HP surprises with size of job cuts

When Hewlett-Packard announced five months ago it was acquiring technology-services firm Electronic Data Systems (EDS), Wall Street expected big layoffs from the combined company, reports The Washington Post.

But the size of the job cuts - 24 600 jobs over the next three years, nearly 8% of HP's 320 000-employee workforce - came as a shock when HP laid out its plans on Monday for integrating EDS.

The surprise could provide a lift for Palo Alto-based HP's stock price today because of the potential cost savings from the dramatic reduction in staff and HP CEO Mark Hurd's track record for wringing more profits out of lean operations.

T-Mobile USA plans to begin selling the first smartphone powered by Google's new mobile software late next month, according to people familiar with the matter. It will face off against Apple's iPhone and Research In Motion's BlackBerry with a device that blends aspects of both, says The Wall Street Journal.

While some wireless companies working with Google's Android mobile software have hit delays, the T-Mobile phone is coming out on schedule. Backers are optimistic Android-based handsets can take sales from rivals.

The phone's manufacturer, HTC, forecasts sales that are rosier than analysts' estimates. HTC says it expects to ship 600 000 to 700 000 units of the smartphone, dubbed the Dream. The target exceeds analysts' estimates of 300 000 to 500 000.

The successful test run of a massive particle collider brought scientists a step closer to finding answers to a question that has haunted people for centuries: How was the universe created?

According to Computerworld, the $9 billion Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which took 20 years to build outside of Geneva, last week shot its first beam of protons around a vacuum-sealed loop buried 50m to 150m below the ground.

The test was a critical milestone in getting to the project's ultimate goal of shooting two particle beams toward each other at 99.9% of the speed of light. Colliding the beams will create showers of new particles that could re-create conditions in the universe just moments after the big bang that many scientists think created it.

Virginia's Supreme Court stuck down the state's anti-spam law on Friday, overturning the conviction of one of the most prolific mass e-mailers in history, states The Christian Science Monitor.

In a surprising reversal, the court deemed the legislation unconstitutional only a few months after upholding Jeremy Jaynes's nine-year jail sentence for sending up to 10 million unsolicited e-mails a day from his home in North Carolina (and making $24 million while doing it).

Jaynes's attorneys argued that the Virginia law runs against the First Amendment by banning mass e-mails that "falsify or forge" the identity of the sender. The Act went too far by targeting all 'anonymised' e-mail, not only anonymous commercial e-mail, they held.