Category Archives: Technology

Business/Economics, Idaho, International, Technology, U.S.

What Economic Recovery? Hewlett Packard on the ropes, and going down! Blames War on Terror!

“Terrorist acts, conflicts of wars (wherever located throughout the world) may cause damage or disruption to HP, our employees, facilities, partners, suppliers, distributors, resellers or customers or adversely affect our ability to manage logistics……..The potential for future attacks, the national and international responses……or wars, including ongoing military operations in Afghanistan, have created many economic and political uncertainties……actions against or by the United States may impact our business and employees.”-HP Form 10-K, Security & Exchange Commission report, 27 December 2012

Hewlett Packard filed a 10-K report with the U.S. SEC, and it’s full of what if scenarios, mostly bad scenarios.  Obviously the executives of HP are not positive about 2013.  Employees will continue to be shed: “The restructuring plan includes both voluntary early retirement programs and non-voluntary workforce reductions and is expected to result in 29,000 employees exiting the company by the end of the period [by the end of 2014].”   

HP is also dealing with trouble from competitors, dealers and divisions.

The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating HP’s claims that the executives of the British company Autonomy, lied about its financial situation. HP shelled out $11 billion USD for Autonomy in 2011!

After a challenge by IBM (International Business Machines) the U.S. Federal government will continue with a $543 million five year Department of Veterans Affairs contract with HP.

Despite Idaho voters rejecting a laptop for students proposition, HP was awarded a $180 million contract to provide the laptops, at least one week before the voting took place!!!

Skycom Tech, a business partner of Chinese company Huawei, tried to sell $1.72 million worth of HP communication equipment to an Iranian company, some say in violation of U.S./European sanctions.  The deal didn’t go through, but Huawei said: “Huawei’s business in Iran is in full compliance with all applicable laws and regulations including those of the UN, U.S. and EU….”

HP officials said: “HP’s distribution contract terms prohibit the sale of HP products into Iran…”

There are reports that HP is no longer directly selling printers on Amazon. Some analysts think it’s actually retaliation by Amazon, because HP’s new Cloud computing system is in direct competition with Amazon’s own computing system.

A report out of India says a state government is investigating HP’s claims of being able to supply 1,500,000 school laptops by a certain date.  If government officials don’t think HP can make the deadline they will split up the contract to other competitors:  “If HP is found to have insufficient capacity, then it could, accordingly, get a contract to supply a reduced quantity of laptops and the remaining quantity will be divided among the bidders ready to offer the quantity at the rate quoted by HP.”-Uttar Pradesh government statement

HP and General Motors (GM) are going after each other in court.  It involves GM’s recent decision to hire away from HP 3,000 employees, to start its own inhouse tech service. HP claims it’s more than coincidence that GM’s plans to dump HP (and IBM) as tech service providers come after GM hired several HP executives to run GM’s technology operations. HP said the initial 18 HP employees hired by GM resigned “en masse and without notice.”


Business/Economics, International, Technology, U.S.

What Economic Recovery? Yet another U.S. company (based in Utah) spends big billions, but not in the U.S., in Japan

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.

 

International, Technology

Breaking news: Korea launches rocket after reports said they were canceling due to techincal 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.

International, Technology, U.S.

World War 3: Iran decodes all data from stealth drone, says U.S. lying about spying on Iranian nuclear program!

“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.

Business/Economics, International, Technology, U.S.

Some Economic Recovery, for U.S.? Apple reverses outsourcing

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.

 

Business/Economics, International, Technology, U.S.

What Economic Recovery? Yet another U.S. company invests big, but not in the U.S., in Japan

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…..

 

International, Technology, U.S.

World War 3: Iran displays drone that U.S. media says isn’t missing. U.S. Navy did not say it isn’t missing, USN said “all accounted for” which is not the same thing.

“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.

International, Technology, U.S.

Breaking news: Iran uses electronic warfare to capture yet another U.S. 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.

Idaho, Technology

Vehicle I-D: Rat Rod 1967 BLH Austin-Western USN SeaBees road grader $14,794

Image

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

Business/Economics, International, Technology, U.S.

Corporate Incompetence & What Economic Recovery? HP suffers huge losses, blames their own take over of Autonomy! Former Autonomy exec says HP’s Whitman is a Liar!

“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.”