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Out of the Browser “The medium is the message.” – Marshall McLuhan, 1964 Marshall McLuhan was a Canadian thinker who coined the phrase “global village” and argued in 1964 that the tool you use shapes your work as much as the work itself. One of America’s largest financial and insurance companies proved him right. When…

Fourteen Years of Steady Current “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” – Thomas Edison Thomas Edison held more than 1,000 U.S. patents. In 1882, his Pearl Street Station in New York began delivering electric power to paying customers, and the world has been plugged in ever since. One of America’s leading distributors…

Six Years in the Neighborhood “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” – Fred Rogers Fred Rogers taped Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood in Pittsburgh for more than 30 years, and generations of children grew up with his cardigan, his sneakers, and his calm voice. The line came from his mother, who…

If You Build It “If you build it, he will come.” – Field of Dreams, 1989 Field of Dreams was filmed in a cornfield near Dyersville, Iowa, and the ballfield is still there. In 2021, Major League Baseball built a stadium next to it, and the Yankees and White Sox walked out of the corn…

Five Years of Positive Charge “Don’t be encumbered by history. Go off and do something wonderful.” – Robert Noyce Robert Noyce co-invented the integrated circuit in 1959 and later co-founded Intel. People called him the Mayor of Silicon Valley, and he spent his life telling engineers to stop looking back and start building. One of…

Fifteen Years at a Steady Pace “Slow and steady wins the race.” – Aesop, The Tortoise and the Hare Aesop told the story of the tortoise and the hare about 2,500 years ago. The hare raced ahead, took a nap, and lost. The tortoise just kept going, and it is still winning races in storybooks…

Three Years Down Under “Ambition leads me not only farther than any other man has been before me, but as far as I think it possible for man to go.” – Captain James Cook, 1774 Captain James Cook charted the east coast of Australia in 1770 and sailed farther south than anyone before him. He…

Fifteen Years of Full Bars “When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain.” – Nikola Tesla, 1926 Nikola Tesla dreamed of wireless long before anyone carried a phone. In 1901, he began building Wardenclyffe Tower on Long Island to send signals through the air. He was decades ahead…

Fully Covered Since 2020 “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” – Benjamin Franklin, 1735 Benjamin Franklin wrote those words about fighting fires in Philadelphia. In 1752, he co-founded the Philadelphia Contributionship, the oldest property insurance company in America still in business. Franklin knew that the best policy is the one you…

Fifteen Years, Delivered on Time “Eighty percent of success is showing up.” – Woody Allen One of the world’s largest shipping companies, the one that taught us some things absolutely, positively have to be there overnight, has shown up with Nexus every business day for 15 years. Its analysts started using Nexus Query Chameleon in…

A Holding Period of Forever “Our favorite holding period is forever.” – Warren Buffett, 1988 One of the nation’s largest brokerage firms, the pioneer that brought discount investing to everyday Americans, made an investment in 2006. It wasn’t a stock. It was a Universal License for Nexus Query Chameleon, and it has paid dividends ever…

Twenty Years, 30,000 Users and Counting “Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” – Lou Gehrig, 1939 Lou Gehrig played 2,130 consecutive games and earned the name the Iron Horse. One of the largest PC and server manufacturers in the world has a streak of its own: 20 straight…

Special Delivery: A Five-Year Contract “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” – Herodotus, 5th century BC Some federal agencies are old. This one predates the Constitution, and it has been serving the country ever since. When an agency with that…

Signed, Sealed, and Delivered for 27 Months “A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.” – Samuel Goldwyn, Hollywood producer Fortunately, this agreement is on paper, and the ink is dry. A government agency that runs its enterprise data warehouse on Teradata has signed a 27-month contract for Nexus Query Chameleon. The deal…

Understanding Skew and Kurtosis (Why Extremes Matter) In Blog 1, we met Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855), the mathematician who taught the world how to measure uncertainty. At the beginning of the 19th century—around 1800 to 1820—Gauss was trying to solve a practical problem. Astronomers kept measuring the same stars and planets and getting different answers.…

Understanding Skew and Kurtosis (Why Extremes Matter) In Blog 1, we met Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777–1855), the mathematician who taught the world how to measure uncertainty. At the beginning of the 19th century—around 1800 to 1820—Gauss was trying to solve a practical problem. Astronomers kept measuring the same stars and planets and getting different answers.…

Mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss Solves Astronomers’ Problem Variance and standard deviation weren’t invented for business. They were invented because astronomers kept getting different answers. In the early 1800s, scientists were trying to calculate the exact orbits of planets and comets. They would measure the same star night after night… and the numbers never matched perfectly.…

Mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss Solves Astronomers’ Problem Variance and standard deviation weren’t invented for business. They were invented because astronomers kept getting different answers. In the early 1800s, scientists were trying to calculate the exact orbits of planets and comets. They would measure the same star night after night… and the numbers never matched perfectly.…

A major government agency that loves its Teradata Enterprise Data Warehouse has made it ten times more powerful by purchasing a Universal Nexus license. When you combine the greatest data warehouse database company with software that works across all databases, you have the perfect one-two punch. What is a Universal Nexus License? A Universal Nexus…

A major government agency that loves its Teradata Enterprise Data Warehouse has made it ten times more powerful by purchasing a Universal Nexus license. When you combine the greatest data warehouse database company with software that works across all databases, you have the perfect one-two punch. What is a Universal Nexus License? A Universal Nexus…