Joint stock company is a voluntary association of individuals for profit, having a capital divided into transferable shares, the ownership of which is the condition of membership.

The definition of a joint stock company highlights the following features of a company.

Separate legal entity:From the day of its incorporation, a company acquires an identity, distinct from its members. Its assets and liabilities are separate from those of its owners. The law does not recognise the business and owners to be one and the same.

The management and control of the affairs of the company is undertaken by the Board of Directors, which appoints the top management officials for running the business. The directors hold a position of immense significance as they are directly accountable to the shareholders for the working of the company. The shareholders, however, do not have the right to be involved in the day-to-day running of the business. The liability of the members is limited to the extent of the capital contributed by them in a company

The risk of losses in a company is borne by all the shareholders. This is unlike the case of sole proprietorship or partnership firm where one or few persons respectively bear the losses.

‘Brand’ refers to a particular identity or image regarded as an asset. ‘Stock’ refers to the capital raised by a company or corporation through the issue and subscription of shares. ‘Bond’ is an interest-bearing security issued by governments, companies and some other organisations. ‘Barter’ refers to exchange (goods or services) for other goods or services without using money. ‘Bankruptcy’ means the state of being bankrupt. The given blanks can either use ‘bond’ or ‘stock’ as both are similar in meaning. Bonds and stocks are both securities, but the major difference between the two is that (capital) stockholders have an equity stake in a company (that is, they are owners), whereas bondholders have a creditor stake in the company (that is, they are lenders). Being a creditor, bondholders have priority over stockholders. Thus, ‘bond’ is the best fit word for the given blanks as it is clearly stated that it is a form of loan. This makes option 3 the correct answer.

Chmod() is used for changing permissions on a file.

Syntax:

Chmod(file, mode)

Mode here specifies the permissions as follows:

The first number is always zero

The second number specifies permissions for the owner

The third number specifies permissions for the owner's user group

The fourth number specifies permissions for everybody else

Possible values (to set multiple permissions, add up the following numbers)

1 = execute permissions

2 = write permissions

4 = read permissions

Example:

// everything for owner, read for owner's group

chmod("test.txt",0740);