Another reason to become an amateur radio operator...

[alexpgp]

Via Yahoo!News:

Emergency alerts may soon be delivered by more than just your television set or old-fashioned radio: The federal government is considering alerting you via text message should a possible natural disaster or terrorist attack directly affect your area.

Incredible! These bright bozo legislators want to increase load on the communications infrastructure and push a huge wad of SMS messages through the network, during a time when the ability to communicate may mean the difference between life and death!

(During such stressful times in my experience, I seem to recall public announcements asking people to not make unnecessary calls, y'dig?)

It'd be like a cyberassault, combining the best features of SMS spam and a denial of service attack, except it'd be self-inflicted and paid for by tax dollars.

I wonder if legislators were this stupid back in the pre-Cold-War days?

Cheers...

UPDATE: Maybe I was a little harsh with my initial assessment, but I still think this is a typical example of Grandstanding Congresscritters With Too Much Idle Time On Their Hands™.

Comments

[kf6gpe.livejournal.com]

I like the idea that one of the repliers has access to, that is, getting information for your region. Otherwise, it's a horrid waste of money, and yes, I agree it's a whacked idea.

Interestingly, as carriers like VZW and Cingular adopt support for cell broadcast (basically the notion of multicast for SMS), the impact on the network would be negligible... hmm.. I wonder if that's where the idea came from? Carriers lobbying for money to defray the cost of getting cell broadcast supported?

*shudder*