Posts by mfisch

You wanna be an alpha... tester of The Register's redesign? Step this way

Re: News Prioritization by Popularity not ideal.

Re: whitepace

The thing that makes the new design difficult to read:

- The gray line around the article boxes is super distracting. The old format (just white space) was much easier on the eyes. Perhaps even a more subtle gray would make a difference here. I've tested this on both desktop and mobile and the eyeball burn problem is there in both.

- 4x articles wide is strange.

I see as I resize the window it goes from one article wide (phone, good), 2 articles wide (tablet? small browser window? Good), ... then straight to 4 articles wide (crazy jumbled looking). Even at max-width of the main content page 4 articles wide is too busy.

If I had to redesign this part with no other considerations I would do 3 articles wide until the viewport width is sufficiently wide to fit 4 articles with pleasant whitespace. Instead I've got empty grayspace padding the left and right sides and text thats so squished in the middle I can't read it.

Re: News Prioritization by Popularity not ideal.

hmm .... I'm looking closer now. Is "MOST READ" just those four articles in that box and the remainder of the bottom of the page all chronological?

It's not really clear.

If the entire bottom of the page is chronologically inclusive (so I can catch up etc) .... then I like the new format.

Two other notes:

There's not nearly enough whitespace, everything is too jammed together making it difficult to read. Are you afraid people don't like scrolling?

I'm very happy with the responsiveness of this new design. The old design was obviously geared for desktops which means half the time (mobile device) your site is difficult and feels like it was designed in the stone age. Cheers for horizontal bounding to screen width!

News Prioritization by Popularity not ideal.

Perhaps I'm not your median reader .... I've been a (nearly) daily reader for almost 20 years. Days where I'm too busy I catch up later in the week somehow.

In short, I spend a lot of time looking at your content and don't need 'sort by popularity' to save me time (by pulling the less popular stories out of the page feed it actually costs me a lot of time or information).

In the average week I peruse perhaps half the articles you have on offer and rely heavily on your information feed to keep up to date in the industry. Your headlines are predictable enough that I can quickly determine whether I want to click through.

The redesign alpha seems to show just a few of the most recent or perhaps pinned articles up top followed by a 'MOST READ' section which I presume is based on popularity.

I find it unlikely that the half of the articles I read thoroughly from your outlet are the same half that are most popular. This means I'm going to miss a lot of stories.

Please make sure to include a chronological feed ... I could resort to XSS to track your content but more likely I'll just switch to an outlet that doesn't force me to click through 10 sections to make sure I'm not missing anything.

Santa says you've been nice kids: OpenVPN to get security audit

correction: no openvpn in anyconnect

Cisco AnyConnect has no OpenVPN code integrated.

Here's the software Cisco does use in anyconnect:

This product includes software developed by the OpenSSL Project for use in the OpenSSL Toolkit: http://www.openssl.org

This product includes cryptographic software written by Eric Young ([e-mail])

This product includes software written by Tim Hudson ([e-mail])

This product incorporates the libcurl HTTP library: Copyright (c) 1996 - 2006, Daniel Stenberg, <[e-mail]>.

New MacBook Pro beckons fanbois to become strip pokers

I do wonder Shaun ...

... How many weeks you worked on that headline, then how many more you've had it stuffed in a bag ...

Or do you guys keep an in-office infinite monkey pool?

Anyone using M-DISC to archive snaps?

While M-DISC's marketing is genius in that it makes long term data storage look easy for consumers, the IT industry already has this figured out -- and experts (librarians) already have protocols for this.

1. Choose the best combination of $$/stored-bit and standardization (to ensure future compatability).

2. Store multiple copies in multiple locations.

3. Make sure to copy your data before the equipment becomes a museum piece.

If you were my customer, I would advise you to pick up the latest LTO-7 drive and a box of tapes for around $3k. That's 6TB per tape!

As a cheapskate IT pro my recommendation is slightly altered: Pick up a used LTO-5 drive and a box of new tapes for around USD $800. 1.5TB per tape ...

LTO tapes (standard media) last 15 to 30 years depending on storage conditions and media quality.

While it is tempting to be attracted to Blu-ray because you can picture yourself popping a CDROM from the late 90's in a contemporary Blu-ray drive, it is highly unlikely this form of storage will be available in consumer devices 15 years hence.

If you have even a few TB of data those M-DISC's begin to look both difficult to deal with (they're so small!) and much less economical than LTO.

Burn all the coal, oil – No danger of sea level rise this century from Antarctic ice melt

I appreciate the diversity of opinion re: climate change in El Reg, it keeps my climate-change believing green heart in check and reminds it to stay grounded.

That said, this piece lacks almost all journalistic credibility -- this type of piece adds nothing to the debate while sowing doubt with readers who don't bother to connect the dots. The discussion in serious scientific communities has never centered around sea-level rise as a cause of concern, but in temperature itself.

Ed take note:

Posts like these make me want to give up on my nearly 15 year history of reading el reg daily.

The second X axis included in the aforementioned chart (in the middle of the el reg article) shows 8-11C of mean temperature increase over the same period. Yes, it will take a few hundred years for giant ice reserves to melt after it's stuck in the oven, in the mean-time our planet will become a wasteland reminiscent of Mad Max's dystopia.

For context, a similar temperature rise occurred in the early triassic which turned the planet into a global desert and rendered much of the livable land masses and oceans lifeless.

https://regmedia.co.uk/2015/09/15/no_problem.png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/media/File:All_palaeotemps.svg

http://www.bitsofscience.org/wordpress-3.0.1/wordpress/images/2012/10/triassic-dead-zone.jpg

What is Violin Memory's sacked CEO still doing on their board?

Everything is negotiable

As is his exit.

Considering the manner of his exit it's hard to imagine him being able to or being allowed to continue effectively as a productive board member.

Without an acceptable golden parachute he may be waiting for an offer of acceptable renumeration. Holding onto his board seat is probably the only chip he has at this point (the other being an extended non-compete).

Just how flash is your enterprise storage rig?

What about the already ditched rust option?

All-flash dropped below enterprise "rust" prices last year .... I took note.

What's next? Memrister and racetrack?

'I still get on the phone for a $5k deal' - NetSuite CEO's anti-SAP mission

Misleading article

What a misleading article.

I can appreciate SaaS -- but this company isn't the disruptive entrant into ERP it's spun as. Compared to salesforce? I can get on the Benioff CRM bandwagon for $65/month/user. Despite being an order of magnitude more economical than Oracle's eBusiness Suite -- NetSuite still smells like Ellison.

While the article in two places seemed to indicate they'd tackle $5k deals -- NetSuite sales told me (in kind enough words) to take a hike unless I have $60,000 to spend in year 1.

Paid Ad? Maybe Nelson meant it's $5,000/hr to get him on the phone.

This is less a critique of NetSuite and moreso the article's spin-factor.