阅读理解

Saturday, June 16th

    In the morning, we went camping along a path in Green Natural Park. We were happy because it was a sunny day. We were expecting an enjoyable two-day holiday. On the way, we kept singing and making jokes.

    However, in the afternoon, when we finished our picnic at one o'clock, it was dark and windy. Soon, there was a shower. Unluckily, none of us brought an umbrella. We ran about but we could find no place to hide.

    Twenty minutes passed and it was still raining. There were hours to go before we reached the campsite (野营地). It was even worse that our small compass (指南针) showed that we went to the wrong way. We had lost our way! 

    We had to make a quick decision as it was raining heavily. Chris said we could set up a tent to hide in, so Mary and Tom helped to set up the tent. Chris and I tried to make a fire to keep us warm. But we were unable to light the fire, as everything was wet. We dried ourselves, chatted and waited inside the tent. At about five o’clock, it stopped raining. We decided to give up the camping trip because all of us had been very tired.

This camping trip may not be very successful but we know each other better. And the most important thing I've learned from this trip is the importance of team spirit.

    The online economy—from search to email to social media—is built in large part on the fact that consumers are willing to give away their data in exchange for products that are free and easy to use. The assumption behind this trade-off is that without giving up all that data, those products either couldn't be so good or would have to come at a cost.

    But a new working paper, released this week by Lesley Chiou of Occidental College and Catherine Tucker of MIT, suggests that the trade-off may not always be necessary. By studying the effects of privacy regulations in the EU, they attempted to measure whether the anonymization(匿名化) of search data hurts the quality of search results.

    Most search engines capture user data, including IP addresses and other data that can identify a user across multiple visits. This data allows them search companies to improve their algorithms(算法) and to personalize results for the user. At least, that's the idea. To determine whether storage of users' personal data improves search results, Chiou and Tucker looked at how search results from Bring and Yahoo differed before and after changes in the European Commission's rules on data retention(数据保存). In 2008 the Commission recommended that search engines reduce the period over which search engines kept user records. In response, Yahoo decided to strengthen its privacy policy by anonymizing user data after 90 days. In 2010 Microsoft changed its policy, and began deleting IP addresses associated with searches on Bring after six months and all data points intended to identify a user across visits after 18 months. In 2011 Yahoo changed its policy again, this time deciding to store personal data longer—for 18 months rather than 90 days—allowing the researchers yet another chance to measure how changes in data storage affected search results.

    The researchers then looked at data from UK residents' web history before and after the changes. To measure search quality, they looked at the number of repeated searches, a signal of dissatisfaction with search results. In all three cases, they found no statistically significant effect on search result quality following changes in data retention policy. In other words, the decision to anonymize the data didn't appear to impair the search experience. “Our results suggest that the costs of privacy may be lower than currently perceived,” the authors write, though they note that previous studies have come to different conclusions.

如图，天秤中的物体a、b、c使天秤处于平衡状态，则物体a与物体c的重量关系是(       )

判断下面句子说法是否正确

“那名妇女怀抱着婴儿”和“他年轻时就怀抱着远大的理想”两句中的“怀抱”一词的解释是相同的，都可以解释为“抱在怀里”。(     )

《北京市节约用水办法》将于2012年7月1日起实施。为了深入宣传该“办法”，培养学生的节水意识，某校举办了“北京水资源”专题展览。在参观的过程中，请你完成下面的任务。