[CII] terms and conditions

[John Osmon]

On Tue, Dec 01, 2009 at 03:38:19PM -0500, Dotzero wrote:
[...]
> The fact that you know a number does not mean that the dispatch center
> has redundancy/resilancy. Are you sure that the multiple numbers run
> over different infrastructure? Would you bet your life? Never mind,
> you ARE betting your life that they designed it right.

Bringing up my life is distracting from the real point you've
hit, and the one I've been trying to drive home:
  Services that are deemed critical are layered on other services.  As
  we've moved towards packet services, the resliency of the "top" layer
  should have increased, as the underlying infrastucuture became less res
  reliant on single paths.

If the underlying infrastructure has not kept up with the times, perhaps 
we should be concentrating on calling attention to that fact?

As for betting my life on 911?  Risk is typicallly caluculated as
a product of probabilty and consqequence.  The probability of needing
911 is low.  The consequence of 911 failure could be high if 911 is my
only means of getting help.  Fortunately, I know that 911 isn't the
only means of summoning help.  Therefore, my personal risk works out
to be:  low * low == low risk factor.


> > Is 911 critical? No, not in my personal view. It's a helpful layer,
> > but in a genuine emergency, I can function fine without it.
> 
> I admire confidence in a person.

Yeah - but I don't try to project that upon the rest of society.  So
I'll help the 911 PSAPs in any way that I can.  :-)