There's an odd and little-studied wrinkle in JDSU's announcement that it will acquire Circadiant. JDSU executives have been saying for a year that they want to emphasize the test and measurement business they launched when the company acquired Acterna (the former merged Wavetek and Wandel & Goltermann) in 2005. It augmented that acquisition by picking up Test-Um Inc. and Casabyte in rapid succession. Meanwhile, the component business was heading south, though JDSU tried to stay active by acquiring Picolight. JDSU had pondered for several months spinning off its components business, and keeping test equipment at its core.

The most interesting aspect of the Nov. 10 Nortel Networks earnings call was not the numbers of potential layoffs, less than anticipated a week ago, but the comment from Nortel CEO Mike Zafirovski to the effect that carrier executives told him in September he was being too pessimistic, only to call him in recent weeks to tell him his anticipation of heavy spending cutbacks was correct. Well duh. We've been arguing for months at EE Times that a financial panic this serious is bound to bring a profound recession in its wake, including cuts in consumer spending, communications, embedded industrial, and commercial services. Why was this not self-evident to the majority of technology executives as soon as sub-prime mortgages started going bad?

Forget the elections, my hopes for a unified artists' coalition have been crushed by Dolly Parton, who is joining a coalition led by National Association of Broadcasters to delay the Federal Communications Commission's vote on public use of TV white space, the frequencies between broadcast channels, as supplementary wireless broadband frequency. Dolly! The one we used to dismiss as a big-breasted hick hawking Breeze towels with Porter Wagoner, only to learn post 9-to-5 that she was a working-class angel in disguise. Dolly, the one who jammed with every scruffy indy musician even as she promoted family values at Dollywood. Had she really fallen under the evil clutches of the NAB?

The Defense Department's space programs are being scaled back in the current budget environment. Aviation Week last week reported a "pause" in the Transformational Satellite program. On Monday, Oct. 27, the print edition of Space News carried a front-page article, not online, reporting that the reduced "T-SAT Digital Core" will drop its laser-based intersatellite links, scale back its broadband communication capabilities, and delay initial launch from 2016 to 2019.

I was talking to a former colleague in Asia recently on the relative merits of Huawei and ZTE, when it struck me: Asian OEMs in telecom and datacom infrastructure have little to worry about any more from erstwhile competitors in North America and Europe. For networks transitioning from IP to multiple protocols, Cisco Systems remains a strong company with vision and imgination. Ditto Ericsson in the realm of fixed-mobile convergence. But beyond that, Asian giants only have to worry about second-tier suppliers that remain strong, such as Ciena, Adva, and Nokia-Siemens Networks. Note the absence of Alcatel-Lucent, Nortel, and Motorola from that list. This is getting depressing.

Let's welcome author James Bamford back to the fold of those who take it as an axiom that any large government agency is more likely to be working against the interests of the private citizen rather than for those interests. In 1982, Bamford published The Puzzle Palace, the first skeptical and detailed look at the National Security Agency since the agency was founded in 1952. In the 1980s, the federal government tried to file suit against Bamford, but by 2001, when his second NSA book (Body of Secrets) came out, the agency was trying to play a more user-friendly role. Bamford even was invited to a book-signing event at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Md.

Late last week, this blog predicted that strange M&A activity stemming from the downturn would include use of unique financial instruments and corporate structures. Certainly, a return to hostile takeover methods could be anticipated - we've already seen it in recent months in Cadence's half-baked assault on Mentor Graphics, in the Sumitomo/Axcelis battle, even in Carl Icahn's attempts at a Motorola extreme makeover. But I never thought this form would emerge in France, in the realm where security, smartcards, and communication processors meet. Anne-Francoise Pele of EE Times Europe shows us we'd better get used to the idea, in the emerging struggle between Gemalto and Wavecom.

As the countdown to an Oct. 3 House vote on a bailout attracted more and more drama, too many pundits drew stark distinctions between a world without a bailout, populated by investment bankers selling apples and Tom Joads escaping dustbowls; and a world with a bailout where the mighty Dow Jones Wurlitzer continues to play its manic tunes. Let's not kid ourselves. In either scenario, 2009 business conditions will slow considerably, tech companies will search for safe harbors, and M&A activity will veer into uncharted new territory.

Next week, I'll be providing a tongue-in-cheek "Modest Proposal" in the print and EDGE editions of EE Times, suggesting that Congressional negotiators consider limits on profit margins for futures and non-tangible assets, as a way of keeping investor-vultures from leaping from one bubble to the next. Obviously, any bailout bill that seeks to wreak specific vengeance on the financial speculators that started this mess will face constitutional challenges similar to those FDR faced in his New Deal programs. But media interviews with American citizens over the past few days have reinforced the view that the public only wants a bailout if the individuals and institutions responsible for the current meltdown are held strictly accountable.

Four years ago, EE Times asked the question: with most manufacturing and even significant portions of design outsourced to other players, what was the mission of Nortel Networks? Following the past week's cost-cutting decisions to back out of Carrier Ethernet, optics, and possibly all 4G infrastructure, we must repeat the question: What is Nortel's center of gravity, and where does it intend to go?