填空题
Remember the paper encyclopedia Half the people who want an Encyclopedia Britannica today buy it on a single compact disc. They save trees, effort, time, money — and avoid errors in cheaper products. An example: No Australian soldiers landed on Gallipoli in 1915. So says the world’s best-selling encyclopedia, Microsoft Bookshelf. Microsoft is the most influential computer software company on the globe. However, in edition after edition, its electronic encyclopedia has been reporting that the British and Australians were the invading force. Requests for correction are ignored. No such phantom (不存在的) Australian army appears when you call on the new electronic Encyclopedia Britannica on CD-ROM. Type in the word "Gallipoli" and in seconds you are offered 55 separate and well-searched items, including some about the event of 1915. You then choose the material you want.
No matter how much the technology changes, the primary measure of an information source is its publisher’s care and attention to accuracy. As Microsoft’s sustained Gallipoli misreporting displays, even the appearance of a respected business name on an electronic resource does not guarantee that information will be correct. EB on CD-ROM comes with direct access to the editor’s name and address, and a request to point out things that need fixing.
Encyclopedia Britannica is now available in two electronic forms. These are a single CD-ROM which sells for less than $1,200, and EB Online, effectively a password that can be purchased for the equivalent of $150. Password holders enjoy unrestricted access to EB data via the Internet for one year. Each format offers information available in the printed volumes, updated and re-organized entirely in preservation. The complete encyclopedia has more than 130,000 links to Web sites. Coverage includes more than 72,000 articles; over 10,000 illustrations, including photographs, drawings, maps, and flags; and more than 75,000 definitions~
The quality of EB material, both in scope and detail, is legendary. For the new electronic formats, editors have completely reworked material from the printed edition for compatibility with Netscape Navigator Internet Web browser, already familiar to many computer users. Subscribers need only click the icon for EB on their personal computers (Windows or Macintosh), and within it, space for the question to be answered. The software processes the question, scanning hundreds of thousands of files in seconds, and then presents possible answers. After browsing through these offerings, the information can be copied electronically and "passed" into user’s own document.