14 December 2012, Japan’s struggling Mitsubishi Aircraft just announced it has received its largest order ever, from a U.S. company.
Utah based Skywest is buying 100 Mitsubishi Regional Jets (MRJs), with an option to buy another 100 later.
The 100 MRJs will cost Skywest $4.2 billion USD. The planes will be delivered at least one year late, as Mitsubishi says they’re having manufacturing problems.
12 December 2012, Korea (north) launches their rocket, after Japanese and Korean (south) sources reported the day before that the rocket had been taken down due to technical problems.
The very same southern Korean sources that said the rocket was defective are now confirming that northern Korea made a successful launch.
The last time northern Korea launched a rocket it blew up. Today’s launch was successful, the rocket past over Okinawa before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean, about 300km (186 miles) east of the Philippines. The Japanese Self Defense Forces did not carry out their threats to shoot down the rocket.
“All the intelligence existing in this drone has been completely decoded and extracted and we know each and every step it has taken…..The U.S. President had told the Israeli officials that the drone was tasked with spying on Iran’s nuclear program, but our experts found, after decoding the drone, that it had not performed even a single nuclear [spying] mission over Iran….this reveals that Americans are treating the nuclear issue as an excuse…”-Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh, Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force
Last December Iran gained control of a Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Stealth drone. It’s taken them a year, but they say they’ve decoded all data in the drone’s computers.
Without saying more, Iranian officials said there was no data which showed the U.S. spying on any Iranian nuclear program, every geographical area that the drone flew over was devoid of anything relating to nuclear programs.
This suggests that the U.S. operators of the drone didn’t know what they were looking for, or as the Iranians believe, this is evidence that the U.S. rhetoric about Iranian nuclear programs is nothing but rhetoric.
07 December 2012, Apple CEO, Tim Cook, revealed that some computer manufacturing will be brought back to the United States.
However, the actual assembly of a specific line of Macs will still be contracted out. Cook says they’re still figuring out where in the U.S. to assemble the computers.
Analysts say the move amounts to about a $100 million USD investment into the U.S. economy, which is tiny when you realize Apple has at least $1 billion in cash and other investments. So, don’t expect this insourcing of a new Mac to be the cure all for the U.S. unemployment blues.
05 December 2012, for awhile now U.S. President Barack Obama has been touting his desire that U.S. corporations start investing into research right here in the United States. Yet, U.S. companies continue to spend that money outside the U.S.
The latest is Qualcomm, who announced they will spend up to $120 million USD, by March 2013, on the failing Japanese company Sharp.
Sharp is now predicting it will lose a record $5.5 billion by the end of March 2013!
Sharp was hoping to be saved by a Taiwanese company, but that deal went south, partly because Sharp’s stock prices are crashing and burning (falling by 75%).
Qualcomm says it’ll use half the $120 million buying up Sharp stocks now, and the other half will be used when Sharp starts showing a profit. Obviously the California based company has more faith in the Japanese economy than in the U.S. economy.
This could be a money maker for Qualcomm, if Sharp recovers, but if Sharp fails…..
“The new U.S. failure in spying operation by this drone demonstrated that the U.S. government, despite its high military and economic power and its dominance on the world political order, is not capable of confronting the Islamic Iran…”-Brigadier General Hossein Salami, Islamic Revolution Guards Corps
04 December 2012, despite the USN insisting that it is not missing any ScanEagle drones (specifically saying all drones were “accounted for” but that doesn’t mean they have them in their possesion, it simply means they know where they are), Iran has put on display something that looks exactly like a ScanEagle.
Earlier U.S. media reports said the Iranian video didn’t allow anyone to see any clear markings. However, the ScanEagle is the only drone that looks the way it does, and most operational drones don’t carry obvious markings anyway.
I watched some U.S. posted videos of the captured ScanEagle and noticed some edited out the parts that showed the sophisticated optical system in the nose of the drone. The Iranian video clearly shows it, and even shows members of the IRCG gawking at it. However, it is interesting that the IRCG managed to get the just captured drone put on public display so fast.
If the Iranians did not capture a Scan Eagle then they’ve made a detailed mock up of the drone, so detailed that they must have access to data about the Boeing/Insitu drone.
04 December 2012, Iranian media reports that Islamic Revolution Guards Corps have captured a U.S. Navy ScanEagle drone, which flew into Iranian airspace over the Persian Gulf.
The ScanEagle is a small recon unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The recon drone had been flown over the same area for several days. Iranian IRCG officials claim they captured the drone by taking electronic control away from U.S. naval forces.
Last year Iran captured a more expensive stealth drone. At that time, one Iranian parliament member said war would be on if another drone was captured violating Iranian airspace.
Spotted in 2012 in a Chubbuck, Idaho, storage unit yard. It gone now.
Click on the pics (by AAron B. Hutchins) to make them bigger and see more:
2012 POCATELLO AIRPORT: IDAHO NATIONAL GUARD A-10C THUNDERBOLT 2
“The former management team of Autonomy was shocked to see this statement today, and flatly rejects these allegations, which are false. It took 10 years to build Autonomy’s industry leading technology, and it is sad to see how it has been mismanaged since its acquisition by HP.”-Mike Lynch, former CEO of Autonomy
21 November 2012, that’s the response to Hewlett Packard’s Meg Whitman accusations that Autonomy tricked the struggling computer and printer maker into buying them in 2011 (Whitman was not running HP at that time).
Whitman is blaming a surprise 3rd quarter net loss of $6.9 billion(!) USD on the Autonomy purchase. Compare that to same time last year when HP reported a $200 million profit.
The takeover of Autonomy was led by Leo Apotheker, who resigned as HP’s CEO a month later.
Whitman now says Autonomy officials used accounting tricks to hide gross “irregularities”. But here’s the problem; HP hired an independent auditor to go over Autonomy’s books, then hired another auditor to verify the first auditor’s conclusions. They both said the books were good to go!
Here’s another problem; the current board of directors for HP is still made up of almost every director that was involved in the Autonomy takeover.
Former Autonomy CEO, Mike Lynch, says HP is using the company he created as a scapegoat, to cover up other losses due to HP’s mismanagement.
HP also reported that almost all areas of their operation experienced drops in sales during their 3rd quarter, except for software which increased (and that included software from Autonomy).
Meg Whitman said 2013 is not going to be a good year: “Fiscal 2013 is going to be a fix-and-rebuild year for the company as critical changes to organizational structure take hold. We expect the underlying macro and industry head winds to continue as we enter 2013.”
The Idaho media reported that the majority of Idaho voters turned down propositions that were an attempt to make public education better (Idaho consistently ranks low in quality of education in the United States, I guess most people in Idaho are happy with that).
What the dumb voters (encouraged by the dumb Idaho media) don’t know is that those propositions are not going away. State legislatures will simply revisit those proposals, and can even pass them as laws without voter input (they’ve done it before).
But here’s one good reason that Proposition 3 (provision of computing devices and online courses for high school graduation, aka lap tops for students proposal) isn’t dead: Hewlett Packard was already awarded an eight year $180 million USD contract to provide those lap tops, back on 23 October!
Now you voters in Idaho don’t want to be responsible for anymore layoffs there at the Boise HP Center, do you?
Here’s some of the latest data to show you how bad education is in the Gem State:
Montana State University: Idaho ranks 33rd for teacher quality. Idaho ranks 35th for education input. Idaho ranks 33rd for education social impact. Idaho submitted no data for the education output & education efficiency rankings.
Quality Counts Education Survey, 2012: Idaho ranks 47th (tied with Nevada).
CNBC Business ranking 2012: Idaho ranks 48th in the survey’s Education category, a drop from 45 in 2011.
U.S. Census Bureau: Idaho ranks 50th in school spending. I’m normally against increased spending, especially since most of the money goes to administrative costs and not actual education, or is not even accounted for, (and it seems year after year I have to pay more fees, besides property taxes, for my high school aged kids). But maybe there is a correlation here? However, according to National Kids Count Program (2009 data), when you adjust spending on regional cost of living then Idaho actually spends more than California, per student! Ah ha!
Here’s the problem I have with increasing funding: For example, School District 25 gets millions and millions of dollars from local property taxes (technically they’re called fees, which is why school officials get away with telling voters that school bonds/levies will not raise “taxes”. A few years ago a local newspaper article revealed that just one major employer in Pocatello pays $1 million yearly in school fees on their property tax bill!). Then they get money from the State and Federal governments (again from our taxes we pay). Then, supposedly, they get millions from Powerball Lottery (at least that’s what the lottery advertisements say). Oh, and I almost forgot the grant money, and computers they get donated from corporations, like the Albertson’s Foundation (I remember when my kids were attending Chubbuck Elementary [little more than ten years ago], seeing the school get new computers almost every year, and one year one of my kid’s teachers admitted that she didn’t even use them ’cause it was too stressful for her to learn how!)! Yet school district officials are always whining that they don’t have enough money! I want to see an investigation and a detailed breakdown of where all that money goes!
And if the votes of Idaho voters really count, then what’s going to happen to the $180 million HP is getting for Proposition 3, the Proposition voters just rejected?
(Here’s an update for 09 November 2012: my youngest daughter came home from school [she’s a Junior at one of the local high schools] saying that teachers were trying to explain that the “lap tops for students” was still happening, despite the election results. You see, your votes really don’t count!)