On 8/5/12, Peter Kristolaitis <alter3d@alter3d.ca> wrote:
My point is more along the line of if you're depending on a service which provides only best-effort on uptime (as Bill Herrin mentioned, some providers can barely manage 2 nines of 911 uptime) and to which you're connected by a single, fault-prone connection, and which provides no guarantee of service even if you CAN contact them, calling it "critical" is kind of a joke, and you'd probably get laughed at by a risk analyst. If
I've yet to hear of a successful lawsuit bringing a victim back to life. Criticality is defined based on the impact and importance of the service not working correctly, not on its actual lack of fault tolerance mechanisms. The lack of proper reliability, if/where that's the case, is a regulatory issue that should be addressed by citizens contacting their government, and entering complaints with their elected reps.
you're serious about protecting health and home, you'd better have some other plan in place that doesn't have a ridiculous number of single points of failure.
Plan away, there are still situations where assistance would be absolutely essential. Your example of "add a Dog and Gun" to the plan may help in case of "Police not available"; it won't help against multiple armed adversaries carrying drugged meat to seduce dogs, who just want to kill without regard. It won't help in case of no response to call for Fire department or Medical. Dogs and Guns are also dangerous implements, require skills to operate and a great deal of care and mainteinance, there are more people accidentally injured or killed by them, or discharging them illegally, or their guns getting stolen and turned against them, than successfully using them in a legal tactically appropriate way for self-defense.
Pete -- -JH