The original article contains a few more arguments: http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/02/28/communications-why-do-we-accept-less-99-999 http://www.thestandar

The original article contains a few more arguments: http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/02/28/communications-why-do-we-accept-less-99-999 http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/02/28/communications-wh... The comments at slashdot point out the underlying economic trade-off: cost of reliability vs. cost of downtime.