> As I've cautioned clients, don't think of it as "mail". Think of it > as a hastily-scribbled postcard whose contents might be read by anyone > while it's in transit, and which MIGHT eventually get where it's going. > Never, ever rely on email for communications where timeliness or > guaranteed delivery are essential -- that's what FedEx or certified mail > requiring a signature are for. Agreed. My mail-server delays delivery for a few hours quite often. Once in a while email form somebody else doesn't reach me at all (not bounced back, just disappeared), not very often, but happpens. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
> Agreed. My mail-server delays delivery for a few hours > quite often. Once in > a while email form somebody else doesn't reach me at > all (not bounced back, > just disappeared), not very often, but happpens. It should be pointed out that the SPOT system does allow you to send your distress signal to multiple email addresses. This does not eliminate possible delay, but it does statistically improve your chances of the message being delivered in a timely fashion. If one of four messages sits in an email server for a few hours, that still means that three messages went out successfully. It would probably be wise to ensure that all of your messages aren't sent to the same email server. Email may be imperfect, but the alternative is a completely independent delivery system. The cost of such a system would likely be comparable with satellite phones. > I do think that there are more people likely to be listening to marine > VHF > channel 16 that are likely to come to your rescue than there are people > likely to be listening to aviation VHF 121.5mHz. It does depend where you are. Some cities have waterfront airports - Toronto being one example. The city was well within visual range. On a recent sailing event, we were far enough out that VHF radio was unable to reach shore and Cell phones were unable to pick up a signal either. In this case, there was no emergency. We were just a little bit late getting back to our destination. This example does show the limitations of our standard communication devices. Since there is a steady flow of traffic out of the city airport, the ability to communicate with a passing aircraft might have proven useful in an emergency. This is also a scenario where SPOT's signal would have clear access to Satellites. Derek *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
Derek wrote: >> Agreed. My mail-server delays delivery for a few hours quite often. >> Once in a while email form somebody else doesn't reach me at all (not >> bounced back, just disappeared), not very often, but happpens. > > It should be pointed out that the SPOT system does allow you to send > your distress signal to multiple email addresses. This does not > eliminate possible delay, but it does statistically improve your chances > of the message being delivered in a timely fashion. If one of four > messages sits in an email server for a few hours, that still means that > three messages went out successfully. It would probably be wise to > ensure that all of your messages aren't sent to the same email server. Derek, I may not understand how you would intend to use SPOT with multiple email addressees in the event of an emergency. Are you expecting each of the several recipients of an emergency message from you to separately contact the search and rescue folks? Or, are they to confer with each other and have just one of them contact the SAR folks? Secondly, are you expecting to use the unit as a method for folks to follow your progress, and if they do not get a signal from you after several days, to contact authorities near your presumed location? The reason I am asking is because there have been three or four "false alarms" on the west coast (some in Alaska, some in BC) since SPOT went online in which a monitor called SAR and reported the SPOT user overdue and/or potentially lost. In these cases, the person was not in distress, and was located after extensive searching by SAR resources, at some expense; in fact, there had been a delay or malfunction in sending/receiving an "I'm OK" message. The result is that both the USCG and the CCG are now treating such alarms from SPOT monitors as non-emergency situations. With several minders, I'm wondering if, statistically, there might be a greater chance of one of the monitors sending up a false alarm, unless the minders are coordinated in some way. I thought there was a specific "911" button which circumvented using email to a monitor or minder. Am I mistaken in this? -- Dave Kruger Astoria, OR *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
On Thu, Oct 2, 2008 at 4:40 AM, Dave Kruger <kdruger_at_pacifier.com> wrote: > > > I thought there was a specific "911" button which circumvented using email > to a monitor or minder. Am I mistaken in this? > > No... the "911" function routes to the "GEOS Emergency Center" which, one presumes, is manned by people less likely to panic than Aunt Mabel. However the "center" might have its own problems. For one thing, we don't know how it is routed and, as has been pointed out, if it's as email on the Internet there can be substantial delays. But those can be mitigated by the fact that SPOT keeps on sending the 911 message over and over until its batteries die. If a paddler runs into trouble we assume that some form of Coast Guard will be the likely rescuer. And if that's the case then that unlucky paddler is probably going to be rescued because, at least in the USA, the Coast Guard is well organized and efficient at rescues in places where it is prepared to do so. But if I run into trouble on, say, Moses Lake (where I paddle the most) it could be a far different story. The USCG, good as they are, have never been sighted on Moses Lake. The most likely rescue authority is very likely to be the local fire department or the County Sheriff. But which one would the "center" call? One thing is pretty certain: They can't call "911" on a telephone and get a person who is locked in to the appropriate rescue authority near Moses Lake. Nor will they be likely to find a "rescue center" in the phone book because the local 911 authority is a private business called the "multi-agency communications center" that contracts with the local agencies to coordinate all their emergency and radio communications. SPOT may have resolved this but they hadn't as recently as last August when a hiker in the Cascades near Wenatchee carrying a SPOT activated his "911" feature and had to wait for literally hours until someone figured out exactly who to call to send him help. This hiker was, fortunately, on a ridge. Fortunate because, as we have been reading here, SPOT's weakness is in areas where there is no clear and unobstructed view of the sky (and not just the southern sky, either). If SPOT has a place in the rescue scenario it's probably in the marine environment where there is a clear view of the sky and there is a clear-cut SAR authority. There are a plethora of stories on SPOT's web page about people who have been rescued due to their carying a SPOT device. I wonder if there is a web page for people who have activated their SPOT's "911" function and then *not* been rescued. Craig Jungers Moses Lake, WA *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
On Wed, Oct 01, 2008 at 11:50:02AM -0700, Derek wrote: > It should be pointed out that the SPOT system does allow you to > send your distress signal to multiple email addresses. This does > not eliminate possible delay, but it does statistically improve your > chances of the message being delivered in a timely fashion. Probably, but not definitely. Part of this depends on whether or not the email origination point is scrupulously compliant with both de jure and de facto standards for email. For example, is it located on a known-clean network block? Does it have correct forward and reverse DNS? Does it obey the SMTP protocol wrt no pre-greeting traffic? Is the envelope-sender syntactically correct? Does it issue messages with proper Message-ID fields? And so on. The more of these things they get right, the better the odds. But a surprising number of "people who should know better" get it wrong -- e.g., Google, Schwab and Apple. And even then: there's nothing they can do about similar sets of problems on the receiving side. Hotmail is well-known for throwing incoming messages on the floor, Yahoo's greylisting is frequently broken, some people still foolishly use mail quotas, others run broken accept-then-bounce crap like Exchange, etc. So unless they have at least one very senior and very experienced person taking care of their outbound email server(s), I wouldn't want to rely on it for *any* delivery, let alone time-critical delivery. Heck, I'm one of the most experienced people out there w.r.t. email operations, and there are occasionally problems that send me back for a third or fourth cup of coffee. It's gotten MUCH harder in the last decade, as the level of postmaster competence worldwide continues to fall and the level and sophistication of attacks continues to rise. And all this is before we get into questions about their underlying connectivity to the Internet: do they have multiple, independent connections? (If only one, then one happens when the same weather event that puts a paddler in distress takes out their single connection?) I don't know the answers to many, even most, of these questions, so I don't want to give the impression that I do. I merely mean to raise them, not to attempt to answer them. ---Rsk *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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