Asset

In financial accounting, an asset is an economic resource. Anything tangible or intangible that can be owned or controlled to produce value and that is held to have positive economic value is considered an asset. Simply stated, assets represent value of ownership that can be converted into cash (although cash itself is also considered an asset).

The balance sheet of a firm records the monetary value of the assets owned by the firm. It is money and other valuables belonging to an individual or business. Two major asset classes are tangible assets and intangible assets. Tangible assets contain various subclasses, including current assets and fixed assets. Current assets include inventory, while fixed assets include such items as buildings and equipment.

Intangible assets are nonphysical resources and rights that have a value to the firm because they give the firm some kind of advantage in the market place. Examples of intangible assets are goodwill, copyrights, trademarks, patents and computer programs, and financial assets, including such items as accounts receivable, bonds and stocks.

Private

Private may refer to:

Privates redirects here and may refer to:

See also

Private (rocket)

Private was an experimental rocket developed by the California Institute of Technology on behalf of the United States Army. Tested in two different configurations, it provided the proof of concept that a fin-stabilised ballistic missile was technologically feasible, and led to the development of the Corporal ballistic missile.

History

The Private program was begun in 1944 as an outgrowth of work by the California Institute of Technology's Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory that had produced the first practical jet-assisted take-off (JATO) rockets. A proposal to adapt the JATO rockets for research into the development of ballistic missiles was accepted, and the first flight of the Private A rocket, developed under the direction of Tsien Hsue-shen, took place in December 1944, conducted at Camp Irwin in California.

Private A was an unguided, fin-stabilised ballistic rocket; it consisted of a JATO unit equipped with cruciform tail fins, and a set of four T22 booster rockets that were jettisoned after launch. This made Private A the first multistage rocket to be flown in the United States.

Information hiding

In computer science, information hiding is the principle of segregation of the design decisions in a computer program that are most likely to change, thus protecting other parts of the program from extensive modification if the design decision is changed. The protection involves providing a stable interface which protects the remainder of the program from the implementation (the details that are most likely to change).

Written another way, information hiding is the ability to prevent certain aspects of a class or software component from being accessible to its clients, using either programming language features (like private variables) or an explicit exporting policy.

Overview

The term encapsulation is often used interchangeably with information hiding. Not all agree on the distinctions between the two though; one may think of information hiding as being the principle and encapsulation being the technique. A software module hides information by encapsulating the information into a module or other construct which presents an interface.