Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips Information has always been searchable. What I really want is information that is findable. Search is a topic that has plagued and payed computer scientists since anyone was first called a computer scientist. I studied search back when I was in college (we used punch card machines back then and wrote on […]

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by Dwayne Phillips I suppose I am several generations behind in the lingo of my profession. Is it too much to ask people to speak English or at least define their terms? I read this recently, “Get the architecture right, then the details.” Hmm, sounds like in that case “architecture” means the “high-level design.” But […]

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by Dwayne Phillips A simple tool for providing feedback to a writer. “Mary had a little lamb.” The above five-word phrase can be said at least ten different ways. It can be assigned at least ten different meanings. Which one did the writer intend? Now we come to providing feedback to a writer. Ask, “Do […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Much of the jargon we use doesn’t make sense. If we didn’t use the nonsense, no one would understand us. We use jargon. I work in computers, and we are one of the worst offenders of jargon in communication. The jargon is nonsense. If I used real words, however, no one would […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Often, with the best of intentions, groups of people writing something add needless adjective and adverbs. There is a group of persons. They are writing directions, a memo, something important or seemingly so. Someone, earnestly with the best of intentions, suggests, “We should change ‘calculate performance’ to ‘carefully calculate detailed performance.’” Just […]

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by Dwayne Phillips A problem with fact checking is that people write so poorly these days we cannot find the facts in seemingly factual statements. Fact checking and the absence or removal of fact checking has been in the news recently. Some society media outlets have removed fact checking and such for something else called […]

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by Dwayne Phillips This is an old saying told to me many, many years ago. It is true today more than ever. Recent “reports” tell me that some Federal agencies are arresting folks who are merely trying to help their neighbors. And I hear of nice folks pointing guns at other Americans who are temporary […]

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by Dwayne Phillips When confronting something that looks odd, show it to an old person. They may have seen this before and can explain it. Many years ago, a programmer saw an odd way to demodulate amplitude modulation. The method didn’t resemble any of the equations or diagrams regarding amplitude modulation (AM, or that radio […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Let not check a communications channel using that same communications channel. It is pretty silly to do so. Since the great pandemic of the early 2020s, I have been part of countless ZoomerTeams meetings. Almost every one starts with, “Can everyone hear me?” Let’s pause and think. If a participant cannot hear […]

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by Dwayne Phillips Sometimes it is worth the effort to make the output “look good.” Sometimes this pretty printing is a waste and only aggravates those involved. This past week at work I spent hours and hours pretty printing. We had “done the work” and were trying to make a printout of the work for […]

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