1.
Chicago
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Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the third-most populous city in the United States. With over 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the state of Illinois, and it is the county seat of Cook County. In 2012, Chicago was listed as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Chicago has the third-largest gross metropolitan product in the United States—about $640 billion according to 2015 estimates, the city has one of the worlds largest and most diversified economies with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce. In 2016, Chicago hosted over 54 million domestic and international visitors, landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Museum of Science and Industry, and Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicagos culture includes the arts, novels, film, theater, especially improvisational comedy. Chicago also has sports teams in each of the major professional leagues. The city has many nicknames, the best-known being the Windy City, the name Chicago is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as Checagou was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir, henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the wild garlic, called chicagoua, grew abundantly in the area. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African and French descent and arrived in the 1780s and he is commonly known as the Founder of Chicago. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, on August 12,1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people, on June 15,1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4,1837, as the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicagos first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois, the canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River. A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad, manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade listed the first ever standardized exchange traded forward contracts and these issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage
2.
Real estate
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Also, the business of real estate, the profession of buying, selling, or renting land, buildings or housing. It is a term used in jurisdictions whose legal system is derived from English common law, such as India, the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Pakistan, Australia. Residential real estate may contain either a family or multifamily structure. Residences can be classified by, if, and how they are connected to neighbouring residences, different types of housing tenure can be used for the same physical type. For example, connected residents might be owned by an entity and leased out. Major categories in North America and Europe Attached / multi-unit dwellings Apartment or Flat – An individual unit in a multi-unit building, the boundaries of the apartment are generally defined by a perimeter of locked or lockable doors. Often seen in apartment buildings. Multi-family house – Often seen in multi-story detached buildings, where each floor is an apartment or unit. Terraced house – A number of single or multi-unit buildings in a row with shared walls. Condominium – Building or complex, similar to apartments, owned by individuals, common grounds and common areas within the complex are owned and shared jointly. There are townhouse or rowhouse style condominiums as well, semi-detached dwellings Duplex – Two units with one shared wall. Single-family detached house Portable dwellings Mobile homes – Potentially a full-time residence which can be movable on wheels, houseboats – A floating home Tents – Usually very temporary, with roof and walls consisting only of fabric-like material. The size of an apartment or house can be described in square feet or meters, in the United States, this includes the area of living space, excluding the garage and other non-living spaces. It can be described roughly by the number of rooms. A studio apartment has a bedroom with no living room. A one-bedroom apartment has a living or dining room separate from the bedroom, Two bedroom, three bedroom, and larger units are common. Major categories in India and the Asian Subcontinent Co-operative Housing Societies Condominiums Chawls Villas Havelis The size is measured in Gaz, Quila, Marla, Beegha, and acre. See List of house types for a listing of housing types and layouts, real estate trends for shifts in the market
3.
Ethical code
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Ethical codes are adopted by organizations to assist members in understanding the difference between right and wrong and in applying that understanding to their decisions. An ethical code generally implies documents at three levels, codes of ethics, codes of conduct for employees, and codes of professional practice. Many companies use the phrases ethical code and code of conduct interchangeably, a code of ethics will start by setting out the values that underpin the code and will describe a companys obligation to its stakeholders. The code is available and addressed to anyone with an interest in the companys activities. It will include details of how the plans to implement its values and vision, as well as guidance to staff on ethical standards. However, a code of conduct is generally addressed to and intended for employees alone and it usually sets out restrictions on behavior, and will be far more compliance or rules focused than value or principle focused. A code of practice is adopted by a profession or by a governmental or non-governmental organization to regulate that profession, in a membership context, failure to comply with a code of practice can result in expulsion from the professional organization. Listed below are a few examples of professional codes from the Society of Professional Journalists, minimize Harm - Public Relations Society of America Code of Ethics – It is possible to get the truth out without having to put someone’s life and reputation in jeopardy. Being patient and being able to listen and make the right make a better PR. Being able to get along with the individual is beneficial to both yourself and the client, show Loyalty - Public Relations Society of America Code of Ethics - be faithful to those we represent, while honoring our obligation to serve the public interest. Act Fairly - Public Relations Society of America Code of Ethics - deal fairly with clients, employers, competitors, peers, vendors, the media, respect all opinions and support the right of free expression. Act Independently - Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics – being independent and taking on your own ventures and this means that you take risks to get the job done. Minimize Harm - Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics - Balance the public’s need for information against potential harm or discomfort, pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance or undue intrusiveness. Balance a suspect’s right to a trial with the public’s right to know. Consider the implications of identifying criminal suspects before they face legal charges, act Independently - Society of Professional Journalist Code of Ethics - Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived. They are distinct from moral codes that may apply to the culture, education, often, acts that violate ethical codes may also violate a law or regulation and can be punishable at law or by government agency remedies. Even organizations and communities that may be considered criminal in nature may have ethical codes of conduct, examples could include hacker communities, bands of thieves, and street gangs. The Jewish Written Torah and Oral Torah comprise the earliest and best preserved ethical code, adapted to every field of actual day-to-day life for thousands of years, Jewish Halakha is the oldest collective body of religious laws, laws and jurisdictions still in use
4.
The Real Estate Roundtable
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The Real Estate Roundtable is a non-profit public policy organization based in Washington, D. C. that represents the interests of real estate. It focuses on policy areas governing tax, capital and credit, environment and energy, the Real Estate Roundtable holds four annual meetings in Washington, D. C. and publishes a weekly electronic newsletter as well as its Annual Report and Policy Agenda. 66% of the organization is made up of members from public and privately owned real estate enterprises, 3% are involved in asset management. 11% of the organization is real estate trade associations, membership is by invitation and is divided between two tiers, Roundtable and Presidents Council, each with a cap of 100 members. Membership in Roundtable is offered to leaders of national real estate entities or major real estate trade associations, all four annual meetings are open to members of the Roundtable. Membership of the Presidents Council is also offered to industry leaders and these members are invited to two of the annual meetings, the Annual Meeting and the State of the Industry meeting. National Association of Realtors The Real Estate Roundtable
5.
Washington, D.C.
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Washington, D. C. formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D. C. is the capital of the United States. The signing of the Residence Act on July 16,1790, Constitution provided for a federal district under the exclusive jurisdiction of the Congress and the District is therefore not a part of any state. The states of Maryland and Virginia each donated land to form the federal district, named in honor of President George Washington, the City of Washington was founded in 1791 to serve as the new national capital. In 1846, Congress returned the land ceded by Virginia, in 1871. Washington had an population of 681,170 as of July 2016. Commuters from the surrounding Maryland and Virginia suburbs raise the population to more than one million during the workweek. The Washington metropolitan area, of which the District is a part, has a population of over 6 million, the centers of all three branches of the federal government of the United States are in the District, including the Congress, President, and Supreme Court. Washington is home to national monuments and museums, which are primarily situated on or around the National Mall. The city hosts 176 foreign embassies as well as the headquarters of international organizations, trade unions, non-profit organizations, lobbying groups. A locally elected mayor and a 13‑member council have governed the District since 1973, However, the Congress maintains supreme authority over the city and may overturn local laws. D. C. residents elect a non-voting, at-large congressional delegate to the House of Representatives, the District receives three electoral votes in presidential elections as permitted by the Twenty-third Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1961. Various tribes of the Algonquian-speaking Piscataway people inhabited the lands around the Potomac River when Europeans first visited the area in the early 17th century, One group known as the Nacotchtank maintained settlements around the Anacostia River within the present-day District of Columbia. Conflicts with European colonists and neighboring tribes forced the relocation of the Piscataway people, some of whom established a new settlement in 1699 near Point of Rocks, Maryland. 43, published January 23,1788, James Madison argued that the new government would need authority over a national capital to provide for its own maintenance. Five years earlier, a band of unpaid soldiers besieged Congress while its members were meeting in Philadelphia, known as the Pennsylvania Mutiny of 1783, the event emphasized the need for the national government not to rely on any state for its own security. However, the Constitution does not specify a location for the capital, on July 9,1790, Congress passed the Residence Act, which approved the creation of a national capital on the Potomac River. The exact location was to be selected by President George Washington, formed from land donated by the states of Maryland and Virginia, the initial shape of the federal district was a square measuring 10 miles on each side, totaling 100 square miles. Two pre-existing settlements were included in the territory, the port of Georgetown, Maryland, founded in 1751, many of the stones are still standing
6.
Minneapolis
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Minneapolis is the county seat of Hennepin County, and the larger of the Twin Cities, the 16th-largest metropolitan area in the United States. As of 2015, Minneapolis is the largest city in the state of Minnesota, Minneapolis and Saint Paul anchor the second-largest economic center in the Midwest, after Chicago. Minneapolis lies on both banks of the Mississippi River, just north of the confluence with the Minnesota River, and adjoins Saint Paul. It was once the worlds flour milling capital and a hub for timber, the city and surrounding region is the primary business center between Chicago and Seattle, with Minneapolis proper containing Americas fifth-highest concentration of Fortune 500 companies. As an integral link to the economy, Minneapolis is categorized as a global city. Noted for its music and performing arts scenes, Minneapolis is home to both the award-winning Guthrie Theater and the historic First Avenue nightclub. The name Minneapolis is attributed to Charles Hoag, the citys first schoolteacher, who combined mni, a Dakota Sioux word for water, and polis, Dakota Sioux had long been the regions sole residents when French explorers arrived around 1680. For a time relations were based on fur trading, gradually more European-American settlers arrived, competing for game and other resources with the Dakota. In the early 19th century, the United States acquired this territory from France, fort Snelling was built in 1819 by the United States Army, and it attracted traders, settlers and merchants, spurring growth in the area. The United States government pressed the Mdewakanton band of the Dakota to sell their land, the Minnesota Territorial Legislature authorized present-day Minneapolis as a town in 1856 on the Mississippis west bank. Minneapolis incorporated as a city in 1867, the rail service began between Minneapolis and Chicago. It later joined with the city of St. Anthony in 1872. Minneapolis developed around Saint Anthony Falls, the highest waterfall on the Mississippi River, forests in northern Minnesota were a valuable resource for the lumber industry, which operated seventeen sawmills on power from the waterfall. By 1871, the west river bank had twenty-three businesses, including mills, woolen mills, iron works, a railroad machine shop, and mills for cotton, paper, sashes. Due to the hazards of milling, six local sources of artificial limbs were competing in the prosthetics business by the 1890s. The farmers of the Great Plains grew grain that was shipped by rail to the citys thirty-four flour mills, a father of modern milling in America and founder of what became General Mills, Cadwallader C. Some ideas were developed by William Dixon Gray and some acquired through industrial espionage from the Hungarians by William de la Barre, pillsbury Company across the river were barely a step behind, hiring Washburn employees to immediately use the new methods. The hard red spring wheat that grows in Minnesota became valuable, not until later did consumers discover the value in the bran that Minneapolis
7.
United States Patent and Trademark Office
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The USPTO is unique among federal agencies because it operates solely on fees collected by its users, and not on taxpayer dollars. The USPTO is based in Alexandria, Virginia, after a 2005 move from the Crystal City area of neighboring Arlington, the head of the USPTO is Michelle K. Lee. She took up her new role on January 13,2014, on March 13, she formally took office as Director after being nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the U. S. Senate. She formerly served as the Director of the USPTOs Silicon Valley satellite office, the USPTO cooperates with the European Patent Office and the Japan Patent Office as one of the Trilateral Patent Offices. The USPTO mission is to maintain a permanent, interdisciplinary historical record of all U. S. patent applications in order to fulfill objectives outlined in the United States Constitution. The legal basis for the United States patent system is Article 1, Section 8, an additional building in Arlington, Virginia, was opened in 2009. The USPTO was expected by 2014 to open its first ever satellite offices in Detroit, Dallas, Denver, the first satellite office opened in Detroit on July 13,2012. In 2013, due to the sequestration, the satellite office for Silicon Valley. However, renovation and infrastructure updates continued after the sequestration, and the Silicon Valley location is due to open in San Jose City Hall in mid-2015. As of September 30,2009, the end of the U. S. governments fiscal year, of those,6,242 were patent examiners and 388 were trademark examining attorneys, the rest are support staff. They are generally newly graduated scientists and engineers, recruited from universities around the nation. They hold degrees in scientific disciplines, but who do not necessarily hold law degrees. Unlike patent examiners, trademark examiners must be licensed attorneys, all examiners work under a strict, count-based production system. For every application, counts are earned by composing, filing, and mailing a first office action on the merits, the Patent Operations of the office is divided into nine different technology centers that deal with various arts. Prior to 2012, decisions of patent examiners may be appealed to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences, the United States Supreme Court may ultimately decide on a patent case. Similarly, decisions of trademark examiners may be appealed to the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, with subsequent appeals directed to the Federal Circuit, under the America Invents Act, the BPAI was converted to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board or PTAB. In recent years, the USPTO has seen increasing delays between when a patent application is filed and when it issues, to address its workload challenges, the USPTO has undertaken an aggressive program of hiring and recruitment. The USPTO hired 1,193 new patent examiners in Fiscal Year 2006,1,215 new examiners in fiscal 2007, in 2006, USPTO instituted a new training program for patent examiners called the Patent Training Academy
8.
Generic trademark
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A trademark is said to become genericized when it begins as a distinctive product identifier but changes in meaning to become generic. Thermos, Kleenex, Dumpster and Realtor are examples of trademarks that have become genericized in the US, genericization or loss of secondary meaning may be either among the general population or among just a subpopulation, for example, people who work in a particular industry. Most often, genericization occurs because of advertising that fails to provide an alternative generic name or that uses the trademark in similar fashion to generic terms. The pharmaceutical industry affords some protection from genericization of trade due to the modern practice of assigning a nonproprietary name for a drug based upon chemical structure. For example, even when Lipitor was new, its nonproprietary name, examples of genericization before the modern system of generic drugs include aspirin, introduced to the market in 1897, and heroin, introduced in 1898, both were originally trademarks of Bayer AG. U. S. court rulings in 1918 and 1921 found the term to be genericized, stating the companys failure to reinforce the brands connection with their product as the reason. Bayers involvement in the Great Phenol Plot during World War I, a different sense of the word genericized in the pharmaceutical industry refers to products whose patent protection has expired. For example, Lipitor was genericized in the U. S. when the first competing generic version was approved by the FDA in November 2011, in this same context, the term genericization refers to the process of a brand drug losing market exclusivity to generics. Trademark erosion, or genericide, is a case of antonomasia related to trademarks. It happens when a trademark becomes so common that it starts being used as a common name, nintendo is an example of a brand that successfully fought trademark erosion, having managed to replace excessive use of its name by the then-neologism game console. A more contemporary example is the use of the word iPad to describe all personal computers in tablet form. If the mark does not perform this function and it is no longer possible to legally enforce rights in relation to the mark. In many legal systems a generic mark forms part of the public domain, nevertheless, there exists the possibility of a trademark becoming a revocable generic term in German trademark law. The process by which trademark rights are diminished or lost as a result of use in the marketplace is known as genericization. One risk factor that may lead to genericization is the use of a trademark as a verb, plural or possessive, however, in highly inflected languages, a tradename may have to carry case endings in usage, for example in Finnish Microsoftin and Facebookista. Generic use of a trademark presents an inherent risk to the enforcement of trademark rights. Such a term is called a generic descriptor, and is used immediately after the trademark to provide a description of the product or service. For example, Kleenex tissues or Velcro brand fasteners for Velcro brand name hook-and-loop fasteners, another common practice among trademark owners is to follow their trademark with the word brand to help define the word as a trademark
9.
Social media
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Social media are computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks. User-generated content, such as posts or comments, digital photos or videos. Users create service-specific profiles for the website or app that are designed and maintained by the media organization. Social media facilitate the development of social networks by connecting a users profile with those of other individuals or groups. They introduce substantial and pervasive changes to communication between businesses, organizations, communities and individuals, Social media changes the way individuals and large organizations communicate. These changes are the focus of the field of technoself studies. In America, a reported that 84 percent of adolescents in America have a Facebook account. Over 60% of 13 to 17-year-olds have at least one profile on social media, according to Nielsen, Internet users continue to spend more time on social media sites than on any other type of site. For content contributors, the benefits of participating in social media have gone beyond simply social sharing to building a reputation and bringing in career opportunities and monetary income. Social media differ from paper-based or traditional media such as TV broadcasting in many ways, including quality, reach, frequency, usability, immediacy. Social media operate in a Dialogic transmission system and this is in contrast to traditional media which operates under a monologic transmission model, such as a paper newspaper which is delivered to many subscribers. Some of the most popular social media websites are Baidu Tieba, Facebook, Gab, Google+, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat, Tumblr, Twitter, Viber, WeChat, Weibo, WhatsApp, and YouTube. These social media websites have more than 100,000,000 registered users, observers have noted a range of positive and negative impacts of social media use. At the same time, concerns have been raised about possible links between social media use and depression, and even the issues of cyberbullying, online harassment. Currently, about half of adults have been cyberbullied and of those,20 percent said that they have been cyberbullied on a regular basis. Another survey was carried out among 7th grade students in America which is known as the Precaution Process Adoption Model, according to this study,69 percent of 7th grade students claim to have experienced cyberbullying and they also said that it is worse than face to face bullying. The variety and evolving stand-alone and built-in social media services introduces a challenge of definition, the terminology is unclear, with some referring to social media as social networks. A2015 paper reviewed the prominent literature in the area and identified four commonalities unique to then-current social media services, in 2016, Merriam-Webster defined social media as Forms of electronic communication through which people create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, etc
10.
Facebook
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Facebook is an American for-profit corporation and an online social media and social networking service based in Menlo Park, California. Facebook gradually added support for students at other universities. Since 2006, anyone age 13 and older has been allowed to become a user of Facebook, though variations exist in the minimum age requirement. The Facebook name comes from the face book directories often given to United States university students, Facebook may be accessed by a large range of desktops, laptops, tablet computers, and smartphones over the Internet and mobile networks. After registering to use the site, users can create a user profile indicating their name, occupation, schools attended and so on. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups organized by workplace, school, hobbies or other topics, in groups, editors can pin posts to top. Additionally, users can complain about or block unpleasant people, because of the large volume of data that users submit to the service, Facebook has come under scrutiny for its privacy policies. Facebook makes most of its revenue from advertisements which appear onscreen, Facebook, Inc. held its initial public offering in February 2012, and began selling stock to the public three months later, reaching an original peak market capitalization of $104 billion. On July 13,2015, Facebook became the fastest company in the Standard & Poors 500 Index to reach a market cap of $250 billion, Facebook has more than 1.86 billion monthly active users as of December 31,2016. As of April 2016, Facebook was the most popular social networking site in the world, Facebook classifies users from the ages of 13 to 18 as minors and therefore sets their profiles to share content with friends only. Zuckerberg wrote a program called Facemash on October 28,2003 while attending Harvard University as a sophomore, to accomplish this, Zuckerberg hacked into protected areas of Harvards computer network and copied private dormitory ID images. Facemash attracted 450 visitors and 22,000 photo-views in its first four hours online, the site was quickly forwarded to several campus group list-servers, but was shut down a few days later by the Harvard administration. Zuckerberg faced expulsion and was charged by the administration with breach of security, violating copyrights, Zuckerberg expanded on this initial project that semester by creating a social study tool ahead of an art history final exam. He uploaded 500 Augustan images to a website, each of which was featured with a corresponding comments section and he shared the site with his classmates, and people started sharing notes. The following semester, Zuckerberg began writing code for a new website in January 2004 and he said that he was inspired by an editorial about the Facemash incident in The Harvard Crimson. On February 4,2004, Zuckerberg launched Thefacebook, originally located at thefacebook. com. com and they claimed that he was instead using their ideas to build a competing product. The three complained to The Harvard Crimson and the newspaper began an investigation and they later filed a lawsuit against Zuckerberg, subsequently settling in 2008 for 1.2 million shares. Membership was initially restricted to students of Harvard College, within the first month, eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, Andrew McCollum, and Chris Hughes joined Zuckerberg to help promote the website
11.
Twitter
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Twitter is an online news and social networking service where users post and interact with messages, tweets, restricted to 140 characters. Registered users can post tweets, but those who are unregistered can only read them, users access Twitter through its website interface, SMS or a mobile device app. Twitter Inc. is based in San Francisco, California, United States, Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams and launched in July. The service rapidly gained worldwide popularity, in 2012, more than 100 million users posted 340 million tweets a day, and the service handled an average of 1.6 billion search queries per day. In 2013, it was one of the ten most-visited websites and has described as the SMS of the Internet. As of 2016, Twitter had more than 319 million monthly active users. On the day of the 2016 U. S. presidential election, Twitter proved to be the largest source of breaking news, Twitters origins lie in a daylong brainstorming session held by board members of the podcasting company Odeo. Jack Dorsey, then a student at New York University. The original project name for the service was twttr, an idea that Williams later ascribed to Noah Glass, inspired by Flickr. The developers initially considered 10958 as a code, but later changed it to 40404 for ease of use. Work on the project started on March 21,2006, when Dorsey published the first Twitter message at 9,50 PM Pacific Standard Time, Dorsey has explained the origin of the Twitter title. we came across the word twitter, and it was just perfect. The definition was a short burst of inconsequential information, and chirps from birds, and thats exactly what the product was. The first Twitter prototype, developed by Dorsey and contractor Florian Weber, was used as a service for Odeo employees. Williams fired Glass, who was silent about his part in Twitters startup until 2011, Twitter spun off into its own company in April 2007. Williams provided insight into the ambiguity that defined this early period in a 2013 interview, With Twitter and they called it a social network, they called it microblogging, but it was hard to define, because it didnt replace anything. There was this path of discovery with something like that, where over time you figure out what it is, Twitter actually changed from what we thought it was in the beginning, which we described as status updates and a social utility. It is that, in part, but the insight we eventually came to was Twitter was really more of an information network than it is a social network, the tipping point for Twitters popularity was the 2007 South by Southwest Interactive conference. During the event, Twitter usage increased from 20,000 tweets per day to 60,000, the Twitter people cleverly placed two 60-inch plasma screens in the conference hallways, exclusively streaming Twitter messages, remarked Newsweeks Steven Levy
12.
LinkedIn
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LinkedIn is a business and employment-oriented social networking service that operates via websites and mobile apps. Founded on December 28,2002, and launched on May 5,2003, it is used for professional networking, including employers posting jobs. As of 2015, most of the revenue came from selling access to information about its members to recruiters. As of September 2016, LinkedIn had more than 467 million accounts, LinkedIn allows members to create profiles and connections to each other in an online social network which may represent real-world professional relationships. Members can invite anyone to become a connection, the gated-access approach is intended to build trust among the services members. LinkedIn participated in the EUs International Safe Harbor Privacy Principles, the site has an Alexa Internet ranking as the 20th most popular website. According to the New York Times, US high school students are now creating LinkedIn profiles to include with their college applications, LinkedIn filed for an initial public offering in January 2011 and traded its first shares on May 19,2011, under the NYSE symbol LNKD. On June 13,2016, Microsoft announced plans to acquire LinkedIn for $26.2 billion, the acquisition was completed on December 8,2016. The transaction resulted in the payment of approximately $26.4 billion in cash merger consideration, in January 2016, the company had around 9,200 employees. LinkedIns CEO is Jeff Weiner, previously a Yahoo. Inc. executive, founder Reid Hoffman, previously CEO of LinkedIn, is Chairman of the Board. It is funded by Sequoia Capital, Greylock, Bain Capital Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, LinkedIn reached profitability in March 2006. Through January 2011, the company had received a total of $103 million of investment, the company was founded in December 2002 by Reid Hoffman and founding team members from PayPal and Socialnet. com. In late 2003, Sequoia Capital led the Series A investment in the company, in August 2004, LinkedIn reached 1 million users. In March 2006, LinkedIn achieved its first month of profitability, in April 2007, LinkedIn reached 10 million users. In February 2008, LinkedIn launched a version of the site. In October of that year, Silicon Valley Insider ranked the company No.10 on its Top 100 List of most valuable start ups, by December, the company was valued at $1.575 billion in private markets. LinkedIn filed for a public offering in January 2011. The company traded its first shares on May 19,2011, under the NYSE symbol LNKD, shares of LinkedIn rose as much as 171% on their first day of trade on the New York Stock Exchange and closed at $94.25, more than 109% above IPO price
13.
Instagram
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In August 2015, version 7.5 was released for mobile devices, allowing users to upload media captured in any aspect ratio, but not at full size. Users can also apply various digital filters to their images, the service rapidly gained popularity, with over 100 million active users as of April 2012 and over 300 million as of December 2014. Support for the app is available for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Windows 10 devices and Android handsets, while third-party Instagram apps are available for BlackBerry 10, the service was acquired by Facebook in April 2012 for approximately US$1 billion in cash and stock. In 2013, Instagram grew by 23%, while Facebook, as the parent company, Instagram began development in San Francisco, when Systrom and Brazilian Krieger chose to focus their multi-featured HTML5 check-in project, Burbn, on mobile photography. As Krieger reasoned, Burbn became too similar to Foursquare, and for that, Burbn pivoted to become more focused. The word Instagram is a portmanteau of instant camera and telegram, on March 5,2010, Systrom closed a $500,000 seed funding round with Baseline Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz while working on Burbn. Josh Riedel then joined the company as Community Manager, shayne Sweeney joined in November 2010 as an engineer and Jessica Zollman was hired as a Community Evangelist in August 2011. In January 2011, Instagram added hashtags to help users discover both photographs and each other, Instagram encourages users to make tags both specific and relevant, rather than tagging generic words like photo, to make photographs stand out and to attract like-minded Instagram users. In September, version 2.0 went live in the App Store and included new and live filters, instant tilt–shift, high resolution photographs, optional borders, one-click rotation, the deal valued Instagram at around $25 million. On April 3,2012, Instagram was released for Android phones running the 2.2 Froyo version of the OS and that same week, Instagram raised $50 million from venture capitalists for a share of the company, the process valued Instagram at $500 million. Facebook made an offer to purchase Instagram, along with its 13 employees, for approximately $1 billion in cash and stock in April 2012, with a plan to keep the company independently managed. Britains Office of Fair Trading approved the deal on August 14,2012, and on August 22,2012, on September 6,2012, the deal between Instagram and Facebook was officially closed. On April 12,2012, Facebook acquired Instagram for approximately $1 billion in cash, the deal, which was made just prior to Facebooks scheduled IPO, cost about a quarter of Facebooks cash-on-hand, according to figures documented at the end of 2011. Mark Zuckerberg noted that Facebook was committed to building and growing Instagram independently, according to multiple reports, the deal netted Systrom $400 million based on his ownership stake in the business. The exact purchase price was $300 million in cash and 23 million shares of stock, on December 17,2012, Instagram updated its Terms of Service, granting itself the right—starting on January 16, 2013—to sell users photos to third parties without notification or compensation. In January 2013, it was confirmed that Instagram had asked for identification as a form of verification due to unspecified violations. In September 2013, Instagram reaffirmed its commitment to free and open access to its app for users. On October 3,2013, Instagram announced that it would be adding advertising to its platform
14.
Google+
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Google+ is an interest-based social network that is owned and operated by Google. The service, Googles fourth foray into social networking, experienced growth in its initial years, although usage statistics have varied. Three Google executives have overseen the service, which has undergone substantial changes leading to a redesign in November 2015, Google+ is the companys fourth foray into social networking, following Google Buzz, Google Friend Connect, and Orkut. According to a 2016 book by a former Facebook employee, some leaders at Facebook saw Googles foray into social networking as a threat to the company. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg instituted a company-wide lockdown, signaling that employees were supposed to dedicate time to bringing Facebooks features into line with Google+, according to Ars Technica, Google+ signups were often just an incidental byproduct of signing up for other Google services. Consequently, the number of active users on Google+ grew significantly. In 2011 Google+ reached 10 million users just two weeks after the launch, in a month, it reached 25 million. In October 2011, the service reached 40 million users, according to Larry Page, based on ComScore, the biggest market was the United States followed by India. By the end of the year Google+ had 90 million users, in October 2013, approximately 540 million monthly active users made use of the social layer by interacting with Google+s enhanced properties, like Gmail, +1 button, and YouTube comments. Some 300 million monthly active users participated in the network by interacting with the Google+ social networking stream. But user engagement on Google+ was low compared with its competitors, ComScore estimated that users averaged just 3.3 minutes on the site in January 2012, versus 7.5 hours for Facebook. In March 2013, average time spent on the site remained low, roughly 7 minutes, according to Nielsen, not including traffic via apps. In February 2014, The New York Times likened Google+ to a ghost town, citing Google stats of 540 million monthly active users, but noting that almost half dont visit the site. The company replied that the significance of Google+ was less as a Facebook competitor than as a means of gathering and connecting user information from Googles various services. In April 2014, Vic Gundotra, the executive in charge of Google+, by March 2015, Google executive Bradley Horowitz, who had co-founded Google Plus with Gundotra, had replaced Besbris, becoming vice president of streams, photos, and sharing. In an interview with Steven Levy published on May 28,2015, by that time, two core Google+ functions, communications and photos, had become standalone services. Google Photos, Googles photo and video library, was announced at the May 2015 Google I/O conference, Google Hangouts, Googles communications platform, was announced two years earlier, also at Google I/O. Google subsequently refocused Google+ on shared interests, removing features not supporting a social experience
15.
North America
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North America is a continent entirely within the Northern Hemisphere and almost all within the Western Hemisphere. It can also be considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the west and south by the Pacific Ocean, and to the southeast by South America and the Caribbean Sea. North America covers an area of about 24,709,000 square kilometers, about 16. 5% of the land area. North America is the third largest continent by area, following Asia and Africa, and the fourth by population after Asia, Africa, and Europe. In 2013, its population was estimated at nearly 565 million people in 23 independent states, or about 7. 5% of the worlds population, North America was reached by its first human populations during the last glacial period, via crossing the Bering land bridge. The so-called Paleo-Indian period is taken to have lasted until about 10,000 years ago, the Classic stage spans roughly the 6th to 13th centuries. The Pre-Columbian era ended with the migrations and the arrival of European settlers during the Age of Discovery. Present-day cultural and ethnic patterns reflect different kind of interactions between European colonists, indigenous peoples, African slaves and their descendants, European influences are strongest in the northern parts of the continent while indigenous and African influences are relatively stronger in the south. Because of the history of colonialism, most North Americans speak English, Spanish or French, the Americas are usually accepted as having been named after the Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci by the German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann. Vespucci, who explored South America between 1497 and 1502, was the first European to suggest that the Americas were not the East Indies, but a different landmass previously unknown by Europeans. In 1507, Waldseemüller produced a map, in which he placed the word America on the continent of South America. He explained the rationale for the name in the accompanying book Cosmographiae Introductio, for Waldseemüller, no one should object to the naming of the land after its discoverer. He used the Latinized version of Vespuccis name, but in its feminine form America, following the examples of Europa, Asia and Africa. Later, other mapmakers extended the name America to the continent, In 1538. Some argue that the convention is to use the surname for naming discoveries except in the case of royalty, a minutely explored belief that has been advanced is that America was named for a Spanish sailor bearing the ancient Visigothic name of Amairick. Another is that the name is rooted in a Native American language, the term North America maintains various definitions in accordance with location and context. In Canadian English, North America may be used to refer to the United States, alternatively, usage sometimes includes Greenland and Mexico, as well as offshore islands
16.
United States Department of Justice
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The department was formed in 1870 during the Ulysses S. Grant administration. In its early years, the DOJ vigorously prosecuted Ku Klux Klan members, the Department of Justice administers several federal law enforcement agencies including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The department has responsibility to investigate instances of fraud, to represent the United States in legal matters such as in the Supreme Court. The department also has responsibilities to review actions of law enforcement conduct by the Violent Crime Control. The Department is headed by the United States Attorney General, who is nominated by the President, the current Attorney General is Jeff Sessions. The U. S. Attorney General was initially a one-person and it was established by the Judiciary Act of 1789, but this grew with the bureaucracy. At one time the Attorney General gave legal advice to the U. S. Congress as well as the President, until March 3,1853, the salary of the Attorney General was set by statute at less than the amount paid to other Cabinet members. Early Attorneys General supplemented their salary by engaging in private practice of law. Following unsuccessful efforts to put the Attorney Generals Office on a footing, in 1869. On February 19,1868, Lawrence introduced a bill in Congress to create the Department of Justice, President Ulysses S. Grant then signed the bill into law on June 22,1870. The Department of Justice officially began operations on July 1,1870, just prior to the Civil War, in February 1861, the Confederate States of America established a Department of Justice. Grant appointed Amos T. Akerman as Attorney General and Benjamin H. Bristow as Americas first Solicitor General, both Akerman and Bristow used the Department of Justice to vigorously prosecute Ku Klux Klan members in the early 1870s. In the first few years of Grants first term in there were 1000 indictments against Klan members with over 550 convictions from the Department of Justice. The result was a decrease in violence in the South. Akerman gave credit to Grant and told a friend that no one was better or stronger then Grant when it came to prosecuting terrorists. Akermans successor, George H. Williams, in December 1871, the law did create a new office, that of Solicitor General, to supervise and conduct government litigation in the Supreme Court of the United States. In 1884, control of federal prisons was transferred to the new department, new facilities were built, including the penitentiary at Leavenworth in 1895, and a facility for women located in West Virginia, at Alderson was established in 1924. The U. S. Department of Justice building was completed in 1935 from a design by Milton Bennett Medary, upon Medarys death in 1929, the other partners of his Philadelphia firm Zantzinger, Borie and Medary took over the project
17.
Competition law
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Competition law is a law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies. Competition law is implemented through public and private enforcement, Competition law is known as anti-trust law in the United States, and as anti-monopoly law in China and Russia. In previous years it has known as trade practices law in the United Kingdom. In the European Union, it is referred to as both antitrust and competition law, the history of competition law reaches back to the Roman Empire. The business practices of market traders, guilds and governments have always been subject to scrutiny, since the 20th century, competition law has become global. The two largest and most influential systems of regulation are United States antitrust law and European Union competition law. National and regional competition authorities across the world have formed international support, modern competition law has historically evolved on a country level to promote and maintain fair competition in markets principally within the territorial boundaries of nation-states. National competition law usually does not cover activity beyond territorial borders unless it has significant effects at nation-state level, countries may allow for extraterritorial jurisdiction in competition cases based on so-called effects doctrine. The protection of competition is governed by international competition agreements. These obligations were not included in GATT, but in 1994, with the conclusion of the Uruguay Round of GATT Multilateral Negotiations, the Agreement Establishing the WTO included a range of limited provisions on various cross-border competition issues on a sector specific basis. Competition law, or antitrust law, has three elements, prohibiting agreements or practices that restrict free trading and competition between business. This includes in particular the repression of trade caused by cartels. Banning abusive behavior by a firm dominating a market, or anti-competitive practices that tend to lead to such a dominant position, Practices controlled in this way may include predatory pricing, tying, price gouging, refusal to deal, and many others. Supervising the mergers and acquisitions of large corporations, including joint ventures. Substance and practice of competition law varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, protecting the interests of consumers and ensuring that entrepreneurs have an opportunity to compete in the market economy are often treated as important objectives. In recent decades, competition law has been viewed as a way to better public services. An early example of competition law can be found in Roman law, the Lex Julia de Annona was enacted during the Roman Republic around 50 B. C. To protect the trade, heavy fines were imposed on anyone directly, deliberately
18.
Brick and mortar
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Brick and mortar refers to a physical presence of an organization or business in a building or other structure. The term brick-and-mortar business is used to refer to a company that possesses or leases retail stores, factory production facilities. More specifically, in the jargon of e-commerce businesses in the 2000s, brick-and-mortar businesses are companies that have a physical presence, however, such online businesses normally have non-public physical facilities from which they either run business operations, and/or warehouses for storing and distributing products. Concerns such as traffic, storefront visibility, and appealing interior design apply to brick-and-mortar businesses rather than online ones. Some stores have both a bricks and mortar presence and extensive online shopping services. Examples include Best Buy, Walmart, and Target, while these stores are primarily known as brick-and-mortar businesses, they also have major online shopping websites. In the 2010s, the presence of online stores is adversely affecting some bricks and mortar-only businesses, some bricks and mortar stores state that this trend is decreasing their sales. The name is a derived from the traditional building materials associated with physical buildings, bricks. The term was used by 19th century British novelist Charles Dickens in the book Little Dorrit. The term brick-and-mortar businesses is also a retronym, in that most stores had a presence before the advent of the Internet. The term is applicable in a pre-Internet era, when contrasting businesses with physical retail presence with those that operated strictly in an order-by-mail capacity pre-Internet. All large retailers in the 19th and the early to mid-20th century started off with a brick and mortar presence. For many small businesses, their business model is limited to a bricks and mortar model. Nevertheless, even service-based businesses can use websites and apps to new customers or improve their services. For example, a dry cleaning service could use a website to let customers know of the hours and location of their bricks and mortar stores. Netflix, a movie streaming website founded in 1997, is an example of how an online business has affected a B&M businesses such as video rental stores. After Netflix and similar companies became popular, traditional DVD rental stores such as Blockbuster LLC went out of business, the rapid rise of online film streaming offered by the likes of Lovefilm and Netflix made Blockbusters video and DVD business model practically obsolete. There has been an increase in online retailers in the 2000s, today’s consumers lead busy lives and shopping takes time
19.
Internet
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The Internet is the global system of interconnected computer networks that use the Internet protocol suite to link devices worldwide. The origins of the Internet date back to research commissioned by the United States federal government in the 1960s to build robust, the primary precursor network, the ARPANET, initially served as a backbone for interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the 1980s. Although the Internet was widely used by academia since the 1980s, Internet use grew rapidly in the West from the mid-1990s and from the late 1990s in the developing world. In the two decades since then, Internet use has grown 100-times, measured for the period of one year, newspaper, book, and other print publishing are adapting to website technology, or are reshaped into blogging, web feeds and online news aggregators. The entertainment industry was initially the fastest growing segment on the Internet, the Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of personal interactions through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking. Business-to-business and financial services on the Internet affect supply chains across entire industries, the Internet has no centralized governance in either technological implementation or policies for access and usage, each constituent network sets its own policies. The term Internet, when used to refer to the global system of interconnected Internet Protocol networks, is a proper noun. In common use and the media, it is not capitalized. Some guides specify that the word should be capitalized when used as a noun, the Internet is also often referred to as the Net, as a short form of network. Historically, as early as 1849, the word internetted was used uncapitalized as an adjective, the designers of early computer networks used internet both as a noun and as a verb in shorthand form of internetwork or internetworking, meaning interconnecting computer networks. The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used interchangeably in everyday speech, however, the World Wide Web or the Web is only one of a large number of Internet services. The Web is a collection of interconnected documents and other web resources, linked by hyperlinks, the term Interweb is a portmanteau of Internet and World Wide Web typically used sarcastically to parody a technically unsavvy user. The ARPANET project led to the development of protocols for internetworking, the third site was the Culler-Fried Interactive Mathematics Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, followed by the University of Utah Graphics Department. In an early sign of growth, fifteen sites were connected to the young ARPANET by the end of 1971. These early years were documented in the 1972 film Computer Networks, early international collaborations on the ARPANET were rare. European developers were concerned with developing the X.25 networks, in December 1974, RFC675, by Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal, and Carl Sunshine, used the term internet as a shorthand for internetworking and later RFCs repeated this use. Access to the ARPANET was expanded in 1981 when the National Science Foundation funded the Computer Science Network, in 1982, the Internet Protocol Suite was standardized, which permitted worldwide proliferation of interconnected networks.5 Mbit/s and 45 Mbit/s. Commercial Internet service providers emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990
20.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
21.
Republican Party (United States)
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The Republican Party, commonly referred to as the GOP, is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, the other being its historic rival, the Democratic Party. The party is named after republicanism, the dominant value during the American Revolution and it was founded by anti-slavery activists, modernists, ex-Whigs, and ex-Free Soilers in 1854. The Republicans dominated politics nationally and in the majority of northern States for most of the period between 1860 and 1932, there have been 19 Republican presidents, the most from any one party. The Republican Partys current ideology is American conservatism, which contrasts with the Democrats more progressive platform, further, its platform involves support for free market capitalism, free enterprise, fiscal conservatism, a strong national defense, deregulation, and restrictions on labor unions. In addition to advocating for economic policies, the Republican Party is socially conservative. As of 2017, the GOP is documented as being at its strongest position politically since 1928, in addition to holding the Presidency, the Republicans control the 115th United States Congress, having majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The party also holds a majority of governorships and state legislatures, the main cause was opposition to the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise by which slavery was kept out of Kansas. The Northern Republicans saw the expansion of slavery as a great evil, the first public meeting of the general anti-Nebraska movement where the name Republican was suggested for a new anti-slavery party was held on March 20,1854, in a schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin. The name was chosen to pay homage to Thomas Jeffersons Republican Party. The first official party convention was held on July 6,1854, in Jackson and it oversaw the preserving of the union, the end of slavery, and the provision of equal rights to all men in the American Civil War and Reconstruction, 1861–1877. The Republicans initial base was in the Northeast and the upper Midwest, with the realignment of parties and voters in the Third Party System, the strong run of John C. Fremont in the 1856 United States presidential election demonstrated it dominated most northern states, early Republican ideology was reflected in the 1856 slogan free labor, free land, free men, which had been coined by Salmon P. Chase, a Senator from Ohio. Free labor referred to the Republican opposition to labor and belief in independent artisans. Free land referred to Republican opposition to the system whereby slaveowners could buy up all the good farm land. The Party strove to contain the expansion of slavery, which would cause the collapse of the slave power, Lincoln, representing the fast-growing western states, won the Republican nomination in 1860 and subsequently won the presidency. The party took on the mission of preserving the Union, and destroying slavery during the American Civil War, in the election of 1864, it united with War Democrats to nominate Lincoln on the National Union Party ticket. The partys success created factionalism within the party in the 1870s and those who felt that Reconstruction had been accomplished and was continued mostly to promote the large-scale corruption tolerated by President Ulysses S. Grant ran Horace Greeley for the presidency. The Stalwarts defended Grant and the system, the Half-Breeds led by Chester A. Arthur pushed for reform of the civil service in 1883
22.
Democratic Party (United States)
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The Democratic Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The Democrats dominant worldview was once socially conservative and fiscally classical liberalism, while, especially in the rural South, since Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal coalition in the 1930s, the Democratic Party has also promoted a social-liberal platform, supporting social justice. Today, the House Democratic caucus is composed mostly of progressives and centrists, the partys philosophy of modern liberalism advocates social and economic equality, along with the welfare state. It seeks to provide government intervention and regulation in the economy, the party has united with smaller left-wing regional parties throughout the country, such as the Farmer–Labor Party in Minnesota and the Nonpartisan League in North Dakota. Well into the 20th century, the party had conservative pro-business, the New Deal Coalition of 1932–1964 attracted strong support from voters of recent European extraction—many of whom were Catholics based in the cities. After Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal of the 1930s, the pro-business wing withered outside the South, after the racial turmoil of the 1960s, most southern whites and many northern Catholics moved into the Republican Party at the presidential level. The once-powerful labor union element became smaller and less supportive after the 1970s, white Evangelicals and Southerners became heavily Republican at the state and local level in the 1990s. However, African Americans became a major Democratic element after 1964, after 2000, Hispanic and Latino Americans, Asian Americans, the LGBT community, single women and professional women moved towards the party as well. The Northeast and the West Coast became Democratic strongholds by 1990 after the Republicans stopped appealing to socially liberal voters there, overall, the Democratic Party has retained a membership lead over its major rival the Republican Party. The most recent was the 44th president Barack Obama, who held the office from 2009 to 2017, in the 115th Congress, following the 2016 elections, Democrats are the opposition party, holding a minority of seats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. The party also holds a minority of governorships, and state legislatures, though they do control the mayoralty of cities such as New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Washington, D. C. The Democratic Party traces its origins to the inspiration of the Democratic-Republican Party, founded by Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and that party also inspired the Whigs and modern Republicans. Organizationally, the modern Democratic Party truly arose in the 1830s, since the nomination of William Jennings Bryan in 1896, the party has generally positioned itself to the left of the Republican Party on economic issues. They have been liberal on civil rights issues since 1948. On foreign policy both parties changed position several times and that party, the Democratic-Republican Party, came to power in the election of 1800. After the War of 1812 the Federalists virtually disappeared and the national political party left was the Democratic-Republicans. The Democratic-Republican party still had its own factions, however. As Norton explains the transformation in 1828, Jacksonians believed the peoples will had finally prevailed, through a lavishly financed coalition of state parties, political leaders, and newspaper editors, a popular movement had elected the president
23.
Subprime mortgage crisis
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The United States subprime mortgage crisis was a nationwide banking emergency that contributed to the U. S. recession of December 2007 – June 2009. It was triggered by a decline in home prices after the collapse of a housing bubble, leading to mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures. Declines in residential investment preceded the recession and were followed by reductions in household spending, spending reductions were more significant in areas with a combination of high household debt and larger housing price declines. A proximate cause was the rise in subprime lending. S, a high percentage of these subprime mortgages, over 90% in 2006 for example, were adjustable-rate mortgages. These two changes were part of a trend of lowered lending standards and higher-risk mortgage products. When U. S. home prices declined steeply after peaking in mid-2006, as adjustable-rate mortgages began to reset at higher interest rates, mortgage delinquencies soared. Securities backed with mortgages, including mortgages, widely held by financial firms globally. Concerns about the soundness of U. S. credit and financial markets led to tightening credit around the world and slowing growth in the U. S. The crisis had severe, long-lasting consequences for the U. S. the U. S. entered a deep recession, with nearly 9 million jobs lost during 2008 and 2009, roughly 6% of the workforce. One estimate of lost output from the crisis comes to at least 40% of 2007 gross domestic product, U. S. housing prices fell nearly 30% on average and the U. S. stock market fell approximately 50% by early 2009. As of early 2013, the U. S. stock market had recovered to its pre-crisis peak, Economic growth remained below pre-crisis levels. Europe also continued to struggle with its own crisis, with elevated unemployment. The immediate cause or trigger of the crisis was the bursting of the United States housing bubble which peaked in approximately 2005–2006. However, once interest rates began to rise and housing prices started to drop moderately in 2006–2007 in many parts of the U. S. borrowers were unable to refinance. Defaults and foreclosure activity increased dramatically as easy initial terms expired, home prices fell, as housing prices fell, global investor demand for mortgage-related securities evaporated. This became apparent by July 2007, when investment bank Bear Stearns announced that two of its hedge funds had imploded and these funds had invested in securities that derived their value from mortgages. When the value of these securities dropped, investors demanded that these hedge funds provide additional collateral and this created a cascade of selling in these securities, which lowered their value further. Economist Mark Zandi wrote that this 2007 event was arguably the proximate catalyst for the market disruption that followed
24.
Collusion
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It is an agreement among firms or individuals to divide a market, set prices, limit production or limit opportunities. It can involve wage fixing, kickbacks, or misrepresenting the independence of the relationship between the colluding parties, in legal terms, all acts effected by collusion are considered void. In the study of economics and market competition, collusion takes place within an industry when rival companies cooperate for their mutual benefit. Collusion most often takes place within the structure of oligopoly. Cartels are a case of explicit collusion. Collusion which is overt, on the hand, is known as tacit collusion. However, if firms collude to all prices, loss of sales is minimized. This benefits the colluding firms at the cost of efficiency to society, one variation of this traditional theory is the theory of kinked demand. Several examples of collusion in the United States include, Market division and price-fixing among manufacturers of electrical equipment in the 1960s. An attempt by Major League Baseball owners to restrict players salaries in the mid-1980s, Market division and output determination of livestock feed additive, called lysine, by companies in the US, Japan and South Korea in 1996, Archer Daniels Midland being the most notable of these. Chip dumping in poker or any other high stake card game and this allows each firm to see how and why every other firm is pricing their products. If the practice of the industry causes more complicated pricing, which is hard for the consumer to understand and this causes industries to have essentially the same prices and compete on advertising and image, something theoretically as damaging to consumers as normal price fixing. There can be significant barriers to collusion, in any given industry, these may include, The number of firms, As the number of firms in an industry increases, it is more difficult to successfully organize, collude and communicate. Cost and demand differences between firms, If costs vary significantly between firms, it may be impossible to establish a price at which to fix output. Cheating, There is considerable incentive to cheat on collusion agreements, although lowering prices might trigger price wars and this phenomenon is frequently referred to as chiseling. Potential entry, New firms may enter the industry, establishing a new baseline price, Economic recession, An increase in average total cost or a decrease in revenue provides incentive to compete with rival firms in order to secure a larger market share and increased demand. Anticollusion legal framework and collusive lawsuit, collusive lawsuit Conscious parallelism Corporate crime Baseball collusion Cartel Vives, X. Oligopoly pricing, MIT Press, Cambridge MA Tirole, J. The Theory of Industrial Organization, MIT Press, Cambridge MA Tirole, J. Hierarchies and Bureaucracies, Journal of Law Economics and Organization, vol
25.
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
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The U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission is an independent agency of the United States federal government. The SEC was created by Section 4 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the SEC has a three-part mission, to protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation. To achieve its mandate, the SEC enforces the requirement that public companies submit quarterly and annual reports. MD&A will usually touch on the upcoming year, outlining future goals. In an attempt to level the field for all investors. Quarterly and semiannual reports from companies are crucial for investors to make sound decisions when investing in the capital markets. Unlike banking, investment in the markets is not guaranteed by the federal government. The potential for big gains needs to be weighed against that of sizable losses, the SEC makes reports available to the public through the EDGAR system. The SEC also offers publications on investment-related topics for public education, the same online system also takes tips and complaints from investors to help the SEC track down violators of the securities laws. The SEC adheres to a policy of never commenting on the existence or status of an ongoing investigation. Prior to the enactment of the securities laws and the creation of the SEC. They were enacted and enforced at the level, and regulated the offering. Though the specific provisions of these laws varied among states, they all required the registration of all offerings and sales, as well as of every U. S. stockbroker. However, these blue sky laws were found to be ineffective. For example, the Investment Bankers Association told its members as early as 1915 that they could ignore blue sky laws by making securities offerings across state lines through the mail. After holding hearings on abuses on interstate frauds, Congress passed the Securities Act of 1933, the subsequent Securities Exchange Act of 1934 regulates sales of securities in the secondary market. The Securities Act of 1933 is also known as the Truth in Securities Act and its goal was to increase public trust in the capital markets by requiring uniform disclosure of information about public securities offerings. For the first year of the enactment, the enforcement of the statute rested with the Federal Trade Commission
26.
Sherman Antitrust Act
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The Sherman Antitrust Act is a landmark federal statute in the history of United States antitrust law passed by Congress in 1890. In the general sense, a trust is a form of a contract whereby one party entrusts its property to a second party. These are commonly used to hold inheritances for the benefit of children, in most countries outside the United States, antitrust law is known as competition law. The law attempts to prevent the raising of prices by restriction of trade or supply. Innocent monopoly, or monopoly achieved solely by merit, is perfectly legal, over time, the Act has also been used more broadly, to oppose the combination of entities that could potentially harm competition, such as monopolies or cartels. The Sherman Act is divided into three sections, Section 1 delineates and prohibits specific means of anticompetitive conduct, while Section 2 deals with end results that are anti-competitive in nature. Thus, these sections supplement each other in an effort to prevent businesses from violating the spirit of the Act, Section 3 simply extends the provisions of Section 1 to U. S. territories and the District of Columbia. The Robinson–Patman Act of 1936 amended the Clayton Act, the amendment proscribed certain anti-competitive practices in which manufacturers engaged in price discrimination against equally-situated distributors. The federal government began filing cases under the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890, some cases were successful and others were not, many took several years to decide, including appeals. Notable cases filed under the act include, United States v. Workingmens Amalgamated Council of New Orleans, hale v. Henkel also reached the Supreme Court. Precedent was set for the production of documents by an officer of a company, hale was an officer of the American Tobacco Co. Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, which broke up the company based on geography, United States v. American Tobacco Co. which split the company into four. Federal Baseball Club v. National League in which the Supreme Court ruled that Major League Baseball was not interstate commerce and was not subject to the anti-trust law, United States v. National City Lines, related to the General Motors streetcar conspiracy. United States v. AT&T Co. which was settled in 1982, United States v. Microsoft Corp. was settled in 2001 without the breakup of the company. The law directs itself not against conduct which is competitive, even severely so, according to its authors, it was not intended to impact market gains obtained by honest means, by benefiting the consumers more than the competitors. Senator George Hoar of Massachusetts, another author of the Sherman Act, who merely by superior skill and intelligence. got the whole business because nobody could do it as well as he could was not a monopolist. It involved something like the use of means which made it impossible for other persons to engage in fair competition, at Apex Hosiery Co. v. Leader 310 U. S.469,310 U. S. 492-93 and n. In 1890, when the Sherman Act was adopted, there were only a few federal statutes imposing penalties for obstructing or misusing interstate transportation
27.
Copyright law of the United States
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The Copyright Law of the United States tries to encourage the creation of art and culture by rewarding authors and artists with a set of exclusive rights. Copyright law grants authors and artists the right to make and sell copies of their works, the right to create derivative works. These exclusive rights are subject to a limit, and generally expire 70 years after the authors death. In the United States, any music composed before January 1,1923, is considered public domain. United States copyright law is governed by the Copyright Act of 1976, the United States Constitution explicitly grants Congress the power to create copyright law under Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8, known as the Copyright Clause. The United States Copyright Office handles copyright registration, recording of copyright transfers, US copyright law traces its lineage back to the British Statute of Anne, which influenced the first US federal copyright law, the Copyright Act of 1790. The Copyright Act has been updated several times, including, notably, the Copyright Act of 1976 and this includes incentivizing the creation of art, literature, architecture, music, and other works of authorship. As with many legal doctrines, the effectiveness of law in achieving its stated purpose is a matter of debate. The United States copyright law protects original works of authorship, fixed in a tangible medium including literary, dramatic, musical, artistic and this protection is available to both published and unpublished works. This distinction is called the idea–expression dichotomy, the distinction between idea and expression is fundamental to copyright law. For example, a paper describing a theory is copyrightable. The paper is the expression of the ideas about the political theory. But the theory itself is just an idea, and is not copyrightable, another author is free to describe the same theory in their own words without infringing on the original authors copyright. Although fundamental, the dichotomy is often difficult to put into practice. Reasonable people can disagree about where the unprotectable idea ends and the expression begins. Peter Pan Fabrics, Inc. v. Martin Weiner Corp.274 F. 2d 487, however, compilations of facts are treated differently, and may be copyrightable material. Copyright protection in compilations is limited to the selection and arrangement of facts, the Supreme Court decision in Feist v. Rural clarified the requirements for copyright in compilations. The Feist case denied copyright protection to a white pages phone book, in making this ruling, the Supreme Court rejected the sweat of the brow doctrine
28.
Berkshire Hathaway
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Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is an American multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska, United States. The company wholly owns GEICO, BNSF Railway, Lubrizol, Dairy Queen, Fruit of the Loom, Helzberg Diamonds, FlightSafety International, Pampered Chef, and NetJets, and also owns 43. Berkshire Hathaway averaged a growth in book value of 19. 7% to its shareholders for the last 49 years, while employing large amounts of capital. In the early part of Buffetts career at Berkshire, he focused on investments in publicly traded companies. According to the Forbes Global 2000 list and formula, Berkshire Hathaway is the fourth largest public company in the world, Berkshire Hathaway traces its roots to a textile manufacturing company established by Oliver Chace in 1839 as the Valley Falls Company in Valley Falls, Rhode Island. Chace had previously worked for Samuel Slater, the founder of the first successful textile mill in America, Chace founded his first textile mill in 1806. In 1929 the Valley Falls Company merged with the Berkshire Cotton Manufacturing Company established in 1889, in Adams, the combined company was known as Berkshire Fine Spinning Associates. Hathaway had been successful in its first decades, but it suffered during a decline in the textile industry after World War I. At this time, Hathaway was run by Seabury Stanton, whose investment efforts were rewarded with renewed profitability after the Depression, after the merger Berkshire Hathaway had 15 plants employing over 12,000 workers with over $120 million in revenue and was headquartered in New Bedford. However, seven of those locations were closed by the end of the decade, in 1962, Warren Buffett began buying stock in Berkshire Hathaway after noticing a pattern in the price direction of its stock whenever the company closed a mill. Eventually, Buffett acknowledged that the business was waning and the companys financial situation was not going to improve. In 1964, Stanton made a tender offer of $11 1⁄2 per share for the company to buy back Buffetts shares. A few weeks later, Warren Buffett received the offer in writing. Buffett later admitted that this lower, undercutting offer made him angry, instead of selling at the slightly lower price, Buffett decided to buy more of the stock to take control of the company and fire Stanton. However, this put Buffett in a situation where he was now majority owner of a business that was failing. Buffett initially maintained Berkshires core business of textiles, but by 1967, he was expanding into the insurance industry, Berkshire first ventured into the insurance business with the purchase of National Indemnity Company. In the late 1970s, Berkshire acquired an equity stake in the Government Employees Insurance Company, in 1985, the last textile operations were shut down. Buffett claimed that had he invested that money directly in insurance businesses instead of buying out Berkshire Hathaway, Berkshires class A shares sold for $258,000
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Minnesota
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Minnesota is a state in the midwestern and northern regions of the United States. Minnesota was admitted as the 32nd U. S. state on May 11,1858, the state has a large number of lakes, and is known by the slogan Land of 10,000 Lakes. Its official motto is LÉtoile du Nord, Minnesota is the 12th largest in area and the 21st most populous of the U. S. Minnesota is known for its progressive political orientation and its high rate of civic participation and voter turnout. Until European settlement, Minnesota was inhabited by the Dakota and Ojibwe/Anishinaabe, in recent decades, immigration from Asia, the Horn of Africa, and Latin America has broadened its historic demographic and cultural composition. Minnesotas standard of living index is among the highest in the United States, Native Americans demonstrated the name to early settlers by dropping milk into water and calling it mnisota. Many places in the state have similar names, such as Minnehaha Falls, Minneiska, Minneota, Minnetonka, Minnetrista, and Minneapolis, a combination of mni and polis, Minnesota is the second northernmost U. S. state. Its isolated Northwest Angle in Lake of the Woods county is the part of the 48 contiguous states lying north of the 49th parallel. The state is part of the U. S. region known as the Upper Midwest and it shares a Lake Superior water border with Michigan and a land and water border with Wisconsin to the east. Iowa is to the south, North Dakota and South Dakota are to the west, with 86,943 square miles, or approximately 2.25 percent of the United States, Minnesota is the 12th-largest state. Minnesota has some of the Earths oldest rocks, gneisses that are about 3.6 billion years old. About 2.7 billion years ago, basaltic lava poured out of cracks in the floor of the primordial ocean, the roots of these volcanic mountains and the action of Precambrian seas formed the Iron Range of northern Minnesota. Following a period of volcanism 1, in more recent times, massive ice sheets at least one kilometer thick ravaged the landscape of the state and sculpted its terrain. The Wisconsin glaciation left 12,000 years ago and these glaciers covered all of Minnesota except the far southeast, an area characterized by steep hills and streams that cut into the bedrock. This area is known as the Driftless Zone for its absence of glacial drift, much of the remainder of the state outside the northeast has 50 feet or more of glacial till left behind as the last glaciers retreated. Gigantic Lake Agassiz formed in the northwest 13,000 years ago and its bed created the fertile Red River valley, and its outflow, glacial River Warren, carved the valley of the Minnesota River and the Upper Mississippi downstream from Fort Snelling. Minnesota is geologically quiet today, it experiences earthquakes infrequently, the states high point is Eagle Mountain at 2,301 feet, which is only 13 miles away from the low of 601 feet at the shore of Lake Superior. Notwithstanding dramatic local differences in elevation, much of the state is a rolling peneplain. Two major drainage divides meet in Minnesotas northeast in rural Hibbing, forming a triple watershed, precipitation can follow the Mississippi River south to the Gulf of Mexico, the Saint Lawrence Seaway east to the Atlantic Ocean, or the Hudson Bay watershed to the Arctic Ocean
30.
Maryland
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The states largest city is Baltimore, and its capital is Annapolis. Among its occasional nicknames are Old Line State, the Free State, the state is named after Henrietta Maria of France, the wife of Charles I of England. George Calvert was the first Lord of Baltimore and the first English proprietor of the colonial grant. Maryland was the state to ratify the United States Constitution. Maryland is one of the smallest U. S. states in terms of area, as well as one of the most densely populated, Maryland has an area of 12,406.68 square miles and is comparable in overall area with Belgium. It is the 42nd largest and 9th smallest state and is closest in size to the state of Hawaii, the next largest state, its neighbor West Virginia, is almost twice the size of Maryland. Maryland possesses a variety of topography within its borders, contributing to its nickname America in Miniature. The mid-portion of this border is interrupted by Washington, D. C. which sits on land that was part of Montgomery and Prince Georges counties and including the town of Georgetown. This land was ceded to the United States Federal Government in 1790 to form the District of Columbia, the Chesapeake Bay nearly bisects the state and the counties east of the bay are known collectively as the Eastern Shore. Close to the town of Hancock, in western Maryland, about two-thirds of the way across the state. This geographical curiosity makes Maryland the narrowest state, bordered by the Mason–Dixon line to the north, portions of Maryland are included in various official and unofficial geographic regions. Much of the Baltimore–Washington corridor lies just south of the Piedmont in the Coastal Plain, earthquakes in Maryland are infrequent and small due to the states distance from seismic/earthquake zones. The M5.8 Virginia earthquake in 2011 was felt moderately throughout Maryland, buildings in the state are not well-designed for earthquakes and can suffer damage easily. The lack of any glacial history accounts for the scarcity of Marylands natural lakes, laurel Oxbow Lake is an over one-hundred-year-old 55-acre natural lake two miles north of Maryland City and adjacent to Russett. Chews Lake is a natural lake two miles south-southeast of Upper Marlboro. There are numerous lakes, the largest of them being the Deep Creek Lake. Maryland has shale formations containing natural gas, where fracking is theoretically possible, as is typical of states on the East Coast, Marylands plant life is abundant and healthy. Middle Atlantic coastal forests, typical of the southeastern Atlantic coastal plain, grow around Chesapeake Bay, moving west, a mixture of Northeastern coastal forests and Southeastern mixed forests cover the central part of the state
31.
North Carolina
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North Carolina is a state in the southeastern region of the United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west, Virginia to the north, North Carolina is the 28th most extensive and the 9th most populous of the U. S. states. The state is divided into 100 counties, the most populous municipality is Charlotte, which is the second largest banking center in the United States after New York City. The state has a range of elevations, from sea level on the coast to 6,684 feet at Mount Mitchell. The climate of the plains is strongly influenced by the Atlantic Ocean. Most of the falls in the humid subtropical climate zone. More than 300 miles from the coast, the western, mountainous part of the state has a highland climate. North Carolina is bordered by South Carolina on the south, Georgia on the southwest, Tennessee on the west, Virginia on the north, the United States Census Bureau places North Carolina in the South Atlantic division of the southern region. So many ships have been lost off Cape Hatteras that the area is known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic, the most famous of these is the Queen Annes Revenge, which went aground in Beaufort Inlet in 1718. The coastal plain transitions to the Piedmont region along the Atlantic Seaboard fall line, the Piedmont region of central North Carolina is the states most populous region, containing the six largest cities in the state by population. It consists of rolling countryside frequently broken by hills or low mountain ridges. The Piedmont ranges from about 300 feet in elevation in the east to about 1,500 feet in the west, the western section of the state is part of the Appalachian Mountain range. Among the subranges of the Appalachians located in the state are the Great Smoky Mountains, Blue Ridge Mountains, the Black Mountains are the highest in the eastern United States, and culminate in Mount Mitchell at 6,684 feet, the highest point east of the Mississippi River. North Carolina has 17 major river basins, the five basins west of the Blue Ridge Mountains flow to the Gulf of Mexico, while the remainder flow to the Atlantic Ocean. Of the 17 basins,11 originate within the state of North Carolina, but only four are contained entirely within the states border – the Cape Fear, the Neuse, the White Oak, and the Tar-Pamlico basin. Elevation above sea level is most responsible for temperature change across the state, the climate is also influenced by the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf Stream, especially in the coastal plain. These influences tend to cause warmer winter temperatures along the coast, the coastal plain averages around 1 inch of snow or ice annually, and in many years, there may be no snow or ice at all. North Carolina experiences severe weather in summer and winter, with summer bringing threat of hurricanes, tropical storms, heavy rain
32.
Georgia (U.S. state)
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Georgia is a state in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1733, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies, named after King George II of Great Britain, Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2,1788. It declared its secession from the Union on January 19,1861 and it was the last state to be restored to the Union, on July 15,1870. Georgia is the 24th largest and the 8th most populous of the 50 United States, from 2007 to 2008,14 of Georgias counties ranked among the nations 100 fastest-growing, second only to Texas. Georgia is known as the Peach State and the Empire State of the South, Atlanta is the states capital, its most populous city and has been named a global city. Georgia is bordered to the south by Florida, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean and South Carolina, to the west by Alabama, the states northern part is in the Blue Ridge Mountains, part of the Appalachian Mountains system. Georgias highest point is Brasstown Bald at 4,784 feet above sea level, Georgia is the largest state entirely east of the Mississippi River in land area. Before settlement by Europeans, Georgia was inhabited by the mound building cultures, the British colony of Georgia was founded by James Oglethorpe on February 12,1733. The colony was administered by the Trustees for the Establishment of the Colony of Georgia in America under a charter issued by King George II. The Trustees implemented a plan for the colonys settlement, known as the Oglethorpe Plan. In 1742 the colony was invaded by the Spanish during the War of Jenkins Ear, in 1752, after the government failed to renew subsidies that had helped support the colony, the Trustees turned over control to the crown. Georgia became a colony, with a governor appointed by the king. The Province of Georgia was one of the Thirteen Colonies that revolted against British rule in the American Revolution by signing the 1776 Declaration of Independence, the State of Georgias first constitution was ratified in February 1777. Georgia was the 10th state to ratify the Articles of Confederation on July 24,1778, in 1829, gold was discovered in the North Georgia mountains, which led to the Georgia Gold Rush and an established federal mint in Dahlonega, which continued its operation until 1861. The subsequent influx of white settlers put pressure on the government to land from the Cherokee Nation. In 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law, sending many eastern Native American nations to reservations in present-day Oklahoma, including all of Georgias tribes. Despite the Supreme Courts ruling in Worcester v. Georgia that ruled U. S. states were not permitted to redraw the Indian boundaries, President Jackson and the state of Georgia ignored the ruling. In 1838, his successor, Martin Van Buren, dispatched troops to gather the Cherokee
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