Sun slashes another 3 000 jobs

Sun has filed a report with the Securities and Exchange Commission, saying it is cutting jobs as it awaits the closure of the acquisition of the company by Oracle, says The Register.

Oracle said it would pony up $7.4 billion back in April to acquire Sun, and net of cash as of the end of the September quarter, Oracle's net payout to get Sun would be about $5 billion. Provided Sun doesn't blow all of the cash it has on hand keeping the doors open.

The US Department of Justice has approved the acquisition but the European Commission's anti-trust police are concerned that Oracle is getting its hands on the open source MySQL database as part of the deal and has held up its approval of the Oracle-Sun deal.

The Home Office will drop a plan to keep the DNA profiles of those arrested, but not convicted of a crime, for between six and 12 years, reports Computing.co.uk.

This is the second measure to be dropped from the Policing and Crime Bill, which is currently in the House of Lords, and is a move by the government to try to get the legislation through the lords before the Queen's speech.

This measure goes against a European court ruling in December, which found it was unlawful to keep DNA profiles of arrested, but unconvicted people, saying that such a policy did not differentiate between criminals and people who had never been convicted. Currently, the DNA of 850 000 such people can be held indefinitely on the database.

A group of the world's largest Internet companies has written a letter of support to the US Federal Communications Commission, says the BBC.

The letter is the latest in an ongoing debate about "network neutrality" - or how data is distributed on the Web.

Some Internet providers have called for a tiered system, in which bandwidth-heavy data like videos travel slower.

In a wide-ranging interview at the Web 2.0 Summit, Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, announced a low-cost and portable ultrasound scanner called the Vscan, reports CNet.

"It's about the same size as a BlackBerry," Immelt said, holding up a white device that appeared to fold in the middle like a flip-phone. The top of the device showed an ultrasound image, while the bottom showed control keys.

"This is Moore's law," he said, saying the device had the same power as a console ultrasound from two to three years ago that would cost $250 000.