Working Up

Working Up in Project Management, Systems Engineering, Technology, and Writing

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Is the Light Bulb On or Off?

March 21st, 2022 · No Comments

By Dwayne Phillips Sometimes we need to remind ourselves what it is that computers can and cannot do. Computers are taking over the world. Well, maybe not. Let’s recall what a computer can do. A computer can tell if a light bulb is on or off. That’s about it folks. Nothing more. Everything else is […]

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Tags: Cloud Computing · Computing · General Systems Thinking · Learning · Software · Teaching · Technology

Hacking the International Order

March 3rd, 2022 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Expediting the fall of the nation state are the hacktivists or activist hackers. We have had mercenaries for many centuries. These were soldiers hired by governments to fight battles for them. Sometimes nations hired the armies of other nations to do this. Sometimes nations hired individuals. And we have had Internet mercenaries. […]

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Tags: Change · Computing · Concepts · Government · Technology

Data has always been Everywhere

January 20th, 2022 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Lest we forget, we have always had more data than we could process. For some reason, we are now recording it with magnetism. I just read yet another article telling me that “data is everywhere.” Then there are the usual numbers of peta-peta-something-or-other bytes of data every second or so. Cries follow […]

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Tags: Computing · Culture · Data Science · History · Scale · Science

The General Store (as a Service)

January 13th, 2022 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips We have XaaS or EaaS. We have returned to the day of the general store. We have almost everything as a service. Some call this XaaS. I call it EaaS (Everything as a Service or maybe AEaaS Almost Everything as a Service). Examples, IaaS, DHaaS, SaaS, PaaS, etc. (how many letters are […]

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Tags: America · Computing · Customer · Technology

The CRUD Systems

December 23rd, 2021 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Once stripped of all the extras, the great majority of computers systems we use are CRUD. And that is okay. We invented computers to compute, i.e., to calculate things. 1+2=3 and so on. We also learned that computers are good at storing information. We put information in the computer, it is there. […]

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Tags: Change · Cloud Computing · Computing · Writing

RISC, CISC, and General Systems Thinking

September 23rd, 2021 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Reduced complexity optimizes for simplicity. Increased complexity optimizes for simplicity in another form. Which simplicity is “best” is a matter of situation. Apple has recently moved to their own “Apple Silicon” processors. In general terms, Apple switched from Intel’s processors to ARM’s processors. ARM processors are a form of RISC. Intel processors […]

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Tags: Choose · Computing · General Systems Thinking · Systems · Technology

The Essence of Data Science (attempt #2)

September 2nd, 2021 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips After a few more years, I think I understand the essence of Data Science. It isn’t that complicated. I wrote a post in November of 2020 attempting to describe the essence of data science. A few thoughts came to me recently. So here goes another attempt. A person has a large amount […]

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Tags: Computing · Data Science · Questions · Science · Time

Forward to the Past: Infrastructure as Code and JCL

February 22nd, 2021 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips We tend to reinvent the past as we move into the future. Remember JCL? I took an class in operating systems in 1980 (yes, I am that old). At least that was the name of the class. In reality, it was a class in what IBM called Job Control language or JCL. […]

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Tags: Change · Computing · History · Language

The Mundane Necessity of Computing (Professionals)

December 17th, 2020 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Some things are so obvious that we all miss them for a long time. Moving from experiment lab to the real world requires some expertise. To do artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, etc. you do computing. This means a lot of software work. Though not as old as physics and chemistry, […]

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Tags: Computing · Engineering · Experiment · Programming · Reality · Systems

The Hybrid Cloud: Forward to the Past

October 10th, 2019 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips We reinvent the past and give it a new name. IBM is pushing into the cloud computing business. They are “behind” the competition, but have hopes of making ground and money with “hybrid” technologies. Let’s consider this idea of hybrid cloud. I trust the cloud provider to keep my stuff reliably and […]

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Tags: Computing · History · Technology