It looks like the lights at the Symbian Foundation headquarters won’t be on much longer. The sad fact of the matter is that no one cares about Symbian anymore. Two of the Foundation’s major supporters — Samsung and Sony — have either halted all development on current Symbian-powered products or have withdrawn from the Foundation altogether. It also doesn’t help that the Foundation’s largest supporter is Nokia, whom also isn’t exactly having the greatest of times. Yeah, they still continue to move a lot of phones. But the harsh reality is that most of those phones are bottom of the barrel junk phones that no one cares about.
Complicating matters, former CEO Lee Williams threw in the towel last week and walked off the job citing Symbian’s on it’s way to the grave “personal reasons”. As his replacement, the Symbian Foundation promoted CFO Tim Holbrow to the helm. But that doesn’t mean all is well. Apparently, Holbrow has been caught stating that the Foundation’s focus is moving away from technology and consumer development and more into the”operations” realm — this all according to “a source close to the matter” and comments recently made to UK tech site, TheRegister:
But a source close to Symbian has told The Reg that Holbrow has been appointed to wind down operations and that Foundation employees are being offered redundancy packages.
Symbian would not confirm or deny, but it said the group’s board is reviewing strategy. “The future business strategy for the Symbian Foundation is still under review by the board. As no decisions have been made, we will not be offering further comment,” Symbian said.
Waning support, lack of funds, and a portfolio of products that no one cares about — that sounds like death to me.
Yes, horrible news people… Dennis Hopper, the amazingness behind the live action Super Mario Bros movie’s adaptation of Koopa is dead at age 71. He is no more, among all the voice overs he has done for video games, the tons and tons of movies he was in, him playing the beloved Princess nappin Koopa, is no more. This is sad news, and all nerds out there will definitely want to keep his family in their thoughts.
If any of you out there haven’t seen this movie, go rent it/buy it/don’t download this one, please and support this great movie and this amazing actor.
Dennis Hopper RIP
- November 18, 2009 12:48 pm
If this is a repeat visit for you, I’m sure you’ve at least seen one or two articles of my not to favorable outlook on AT&T. To the tech crowd, AT&T is also commonly referred to as “The Deathstar”. Perhaps the particular employee that was helping Consumerist reader Robert was taking it a tad too far? Psh, if anything AT&T should promote this gal to the top of the food chain. Blunt humor and more casual, consumer friendly mood. AT&T could use a lot more of that up top don’t you think?
For as cold and business-like as AT&T portrays itself, this rare showing of raw humor shows that at least 0.01% of AT&T is still consumer friendly. The blunt yet hilarious joke has me liking this Darlene chick. But after we get over the initial ha ha moment, we have to ask ourselves just how bad is it working inside of the company if the employees are (even jokingly) bringing up killing themselves….?
Funniest thing I’ve ever seen? God no. But it is the funniest tech thing I’ve seen this month.
Consumerist
Science fiction is full of tails entailing tricks and tweaks on life itself. “Suspended animation and “re-animation” are words typically used to describe scientific ways of tricking the body, reaching the absolute limits between life and death, and even surpassing them. The little mouse above appears to be a goner, but, he’s actually suspended. But wait, that’s a sci-fi term we see in books detailing the future of medicine and science. That isn’t possible yet. Is it? The answer may surprise you.
After a tragic accident involving his daughter, Mark Roth of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center is on the verge of bringing science fiction to life. He has discovered that by replacing oxygen in our bodies’ cells with a toxin — hydrogen sulfide. The hydrogen sulfide stops the real problems behind death after our hearts stop, the chain reaction after oxygen stops filling our cells. With hydrogen sulfide, even though we aren’t breathing and our hearts aren’t pumping, the presence of the hydrogen sulfide keeps us “suspended”. So far, the smaller insects Mark Roth has tested them on all come back to life within minutes of reintroducing oxygen into their test containers. The mice on the other hand haven’t been able to be completely suspended. Instead, their metabolism is dropped to under 10% of normal functioning which is really low. As the insects, adding oxygen back into the mix brings the little rodents back “normal speed” within minutes.
When becoming suspended with hydrogen sulfide, we don’t die. We merely “stop growing”. The concept of time is rather simple to follow as well. Becoming suspended for an entire day results in the organism or animal taking a day longer to develop than an animal that wasn’t suspended. Some truly freaky, futuristic stuff for sure.
Unfortunately, tests on larger subjects such as swine and animals of that size are proving harder than their smaller counterparts both in actually getting the specimens to test as well as the results coming forth. Not to mention, the larger size is presenting a problem — they aren’t able to drop into a suspended state with gasified hydrogen sulfide. To get around this, Ikaria, Roth’s co-founded company had to develop an injectable “suspension fluid” consisting of sodium sulfide that would dissolve into hydrogen sulfide once it comes in contact with blood.
Human trials are already underway in Canada and Australia meaning within presumably the next 10-15 years, we could literally leap frog through decades of your average science fiction text book. Simply amazing isn’t it?
CNN
Building on the Halloween festivities that were presented in the previous post, if you have a desk in need of a little customization or a more homie feeling, adding something unique and head turning definitely adds to the overall appeal of a house. Are you a sick and twisted sort of individual or likes all things death? If so, awesome (get help). If not and you just like unique gadgets, the USB Skull Speakers should fulfil your decorating needs.
With a nice graphic representation of a bloody skull combined with 2.5 W output means your desk can make sweet sweet music and look eerily sinister all at the same time. Such design and sophistication are impecable at giving the kiddies a nice little nightmare or two. The only set back is that audio wise, these are probably crap. But the $47 you’ll pony up for the dual speakers of death are more than likely for the way out their design. You hooked?
[Product Page]
TechChee
