Insurance

Insurance, in law and economics, is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a potential loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for a premium. Insurer, in economics, is the company that sells the insurance. Insurance rate is a factor used to determine the amount, called the premium, to be charged for a certain amount of insurance coverage. Risk management, the practice of appraising and controlling risk, has evolved as a discrete field of study and practice.

When is a Policy Really Insurance?
“Insurance provides indemnification against loss or liability from specified events and circumstances that may occur or be discovered during a specified period. ”
-- FASB Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 113, “Accounting for Reinsurance of Short-Duration and Long-Duration Contracts” December 1992
An operational definition of insurance is that it is
the benefit provided by a particular kind of indemnity contract, called an insurance policy;
that is issued by one of several kinds of legal entities (stock company, mutual company, reciprocal, or Lloyds organization, for example), any of which may be called an insurer;
in which the insurer promises to pay on behalf of or to indemnify another party, called a policyholder or insured;
that protects the insured against loss caused by those perils subject to the indemnity in exchange for consideration known as an insurance premium.
In recent years this kind of operational definition proved inadequate as a result of contracts that had the form but not the substance of insurance. The essence of insurance is the transfer of risk from the insured to one or more insurers. How much risk a contract actually transfers proved to be at the heart of the controversy.
This issue arose most clearly in reinsurance, where the use of Financial Reinsurance to reengineer insurer balance sheets under US GAAP became fashionable during the 1980s. The accounting profession raised serious concerns about the use of reinsurance in which little if any actual risk was transferred, and went on to address the issue in FAS 113, cited above. While on its face, FAS 113 is limited to accounting for reinsurance transactions, the guidance it contains is generally conceded to be equally applicable to US GAAP accounting for insurance transactions executed by commericial enterprises.

iPod

iPod is a brand of portable media players designed and marketed by Apple and launched in October 2001. Devices in the iPod range are primarily digital audio players, designed around a central click wheel — with exception to the iPod Shuffle, which uses buttons because of its size. As of October 2005, the line-up consists of the video-capable fifth generation iPod, the smaller iPod nano, and the display-less iPod shuffle. The full-sized model stores media on an internal hard drive, while the smaller iPod nano and iPod shuffle use flash memory. Like many digital music players, iPods can also serve as external data storage devices. In January 2007, Apple announced the iPhone, a device that combined the features of the video-capable iPod with mobile phone and mobile Internet capabilities.
Apple's iTunes software is used to transfer music to the devices. As a free jukebox application, iTunes stores an entire music library on the user's computer and can play, burn, and rip music from a CD. It can also transfer photos, videos, games, and calendars to the models that support them.
Apple focused its development on the iPod's unique user interface and its ease of use, rather than on technical capability. As of October 2004, the iPod is the world's best-selling range of digital audio players and its worldwide mainstream adoption made it one of the most popular consumer brands. Some of Apple's design choices and proprietary actions have, however, led to criticism and legal battles.
On Monday, April 9, 2007, Apple announced that over 100 million iPods had been sold worldwide.[1] This makes the iPod the best-selling music player in history.