The Brazilian productivity

The renowned magazine The Economist has made harsh criticism of the low productivity of Brazilian last week and provoked mixed reactions. But does the article "The 50-year snooze" talk correct about Brazil?

Of course nobody likes that someone points the finger in your face and speak about your deficiencies! If we stop to think about some statistic data and look around the reality and the contrast, we will see many truth things.
Some specialists mention there are a few aspects that we should highlight and take apart:

- The first is the "physical capital": The workers are more productive when they have better infrastructure, best machines and tools. A truck driver in the U.S. to make ten trips per month transporting soybeans, while a Brazilian makes only three. We don't need to think too much to conclude that Brazilians have lower trucks, travel through the worst roads and spend many days in queues of ports.

- The second is natural resources: a country with poor natural resources such as soil fertility, mineral reserves, rivers and climate - certainly it will contribute to break the growth of the country; Again, definitely this is not Brazil's reality where most of the cultivable areas whatever we sow, we reap.

- The third is the "human capital": This means the level of education, training and technical skills of workers. No need to highlight that Brazil is far from developed countries, when we see researches such as Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) ranking the country in last positions. Also another research from Varkey GEMS called Global Teacher Status Index giving the last position to the country when related to the value of its teachers.

- The fourth factor and not last, technological knowledge: When compared with the U.S., the Brazilian worker operates inferior technologies, exceptions of sectors with technical excellence. In this analysis the private sector and the public sector are included, and as it is well known that the Brazilian public health system is inefficient, its contribution to the low productivity is quite large.

However there are a few more negative points that contribute to this status - heavy tax burden, slow judiciary system, high corruption and bad laws - also contribute to low productivity. Certainly, we don't like to see articles like The Economist made about us, but we can think over and see if we should accept it or act as soon as possible, the #Eleições2014 are around the corner.

Curious to read the full article from The Economist? Check this out:
http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21600983-brazilian-workers-are-gloriously-unproductive-economy-grow-they-must-snap-out

Virtualization: the shadow of the Cloud

In recent years, we have heard a new term called Cloud, which means in general lines to have the service or application available on the internet reachable from anywhere, quite different from the traditional model where the application runs in a specific server and reachable only from a closed network. The Cloud comes with a different concept of work, instead of you buy the hardware, take care of the maintenance and provide all infrastructure, you just buy a piece of service where you will put your application to run – the simplest and practical example we see it is the email, instead of having the server mail to host you domain and provide the service, there are many companies providing this service where you pay a monthly or yearly subscription and access from anywhere and just forget the maintenance worries.

Although, do you know how the Cloud service usually works behind the scenes? It’s a complex environment and varies a lot from service to service, but the main though is to have a hardware that can work to run as many “clients” as possible in order to use the full capacity of the hardware, and make this model profitable. The service can vary widely because in our giving example about Email service, possibly the server would run only one email service and then shared with many customers. The complex service would have from each customer some specific features which would be pretty hard to match with another customer and share the same resource. In order to solve this gap, it would have another layer which splits the server in many other small servers, known as Virtualization.

To give a better idea how virtualization works, imagine the company has a very powerful server with lots of processors, memory and disk space, each time a customer comes with a specific requirement, the administrator will slice the server and create a “virtual server” or “virtual machine” with the resources to meet the requirement. This is the mentioned added layer that will be used for the customer with specific purposes and totally isolated from the rest of the resources of the powerful server.

You might be wondering that only companies with specific requirement can afford this kind of hardware!! Actually at home you can also have a virtualization environment with no money involved (or a little), of course not powerful as a server, but the same hardware using different purposes.

Let’s describe some possible scenarios:

- You might have special needs for specific software that you use only works in a specific operating system, but you don’t want to downgrade the whole environment, thus with virtualization you would keep your current operating system and create a virtual machine (VM) and install the operating system required for that. Eg: your laptop running MS Windows 7, but you use a program that works only on MS Windows XP, so this XP version would be a VM.

- A very interesting requirement - You just bought a Mac and of course some programs are incompatible with OSX and only run on Windows. Not problem, you will install this program into a VM by creating a VM to install your MS Windows 7 and later your program, so that it will be easy to switch platforms in clicks and taking advantage of both platforms.

- You would like to install a trial program and test if it fits on what you are looking for, but don’t want to do this on your fresh and clean operating system recently installed, so you would create a new VM, install the operating system, install the trial software, test and decide if it’s worth to have on your “real” computer. This is much easier to do because if you don’t like, you can reverse back a copy of this VM or just leave this VM for testing purposes.

Did you enjoy this idea? So take a look at those vendors’s website and look for the products, some are free, others paid – just be aware of the minimum requirement to run the software virtualization on your PC or laptop:




- VMWare Player from VMWare (Windows and Linux) - www.vmware.com
- VMWare Fusion from VMWare (Mac only) - www.vmware.com
- Virtual Box from Oracle (Windows, Linux and Mac) - www.virtualbox.org
- Parallels Desktop from Parallels (Mac only) - www.parallels.com

A new finding threat that prevents users to fix

In this world of technology very often we hear thread of virus, trojans, vulnerability or bugs in operating systems and applications, and the first action we users are instructed to do first is to update the software with the latest release or also update the antivirus’s database because the thread has already been fixed or blocked.

However, this time it is different, the Google’s engineer along with Codenomicon’s engineer have found a bug called Heartbleed in the OpenSSL protocol, an implementation of the open source SSL and TLS protocols that is widely used by most common browser, eg: Firefox, Internet Explorer and Chrome. This protocol is used when we navigate on websites that requires encryption, generally when evolves sensitive information such passwords, confidential information (banks, credit cards, purchases, etc) and we can notice this because the browser puts a padlock icon in the URL bar and also changes the URL address to use “https” instead of “http” protocol.

At this time, we users cannot do anything to fix or avoid it because those fixes should be updated in the servers of the websites. More than this, the manufactures still have to analyze the impact and how to implement this fix, and now there is no prediction how much time it will take to have this fixed. According to specialists in encryption, on a scale of 1 to 11 (the gravity of the threat) is about 11. Even though we users can’t get fixed it now by ourselves, it’s worth to keep the operating system, antivirus and firewall up to date anyways and always.

The lack of professionals with technical skills

Many researches point out that it’s getting harder and harder to find qualified technical professionals to work in areas such as mechanical, electrical and hydraulic with minimum skills and experience. Those workers don’t come from a university but from technical schools which prepare the worker with specific knowledge, however nowadays people are giving more priority to have a university course judging that it will provide more opportunities, what it’s not wrong.

One of the causes of the mismatch between supply and demand is the career choice of students who complete high school. Most do not consider the technique as a career path to follow, despite the high rate of employment and rising wages. In part, has been strengthened with greater access to higher education (university courses) through programs like Prouni provided by the federal government. So there is a left over candidates with generalist higher education and a lack of skilled technical professionals.

There is an expectation that for the further years this situation will be softened with the federal program called Pronatec (National Program for Access to Technical Education and Employment) released in 2011.

Big Data - All our information there

We have never been so connected like today, whether through tablets, smartphones or computers. The result of this is a huge amount of information available on the internet, which can be collected by companies or governments - even if we don’t know it. This is precisely the purpose of Big Data: monitor and organize this almost endless number of information floating on the network.

Looking at a real scenario, with a smartphone in the pocket we carry lots of things: photos, video, music, make access to the internet and social networks, check e-mail, etc., and all this all generates more information mixed with habits and geolocation, but all in unstructured way, a fusion of information.

The Big Date comes to compile all this information based on programming and algorithms and aggregate all structured and unstructured databases - video, images and text. By the time you mix it all, it turns a huge volume of information.

The big challenge is how to manage and analyze all this data volume grows infinitely everyday. More than that, to understand this data and create tools to generate more experience, productivity, consumption and new services. To give an idea, these unstructured data represents 85% of the information with which companies deal nowadays.

Giants like Google and Facebook have extensive experience in using algorithms to interpret profiles and behaviors and transform it into profit - that's why we see ads posted in searches or on the timeline that matches on what you were seeing.

Today we see many people talking about Big Data, and it’s expected to see much more because we will see many other applications using this concept.

The danger of open Wi-Fi networks

Have you ever been catched by a situation where you are in a public place, no access to the internet so try to find any open Wifi??

Recently in Brazil we had discussions about this theme, specially during the protests in June, where people couldn't use accordingly the 3G signal due to the busy services. So in order to workaround the problem, people participating in the parede were asking to the residents living around where the parede was taking place to leave open the their Wifi networks on the streets, homes or companies so that people could use the internet easily.

We all agree that it would be much easier to spread the internet around the city, so wherever you go you would have internet access and in a few seconds you would be connected.

However for both sides, people that leave the wifi network open without any protection and people that connect to an open wifi network disregarding the source might be in dangerous situation.

=> Users that connect to open wifi networks - a very important information that every user needs to know (even though the wifi networks with password) is that all information being transferred in the network might be captured by another computer in the network if the information is not encrypted. So if you don't know how safe the network connection is, avoid having access to the e-mail or any other sensitive personal information that might not be encrypted, otherwise someone else might be capturing all information transferred in the network and you don't have the slightest idea.

An alternative to this it is to use a VPN (Virtual Private Network), once you have stablished a connection to a wifi network, you open another connection using this protocol to a sever that this server will provide a secure connection service in this network.

Common Wireless Networks

=> Users that provide open Wifi network - once anyone can connect to this open wifi network, anyone with bad intention can also act for illicit purposes, such as child pornography, ilegal downloads, etc., the user provider will not be able to tell who did this because there will be no information about the devices which have connected to the network.

An alternative to this, do:

- Never provide a Wifi network without password, there is no enough reason no to put a password.
- Don't provide easy and guessable passwords which anyone can try and possibly connect.
- Change this password frequently, so someone that have connected a time ago will ask you again for the new password and thus you will filter who is connecting in your network.

Those recommendations are the basic steps to follow in your Wifi network at home on in your company.

The excessive use of cellphones cause anxiety in college students

Researchers at the University of Kent, Ohio, USA, found that the constant use of mobile phones by university can increase your anxiety levels and reduce their school performance.

In a study of 500 young people at the University of Kent, scientists Jacob Barkley, Aryn Karpinski and Andrew Lepp concluded that indicators of happiness and satisfaction of participants often connected were smaller than those of students who did not use the device so regularity.

Barkley, Karpinski and Lepp believe that such negative conditions resulting from stress, as some students have trouble disconnecting and feel obligated to stay in touch with your friends.

Over a year, the college students not only to researchers reported daily use of cell phones and their levels of anxiety and life satisfaction, but also allowed their official records, such as bulletins, were accessed.

Scientists found that the scores of students who used their phones were much lower than those of their less connected because the frequent use also implied concentration problems.

Thought

The research at the University of Kent goes against other recent studies that say that mobile can improve social interactions and reduce the sense of isolation. "These results suggest that students should be encouraged to monitor how they use their phone and think about it critically, so that it is not harmful to their academic performance, their physical and mental health and their well-being or happiness , "the researchers emphasized.

28 years of the first MS Windows

We are so used to Microsoft Windows equipped in more than 80% of the desktops and laptops computers that we can barely imagine when it was released the first edition of the Windows operating system, but it was exactly 28 years ago, in November 20th in 1985.

I couldn't even imagine how this release was at that time because my first computer was equipped already with Windows 3.11 in 1996. But thanks to the jsmachines.net website we can have see how the MS Windows version 1.01 was running at time ( click here to access ) using your web-browser to load without any installation in your computer.

To give you more technical details, the Windows was running over the MS-DOS operating system, which means the Windows couldn't be able to run by itself, it was required the MS-DOS version 2.0 installed first in order to launch, plus 256 KB of RAM memory and a hard disk. Initially, it was delivered in 4 floppy disks of 5.25 inches with 360KB each - and this version came with Reversi (game), a calendar, notepad, calculator, clock, command prompt (direct window to DOS), Write, Control Panel, Paint and communication programs.

The MS Windows 1.01 was no a big success compared to his successors in the 1990s, due to the hardware limitation available at that time. However it was the beginning of a new era with graphical interface using the keyboard and a mouse. Nowadays, the latest version of the operating system is the Windows 8 with the introduction of a new concept with touch screen.

The Future of the Present

Every time we see people or company predicting the future of the technology, it's pretty common. However, in mid-2000' a company called Microsoft, at that time the most valued IT company in the world, created a movie showing how a family could use interconnected set of Web services that could serve up relevant information across multiple devices and let them share with everything in a matter of clicks.

Many of the cases came truth nowadays, such as voice commands, cloud file sharing, video conferencing, integration among devices, tablets, smartphones and more. After watching it, we can't understand why Microsoft didn't follow it's own predictions!!!!

Were you able to see yourself using the mentioned services and devices?

The communication tool called e-mail

It's hard to see someone on the internet that still doesn't have an e-mail address. But actually the e-mails is older than the internet, it has been created in 70s and it was purposed to be a digital evolution of the traditional mail that we know. More than this, nowadays the e-mail represents a professional and personal tool so important even though the telephone itself. Proof of this is the fact that in a recent survey conducted by Ipsos revealed that 85% of the Internet users point the electronic mail (e-mail) as their preferred means of communication. But in the same way that this environment has become popular for exchanging information and conducting transactions, also became one of the favorite targets of attacks by cyber-criminals.

One of the most known malwares using emails as a mean of attack was detected more than 13 years ago. In 2000 May, a worm known as 'I Love You' which used a supposed romantic message, spread by email and affected more than 50 million computers worldwide. It is estimated that it has generated more than $ 5.5 million in financial losses.

With a huge problem like this that affects millions of people, the I Love You worm served to change people's behavior regarding the use of e-mail. As a consequence, IT departments and end users reinforced the use of this technology for protection, such as antivirus and security policies aimed at preventing attacks via email.

Since from there has been more awareness of users, but on the other hand, there was a sophistication of attacks aimed to e-mails. Thanks to the social engineering - technique the that attempts to deceive or exploit the trust of the user to obtain sensitive information or important - the email scams have become increasingly difficult to identify and therefore continue to offer a potential danger to companies and people in general.

So below are some tips on how you can identify malicious e-mails:

- E-mails in another language - avoid clicking on links embedded in emails in another language, the content of which is unknown. This is because many of the attacks carried out by electronic mail are directed to different countries and seek to take advantage of the curiosity of the user to do it click that direct addresses to sites with malicious content.

- Spam - ​​not always mass emails contain some form of malware. However, many viruses invade the user's machine and send the malicious messages to all recipients that are in the contact list of the victim. So, always be wary of spam.

- Tempting job offers - one of the decoys to instigate victims into clicking on malicious links is sending messages with false offers of employment. Thus, even if the opportunity seems very attractive, avoid entering links in this kind of message, or even do not send personal information by e-mail for a possible contractor.

- False news - the cyber criminals exploit popular news to propagate malwares, especially in promising unpublished images or videos on certain events that actually are nothing more than a way for the victim to be infected.

- Messages on behalf of trusted institutions - another blow in Brazil is quite common to use fake messages on behalf of banks or government agencies such as Receita Federal. In general, the action induces the user to click on a given link to check or update an urgent information, directing you to a page with malicious content.

Following these basic recommendations, the user reduces the likelihood of being a victim of attacks by email. Moreover, it is always important to keep an updated antivirus on your computer, or any device used to access the e-mail. Another tip and be careful not to become a victim of scams that use electronic mail is clicking only on reliable links and do not open attachments, not sure of their origin.