Thursday, February 24, 2011
Accounting standards, which determine the accounting numbers published by companies, play a major role in the wealth distribution process in market economies. Accounting standards are believed to intend to enhance the quality of accounting information and to reduce the information asymmetry among market participants. In these market economies accounting standards are set either by private standard-setting bodies or by public standard-setting bodies. The examination of private sector standard-setting processes has been the subject of a considerable number of studies. In almost all studies, private standard setting is always considered as a political activity, in which interested parties are given the opportunity to lobby the standard setter and thus influence the process. Parties affected by the rules will seek to persuade the standard setter to write the rules to their advantage. As a result, lobbying activities take place in order to promote, influence, or obstruct proposed accounting standards. The role of the standard setter is to resolve conflicts amongst interested groups by building consensus. Private standard setters develop their standards according to a due process, which allows all interested parties the opportunity to provide input on proposed accounting standards.Book: International Accounting Standards, Regulations and Financial Reporting (Download)
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, a Ph.D. student at Stanford[1] working on the Stanford Digital Library Project (SDLP). The SDLP's goal was “to develop the enabling technologies for a single, integrated and universal digital library." and was funded through the National Science Foundation among other federal agencies.[2][3][4][5] In search for a dissertation theme, Page considered—among other things—exploring the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web, understanding its link structure as a huge graph.[6] His supervisor Terry Winograd encouraged him to pick this idea (which Page later recalled as "the best advice I ever got"[7]) and Page focused on the problem of finding out which web pages link to a given page, considering the number and nature of such backlinks to be valuable information about that page (with the role of citations in academic publishing in mind).[6] In his research project, nicknamed "BackRub", he was soon joined by Sergey Brin, a fellow Stanford Ph.D. student supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship.[2] Brin was already a close friend, whom Page had first met in the summer of 1995 in a group of potential new students which Brin had volunteered to show around the campus.[6] Page's web crawler began exploring the web in March 1996, setting out from Page's own Stanford home page as its only starting point.[6] To convert the backlink data that it gathered into a measure of importance for a given web page, Brin and Page developed the PageRank algorithm.[6] Analyzing BackRub's output—which, for a given URL, consisted of a list of backlinks ranked by importance—it occurred to them that a search engine based on PageRank would produce better results than existing techniques (existing search engines at the time essentially ranked results according to how many times the search term appeared on a page).[6][8] A small search engine called RankDex was already exploring a similar strategy.[9]Convinced that the pages with the most links to them from other highly relevant Web pages must be the most relevant pages associated with the search, Page and Brin tested their thesis as part of their studies, and laid the foundation for their search engine. By early 1997, the backrub page described the state as follows:[10]
Some Rough Statistics (from August 29th, 1996)Total indexable HTML urls: 75.2306 MillionTotal content downloaded: 207.022 gigabytes
Laptop motherboards are highly make and model specific, and do not conform to a desktop form factor. Unlike a desktop board that usually has several slots for expansion cards (3 to 7 are common), a board for a small, highly integrated laptop may have no expansion slots at all, with all the functionality implemented on the motherboard itself; the only expansion possible in this case is via an external port such as USB. Other boards may have one or more standard, such as ExpressCard, or proprietary expansion slots. Several other functions (storage controllers, networking, sound card and external ports) are implemented on the motherboard.[28]Central processing unit (CPU) – Laptop CPUs have advanced power-saving features and produce less heat than desktop processors, but are not as powerful.[29] There is a wide range of CPUs designed for laptops available from Intel (Pentium M, Celeron M, Intel Core and Core 2 Duo), AMD (Athlon, Turion 64, and Sempron), VIA Technologies, Transmeta and others. On the non-x86 architectures, Motorola and IBM produced the chips for the former PowerPC-based Apple laptops (iBook and PowerBook). Some laptops have removable CPUs, although support by the motherboard may be restricted to the specific models.[30] In other laptops the CPU is soldered on the motherboard and is non-replaceable.
A laptop is a personal computer designed for mobile use and small and light enough to sit on one's lap while in use.[1] A laptop integrates most of the typical components of a desktop computer, including a display, a keyboard, a pointing device (a touchpad, also known as a trackpad, and/or a pointing stick), speakers, and often including a battery, into a single small and light unit. The rechargeable battery (if present) is charged from an AC adapter and typically stores enough energy to run the laptop for two to three hours in its initial state, depending on the configuration and power management of the computer.Laptops are usually shaped like a large notebook with thicknesses between 0.7–1.5 inches (18–38 mm) and dimensions ranging from 10x8 inches (27x22cm, 13" display) to 15x11 inches (39x28cm, 17" display) and up. Modern laptops weigh 3 to 12 pounds (1.4 to 5.4 kg); older laptops were usually heavier. Most laptops are designed in the flip form factor to protect the screen and the keyboard when closed. Modern tablet laptops have a complex joint between the keyboard housing and the display, permitting the display panel to swivel and then lie flat on the keyboard housing. They usually have a touchscreen display and some include handwriting recognition or graphics drawing capability.
Laptops were originally considered to be "a small niche market" and were thought suitable mostly for "specialized field applications" such as "the military, the Internal Revenue Service, accountants and sales representatives". But today, there are already more laptops than desktops in businesses, and laptops are becoming obligatory for student use and more popular for general use. In 2008 more laptops than desktops were sold in the US and it has been predicted that the same milestone will be reached in the worldwide market as soon as late 2009.
Intel makes many processors designed for different computers and functions. From power-saving processors for netbooks to high-end, multiple-core 64-bit processors, understanding the differences in the processors is key to selecting the right one for your computing purposes.Atom
Intel Atom processors are low-power-consumption processors designed for use in netbooks and other networked-based computing devices where battery life and power consumption are more important than processing power. There are several types of Atom processor. Processors without a letter designator before the number are meant for general low-power devices. Processors with a N designator are designed for netbooks. Atom processors designed for mobile Internet devices have a Z designator. The number following the designator indicates the level of processor. Higher numbers indicate more processor features.
Celeron
Celeron processors are designed for lower-end desktop computers that are primarily used for web activities and basic computing. Celeron processors have a numerical indicator. The higher the number, the more features on the processor. There are different classes of Celeron processors, including lower-power consumption processors designed for laptop computers.
Pentium
Pentium has been used as a name for a number of different generations of processors. Current generation Pentium processors are energy-efficient dual core processors designed for desktop computers. Pentium processors have numeric designators that, like other Intel processors, indicate higher levels of features with higher-series numbers.
Core
There are two types of Core processors. The original Core processor is called the i7. The number following the i7 on the CPU indicates the number of CPU features. A higher number indicates more features, like cache, clock speed, front side bus or other technologies. Core 2 Duo processors are multiple-core processors. They have a number of letter indicators that indicate different processor families: QX indicates a high-performance quad core CPU, X indicates a high-performance dual-core CPU, Q indicates a quad-core desktop CPU, E indicates an energy-efficient dual core CPU, T indicates an energy-efficient mobile CPU, P indicates a low-power mobile CPU with lower-power consumption than the T, L indicates a very low-power consumption mobile CPU, U indicates the lowest-power consumption Core 2 processor made by Intel, and S indicates a small-form factor CPU package. These alphabetic indicators are followed by a number. Higher numbers indicate more CPU features.
Xeon and Itanium
Intel Xeon and Itanium processors are server class CPUs designed and optimized for various server applications. These processors have three letter indicators: X indicates a high-performance CPU, E indicates a rack-optimized CPU, and L indicates a power-optimized CPU. There are three levels of Xeon processors. The 3000 series processors contain a single core, 5000 series processors contain two cores, and 7000 series processors contain more than two cores. The 9000 series processors indicate Itanium class processors, which can have two or more cores. Higher numbers in each series indicate more processor features.
1971: 4004 MicroprocessorThe 4004 was Intel's first microprocessor. This breakthrough invention powered the Busicom calculator and paved the way for embedding intelligence in inanimate objects as well as the personal computer.1972: 8008 MicroprocessorThe 8008 was twice as powerful as the 4004. A 1974 article in Radio Electronics referred to a device called the Mark-8 which used the 8008. The Mark-8 is known as one of the first computers for the home --one that by today's standards was difficult to build, maintain and operate.
1974: 8080 MicroprocessorThe 8080 became the brains of the first personal computer--the Altair, allegedly named for a destination of the Starship Enterprise from the Star Trek television show. Computer hobbyists could purchase a kit for the Altair for $395. Within months, it sold tens of thousands, creating the first PC back orders in history.
1982: 286 MicroprocessorThe Intel 286, originally known as the 80286, was the first Intel processor that could run all the software written for its predecessor. This software compatibility remains a hallmark of Intel's family of microprocessors. Within 6 years of its release, an estimated 15 million 286-based personal computers were installed around the world.
1985: Intel386™ MicroprocessorThe Intel386™ microprocessor featured 275,000 transistors--more than 100times as many as the original 4004. It was a 32-bit chip and was "multi tasking," meaning it could run multiple programs at the same time.
1989: Intel486™ DX CPU MicroprocessorThe Intel486™ processor generation really meant you go from a command-level computer into point-and-click computing. "I could have a color computer for the first time and do desktop publishing at a significant speed," recalls technology historian David K. Allison of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History. The Intel486™ processor was the first to offer a built-in math coprocessor, which speeds up computing because it offloads complex math functions from the central processor.
1993: Intel® Pentium® ProcessorThe Intel Pentium® processor allowed computers to more easily incorporate "real world" data such as speech, sound, handwriting and photographic images. The Intel Pentium brand, mentioned in the comics and on television talk shows, became a household word soon after introduction.
1995: Intel® Pentium® Pro ProcessorReleased in the fall of 1995 the Intel® Pentium® Pro processor is designed to fuel 32-bit server and workstation applications, enabling fast computer-aided design, mechanical engineering and scientific computation. Each Intel® Pentium Pro processor is packaged together with a second speed-enhancing cache memory chip. The powerful Pentium® Pro processor boasts 5.5 million transistors.
1997: Intel® Pentium® II ProcessorThe 7.5 million-transistor Intel® Pentium II processor incorporates Intel® MMX™ technology, which is designed specifically to process video, audio and graphics data efficiently. It was introduced in innovative Single Edge Contact (S.E.C) Cartridge that also incorporated a high-speed cache memory chip. With this chip, PC users can capture, edit and share digital photos with friends and family via the Internet; edit and add text, music or between-scene transitions to home movies; and, with a video phone, send video over standard phone lines and the Internet.
2000: Intel® Pentium® 4 ProcessorUsers of Intel® Pentium® 4 processor-based PCs can create professional-quality movies; deliver TV-like video via the Internet; communicate with real-time video and voice; render 3D graphics in real time; quickly encode music for MP3 players; and simultaneously run several multimedia applications while connected to the Internet. The processor debuted with 42 million transistors and circuit lines of 0.18 microns. Intel's first microprocessor, the 4004, ran at 108 kilohertz (108,000 hertz), compared to the Intel® Pentium® 4 processor's initial speed of 1.5 gigahertz (1.5 billion hertz). If automobile speed had increased similarly over the same period, you could now drive from San Francisco to New York in about 13 seconds.
2000: Intel® Pentium® 4 ProcessorUsers of Intel® Pentium® 4 processor-based PCs can create professional-quality movies; deliver TV-like video via the Internet; communicate with real-time video and voice; render 3D graphics in real time; quickly encode music for MP3 players; and simultaneously run several multimedia applications while connected to the Internet. The processor debuted with 42 million transistors and circuit lines of 0.18 microns. Intel's first microprocessor, the 4004, ran at 108 kilohertz (108,000 hertz), compared to the Intel® Pentium® 4 processor's initial speed of 1.5 gigahertz (1.5 billion hertz). If automobile speed had increased similarly over the same period, you could now drive from San Francisco to New York in about 13 seconds.
2001: Intel® Xeon™ ProcessorThe Intel® Xeon™ processor is targeted for high-performance and mid-range, dual-processor workstations, dual and multi-processor server configurations coming in the future. The platform offers customers a choice of operating systems and applications, along with high performance at affordable prices. Intel Xeon processor-based workstations are expected to achieve performance increases between 30 and 90 percent over systems featuring Intel® Pentium® III Xeon™ processors depending on applications and configurations. The processor is based on the Intel NetBurst™ architecture, which is designed to deliver the processing power needed for video and audio applications, advanced Internet technologies, and complex 3-D graphics.
2001: Intel® Itanium™ ProcessorThe Itanium™ processor is the first in a family of 64-bit products from Intel. Designed for high-end, enterprise-class servers and workstations, the processor was built from the ground up with an entirely new architecture based on Intel's Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing (EPIC) design technology. The processor delivers world-class performance for the most demanding enterprise and high-performance computing applications, including e-Commerce security transactions, large databases, mechanical computer-aided engineering, and sophisticated scientific and engineering computing.
2002: Intel® Itanium™ 2 ProcessorThe Itanium™ 2 processor is the second member of the Itanium processor family, a line of enterprise-class processors. The family brings outstanding performance and the volume economics of the Intel® Architecture to the most data-intensive, business-critical and technical computing applications. It provides leading performance for databases, computer-aided engineering, secure online transactions, and more.
2003: Intel® Pentium® M ProcessorThe Intel® Pentium® M processor, the Intel® 855 chipset family, and the Intel® PRO/Wireless 2100 network connection are the three components of Intel® Centrino™ mobile technology. Intel Centrino mobile technology is designed specifically for portable computing, with built-in wireless LAN capability and breakthrough mobile performance. It enables extended battery life and thinner, lighter mobile computers.
The long-held industry vision of mainstream pen-based computing became a reality when Microsoft unveiled the Windows XP Tablet PC Edition in November, 2002. The logical evolution of notebook computers, Tablet PCs include a digital pen for handwriting recognition capabilities, yet can be used with a keyboard or mouse, too.In addition, users can run their existing Windows XP applications. The result is a computer that is more versatile and mobile than traditional notebook PCs.
For more information, see the Windows XP Tablet PC Edition Web site.
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