A Man And His Ideas

  Circle Diamond Square Code Breaker Game The Circle Diamond Square is a two-player game in which players compete to find the other players' secret number. The secret number has four digits, each digit a number between 0 and 9; all the numbers are different. The players take turns as the Coder and the Decoder. The  Coder picks a secret number code; the Decoder attempts to crack the code using clues from the Coder. Each player has a worksheet with tables with rows and columns for writing the code number, decode number and the clues.   The game begins when the Coder writes four secret number digits in the Coder table’s top row. To start guessing the secret number, the Decoder writes four numbers in the top row of the Decoder table. The Decoder tells the Coder the number. The Coder writes the guess on the row under the secret number. The Coder responds with a clue in circle, diamond, or square code that the Decoder uses to deduce the secret number.   If the g...

Pronouns - why do we care? If you ever get a chance to work with a client to develop information models for the client's business, pronouns are watchwords that cannot be modeled as facts. However, pronouns do point to the facts and can be used to discover the facts. Pronouns do provide a view of the facts. "send them a bill" "when will it start" Information modeling is an activity everybody does. From birth to death, our mind constructs information models of our personal world. Everybody's information model is unique. No other person has one's information model. The senses provide the gateway allowing world information to engage with the brain and mind. Language is an expression of people's information models. Words are the seeds of thought. The nine types of pronouns indicate the person's internal reference to something else.  It is a fact that pronouns identify something else. but not the actual fact to be modeled. From an information m...

Test for Completeness and Goals

Veterans' Benefit 38 USC 1725  Statues as an Information Model 38 USC 1725 is the Law about business relationships with veterans, DVA, community providers, private insurance, and others. This information model describes the business relationships. Technical Background Dictionary: An information model in software engineering is a representation of concepts and the relationships, constraints, rules, and operations to specify data semantics for a chosen domain of discourse. Typically, it specifies relations between kinds of things, but may also include relations with individual things. It can provide a sharable, stable, and organized structure of information requirements or knowledge for the domain context. Ontology Models – Formal structures (classification systems, assemblies, and parts, language) Affinity Models – Abstract structures (diagnostic, association, disassociation, discrimination, acceptance)   Social Models – Tribe structures (law, group dynamics, ...

The Interloper P henomena This is a computer folklore story I heard many years ago. The story illustrated the essence of technology security. I do not know how the actual story’s facts, however, the story can be told with different facts; however, the essence and outcome would be the same.  In the mid-1970s, Wang was a company in Massachusetts who fostered a computer-based word processing system. Boston legal companies hired armies of legal secretaries. The secretaries would type pages and pages of legal documents flawlessly without errors. Most legal contracts required multiple original documents for signatures. The effort required to constantly key typewriters quickly and accurately could take years to be highly skilled. A typical large law firm could have dozens of legal secretaries.  Wang’s marketing to the law firm was a simple business proposal. A Wang word processing system can replace many legal secretaries. The cost and the return made eliminating lega...