 【M2】________

In 48 hours, it lost 11 points, or almost 18 percent of its value, closing

Wednesday at 517/s. On Friday it hit other new low. Big Board officials 【M3】________

camped out on the exchange floor to prevent chaotic, and brokers 【M4】________

fielded frantic calls from investors in various stages of disbelief and

agony. “They’re screaming and hollering,” said Carol Komskis of York

Securities. “They are saying, ’Things like this just don’t happen in

America. ’” Even worse news could come: IBM warned that it may have

to cut its dividend.

Stock prices that rise and fall are anything new; that’s what makes a 【M5】_________

market. But Big Blue had always epitomized the blue-chip stock that you

could count on to send the kids to college or help you retire in the style. 【M6】_________

Some investors may be in blissful ignorant; pension funds across the 【M7】_________

country are heavily investing in IBM. (The New York state employee 【M8】_________

pension funds lonely hold 3. 6 million shares.) But the charm of stocks 【M9】_________

such as IBM, General Motors and Westinghouse was that you could feel

secure in buying them even you did not know “earnings” from your 【M10】________

elbow. Such stock made generations of Americans faithful capitalists.

“This was the kind of stock that created wealth for a lot of people in this

country,” says Jonathan Pond, a Boston-based financial counselor and

author.

Bill Gates may be one of the smartest guys in the country, but even

he’s annoyed at having to remember a lot of personal passwords for

activities like withdrawing money and going online. He also thinks

they’re secure. At last week’s Comdex computer convention in Las 【M1】__________

Vegas, the Microsoft CEO railed the password as a “weak link”. One of 【M2】__________

his proposed solutions are biometrics, the measuring of unique 【M3】__________

characteristics like the fingerprint and the iris of the eye for the

purpose of verifying identification. 【M4】__________

That delighted about the dozen or so companies that brought biometric 【M5】__________

technology to Comdex. Mostly start-ups, they came to Vegas shopping

schemes to identify you in your hands, your eyes, your voice, even the 【M6】__________

way you type. “We want to see a biometrics row in every CompUSA,

right next to joysticks and printers,” says Kevin Corson of True Touch,

a maker of software that works with various forms of the technology.

Comdex attendants eagerly lined on at the counter of IriScan, a 【M7】_________

firm based in Marlton, N. J. , to hold a scanner—it looked a bit like a

hair dryer—about three inches from their eyes. The device works by

taking a video image of the iris, breaking the image into circular

frameworks and analyzed the unique patterns within each area. The 【M8】_________

company says there’s only a l-in-1078 chances that two people’s irises 【M9】_________

will match in its system.

A company called Identicator, in San Bruno, Calif. , is aiming a

little lower—at your forefingers. The company licenses its scanners to

Compaq and other companies, which combine them with keyboards and

mouses or sell them as $ 100 stand-alone units that you can put into your 【M10】_________

computer.

Language and culture are not fundamentally inseparable. At the

most basic level, language is a method of expressing ideas. That is,

language is communication; when usually verbal, language can also be 【M1】_________

visual (via signs and symbols), or semiotics (via hand or body gestures).

Culture, on the other hand, is a special set of ideas, practices, customs 【M2】_________

and beliefs which make up a functioning society as distinct.

A culture must have at most one language, which it uses as a distinct 【M3】_________

media of communication to convey its defining ideas, customs, beliefs, 【M4】_________

etc. , from one member of the culture to any member. Cultures can 【M5】_________

develop multiple languages, or “borrow” languages from other cultures

to use; not all such languages are co-equal in the culture. One of the

major defining characteristics of culture is which language is the primary 【M6】_________

means of communication in that culture; sociologists and anthropologists

draw lines among similar cultures heavily based on the prevalent 【M7】_________

language usage.

Languages, on the other hand, can be developed apart from its

originated culture. Certain language has scope for cross-cultural 【M8】_________

adaptations and communication, and may not actually be part of some 【M9】_________

culture. Additionally, many languages are used by different cultures

(that is, the same language can be used in several cultures).

Language is heavily influenced by culture—as cultures come out with 【M10】________

new ideas, they develop language components to express those ideas.

The reverse is also true: the limits of a language can define what is

expressible in a culture (that is, the limits of a language can prevent

certain concepts from being part of a culture).