PC Tech World: quietly

Showing posts with label quietly. Show all posts

Monday, March 25, 2013

HTC drops 'Quietly Brilliant' slogan, promises more aggressive marketing

With things getting just a little bit too quiet in HTC's finance department, the marketing folks across the corridor have come up with a solution: drop the old "Quietly Brilliant" tagline in favor of something bolder. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, HTC's new chief marketing officer, Ben Ho, said the company "hasn't been loud enough" in presenting its innovations. He didn't go as far as detailing a new motto, but after his recent remarks about the Galaxy S 4 we're expecting something punchy.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Create your own space program: NASA quietly flogging bits of the Kennedy Space Center

The idea of private space tourism is certainly taking off, but at such high costs, only 1 percent of the 1 percent will be able to afford it. But, what if you could just do it all yourself? You're going to need some infrastructure to get you started, and luckily, NASA is reportedly looking to lease or sell off some Kennedy Space Center assets it no longer needs. While that list has not been made public, it apparently includes Launch Pad 39A, a landing strip, the Launch Control Center, and various other high-tech equipment and buildings from its late shuttle program. NASA also wants some quick deals before anything falls into disrepair, so if you're serious about your new space venture, you might be able to snag a bargain or two with some strategic low offers. Now you've just gotta wait for a cheap rocket deal to pop up on eBay and you're good to go.

when.eng("eng.perm.init")

Saturday, January 5, 2013

Google quietly removed search warning message in China in early December 2012

Google's search engine has a turbulent history in China, from search results being censored to temporary shutdowns. The company's most recent effort to serve mainland China with unfiltered search results met with an untimely end back in early December, Google confirms -- a warning previously told mainlanders when the search term they were using had met with issues (read: Chinese government intrusion causing lengthy connection times) for other users. GreatFire discovered that said message no longer popped up when searching for various censored terms on Google Search in China, and while Google's confirming that fact, it's unclear what the exact reasoning is. Given the rocky history between Google and China, it seems likely that China responded in turn to Google's efforts with its own -- or as The Guardian puts it, "Google concedes defeat in China censorship battle." Whether that's the case or not remains to be seen, but Chinese Google searchers should beware that your experience may result in some unfortunate connection issues from time to time (as much as 90 seconds), per China's censorship policies.

when.eng("eng.perm.init")

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Zenbook Touch U500VZ quietly surfaces on ASUS website, price and availability still MIA

Zenbook Touch U500VZ surfaces on ASUS website

A 15-inch Zenbook Touch U500VZ has quietly appeared on ASUS' website. Though the company has yet to announce this model officially, it's hardly a surprise, as its 13-inch UX31A is already available with a capacitive display, and the line's 11-inch models are confirmed to get touchscreens as well. Essentially, it looks to be the UX51Vz with a touch panel, as this machine's other specs look familiar. It packs a Core i7-3632QM processor, discrete NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M graphics and dual 256GB SSDs. Naturally, the touchscreen features IPS technology and boasts the same 1080p resolution as other Zenbooks. Though the laptop is listed online, price and availability aren't yet clear, but for now you can click through to the website and feast your eyes.

[Thanks, Bob]

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Monday, November 26, 2012

Firefox 64-bit development quietly ended for Windows

firefox, windows, open source, development, 64-bit, projects, browsers, internet browsers, x

It appears Mozilla has quietly toe-tagged 64-bit builds of its Firefox browser for Windows. In a Google Groups discussion, managing engineer Benjamin Smedberg requested coders halt development on nightly builds of its 64-bit Windows distribution.

Mozilla's reasons to end 64-bit flavors of Firefox are numerous: limited plug-in availability, more frequent hang-ups and performance issues, stability problems due in part to a niche user/developer base, difficulty distinguishing between 32-bit and 64-bit bug reports and a general feeling that 64-bit users are second-class.

There was a five-day lapse between the question's proposal and the subsequent confirmation which affirmed the demise of Firefox's more futuristic alter ego. During this time, thread participants issued a number of mixed replies both for and against the decision.

One user said, "I agree whole-heartedly about switching off Win64 Nightly builds - crash-stats are just the tip of the iceberg.", linking to this discussion which spells out some of the troubles developers and users have been experiencing with x64 builds. Another user suggested, "How about you fix the problems instead?" -- the assumption being if Mozilla focused on 64-bit development, those supposed issues would no longer be a reason for the organization to eviscerate the project.

Since Smedberg's proposal specifically called out Firefox builds for Windows, 64-bit development appears to be safe for other platforms, like Linux -- for now. If it were to be canned for Linux users though, a x64 build of Chromium seems like the best alternative for 64-bit purists.

It's interesting to note that although Firefox alternatives like Internet Explorer and Opera offer 64-bit browsers, Google Chrome remains exclusively 32-bit for Windows. By virtue of being 32-bit, Firefox is limited to 2GB of memory usage -- one of the benefits to being 64-bit is access to more physical RAM. Unlike Mozilla's browser, Chrome runs each tab as its own process. This trick allows Chrome to gracefully surpass the 2GB limit without having to be 64-bit.

View the original article here

By: Dilusha On 5:33 PM