tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-92185869046452760432007-02-25T01:19:16.310-08:00EcacofonixBlogger131tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218586904645276043.post-62971068051283644502007-02-25T01:15:00.000-08:002007-02-25T01:19:16.355-08:00<p>The Gross Domestic Product of a country is the value of all goods and services produced in a country in one year.</p><p>GDP can be calculated as follows: add up all of a country's incomes (say wages, interest, profits etc) and its exports. Subtract from this total the country's total imports.</p>Ecacofonixtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218586904645276043.post-49238346511178956312007-02-25T01:12:00.000-08:002007-02-25T01:14:08.500-08:00A thousand trillion is called a quadrillion. It is written as one followed by 15 zeroes = 1,000,000,000,000,000.<br /><br />A quadrillion is also equal to a million billion (1000000*1000000000) .Ecacofonixtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218586904645276043.post-56516206206069745262007-02-25T01:08:00.000-08:002007-02-25T01:10:48.458-08:00A trillion is what you get when you multiply 1000 four times by itself = 1000*1000*1000*1000 . A trillion is written as 1 followed by 12 zeros = 1,000,000,000,000.<br /><br />A trillion is also equal to 1000 billion ( 1000*1000000000 ). It is also equal to a million million ( 1000000 * 1000000 )Ecacofonixtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218586904645276043.post-41018440353340368262007-02-25T01:01:00.000-08:002007-02-25T01:06:28.299-08:00A computer motherboard has nothing to do with your or my mother. The main board inside a computer that contains all the electronic circuits required for information processing, as well as for the computers keyboards and monitors is called the motherboard. In addition to existing circuits, a computer motherboard has the provision to accept additional circuitry should such a need arise.Ecacofonixtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218586904645276043.post-56107918217761141172007-02-24T22:11:00.000-08:002007-02-24T22:16:49.871-08:00Commodities have slightly different meanings in different contexts.<br /><br />In everyday parlance, commodities are goods that are sold solely on the basis of price (and not based on brand name, for instance). Examples of commodities in this sense are food & grains, metals such as gold, silver etc.<br /><br />In the world of investing, commodities are those items that can be traded on the basis of price. In this context, commodities could mean more than just physical commodities - they can also include whatever can be traded on the basis of price.Ecacofonixtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218586904645276043.post-37725369624480621212007-02-24T22:00:00.000-08:002007-02-24T22:10:30.259-08:00The stock markets are funny!<br /><br />You would have thought that you can sell only what you have, but in the case of stock markets you can sell something you do not have. Three questions arise: Why will someone want to sell stocks they do not own, how is this possible, and what is the catch?<br /><br />Why will someone want to sell stocks they do not own? - Well, let's say you are convinced that the price of a stock (that you do not own) is going to decrease significantly over the next few months. You cannot make money with this information if you buy stocks, right? But you can make money with this information if you sell some of those stocks now at a higher price and buy them later at a lower price.<br /><br />How can I sell stocks that I do not own? - This is possible because you can borrow stocks from some one else (usually a stock brokerage house) and sell them. Makes sense?<br /><br />But what is the catch? Ah, this is an important point. The catch is, you need to return the stocks you borrowed to the lender (say a stock brokerage house) at some point in time. In order to return these stocks, you will need to buy them from the market. If during the period between your selling and purchase, the price had decreased considerably, then you make a profit. If on the other hand, your information was wrong and the price of the stock increases during this period, you make a loss.Ecacofonixtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218586904645276043.post-32126544948495910072007-02-24T20:37:00.000-08:002007-02-24T20:43:10.834-08:00A mainframe computer is a large computer that is powerful enough to work much faster than ordinary desktop computers / PCs.<br /><br />The computer age started in the mid 1950s with the mainframe computers before graduating to mini-computers and then to the personal computers.<br /><br />Many aspects of mainframe computers are quite different from those used in our PCs. Their operating systems, databases and storage & computing mechanims are quite different from those of personal computers.<br /><br />IBM is one of the prominent companies that manufactures mainframes.Ecacofonixtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218586904645276043.post-88457388674214913132007-02-24T20:32:00.000-08:002007-02-24T20:36:38.621-08:00The Google PageRank is a method used by the google search engine to rate web pages.<br /><br />While the method uses many aspects of a web page to determine how good it is, some of the most prominent among these methods are:<br /><br />1. how many good web pages link to your web page<br />2. how good is the content in your web page<br /><br />Having a high Google PageRank for your web page is one of the important criterion to get a lot of visitors traffic to your page from Google searches.Ecacofonixtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218586904645276043.post-41694812272721297482007-02-24T20:27:00.000-08:002007-02-24T20:29:49.871-08:00Emerging economy or emerging market economy is a term used to represent those countries which are currently beginning to "emerge" into the global scene and thus have an excellent potential in future. In other words, these are economies which had not been as well as the developed economies until recently, but have just about started doing well and could be doing much better in future<br /><br />Some of the most familiar emerging economies are Brazil, India, Russia and China.Ecacofonixtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218586904645276043.post-51283938039415577292007-02-24T20:23:00.000-08:002007-02-24T20:26:08.558-08:00BRIC is an acronym that refers to four countries - Brazil, Russia, India, China<br /><br />These four countries are expected to do very well during the next few decades; so every business person is keenly watching what's happening in these countries and how they can benefit from them.Ecacofonixtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218586904645276043.post-13474708055961953232007-02-24T20:12:00.000-08:002007-02-24T20:19:25.913-08:00Hedge funds are funds that are usually private funds - meaning these funds are usually run for a relatively few individuals / entities unlike mutual funds which typically have hundreds of thousands of investors. Because these are private funds run for a few select people (usually very rich people), these funds are relatively less-regulated - in other words, not too many people know or can control what these funds do.<br /><br />Hedge funds tend to make riskier investments than their more stable counterparts such as mutual funds. They can hence provide greater returns, but the chances of losing a lot of money are also higher than usual.Ecacofonixtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218586904645276043.post-69193746978359172692007-02-24T20:08:00.000-08:002007-02-24T20:12:16.656-08:00Mutual funds are companies that take your money along with many other peoples' money, and invest the pooled money together in areas such as stocks and bonds.<br /><br />Dumb people like us can benefit from investing in mutual funds because these companies have more knowledge about the stocks and bonds and hence can provide more stable returns than if we invest on our own.Ecacofonixtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9218586904645276043.post-76998827112203315642007-02-24T20:05:00.000-08:002007-02-24T20:08:11.432-08:00Yo! I have started the DumbList blog. This blog will attempt to dumbify all complex matters. This blog will answer questions in such a simple manner even really dumb people - in other words, most people on this blessed earth, including the author - will understand.<br /><br />Let's go!Ecacofonix