Questões de Inglês

The leaders of the G8 areconvening in Northern
Ireland for the 39th G8 Summit. The backdrop for this two-day
meeting of the globe’s preeminent economic powers is a world
facing multiple global crises, all of which demand that summit
participants engage in constructive dialogue that leads to
measurable progress. Despite that need, the annual G8
Summits are known more for eliciting empty political promises
and saddling host cities with exorbitant costs.

The baby boomer generation presidents and prime
ministers at the G8 Summit are facing increasingly frustrated
populations. With economic instability entrenching in the
West, a still teetering world financial order, and escalating
tensions in the Middle East, an entire generation of young
people is growing up without opportunity, and with few
prospects for change. But persistent unemployment, declining
standards in health care and education, and environmental
degradation are also driving growing numbers of young people
to demand sophisticated and coordinated global action.
From this mess, two significant questions arise: are
the boomer generation leaders simply incapable of consensusdriven
international cooperation, one that sets aside national
interests for the collective good of humanity? And if this is the
case, are tomorrow’s Facebook generation leaders doomed to
inherit the quagmire of their political predecessors?

R. Onley. The future of global

diplomacy. June 17th, 2013 (adapted).


In the text, "that need" [l.6] refers to

convening in Ireland.
measuring progress.
engaging in dialogue.
facing global crises.
making promises.

A resposta correta é:

In a recent IBM ad campaign titled Let’s Build a
Smarter Planet, a collection of company technologists explain
why database and data mining technologies matter. According
to one of the IBM scientists, "Every day we are creating fifteen
petabytes of new data. Thatfs eight times as much data as there
is in all of the libraries in the United States combined."
Another IBM researcher in the commercial explains, "If we can
analyze and mine this data, then we can understand it. If we can
understand it, then we can understand trends about it. (c) The
more data you have, the clearer you see." Data entrepreneurs
such as these IBM researchers assume that gathering and
mining massive amounts of data will give objective insight into
human relations and concerns. However, what is the nature of
these trends and new data-driven ways of seeing? The ad is an
excellent example of technology boosterism in the Age of Big
Data, where actors argue that data mining improves our
understanding of social and organizational life. Yet, IBM fails
to comment on how society shapes data mining technologies
and how the use of these technologies may construct, perform,
and categorize us in old and new ways. For example, recent
research into genomics demonstrates an increased capacity to
group people in new ways based upon their genetic
characteristics. The construction, management, and analysis of
a database are more than simply technical exercises in data
collection and processing. Data-driven ways of seeing human
relations purposefully organizes the social world via
communicative acts that incorporate cultural values and
practices of power. As scholars in science and technology
studies argue, human actors" decisions, politics, and cultural
values socially shape the direction and development of
technology and innovation. How will the social shaping of data
mining technologies at the core of new data-intensive practices
of seeing the world mediate social relations, identities, and
practices?

International Journal of Communication, 7 (2013), p. 556.

Internet: (adapted).



According to the text above, judge the following items.

In the “Age of Big Data” (L.15-16), data mining technologies may improve our understanding of social and organizational life.

A resposta correta é:

The proposition “Copyright is Dead, Long Live the
Pirates” was put to the audience after a debate last night on
intellectual property and the need to ensure creators of content
are paid for their work.

Of the audience at Melbourne Town Hall, 49% voted
for the proposition, with 36% against and 15% undecided.
The forum was part of a year-round program of
lectures, readings and debates.

Lori Flekser, executive director of the Intellectual
Property Awareness Foundation and general manager of the
Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia asserted
copyright is not dead, quoting statistics for 2010-2011 which
showed more than 900,000 people were employed in the
copyright industries, which generated an economic value of
$93.2 billion and just over $7 billion in exports.
“It’s very clear from our research that the public either
do not or choose not to understand that the victims of piracy
are not simply studio executives, music companies and
high-profile actors and musicians,” she said.

D. Groves. Copyright is dead. Internet: (adapted).


Based on the text above, judge the following items.

The text criticizes those who are against the defense of intellectual property.

A resposta correta é:

The Oxford Learner’s Dictionary defines
diplomacy as “(…) the management of relations between
countries (…) art of or skill in dealing with people; tact (…)”.
Indeed it is the art of convincing others to perceive things your
way, or at least to have second thoughts about theirs. It is the
combination of logic and science on the one hand with the gift
of proper language packaging and presentation necessary to
convince others.

The power of language rests on the fact that it
contains ideas: and ideas are, according to Plato, more
enduring, indeed more permanent than matter. Ideas can be
suppressed, or go underground but unlike a statue or any other
material things they cannot be shattered. They can only be met
and dealt with by other ideas. Historically it is the magic of
words that bewitched, enthralled and sometimes intoxicated
people and led them to great or mean deeds. The language of
diplomacy, often like poetry, has the ability to move people
from mood to mood. Whether demagogy or whether giving
expression to noble ideologies, theories, or even religious
creeds, ordinary language or that of diplomacy has a
momentum and an inner driving force that is ageless.

K.S. Abu Jaber, Language and Diplomacy. In:

J. Kurbalija; H. Slavi (Eds.) Language and

Diplomacy, p. 53. Malta: DiploProjects, 2001.


According to the author,

a) common language opposes poetry.
b) diplomacy is related to persuasion.
c) ideas last less than material things.
d) language is a demagogical expression.
e) ideologies require a proper language.

A resposta correta é:

The proposition “Copyright is Dead, Long Live the
Pirates” was put to the audience after a debate last night on
intellectual property and the need to ensure creators of content
are paid for their work.

Of the audience at Melbourne Town Hall, 49% voted
for the proposition, with 36% against and 15% undecided.
The forum was part of a year-round program of
lectures, readings and debates.

Lori Flekser, executive director of the Intellectual
Property Awareness Foundation and general manager of the
Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia asserted
copyright is not dead, quoting statistics for 2010-2011 which
showed more than 900,000 people were employed in the
copyright industries, which generated an economic value of
$93.2 billion and just over $7 billion in exports.
“It’s very clear from our research that the public either
do not or choose not to understand that the victims of piracy
are not simply studio executives, music companies and
high-profile actors and musicians,” she said.

D. Groves. Copyright is dead. Internet: (adapted).


Based on the text above, judge the following items.

The debate was part of a one-year forum on intellectual property and piracy.

A resposta correta é:

Taking a Cue From Bernanke a Little Too Far
Financial advisers have been fielding calls from
shaken investors in recent weeks, particularly retirees, who are
nervous that a bond market crash is on the horizon.
You can hardly blame them. Investors have been
fleeing bonds in droves; a record $ 76.5 billion poured out of
bond funds and exchange-traded funds since June. That
exceeds the previous record, according to TrimTabs, when
$ 41.8 billion streamed out of the funds in October 2008 and
the financial crisis was in full force.
But the rush for the exits really means one thing:
investors are betting that interest rates are about to begin their
upward trajectory, something that’s been expected for several
years now.

Their cue came from the Federal Reserve chairman,
Ben Bernanke, who recently suggested that the economic
recovery might allow the central bank to ease its efforts to
stimulate the economy. That includes scaling back its bondbuying
program beginning later this year.
So the big fear is that interest rates are poised to rise
much further, driving down bond prices; the two move in
opposite directions.
A Barclays index tracking a broad swath of
investment-grade bonds lost 3.77 percent from the beginning
of May through Thursday, according to Morningstar. United
States government notes with maturities of 10 years or longer,
however, lost an average of 10.8 percent over the same period.

Making a bet on interest rates is no different from
trying to predict the next big drop in stocks, or jumping into
the market when it appears to be poised to surge higher. These
sort of emotional moves are exactly why research shows that
investors’ returns tend to trail the broader market.

And it’s also why many financial advisers suggest
ignoring the noise, as long as you have a smart assortment of
bond funds that will provide stability when stocks inevitably
tumble once again.

“It’s a futile game to base portfolio moves on interest
rate guesses,” said Milo Benningfield, a financial adviser in
San Francisco. “We don’t have to look any further than highly
regarded Pimco manager Bill Gross, whose horrible interest
rate bet against Treasuries in 2011 landed him in the bottom 15
percent of fund managers in his category that year. Investors
should take a strategic approach designed around the reason
they hold bonds — and then sit tight whenever hedge funds
and other institutions shake the ground around them.”

The main reason longer-term investors hold bonds, of
course, is to provide a steadying force. And though today’s
lower yields provide less of a cushion — the 10-year Treasury
is yielding about 2.5 percent — bonds still remain the best, if
imperfect, foil to stocks.

“The role of bonds in a portfolio has always been to
be a ballast or a diversifier to equity risk,” said Francis
Kinniry, a principal in the Vanguard Investment Strategy
Group. “And that is very true today. Yields are low, but this is
what a bear market in bonds looks like.”

Internet: (adapted).


The words "poised" [l.19] and "yields" (l.47 and 53) mean, respectively,

etiolated and profits.
shaken and gains.
ready and risks.
bolstered and outlay.
on the verge and returns.

A resposta correta é:

The proposition “Copyright is Dead, Long Live the
Pirates” was put to the audience after a debate last night on
intellectual property and the need to ensure creators of content
are paid for their work.

Of the audience at Melbourne Town Hall, 49% voted
for the proposition, with 36% against and 15% undecided.
The forum was part of a year-round program of
lectures, readings and debates.

Lori Flekser, executive director of the Intellectual
Property Awareness Foundation and general manager of the
Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia asserted
copyright is not dead, quoting statistics for 2010-2011 which
showed more than 900,000 people were employed in the
copyright industries, which generated an economic value of
$93.2 billion and just over $7 billion in exports.
“It’s very clear from our research that the public either
do not or choose not to understand that the victims of piracy
are not simply studio executives, music companies and
high-profile actors and musicians,” she said.

D. Groves. Copyright is dead. Internet: (adapted).


Based on the text above, judge the following items.

Statistics show there is more than nine hundred thousand people who depend on the copyright industries for their income.

A resposta correta é:

(…)
But the devotion of Minor’s whole strength was
beginning to prove taxing. His kindly friend Doctor Nicholson
retired in 1895 — still in pain from being attacked by a patient
six years earlier, who hit him on the head with a brick
concealed in a sock. He was replaced by Doctor Brayn, a man
selected (for more than his name alone, one trusts) by a Home
Office that felt a stricter regime needed to be employed at the
asylum.

Brayn was indeed a martinet, a jailer of the old school
who would have done well at any prison farm. But he did as
the government required: There were no escapes during his
term of office (there had been several before, causing
widespread alarm), and in the first year two hundred thousand
hours of solitary confinement were logged by the more
fractious inmates. He was widely feared and loathed by the
patients — as well as by Doctor Murray, who thought he was
treating Minor heartlessly.

(…)
One curious snippet of information came from the
United States later that same year, when it was noted rather
laconically that two of Minor’s family had recently killed
themselves — the letter going on to warn the staff at
Broadmoor that great care should be taken lest whatever
madness gripped their patient turned out to have a hereditary
nature. But even if the staff thought Minor a possible suicide
risk, no restrictions were placed on him as a result of the
American information.
Some years before he had asked for a pocket knife,
with which he might trim the uncut pages of some of the first
editions of the books he had ordered: There is no indication
that he was asked to hand it back, even with the harsh Doctor
Brayn in charge. No other patient was allowed to keep a knife,
but with his twin cells, his bottles, and his books, and with his
part-time servant, William Minor seemed still to belong to a
different category from most others in Broadmoor at the time.

In the year following the disclosure about his
relatives, the files speak of Minor’s having started to take
walks out on the Terrace in all weathers, angrily denouncing
those who tried to persuade him to come back in during one
especially violent snowstorm, insisting in his imperious way
that it was his business alone if he wished to catch a cold. He
had more freedom of choice and movement than most.
(…)

Simon Winschester. The Professor and the Madman – A Tale

of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English

Dictionary. Harper Perennial, 2005, p. 182-3 (adapted).


Each of the options below presents an excerpt taken from the text and a version of the same excerpt. Choose the one which has retained most of the original meaning found in the text.

"In the year following the disclosure about his relatives, the files speak of Minor"s having started to take walks out on the Terrace in all weathers, angrily denouncing those who tried to persuade him to come back in …" [l.36- / In the year after the revelation about his relatives, the archives show that Minor had started to take walks out on the Terrace during any kind of weather, angrily extolling people who tried to convince him to come back in…
"He was replaced by Doctor Brayn, a man selected (…) by a Home Office that felt a stricter regime needed to be employed at the asylum." [l.5- / He was substituted by Doctor Brayn, a man picked over (…) by a Home Office who believed a more rigid regimen needed to be established at the asylum.
"Brayn was indeed a martinet, a jailer of the old school who would have done well at any prison farm" [l.9- / Brayn was really punctilious, a traditional jailer who would have been successful working at any prison farm.
"There were no escapes during his term of office (…), and in the first year two hundred thousand hours of solitary confinement were logged by the more fractious inmates." [l.11- / No one escaped while he was in office (…), and in the first year of his mandate two hundred thousand hours of solitary confinement were registered by the more ingratiating prisoners.
"One curious snippet of information came from the United States later that same year, when it was noted rather laconically that two of Minor"s family had recently killed themselves…" [l.19- / One odd piece of information came from the United States later that same year, when it was noted rather verbosely that two of Minor"s relatives had recently killed themselves…

A resposta correta é:

An Economic History of Patent Institutions


Scholars such as Max Weber and Douglass North have suggested that intellectual property systems had an important
impact on the course of economic development. However, questions from other eras are still current today, ranging from
whether patents and copyrights constitute ideal policies toward intellectual inventions and their philosophical rationale to the
growing concerns of international political economy. Throughout their history, patent and copyright regimes have confronted
and accommodated technological innovations that were no less significant and contentious for their time than those of the
twenty-first century.
The British Patent System
Britain is noted for the establishment of a patent system which has been in continuous operation for a longer period than
any other in the world. English monarchs frequently used patents to reward favorites with privileges, such as monopolies over
trade that increased the retail prices of commodities. It was not until the seventeenth century that patents were associated
entirely with awards to inventors, when Section 6 of the Statute of Monopolies repealed the practice of royal monopoly grants
to all except patentees of inventions.
The British patent system established significant barriers in the form of prohibitively high costs that limited access to
property rights in invention to a privileged few. Patent fees provided an important source of revenues for the Crown and its
employees, and created a class of administrators who had strong incentives to block proposed reforms.
In addition to the monetary costs, complicated administrative procedures that inventors had to follow made transactions
costs also high. Thus nation-wide lobbies of manufacturers and patentees expressed dissatisfaction with the operation of the
British patent system. However, it was not until after the Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1851 that their concerns were finally
addressed, in an effort to meet the burgeoning competition from the United States. In 1852 the efforts of numerous societies
and of individual engineers, inventors and manufacturers that had been made over many decades were finally rewarded.
Parliament approved the Patent Law Amendment Act, which authorized the first major adjustment of the system in two
centuries.
However, the adjustments made at that time were not completely satisfactory. One source of dissatisfaction that endured
until the end of the nineteenth century was the state of the common law regarding patents. British patents were granted "by the
grace of the Crown" and therefore were subject to any restrictions that the government cared to impose. According to the
statutes, as a matter of national expediency, patents were to be granted if "they be not contrary to the law, nor mischievous to
the State, by raising prices of commodities at home, or to the hurt of trade, or generally inconvenient." The Crown possessed
the ability to revoke any patents that were deemed inconvenient or contrary to public policy. [...]
The Patent System in the United States
The United States stands out as having established one of the most successful patent systems in the world. American
industrial supremacy has frequently been credited to its favorable treatment of inventors and the inducements held out for
inventive activity. The first Article of the U.S. Constitution included a clause to "promote the Progress of Science and the
useful Arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and
Discoveries." Congress complied by passing a patent statute in April 1790. In 1836 the United States created the first modern
patent institution in the world, a system whose features differed in significant respects from those of other major countries.
The primary feature of the "American system" is that all applications are subject to an examination for conformity with
the laws and for novelty. An examination system was set in place in 1790, when a select committee consisting of the Secretary
of State (Thomas Jefferson), the Attorney General and the Secretary of War scrutinized the applications. These duties proved to
be too time-consuming for highly ranked officials who had other onerous duties, so three years later it was replaced by a
registration system. The validity of patents was left up to the district courts, which had the power to set in motion a process that
could end in the repeal of the patent.
Another important feature of the American patent system is that it was based on the presumption that social welfare
coincided with the individual welfare of inventors. Accordingly, legislators rejected restrictions on the rights of American
inventors.
Nevertheless, economists such as Joseph Schumpeter have linked market concentration and innovation, and patent rights
are often felt to encourage the establishment of monopoly enterprises. Thus, an important aspect of the enforcement of patents
and intellectual property in general depends on competition or antitrust policies. The attitudes of the judiciary towards patent
conflicts are primarily shaped by their interpretation of the monopoly aspect of the patent grant. The American judiciary in the
early nineteenth century did not recognize patents as monopolies, arguing that patentees added to social welfare through
innovations which had never existed before, whereas monopolists secured to themselves rights that already belong to the
public.[...]

B. Zorina Khan. In: Internet: (adapted).


According to the information provided by text, judge the items below.

The word "patentees" (l.12) can be understood as patent holders.

A resposta correta é:

It is one of the most pressing questions of our time:
what is the relationship between financial and environmental
meltdown? Are the two crises the same thing, needing to be
dealt with together? Or do we, as even some business leaders
suggest, have to fix the environment before we can fix the
economy? A slew of books, ebooks, pamphlets and journals
are tackling this thorny question.

You might expect a strong “yes” from the greens to
fixing the environment ahead of the economy. And in The
Environmental Debt: The hidden costs of a changing global
economy, long-time Greenpeace activist Amy Larkin does
make a cogent argument for this. The high costs of coping with
extreme weather, pollution and declining resources are, she
says, catching up with capitalism. Our carefree attitude to the
“externalities” of wealth generation has run up an
environmental debt that is loading unsustainable financial debt
on us all.

But environmentalists are not the only ones making
the link. In Wall Street and the City, there is similar talk that
the worst fears of environmentalists are coming to pass. As
shortages of natural resources push up prices, a looming
resource crunch is manifested in market meltdown.

Paul Donovan and Julie Hudson, economists for the
Swiss bank UBS, agree. They argue that “there is a second
credit crunch”, an environmental one. By ransacking global
resources and enfeebling ecosystems, the authors say, we are
drawing down environmental credit as surely as reckless
spending on a credit card draws down financial credit. The two
crunches have “a symbiotic relationship”, they argue: “The
party has to stop.”
The synergies between financial and environmental
crunches may be complex, but at root, many economists argue
that reckless consumption, driven by easy credit, helped fuel
financial crisis. Environmentalists agree that the same
consumer binge drove up environmental debt.

F. Pearce. What do we fix first – environment or

economy? Newscientist. July 8th, 2013 (adapted).


Based on the text, judge if the items below are right (C) or wrong (E).

Wall Street and the City experts foresee a complete market breakdown.

A resposta correta é: