Is internet applications a bad idea?

On newsforge Robin Miller claims that internet applications is a bad idea. He lists three reasons. 1: loss of connection, 2: connection outage and 3, connection failure.  OK, so he really mentions only one reason, but he mentions it three times in different variations. Yes, internet connections between X and Y is not 100% reliable. Not only can your hardware or software fail, your connection to the ISP can fail, the connection between your ISP and the application servers ISP can fail and the application servers ISP can fail and the application server can fail and...

Things fail. Connections too. But that is no different from a hardwaree failure or a software crash from the users point of view. So, the more important an application is, the more you need to make sure access to it will work all the time. A rather self-evident point, which Robin Miller fails to reach.

Getting a stable access of course includes minimizing failure points. For internet based applications, which in todays world includes almost anything, since the internet reaches all the way to that 10base-T plug that sticks out the back of your computer, that means you shouldn't have fifteen ISPs between you and the server. Which also seems rather self evident.

The internet today is everywhere, because it facilitates communication in a way we have never seen before. Anything you do via the internet is an internet based application, really. Can you honestly say it is a bad idea?