Scientists don't frighten me. They think in straight, predictable, directable, and therefore MISdirectable lines. It's children and conjurers who fri… - James P. Hogan

Confidence is a feeling you get when you don't REALLY understand the situation.

In many ways, communications networks are like road systems: their purpose is to move traffic quickly from one place to another with minimum congestion. They therefore present similar problems to their designers. Speed is important, of course, and so is safety, which means essentially the same in communications as it does on highways: what arrives at a destination should bear as close a resemblance as possible to whatever left the departure point.

Gregg Caldwell has a method that he uses sometimes when he has to make a difficult decision quickly: forget the issue itself and consider the alternatives; if none of them is acceptable, the decision is made.