Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips If elected leaders want it, of course someone will build the fill-in-the-blank registry (if it doesn’t already exist). Big news lately about how large numbers of programmers have pledged not to build a fill-in-the-blank registry. (It is pretty easy to make such a pledge when you are employed and have enough work […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips Government contractors use a new form of the Agile methods. I have met an ever increasing government contractors who claim to use a method they call Agile Lite. This is quite simple. The government official who directs the contractor tells them: (1) Tell everyone that you are doing Agile. (2) Every day, […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips There is the great idea, then there is the great execution that brings the idea to fruition. In my experience, the idea is greatly over valued. I worked 28 years inside government. I was bombarded with examples of, “Oh, so-and-so is a great idea person. We need you to work all the […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips If a system designed to last a few months last 12 years, is that a success or a failure? A recent story hailed the success of the NASA Mars rover. The rover was “designed” to last a few months, but is still going after 12 years. Wow! What a great design and […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips Governments worldwide are grappling with how to make their infrastructure safe from hacking. The solution is trivial. Everyone is afraid that their SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) systems are being hacked (here is one story of many). Bad people will cause dams to overflow and sewage to be poured into drinking […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips If someone could overcome the scientific and logical barriers to backdoors to encryption systems, they would still face one of trusting liars. Many of our elected representatives want our technology companies to build encryption systems with “backdoors.” (Here is a link to one story of such.) These magical backdoors would permit the […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips Thanks to recent legislation concerning health insurance, we have a new way to calculate take-home pay. In the old days, whenever that was, take-home pay was calculated as: income minus taxes Now, however, take-home pay is calculated as: income minus taxes minus what you pay for health insurance in your job based […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips I explore another aspect of logical implication and how lying permits people to construct all sorts of crazy stories. Background: If logical implication makes no sense to you, and it made no sense to me for years, I point to two prior blog posts that I hope will help you understand this […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips Google is often sued for its free search results. I am missing something here. India is investigating Google search results for antitrust violations. I don’t understand how any of this works. I pay nothing for Google search results. They are free advice that are often worth every penny I pay. Yes, sometimes […]

[Read more →]

by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes citizens of the U.S. working for the U.S. become separated from the rest of the citizenry at everyone’s loss. Recently, heads of agencies of the U.S. Intelligence Community met to discuss the types of things they discuss in public. Several of them lamented the protests of many citizens against their efforts […]

[Read more →]