Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Aha! I was sort of right. Now companies have teams of folks hunting down stupid in their systems to keep the world safe from stupid. Way back in 2015, I wrote a blog post about being a stupid hunter. This is not a hunter who is stupid, but a hunter whose job […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I don’t want to jump into the next book-writing project at home. Or do I? I just finished a writing project at home. Done, wrapped up, self-published on the places where my friends and relatives can by it for 99¢. Sigh. I don’t want to jump into the first thing that pops […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Find the right question. The answer will direct efforts. That is pretty basic, but it seems to work. The purpose of this blog post is… Well, let me struggle with the rest of that sentence. In my struggles, let me find the right question. How about, “Why would anyone read this?” or […]

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by Dwayne Phillips What are you talking about? What level of abstraction are you discussing? There are levels of abstraction. A car moves me from here to there. A car has an engine, a transmission, wheels, and fuel. An engine has spark plugs and belts and hoses. A spark plug has a housing, insulator, and […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Stop worrying about the next technology. Do something simple that has all the functions you need. The database. Sigh. Gosh, what is next? What is the next database technology that will solve all my problems? Requirements: Enter information. Find entered information. Read entered information. Change entered information. Solution: The ASCII text file. […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The number crunchers now rule the world. How did that happen? Many years ago I was a number cruncher. I did then what people still call “digital signal processing.” We took analog signals, magically made them numbers in computers via gadgets called analog-to-digital converters or A/D converters, and happily applied digital approximations […]

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by Dwayne Phillips These inconvenient facts seem to be everywhere. They are inconvenient, however, only when we have a story to tell that denies reality. There are some old sayings like, “opinions being mugged by facts,” and “don’t confuse my opinion with facts,” and “there is nothing like facts getting in the way of my […]

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by Dwayne Phillips The basic yes-no question is quite easy to answer. It is either “yes” or “no.” Recognizing the question is a bit more difficult, but not impossible. There is a type of question for which the answer is either “yes” or “no.” It is quite easy to answer as there are only two […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes we “know where everything is” despite outward appearances. Sometimes we have “a place for everything and everything in its place.” Sometimes both ideas work. Sometimes neither work. Data is everywhere. Data is the new oil or bacon or pizza or something good or bad. The trouble with data is if I […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Linear Regression is an old, basic technique to predict the future given the past. It seems that its utility has been forgotten by many. How did we get here? Why didn’t anyone see this coming? These are a couple questions I heard recently when groups of persons gathered to discuss … well, […]

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