Questões de Concurso

Information Systems
Information Systems (IS) is concerned with the information that computer systems can provide to aid a company, non-profit or governmental organization in defining and achieving its goals. It is also concerned with the processes that an enterprise can implement and improve using information technology. IS professionals must understand both technical and organizational factors, 5 and must be able to help an organization determine how information and technology-enabled business processes can provide a foundation for superior organizational performance. They serve as a bridge between the technical and management communities within an organization. What information does the enterprise need? How is that information generated? Is it delivered to the people who need it? Is it presented to them in ways that permit them to use it readily? 10 Is the organization structured to be able to use technology effectively? Are the business processes of the organization well designed? Do they use the opportunities created by information technology fully? Does the organization use the communication and collaboration capabilities of information technologies appropriately? Is the organization capable of adapting quickly enough to changing external circumstances? These are the important issues that businesses rely on IS people to 15 address. A majority of IS programs are located in business schools; however, they may have different names such as management information systems, computer information systems, or business information systems. All IS degrees combine business and computing topics, but the emphasis between technical and organizational issues varies among programs. For example, 20 programs differ substantially in the amount of programming required. Traditionally, many graduates of IS programs have functioned in roles that are similar to the roles for which IT programs explicitly prepare their students. Information systems graduates continue to fill these roles, but the new programs in information technology offer an alternative path to these positions. INFORMATION Systems. Disponível em: . Acesso em: 03 jan.2011.

Microsoft Update Quietly Installs Firefox Extension

    A routine security update for a Microsoft Windows component installed on tens of millions of computers has quietly installed an extra add-on for an untold number of users surfing the Web with Mozilla's Firefox Web browser.
    Earlier this year, Microsoft shipped a bundle of updates known as a "service pack" for a programming platform called the Microsoft .NET Framework, which Microsoft and plenty of thirdparty developers use to __[VERB]__ a variety of interactive programs on Windows.
    The service pack for the .NET Framework, like other updates, was pushed out to users through the Windows Update Web site. A number of readers had never heard of this platform before Windows Update started offering the service pack for it, and many of you wanted to know whether it was okay to go ahead and install this thing. Having earlier checked to see whether the service pack had caused any widespread problems or interfered with third-party programs − and not finding any that warranted waving readers away from this update − I told readers __[A]__
    I'm here to report a small side effect from installing this service pack that I was not aware of until just a few days ago: Apparently, the .NET update automatically installs its own Firefox add-on that is difficult − if not dangerous − to remove, once installed.
    Annoyances.org, which lists various aspects of Windows that are, well, annoying, says "this update adds to Firefox one of the most dangerous vulnerabilities present in all versions of Internet Explorer: the ability for Web sites to easily and quietly
install software on your PC." I'm not sure I'd put things in quite such dire terms, but I'm fairly confident that a decent number of Firefox for Windows users are rabidly anti-Internet Explorer, and would take umbrage at the very notion of Redmond monkeying with the browser in any way.
    Big deal, you say? I can just uninstall the add-on via Firefox's handy Add-ons interface, right? Not so fast. The trouble is, Microsoft has disabled the "uninstall" button on the extension. What's more, Microsoft tells us that the only way to get rid of this thing is to modify the Windows registry, an exercise that − if done imprecisely − can cause Windows systems to fail to boot up.
    Anyway, I'm sure it's not the end of the world, but it's probably infuriating to many readers nonetheless. Firstly − to my readers − I apologize for overlooking this..."feature" of the .NET Framework security update. Secondly − to Microsoft − this is a great example of how not to convince people to trust your security updates.

(Adapted from http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/05/microsoft_update_quietly_insta.html)

Read the text below entitled “Taxation Trends in the European Union” so as to answer questions 24 to 26:

Taxation Trends in the European Union
Source: www.ec.europa.eu
2009 Edition (Adapted)

    This year´s edition of the Taxation Trends in the European Union appears at a time of upheaval. The effects of the global economic and financial crisis have hit the European Union (EU) with increasing force from the second half of 2008. Given that the last year for which detailed data are available is 2007, this year´s report cannot yet analyze the consequences of the recession on tax revenues. Nevertheless, the report takes stock of the tax policy measures taken by EU governments in response to the crisis up to spring 2009.
    The European Union is, taken as a whole, a high tax area. In 2007, the overall tax ratio, i.e. the sum of taxes and social security contributions in the 27 Member States amounted to 39.8% of GDP. This value is about 12 percentage points above those recorded in the United States and Japan.
    The high EU overall tax ratio is not new, dating back essentially to the last third of the 20th century. In those years, the role of the public sector became more extensive, leading to a strong upward trend in the tax ratio in the 1970s, and to a lesser extent also in the 1980s and early 1990s.

Atenção: As questões de números 16 a 20 baseiam-se no texto abaixo.

    One test of the vigor of the systems analyst role is that of demand. What is the current job market and what are the future employment prospects for the systems analyst? How do these compare with past? A recent study by Smolkina (2001) indicates that employment of systems analyst is projected to rank in the top twenty in the number of new jobs and is expected to increase over one hundred per cent over the next twenty years. In that study it was revealed that employment in computer and data processing services grew by more than 900,000 jobs from 1988 to 1998. In 1998, there were about 1.6 million wage and salary jobs, and an additional 216,000 self-employed workers, making it one of ...I... industries in the economy. Since the late 1980s, employment ...II... most rapidly in the computer programming services and prepackaged software segments of the industry. From 1988 to 1998, about 245,000 jobs were created in programming services and another 166,000 in prepackaged software. The study further revealed that the computer and data processing services industry has grown dramatically in recent years and employment is expected to grow about 117 percent by the year 2008, making this the fastest growing industry in the U.S. economy. The majority of workers in computer and data processing services are managers, professional specialists, such as computer systems analysts, engineers, and scientists; and technicians, such as computer programmers. Together, these occupational groups accounted for 70 percent of the jobs in the industry, reflecting the emphasis on high-level skills and  creativity. These statistics imply that the job title "Systems Analyst" is indeed ...III... and in fact is thriving (at least in name).

(Adapted from Morrell, J.S. et al. 2001. The Systems Analyst – A Post Mortem? available at http://www.sba.muohio.edu/abas/2001/quebec/Morrell_The_Systems_Ana lyst-_A_Post_Mortem.pdf)

Experts Try to Gauge Health Effects of Gulf Oil Spill
                                              Wednesday, June 23, 2010