【判断题】Relevant costs are only variable.

"Water, which is essential for life, costs nothing. On the other hand, diamonds, which are essential for nothing, cost a lot." Unfortunately, the world has changed considerably since an 18th century economist made this remark.

What was true over 200 years ago is certainly no longer true now. In a number of countries people pay as much for water in their homes as they do for electricity.

Like health, we ignore water when we have it--unless there are floods, of course. Once there is a threat to our water supply, however, water can quickly become the only thing that matters. We know only too well that, without water, there can be no life.

The situation is now becoming so bad that environmentalists feel it may be necessary to shock the world into saving water in a similar way to the shock caused by the oil crises in the 1970's.

At that time, the oil crisis became such a serious threat to the lives of everyone in the developed countries that it made people conscious of the importance of saving oil and provided powerful encouragement for governments to look for other forms of energy.

The result undoubtedly was of major benefit to energy conservation.

There is now no longer an unlimited supply of fresh water. About 97 percent of the planet's water is seawater. Another 2 percent is locked in icecaps and glaciers. There are also reserves of fresh water under the earth's surface but these are too deep for us to use economically.

Unfortunately, competition is growing fiercely for what little water is available. It may be a matter of time before that competition becomes a conflict.

To make matters worse, the world's population is increasing so rapidly that it is expected to grow to about 8 billion in 15 years.

Moreover, in many developed countries throughout the world, flush lavatories and washing machines mean the average person now uses 300 litres of water a day compared with 50 at the beginning of last century.

At the other extreme, according to the World Health Organization, one quarter of the world's present population still lacks safe drinking water and proper sanitation. Most live in the southern hemisphere, where supplies of fresh water are put in jeopardy through dirty industrial practices, poor irrigation and erosion.

The social stability of the world is no longer threatened by global wars, the Cold War. However, the supply of water could soon become the chief threat to such stability. There is already evidence of this happening, especially in Africa.

Recently the Egyptian Government threatened to destroy any dams built on the Nile if they considered the dams would affect their supply of fresh water.

What is required immediately is an awareness of the true value of water and the formation of sensible water conservation strategies.

It is also of vital importance to have a consensus on how best to use shared water resources for the benefit of all the countries in the world as well as an examination of the best methods for the distribution of the world's water.

According to the passage, which of the following statements is true?

A．People now pay as much for water as they did 200 years ago.

B．People now pay as little for water as they did 200 years ago.

C．Water now costs as much as it used to.

D．Water now has become more expensive than it was.

听力原文：W: Did you ask whether meals are included in the hotel price?

M: Only breakfast, she said.

Q: What is included in the cost for the hotel?

(4)

A．Three meals.

B．Supper only.

C．Meals and drinks.

D．Breakfast only.

20 IAS 2 Inventories defines the extent to which overheads are included in the cost of inventories of finished goods.

Which of the following statements about the IAS 2 requirements in this area are correct?

1 Finished goods inventories may be valued on the basis of labour and materials cost only, without including overheads.

2 Carriage inwards, but not carriage outwards, should be included in overheads when valuing inventories of finished goods.

3 Factory management costs should be included in fixed overheads allocated to inventories of finished goods.

A All three statements are correct

B 1 and 2 only

C 1 and 3 only

D 2 and 3 only

The cost of plant and equipment includes all expenditures reasonable and necessary in acquring the asset and placing it in a position and condition for use in the operations of the business. Only reasonable and necessary expenditures should be 【21】______ . For example, ff the company's truck driver receives a traffic ticket while hauling a new machine to the plant, the traffic 【22】______ is not part of the cost of the new machine, ff the machine is dropped and 【23】______ while being uploaded, the cost of repairing the damage should be 【24】______ as expense in the current period and should not be added 【25】______ the cost of the machine.

Cost is most easily determined 【26】______ an asset is purchased for cash. The cost of the asset is then 【27】______ to the cash outlay necessary in acquiring the asset 【28】______ any expenditure for freight, insurance while in transit, installation, trial runs, and any other 【29】______ necessary to make the asset ready for use. If plant assets are 【30】______ on the installment plan or by issuance of notes payable, the interest element or carrying charge should be 【31】______ as interest expense and not as part of the cost of the plant assets.

Why should all the incidental charges 【32】______ to the acquisition of a machine 【33】______ included in its cost? Why 【34】______ treat these incidental charges as expenses of the period in which the machine is acquired?

The answer is to be found in the basic accounting 【35】______ of matching costs and revenue. The benefits of 【36】______ the machine will be received over a span of years, 10 years, for example. During those 10 years the 【37】______ of the machine will contribute to revenue. 【38】______ ,the total costs of the machine should be recorded in the accounts as a(n) 【39】______ and allocated against the revenue of the 10 years. All costs incurred in acquiring the machine are costs for services to be 【40】______ from using the machine.

【21】

A．excluded

B．included

C．combined

D．spent

此题为判断题(对，错)。

听力原文： Americans often say that there are only two things a person can be sure of in life: death and taxes. Americans do not have a corner on the "death" market, but many people feel that the United States leads the world with the worst taxes. Taxes consist of the money which people pay to support their government. There are generally three levels of government in the United States: federal, state, and city; therefore, there are three types of taxes. Salaried people who earn more than a few thousand dollars must pay a certain percentage of their salaries to the federal government. The federal government has a graduated income tax; that is, the percentage of the tax increases as a person's income increases. With the high cost of taxes, people are not very happy on April 15, when the federal taxes are due.

(30)

A．Government and taxes.

B．Work and taxes.

C．Freedom and taxes.

D．Death and taxes.

根据以下材料，回答题

Road Politeness

It is all very well to blame traffic jams， the cost of petrol and the quick peace of modern life， but manners on the roads are becoming horrible. You might tolerate the rude and inconsiderate driver， but nowadays the well-mannered motorist is the exception to the rule.

Perhaps the situation calls for a "Be Kind to Other Drivers" campaign; otherwise， it may get completely out of hand.

Road politeness is not only good manners， but good sense， too. It takes the most cool-headed and good-tempered of drivers to resist the temptation to revenge when subjected to uncivilized behaviors. On the other hand， a little politeness goes a long way towards relieving the tensions of motoring. A friendly nod or a wave of acknowledgement in response to an act of politeness helps to create an atmosphere of goodwill and tolerance， so necessary in modern traffic conditions. But such acknowledgements of politeness are all too rare today. Many drivers nowadays don"t even seem able to recognize politeness when they see it.

However， improper politeness can also be dangerous. A typical example is the driver who waves a child across a crossing into the path of oncoming vehicles that may be unable to stop in time. The same goes for encouraging old ladies to cross the road wherever and whenever they care to.

A veteran driver， whose manners are faultless， told me it would help if motorists learn to filter correctly into traffic streams without causing the total blockages （堵塞） that give rise to bad temper. Unfortunately， modern motorists can"t even learn to drive， let alone be well-mannered on the road. Years ago the experts warned us that the car-ownership explosion would demand a lot more give-and-take from all road users. It is high time for all of us to take this message to heart.

According to this passage， troubles on the road are primarily caused by __________ . 查看材料

A.the traffic jams

B.the quick peace of modern life

C.the cost of petrol

D.the behavior. of the driver

Distributed Systems

  

分布系统

  Computer systems are undergoing a revolution. From 1945, when the modern computer era began, until about 1985, computers were large and expensive. Even minicomputers normally cost tens of thousands of dollars each. As a result, most organizations had only a handful of computers, and for lack of a way to connect them, they operated independently from one another.

  Starting in the mid 1980s, however, two advances in technology began to change that situation. The first was the development of powerful microprocessors. Initially, these were 8 bit machines, but soon 16, 32, and even 64 bit CPUs became common. Many of these had the computing power of a decent-sized mainframe (i. e. large) computer, but for a fraction of the price.

  The amount of improvement that has occurred in computer technology in the past half century is truly staggering and totally unprecedented in other industries. From a machine that cost 10 million dollars and executed 1 instruction per second, we have come to machines that cost 1,000 dollars and execute 10 million instructions per second, a price/ performance gain of 1011. If cars had improved at this rate in the same time period, a Roll Royce would now cost 10 dollars and get a billion miles per gallon. (Unfortunately, it would probably also have a 200 page manual telling how to open the door.) The second development was the invention of high speed computer networks. The local area networks, or LANs, allow dozens, or even hundreds, of machines within a building to be connected in such a way that small amounts of information can be transferred between machines in a millisecond or so. Larger amounts of data can be moved between machines at rates of 10 to 100 million bits/sec and sometimes more. The wide area networks, or WANs, allow millions of machines all over the earth to be connected at speeds varying from 64Kbps (kilobits per second) to gigabits per second for some advanced experimental networks.

  The result of these technologies is that it is now not only feasible, but easy, to put together computing systems composed of large numbers of CPUs connected by a high speed network. They are usually called distributed systems, in contrast to the previous centralized systems (or single processor systems) consisting of a single CPU, its memory, peripherals, and some terminals.

  There is only one fly in the ointment^[1]: software. Distributed systems need radically different software than centralized systems do. In particular, the necessary operating systems are only beginning to emerge. The first few steps have been taken, but there is still a long way to go. Nevertheless, enough is already known about these distributed operating systems that we can present the basic ideas.

  

What Is a Distributed System?

  Various definitions of distributed systems have been given in literature, none of them satisfactory and none of them in agreement with any of the others. For our purposes it is sufficient to give a loose characterization.

  A distributed system is a collection of independent computers that appear to the users of the system as a single computer.

  This definition has two aspects. The first one deals with hardware: the machines are autonomous. The second one deals with software: the users think of the system as a single computer. Both are essential.

  Rather than going further with definitions, it is probably more helpful to give several examples of distributed systems. As a first example, consider a network of workstations in a university or company department. In addition to each user's personal workstation, there might be a pool of processors in the machine room that are not assigned to specific users but are allocated dynamically as needed. Such a system might have a single file system, with all files accessible from all machines in the same way and using the same path name. Furthermore, when a user typed a command, the system could look for the best place to execute that command, possibly on the user's own workstation, possibly on an idle workstation belonging to someone else, and possibly on one of the unassigned processors in the machine room. If the system as a whole looked and acted like a classical single processor timesharing system, it would qualify as a distributed system.

  As a second example, consider a factory full of robots, each containing a powerful computer for handling vision, planning, communication, and other tasks. When a robot on the assembly line notices that a part it is supposed to install is defective, it asks another robot in the parts department to bring it a replacement. If all the robots act like peripheral devices attached to the same central computer and the system can be programmed that way, it too counts as a distributed system.

  As a final example, think about a large bank with hundreds of branch offices all over the world. Each office has a master computer to store local accounts and handle local transactions. In addition, each computer has the ability to talk to all other branch computers and with a central computer at headquarters. If transactions can be done without regard to where a customer or account is, and the users do not notice any difference between this system and the old centralized mainframe that it replaced, it too would be considered a distributed system.

  

Advantages of Distributed Systems over Centralized Systems

  The real driving force behind the trend toward decentralization is economics. A quarter of a century ago, computer pundit and gadfly Herb Grosch stated what later came to be known as Grosch's law: the computing power of a CPU is proportional to the square of its price. By paying twice as much, you could get four times the performance. This observation fit the mainframe technology of its time quite well, and led most organizations to buy the largest single machine they could afford.

  With microprocessor technology, Grosch's law no longer holds. For a few hundred dollars you can get a CPU chip that can execute more instructions per second than one of the largest 1980s mainframes. If you are willing to pay twice as much, you get the same CPU, but running at a somewhat higher clock speed. As a result, the most cost effective solution is frequently to harness a large number of cheap CPUs together in a system. Thus, the leading reason for the trend toward distributed systems is that these systems potentially have a much better price/performance ratio than a single large centralized system would have. In effect, a distributed system gives more bang for the buck^[2].

  A slight variation on this theme is the observation that a collection of microprocessors cannot only give a better price/performance ratio than a single mainframe, but may yield an absolute performance that no mainframe can achieve at any price. For example, with current technology it is possible to build a system from 10,000 modern CPU chips, each of which runs at 50 MIPS (Millions of Instructions Per Second), for a total performance of 500,000MIPS. For a single processor (i. e. CPU) to achieve this, it would have to execute an instruction in 0. 002 nsec (2 picosec). No existing machine even comes close to this, and both theoretical and engineering considerations make it unlikely that any machine ever will. Theoretically, Einstein's theory of relativity dictates that nothing can travel faster than light, which can cover only 0.6 mm in 2 picosec. Practically, a computer of that speed fully contained a 0.6 mm cube would generate so much heat that it would melt instantly. Thus, whether the goal is normal performance at low cost or extremely high performance at greater cost, distributed systems have much to offer.

  As an aside, some authors make a distinction between distributed systems, which are designed to allow many users to work together, and parallel systems, whose only goal is to achieve maximum speedup on a single problem, as our 500,000 MIPS machine might. We believe that this distinction is difficult to maintain because the design spectrum is really a continuum. We prefer to use the term "distributed system" in the broadest sense to denote any system in which multiple interconnected CPUs work together.

  A next reason for building a distributed system is that some applications are inherently distributed. A supermarket chain might have many stores, each of which gets goods delivered locally (possibly from local farms), makes local sales, and makes local decisions about which vegetables are so old or rotten that they must be thrown out. It therefore makes sense to keep track of inventory at each store on a local computer rather than centrally at corporate headquarters. After all, most queries and updates will be done locally. Nevertheless, from time to time, top management may want to find out how many rutabagas it currently owns. One way to accomplish this goal is to make the complete system look like a single computer to the application programs, but implement decentrally, with one computer per store as we have described. This would then be a commercial distributed system.

  Notes

  [1] There is only one fly in the ointment. 美中不足。

  [2] gives more bang for the buck: buck，俚语，表示—美元。这句的意思是“小钱办大事”。

Section A暂缺

Section B – ALL FIVE questions are compulsory and MUST be attempted

The Chemical Free Clean Co (C Co) provides a range of environmentally-friendly cleaning services to business customers, often providing a specific service to meet a client’s needs. Its customers range from large offices and factories to specialist care wards at hospitals, where specialist cleaning equipment must be used and regulations adhered to. C Co offers both regular cleaning contracts and contracts for one-off jobs. For example, its latest client was a chain of restaurants which employed them to provide an extensive clean of all their business premises after an outbreak of food poisoning.

The cleaning market is very competitive, although there are only a small number of companies providing a chemical free service. C Co has always used cost-plus pricing to determine the prices which it charges to its customers but recently, the cost of the cleaning products C Co uses has increased. This has meant that C Co has had to increase its prices, resulting in the loss of several regular customers to competing service providers.

The finance director at C Co has heard about target costing and is considering whether it could be useful at C Co.

Required:

(a) Briefly describe the main steps involved in deriving a target cost. (3 marks)

(b) Explain any difficulties which may be encountered and any benefits which may arise when implementing target costing at C Co. (7 marks)