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abu yahya's definitions

News Corp

(BUSINESS & MEDIA) 3rd largest media holding company in the world; US holdings include Fox News, Wall Street Journal, New York Post, and Dow Jones; in the UK, News of the World, *The Sun*, *The Sunday Times*, & The Times (London); and a couple dozen papers in Australia, plus Sky Broadcasting. News Corp also owns HarperCollins & 20th Century Fox.

News Corp is fairly aggressive for a holding company in actually imposing a unified strategy and brand identity on its holdings. It was created by Rupert Murdoch from News, LTD. (a firm created by Murdoch's father, Sir Keith) in 1979, a few years after he went on a media buying spree in the USA. Murdoch became a US citizen so he could legally own US TV stations. The Murdoch family owns 29% of News Corp; Saudi Prince Al-Walid bin Talal owns 7%.

News Corp launched Fox News in 1996 to compete with CNN; shortly before this, News Corp also launched the neoconservative magazine *The Weekly Standard* with William Kristol as its editor.
News Corp is not as large as Walt Disney or Time Warner, but it has been far more successful as a business model than its larger competitors. That's mainly because Murdoch focused on finances and political strategy, whereas the other media conglomerates remain unwieldy, random agglomerations. It's like a battle between a remorseless bulldozer and a large heap of sand.
by Abu Yahya September 1, 2010
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square root

(MATHEMATICS) each positive number has another number that, when multiplied times itself, equals that number. So, for example, 4 has a square root of 2 (2 x 2 = 4).

The square root of a negative number is an imaginary number. Imaginary numbers are not, by themselves, useful solutions to math problems; but they can be used to find them.
BILL: Anna, we have a rectangle that's 3 x as long as it is wide, and it encloses an area of 300 square meters. What are the dimensions?

ANNA: Well, that's like 3 squares of 100 square meters. The square root of 100 is 10, so the rectangle is 10 by 30.

_________________________________________

The logarithm of a square root is one half the log of the number itself; hence, the natural log of 25 is 3.2189, while the natural log of 5 is 1.6094.
by Abu Yahya April 23, 2010
mugGet the square rootmug.

factors of production

*noun*; term coined by Adam Smith (1723-1790) to refer to things used to produce other things. Usually people refer to four factors of production:
1.labor (not the same thing as workers); a worker can work more or less hours per week, and can exchange her labor for payment
2. capital; includes tools, machinery, plants and fixtures, seed corn, etc. Adam Smith distinguished between inventories, which he called circulating capital, and tools, which he called fixed capital;
3. land; understood as a specific area on the earth's surface, but sometimes incorporates the natural productivity or mineral resources as well;
4. entrepreneurship; sometimes lumped with capital. Includes the combination of skills required to start a business.
Different economic systems vary in their view of who should own the factors of production. In capitalism, this would be private individuals; in communism, it would be a collective. In the Marxist transition to communism, it would be the state.
by Abu Yahya March 3, 2009
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bill of exchange

(ECONOMICS) method of transferring wealth from a buyer to a seller, usually over long distances and under different currency systems. Requires the buyer to have an account with a banker in the other city; the buyer sends a note ordering his banker to credit the seller's account by the amount being paid.

Bills of exchange were adopted in 13th century Italy; almost as soon as they became common, traders began to use them as a speculative instrument (discounting bad ones and reselling them) or else as a sleazy method of borrowing money (by "drawing and redrawing," i.e., where two merchants in different towns agree to exchange bills of exchange with each other). "Drawing and redrawing" is analogous to the method used by college students on the 1980's of writing checks to each other every couple of days and depositing them in ATM's so their checking accounts wouldn't bounce.
A bill of exchange is a type of "negotiable instrument" (contractual form of money).

A modern form of bill would be a check.
by Abu Yahya September 7, 2010
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Lusophonic

(ADJECTIVE) Portuguese-speaking; of or related to the Portuguese-speaking world
In order of population, the Lusophonic countries are Brazil, Mozambique, Angola, Portugal, Guinea-Bissau, Timor-Leste, Macau S.A.R., and São Tomé e Príncipe.
by Abu Yahya May 18, 2010
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NYSE

New York Stock Exchange. The US-half of NYSE Euronext.

NYSE has been a publicly traded company since 2005; at the time of its initial public offering, it merged with Euronext and ArcaEX.

While average daily trading volume on the NYSE is typically between 3 million and 7 million shares, only about 40% of this actually trades in the iconic Wall Street building. The rest trades remotely in regional exchanges.
In a good year, about 250 billion in new capital is raised from equity issues on the NYSE.
by Abu Yahya September 28, 2010
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Shah Reza

(HISTORY OF IRAN) More accurately known as Reza Shah; founder of the Pahlavi Dynasty (1925-1979), shah (emperor) of Iran from 1925 to his ouster in 1942 (by invading British and Russian armies).

Born, 1878; died, 1944. Originally in the regular Iranian Army, when the Iranian monarchy was bankrupted he contracted out to command a cossack division for the Anglo Persian Oil Company (British Petroleum). As a result, he actually had a lot of money and was able to become the prime minister (1922), and then depose the old Dynasty, the Qejars.

As Shah, he promised to revise the hated concession to Anglo Iranian Oil Company, but they managed to stall and thwart him with the help of the International Court of Justice. As a result, he turned to the Axis Powers. When World War II broke out, he offered some help to the Germans and Italians, so the British invaded and replaced him with his son, Shah Muhammad Reza.
Shah Reza Pahlavi is often compared with Ataturk, a contemporaneous dictator of Turkey. However, Reza Shah was much more reliant on a cooperative clergy than Ataturk was.
by Abu Yahya July 17, 2010
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