Facts vs. Opinions (was: Re: A comment about changing kernels)

[olafBuddenhagen]

Hi,

> I was only trying to say that many of the things you say often display
> an air of heavy confidence about them. Nothing that there's anything
> wrong with that per se, and in most cases you certainly have the
> experience and knoweldge to display that level of confidence.
> 
> My problem is that I sometimes see cases where this confidence seems
> to not be 100% justified.  The big confusion therefore arises about
> how I should interpret the rest of your statements.  How to know which
> statements to question, and how to know which statements to take as
> facts---how to separate the actual facts from the strong beliefs if
> you like.  Having very little experience in many of the fields you
> talk about can make it really difficult to make this distinction.  I
> hope you can appreciate my problem here.
> 
> Again, I was never attempting to attack your integrity or personality
> in any way (altough the tone in my mail could certainly have given
> that impression).  My intention was to try and make you aware that
> such distinctions that you may take for granted does not always seem
> all that clear in the ears of people who lack some of your experience
> and knowledge about the matter at hand.

Jonathan: I must concur. I had this feeling for weeks. Each time you
state some design is problematic, it's very hard to see whether it is
generally flawed, whether you are unsure about it's merits, whether some
issues need to be taken care of in certain circumstances, or whether it
just doesn't fit your own design.

By now probably most people on this list have the feeling that any
system being different from EROS/Coyotos is at fault ;-)

Take resource management for example. From various cirucumstances and
declarations, I'm pretty sure this hasn't been a major focus for you.
Yet you made some very definite statements about it over the past weeks.
Obviously you do not care about sophisticated resource management,
because simplistic approaches are Good Enough (TM) for you. But the way
you said it, it sounds like any attempt to do better is generally
fruitless. How would we recognize the distinction in all of your other
statements?

-antrik-