Tyco sold M/A-COM to Cobham for $425 mil. The sales price is less than 1 year’s revenue for M/A-COM:
http://hsdailywire.com/single.php?id=6143
How bad are things at Boeing? They just lost the next-generation GPS satellite contract to Lockheed even though they are the current makers of GPS satellites. This is more than a $3.5 bil loss, on top of how Boeing lost the last 4 times it tried for a contract over $500 mil. Boeing had already started the hiring process for its satellite group in El Segundo, and it looks like the new hires and some of the people who have been there awhile will be “resized” and looking for their next jobs. I didn’t realize that Boeing is currently the largest private employer in Southern California…though that could change due to this contract loss:
http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-fi-satellites16-2008may16,0,7313698.story
More about the Boeing contract loss includes the info about how Boeing is currently well behind on its current-generation GPS satellite contract, losing $21.4 mil due to delays and cost overruns. Even though they replaced their managers after that, their failure on their current GPS satellite contract probably was a huge factor in their losing the next-generation GPS satellite contract:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a.at6EZX8Ttw&refer=us
DARPA is celebrating its 50th Anniversary:
Article link
This reporter put together a list of DARPA’s most prominent hits and misses over the years:
Article link
Looks like Syria’s secret nuclear reactor was disguised as a ruined Byzantine fortress. Pretty cool photos of it on this site and then images after Israel bombed it:
http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1885/more-boxology
An extensive nuclear missile deployment area has been discovered in Central China. The photos are interesting and the article discusses that the photos show that China’s nuclear missile program there is much bigger than our analysts had previously thought:
http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2008/05/extensive-nuclear-deployment-area-discovered-in-central-china.php
It appears that the Air Force spread false information about this military-themed social networking site and took so long to correct their position that the social networking site might not be able to recover from the damage:
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/05/in-late-january.html
This man’s autobiographical memory (and the other 2 people who have that type of amazing memory) is being studied to try to unlock the secrets of memory to help those with failing memories (thanks for the link Ben!):
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/conditions/05/07/miraculous.memory/index.html
Insecticides in certain pet shampoos apparently trigger autism:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13905-insecticides-in-pet-shampoo-may-trigger-autism.html
Intel strongly denied a report that Apple was going to use the Atom chip in a future version of the iPhone:
http://www.news.com/8301-13579_3-9945092-37.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
Qualcomm won 40 MHz of spectrum (in the 1.4 GHz band) in an UK auction. It appears that Qualcomm will use the spectrum for mobile TV service via MediaFLO:
Press release
Sprint announced that it is ready to launch commerical WiMAX service in DC and Baltimore later this year:
http://washington.bizjournals.com/washington/stories/2008/05/12/daily48.html?ana=yfcpc
The touch-screen enabled Blackberry Thunder is intended to directly challenge the iPhone and is exclusive to Verizon in the US (and Verizon partner Vodaphone elsewhere). It has only 4 keys and *no* slide-out keyboard, so this is a very different type of Blackberry:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121087480469495889.html?mod=hps_us_whats_news
LTE was initially supposed to be the 4G upgrade for GSM providers, but Alltel is now the 2nd biggest CDMA provider to switch from UMB to LTE for 4G. Verizon (also CDMA-based) and AT&T have already announced they will be going with LTE:
http://www.rcrnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080515/FREE/237472331/1014/rss01
Nintendo launched Wiiware, which offers downloads of original games for the Wii:
http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/content_display/news/digital-downloads/gaming/e3i4c48acfb0da84a316deecf89192c3fbb
