The questions in this group are based on the content of a passage. After reading the passage, choose the best answer to each question. Answer all questions following the passage on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
The collapse of the stock "bubble" of Internet-related companies in 2000-2001 has resulted in more than its fair share of analysis, hand-wringing, and finger-pointing. A panel discussion at a recent Technology Today conference in Santa Monica produced a heated debate between two former luminaries of the dot.corn world: investment banker Pat Verhofen and Sue Mickelson, founder and CEO of Internet retailer Frizbeez.com.
Verhofen fired the opening shot by placing blame for the collapse of Internet stocks on the shoulders of Internet entrepreneurs who aggressively promoted ideas without viable business models. These entrepreneurs were both irresponsible and deceptive, Verhofen argued, to take investors’ money to fund operations that could not reasonably turn a profit, such as giving computers away for free or selling bulky objects, such as dog food or furniture, over the Internet. Many of these companies, he suggested, were little more than arrangements of smoke and mirrors designed to separate investors from their money.
Mickelson responded that Verhofen was like a fox in a henhouse blaming the rooster for all the dead chickens. Entrepreneurs cannot be blamed, she argued, for trying to make money for themselves and other people, because that is what entrepreneurs do. She also stated that you cannot know what ideas will or will not work until you try them; contemporaries of the Wright brothers said that a heavier-than-air aircraft could never work, and look at the skies today.
Mickelson instead placed the blame on the unscrupulous bankers and fund managers who hyped Internet stocks in order to cash in on fees from IPOs and trades. In contrast to entrepreneurs, these financial types actually do have a responsibility to offer only sound financial advice to their clients. If anyone should bear the blame, she argued, it should be people like Pat Verhofen.
Indigo Smith, the moderator of the panel, responded that perhaps the true fault lay with the common investors, who should not have invested in technology stocks in the first place if they lacked the knowledge to do so properly. While she expressed sympathy for those elderly investors who lost substantial portions of their retirement savings on flimsy Internet stocks, she observed that no one forced them to invest in those stocks.
If Mickelson had not used the example of the Wright brothers in her argument, what other example might have illustrated her point as well ？（）
A. Despite widespread public opinion that the sun revolves around the earth, Galileo Galilei published findings showing that the earth revolved around the sun; he later retracted this assertion as a result of pressure from the Church.
B. A tobacco company chose to market cigarettes to children despite widespread public opinion that such marketing is unethical; over the following decade, the company expanded its share of the tobacco market.
C. A home electronics company devoted substantial development resources to eight-track audio technology despite widespread industry opinion that cassette tapes were the wave of the future; eight-tracks were soon replaced by cassette tapes, which in turn were replaced by compact disks.
D. A newspaper chose to publish a story that government lawyers said it could not print; the newspaper won its case against the government lawyers in a federal court, and the writer of the story won a Pulitzer Prize.
E. A computer company initiated research into manufacturing a computer for home use when widespread public opinion held that computers could be useful only for large corporations or government agencies; personal home computers became a multibillion-dollar market.
