6:46 PM
Mineral that the first men on the Moon brought back to Earth in July 1969 had been thought to be unique to the moon's surface and the "extremely precious" material was subjected to intense, detailed study over the years...but has now been found at 6 sites in Western Australia. The mineral is called tranquillityite since the Apollo 11 astronauts landed in the Sea of Tranquility:
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/01/rare-moon-mineral-found-on-earth.html
One of Japan's most wanted men tried to turn himself in to a Tokyo police station on New Year's Eve, but the policeman sent him away because he thought it was a prank. Finally, the wanted terrorist (who helped carry out a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo underground that killed 12 people and made 6,000 other sick) found a police station that would arrest him. That sarin gas attack is the worst terrorist attack ever in Japan and the police officer didn't even bother checking into the identity of the man when he tried to turn himself in!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/04/aum-tokyo-makoto-hirata-sarin?INTCMP=SRCH
Pres. Obama announced his vision for the future of the US military, with cuts to the Army and Marine Corps and "outdated cold War systems" part of an effort to cut $487 bil over 10 years from the DOD budget. The US will focus more on the Asia-Pacific area instead of Afghanistan. The Navy and Air Force will gain increased importance, with the focus on spy tools such as UAVs, special operations forces, offensive cyber weapons, jammers, and military presence to deter and confront Iran and China. The Army has been focused on counterinsurgency for the last decade, but counterinsurgency will be extremely limited in this plan:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/01/pentagon-asia-strategy/
The 500+ page National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012 has a provision buried in the Space Activities section that appears to be a HUGE problem for Clearwire to get FCC approval in time to satisfy their contract with Sprint. The NDAA was signed into law on Saturday and prohibits the FCC from allowing any operation (cough, Clearwire, cough) that interferes with the military use of GPS in any way:
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-Networking/LightSquared-GPS-Interference-Issue-Faces-Congressional-Oversight-860245/
The American Cancer Society projects that 1.64 mil new cancer cases and 577k deaths from cancer will occur in 2012. Overall death rates between 1990/91 and 2008 found that overal death rates decreased by about 23% in men and 15% in women, which translates to more than 1 mil deaths from cancer that were avoided. An estimated 1/3 of cancer deaths in 2012 will be cased by tobacco use and another 1/3 will be related to overweight or obesity, physical inactivity, and poor nutrition:
http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/news/News/annualreport-more-than-a-million-cancer-deaths-avoided-in-2-decades
Yahoo chose PayPal's President to be their new CEO, Yahoo's 4th CEO in 5 years. The graphic with this article clearly shows how the highest Yahoo stock price has steadily declined under each CEO, as Yahoo has been losing a lot of business to Google and Facebook:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-01-04/yahoo-ceo-report/52375040/1
This list of the 10 highest paid CEOs in the wireless sector has 1 big surprise to me--Verizon's CEO is at #8, making less than the CEOs from Nokia, Sprint, Motorola, and *2* people from AT&T:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/special-reports/who-were-highest-paid-executives-wireless
Verizon bought out Qualcomm's 50% of their machine-to-machine joint venture nPhase:
http://www.connectedworldmag.com/blog/?p=743
Verizon activated 4.2 mil iPhones and 2.2 mil LTE devices in the 4Q, significantly more than the other quarters in 2011. Verizon said that their profit margins will decline 5% to 6% from the 3Q, probably due to higher device subsidy costs (one can look at Sprint's balance sheet to see the impact of iPhone subsidies on profit margins). Verizon activated 2.2 mil iPhones in the 1Q, 2.3 mil iPhones in the 2Q, 2 mil iPhones in the 3Q, and 4.2 mil iPhones in the 4Q. LTE device activations were 1Q: 500k, 2Q: 1.2 mil, 3Q: 1.4 mil, 4Q: 2.2 mil:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/verizon-activates-42m-iphones-q4-warns-margin-decline/2012-01-04
AT&T is rapidly expanding its LTE network, covering 26 markets with 75 million POPs. Verizon covers 200 million POPs are far more markets, but by building out first Verizon has experienced growing pains (3 LTE outages in December alone):
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/att-expands-lte-coverage-26-markets-74-million-pops/2012-01-05
Clearwire's stock dropped after an analyst reduced their target stock price from $5/share to $2/share. Clearwire's stock dropped to $2/share by closing yesterday and today dropped below $2/share:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/01/04/clearwire-kaufman-cuts-rating-sees-flattish-2012-revs/
Google may launch a tablet competitor to compete with Amazon's Kindle Fire. Google cannot like how the Kindle Fire will be the best-selling Android-based tablet and it uses Amazon's App Store instead of Google's Android Market. The really interesting thing about the rumor is that it will launch in March or April, will run Android 4.0 (instead of the Android 2.2-based smartphone OS that the Kindle Fire used that has been heavily customized by Amazon), and will sell for *less* than the Kindle Fire's $199 price:
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20120104PD212.html
Mindpeed is buying Picochip for $51.8 mil ($27.5 mil cash, $24.3 mil Mindspeed stock), plus up to $25 mil more if Picochip achieves certain milestones:
http://www.picochip.com/news/208
San Diego-based Entropic Communications is buying Trident Microsystems for $55 mil to help it compete with Irvine-based Broadcom who is entering Entropic's connected home technology:
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jan/04/entropic-aims-buy-assets-bankrupt-chip-firm/
Man slashed tires on dozens of cars and broke into garages east of Carmel Canyon Road...in Carmel Valley, not far from where I live! At least 17 homes in Carmel Valley were victims of the masked man last night through early this morning:
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jan/05/tires-slashed-burglaries-carmel-valley/
16-foot-long crocodile charged at an Australian reptile park worker and stole his lawn mower, guarding it closely all morning. The keepers lured the 1,110-pound crocodile to the other end of the lagoon with a huge mound of kangaroo meat, and while the crocodile was distracted one keeper jumped into the lagoon to retrieve the lawn mower. The keeper also searched the bottom of the lagoon for two 3-inch teeth the crocodile lost when stealing the lawnmower...searching for the teeth while the crocodile was nearby!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45873833/ns/world_news-weird_news/#.TwXXI9SiFw9
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/01/rare-moon-mineral-found-on-earth.html
One of Japan's most wanted men tried to turn himself in to a Tokyo police station on New Year's Eve, but the policeman sent him away because he thought it was a prank. Finally, the wanted terrorist (who helped carry out a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo underground that killed 12 people and made 6,000 other sick) found a police station that would arrest him. That sarin gas attack is the worst terrorist attack ever in Japan and the police officer didn't even bother checking into the identity of the man when he tried to turn himself in!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/04/aum-tokyo-makoto-hirata-sarin?INTCMP=SRCH
Pres. Obama announced his vision for the future of the US military, with cuts to the Army and Marine Corps and "outdated cold War systems" part of an effort to cut $487 bil over 10 years from the DOD budget. The US will focus more on the Asia-Pacific area instead of Afghanistan. The Navy and Air Force will gain increased importance, with the focus on spy tools such as UAVs, special operations forces, offensive cyber weapons, jammers, and military presence to deter and confront Iran and China. The Army has been focused on counterinsurgency for the last decade, but counterinsurgency will be extremely limited in this plan:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/01/pentagon-asia-strategy/
The 500+ page National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012 has a provision buried in the Space Activities section that appears to be a HUGE problem for Clearwire to get FCC approval in time to satisfy their contract with Sprint. The NDAA was signed into law on Saturday and prohibits the FCC from allowing any operation (cough, Clearwire, cough) that interferes with the military use of GPS in any way:
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-Networking/LightSquared-GPS-Interference-Issue-Faces-Congressional-Oversight-860245/
The American Cancer Society projects that 1.64 mil new cancer cases and 577k deaths from cancer will occur in 2012. Overall death rates between 1990/91 and 2008 found that overal death rates decreased by about 23% in men and 15% in women, which translates to more than 1 mil deaths from cancer that were avoided. An estimated 1/3 of cancer deaths in 2012 will be cased by tobacco use and another 1/3 will be related to overweight or obesity, physical inactivity, and poor nutrition:
http://www.cancer.org/Cancer/news/News/annualreport-more-than-a-million-cancer-deaths-avoided-in-2-decades
Yahoo chose PayPal's President to be their new CEO, Yahoo's 4th CEO in 5 years. The graphic with this article clearly shows how the highest Yahoo stock price has steadily declined under each CEO, as Yahoo has been losing a lot of business to Google and Facebook:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/story/2012-01-04/yahoo-ceo-report/52375040/1
This list of the 10 highest paid CEOs in the wireless sector has 1 big surprise to me--Verizon's CEO is at #8, making less than the CEOs from Nokia, Sprint, Motorola, and *2* people from AT&T:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/special-reports/who-were-highest-paid-executives-wireless
Verizon bought out Qualcomm's 50% of their machine-to-machine joint venture nPhase:
http://www.connectedworldmag.com/blog/?p=743
Verizon activated 4.2 mil iPhones and 2.2 mil LTE devices in the 4Q, significantly more than the other quarters in 2011. Verizon said that their profit margins will decline 5% to 6% from the 3Q, probably due to higher device subsidy costs (one can look at Sprint's balance sheet to see the impact of iPhone subsidies on profit margins). Verizon activated 2.2 mil iPhones in the 1Q, 2.3 mil iPhones in the 2Q, 2 mil iPhones in the 3Q, and 4.2 mil iPhones in the 4Q. LTE device activations were 1Q: 500k, 2Q: 1.2 mil, 3Q: 1.4 mil, 4Q: 2.2 mil:
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/verizon-activates-42m-iphones-q4-warns-margin-decline/2012-01-04
AT&T is rapidly expanding its LTE network, covering 26 markets with 75 million POPs. Verizon covers 200 million POPs are far more markets, but by building out first Verizon has experienced growing pains (3 LTE outages in December alone):
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/att-expands-lte-coverage-26-markets-74-million-pops/2012-01-05
Clearwire's stock dropped after an analyst reduced their target stock price from $5/share to $2/share. Clearwire's stock dropped to $2/share by closing yesterday and today dropped below $2/share:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/01/04/clearwire-kaufman-cuts-rating-sees-flattish-2012-revs/
Google may launch a tablet competitor to compete with Amazon's Kindle Fire. Google cannot like how the Kindle Fire will be the best-selling Android-based tablet and it uses Amazon's App Store instead of Google's Android Market. The really interesting thing about the rumor is that it will launch in March or April, will run Android 4.0 (instead of the Android 2.2-based smartphone OS that the Kindle Fire used that has been heavily customized by Amazon), and will sell for *less* than the Kindle Fire's $199 price:
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20120104PD212.html
Mindpeed is buying Picochip for $51.8 mil ($27.5 mil cash, $24.3 mil Mindspeed stock), plus up to $25 mil more if Picochip achieves certain milestones:
http://www.picochip.com/news/208
San Diego-based Entropic Communications is buying Trident Microsystems for $55 mil to help it compete with Irvine-based Broadcom who is entering Entropic's connected home technology:
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jan/04/entropic-aims-buy-assets-bankrupt-chip-firm/
Man slashed tires on dozens of cars and broke into garages east of Carmel Canyon Road...in Carmel Valley, not far from where I live! At least 17 homes in Carmel Valley were victims of the masked man last night through early this morning:
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jan/05/tires-slashed-burglaries-carmel-valley/
16-foot-long crocodile charged at an Australian reptile park worker and stole his lawn mower, guarding it closely all morning. The keepers lured the 1,110-pound crocodile to the other end of the lagoon with a huge mound of kangaroo meat, and while the crocodile was distracted one keeper jumped into the lagoon to retrieve the lawn mower. The keeper also searched the bottom of the lagoon for two 3-inch teeth the crocodile lost when stealing the lawnmower...searching for the teeth while the crocodile was nearby!
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45873833/ns/world_news-weird_news/#.TwXXI9SiFw9