[ B ] introduce the topic of gossip
[ C ] examine gossip from a historical perspective
[ D ] prove the real value of gossip

22. By “Gossip also is a form of social bonding” (Para. 5), Professor Aaron Ben-Ze’ev means gossip ____.
[ A ] is a valuable source of social information
[ B ] produces a joy that most people in society need
[ C ] brings people the feel of being part of a group
[ D ] satisfies people’s need of being unusual

23. Which of the following statements is true according to the text?
[ A ] everyone involved will not benefit from gossip
[ B ] philosophers may hold different attitudes toward gossip
[ C ] Dr. Ronald De Sousa regards gossips as perfectly advantageous
[ D ] people are generally not conscious of the value of medical gossip

24. We learn from the last paragraph that ____.
[ A ] gossipers will surely become gossipees someday
[ B ] Socrates was a typical example of a gossiper becoming a gossipee
[ C ] Plato escaped being a victim of gossip by no gossiping
[ D ] an easy way to confront gossip when subjected to it is to live as usual

25. The author’s attitude toward “ gossip” can be best described as ____.
[ A ] neutral [ B ] positive
[ C ] negative [ D ] indifferent

Text 2

　　SoBig.F was the more visible of the two recent waves of infection because it propagated itself by e-mail, meaning that victims noticed what was going on. SoBig.F was so effective that it caused substantial disruption even to those protected by anti-virus software. That was because so many copies of the virus spread (some 500,000 computers were infected) that many machines were overwhelmed by messages from their own anti-virus software. On top of that, one common counter-measure backfired, increasing traffic still further. Anti-virus software often bounces a warning back to the sender of an infected e-mail, saying that the e-mail in question cannot be delivered because it contains a virus. SoBig.F was able to spoof this system by “harvesting” e-mail addresses from the hard disks of infected computers. Some of these addresses were then sent infected e-mails that had been doctored to look as though they had come from other harvested addresses. The latter were thus sent warnings, even though their machines may not have been infected.

　　Kevin Haley of Symantec, a firm that makes anti-virus software, thinks that one reason SoBig.F was so much more effective than other viruses that work this way is because it was better at searching hard-drives for addresses. Brian King, of CERT, an internet-security centre at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, notes that, unlike its precursors, SoBig.F was capable of “multi-threading”: it could send multiple e-mails simultaneously, allowing it to dispatch thousands in minutes.

　　Blaster worked by creating a “buffer overrun in the remote procedure call”. In English, that means it attacked a piece of software used by Microsoft's Windows operating system to allow one computer to control another. It did so by causing that software to use too much memory.