Slashdot Mirror

grub writes "Halliburton has decided to drop Research In Motion's Blackberry platform in favor of Apple's iOS for its workforce. 'An internal newsletter outlined the plan for the nearly 70,000 employees who work for Halliburton in more than 70 countries. "Over the next year, we will begin expanding the use of our mobile technology by transitioning from the BlackBerry (RIM) platform that we currently use to smartphone technology via the iPhone."'"

grub writes "According to this article on NewScientist.com 'Spam and spim - spam by instant messenger -- are about to be joined by "spit" - spam over internet telephony' Yup, spam via VoIP."

grub writes "If you're one of the people that wins a free download from Apple's iTunes during the upcoming 100 million song giveaway from Pepsi, then check out Tune Recycler. They say: "With the Tune Recycler, you can send us your unwanted iTunes bottlecap codes and we'll use them to support independent music. Easy for you, and good for musicians" Sounds like a great idea for payments that may otherwise be tossed in the trash."

grub wrote to us about an article about SGI, and its ongoing battles to turn its corporate fortunes around. The company's been doing interesting stuff for a long time - here's to hoping they stay around.

grub points to this TechWeb story about a software tool (NetRecall) from a company called Athentica which they claim can selectively allow viewing, copying, and forwarding of online materials. The idea is to maintain control of content on a per-person or per-category basis -- something which could have good or bad applications, but which sounds difficult to implement effectively no matter what use it's put to. (Will the required plug-on also block all screenshot utilities? If not, exactly who is it intended to stop?) Of course, since circumventing even simple methods used to "protect" copyrighted materials is illegal under the DMCA, perhaps that doesn't much matter.

grub writes: "The MPAA must be saying "Ho Lee Fook." Pioneer had introduced a rewritable DVD drive. The drive reads and writes in four formats: DVD-R, CD-R, DVD-RW and CD-RW, has up to 4.7GB capacity per DVD side and records on DVD-R at twice the normal speed." With 60GB drives now at reasonable prices, and drives three times that size coming out on the high end, 4.7GB no longer sounds like the mountain of bits it once did. Still, this is a wild combination: hopefully the world will soon agree on some nice DVD-RAM standards worth living with.