----- Original Message -----
From: "Patrick W. Gilmore" <patrick@ianai.net>
On Aug 24, 2011, at 8:55 AM, JC Dill wrote:
On 23/08/11 3:13 PM, William Herrin wrote:
A. Our structures aren't built to seismic zone standards. Our construction workers aren't familiar with*how* to build to seismic zone standards. We don't secure equipment inside our buildings to seismic zone standards.
They should be. They should be. You should.
Earthquakes can happen anywhere. There's no excuse to fail to build/secure to earthquake standards.
Tornados can happen anywhere, there's no excuse to fail to build/secure for tornados.
[Etc.]
Things that cost money are not done unless the probability of the danger is higher than vanishingly small. This temblor - at 5.8 with no injuries or fatalities - was the largest earthquake on the entire east coast in 67 years, and the largest in VA in well over a century. Think of the _trillions_ of dollars which could have been put into healthcare, public safety, hell, better networking equipment :) we could have used instead of making all buildings on the east coast earthquake safe.
False economy. That argument was valid *before* the Internet became a Generally Mission Critical Utility. It is now. And, alas, commerce being what it is, it's not deployed to be *nearly* as failover redundant as it was designed to be,[1] Cheers, -- jra [1]Anyone who wants to debate either half of this, change the subject line. :-) -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274