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New York State Testing Emergency Alerts Over Gaming Networks
An anonymous reader writes "Gamers are used to confronting invading terrorists, nuclear attacks, and natural calamities—in virtual form. But those living in New York State could soon receive warnings about real emergencies through their favorite video console. State authorities are testing a plan that would see the Emergency Management Office issue alerts over online gaming networks in addition to regular channels."
Why not opt-in SMS alerts. Yeah, cell towers get flooded or knocked out in emergencies, but so does the Internet these games run on. Or better yet, electronic notification through an API that can be integrated with any home product - security systems, home pbx, standalone weather radios...
Invasion of privacy? How are they invading your privacy here? This is no more an invasion then sending you email without permission is an invasion of your privacy.
http://www.chaotickingdoms.com
This is the same thing as them running the emergency broadcast during your favorite show. Annoying, yes, but apparently people think it helps more than it hurts.
http://www.chaotickingdoms.com
Games already contain situations that resemble real emergencies and commonly contain simulated alerts where some government official type tells you what is happening. There a possibility of the alert being ignored because people think it's just part of the game. But far worse is children getting scared or taking unsafe actions to evade perceived hazards because they really believe there is a nuclear attack in progress or that mom and dad turned into blood-sucking zombies. After all they have been taught that they can be alerted to an emergency through a game.
Warning... Valkyrie needs food badly!
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's a fucking gaming network. People are focused on playing the game, not on your emergency announcement. Unless you have a way to literally stop the game (pissing anyone off that isn't affected by the alert) you're wasting your time sending the message.
I'm sick and tired of these idiotic experiments by business people who don't understand the technology and therefore can't work out how asinine what they're suggesting really is. Then between 6 months and 2 years later, when they do have a few people hooked and relying on their ill advised service, they decide the experiment failed and pulled the plug. Fucking tossers.
Uhh... really? It's an *EMERGENCY*. I think when someone tries to go attack New York again, people will be willing to miss a few headshots to get the best possible warning they can. Its not like these announcements are sent out often.
At least, in my head, these are rare occurrences on the scale of Katrina and 9/11 that people would be notified. I think once a year if someone interrupts my game to say "Hey, we're being attacked by god/mormons/terrorists/etc, try not to die", I'll forgive them for ruining my game.
Or are you so insanely entrenched in your game that you'd rather die than be notified of an emergency?
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
I think a couple of employees got their heads together and figured out how to game the System to get a Gaming System.
A likely scenario, boss talking to his team, complete with mock responses:
Keith you will be gaming online. We wont tell you when the alert will come, so better play a couple games.
"Damn!" *wink
You, Stan. Yours will involve a multimedia entertainment mode. See if it interrupts your BluRay viewing.
"I'd have to test it with the new BluRays that just came out. Could you put a note saying, Merry Christmas Darling?"
and so on
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
.. would be good for tornado warning:
"There is a tornado in your area. It is OUTSIDE. You do remember where OUTSIDE is, right?"
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Who filters the users by region? Does MS and Sony give NY state the list of users that live there or does NY state tell MS to broadcast the message to this region?
New York State already has an alert system. It's operated on an opt-in basis. You provide the information for the geographical area that you wish to receive notifications for. It currently sends out notifications for severe weather, amber alerts, escaped convicts, etc. It can also do more mundane (weather/event reporting) reports too.
I would imagine that the purposed system would just link into that. You'd simply be able to select "Counterstrike" and "Call of Duty" in addition to "SMS", "Voice" and "e-mail" as a notification option. The onus would still be on you to opt-in.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
but sometimes I go into my game and decide to say, "Go away, government, go away news, go away famiily, go away anyone and anything that isn't in the game."
"Go away, hurricane, go away brush fires, go away rioting, go away tidal wave!"
You joke - in NC it is attempted 1st degree murder to attempt suicide.
I remember a guy who attempted suicide - he ate the end of a .22 - failed at killing him self BUT managed to blow most of his brain stem off and became a quadriplegic. He was later convicted of attempted 1st degree murder and sent to jail (no i don't remember for how long).
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
If that means I miss some emergency alert that may save my life, well, that's life, ain't it?
Technically speaking, that would be death, not life. At the very least, an emergency broadcast would tell you to save your game because there is a tornado/hurricane/earthquake/zombie infestation coming along that could disrupt power. But seriously, putting yourself in danger for a video game is extremely stupid and selfish... you are not only putting yourself in danger but the using up the resources of and endangering rescuers that have to come save your hide because you were too busy powerlevelling your orcish mage to get out of trouble before disaster struck.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
These kinds of emergency notifications should be as hard to opt out of as possible. For a real emergency as many people need to know about it as possible. Unless of course "this is a test of the emergency broadcasting system...".
Connecticut emergency management officials have apologized for an erroneous message sent to state broadcasters today saying an evacuation of the state had been ordered. State emergency management officials believe someone pressed the wrong button. Instead of running a test of the emergency alert system, midday television viewers and radio listeners were told that the state was being evacuated ........... State police said they received no calls related to the erroneous alert.
"His name was James Damore."
I posted this elsewhere but it deserves some more exposure.
In 2005 the State of Connecticut issued an alert on their emergency system, which interrupted both midday television and radio broadcasts. The alert was a Statewide evacuation order.
Pretty serious shit must be afoot, right?
State police later reported that NOBODY called them to find out what was going on, and obviously people didn't evacuate Connecticut.
The emergency system is stupid. It doesnt matter what it says on there.. if I look outside and don't directly witness something akin to Armageddon, I'm not leaving the house. If something akin to Armageddon IS heppening, then quite frankly I don'y need an alert system to tell me about it.
"His name was James Damore."
Not that I want to take part in a game of oneupmanship, but round these parts we recently had a radioactive paedophile on the loose...
Be smart, help people!
There's a cutscene in COD:MW2 that has a type of emergency notification. I actually second-guessed whether it was real or just a part of the game. Granted, I was way tired, as I had picked up the midnight release of it and was up until 5am. Hopefully they wouldn't interrupt the game THAT much in an emergency. If I'm playing against someone in a different region and all of a sudden they kill me 15 times in a row because my screen goes to "color bars" when some 6-year-old is kidnapped 50 miles away, I'm going to get a little upset.
SIG FAULT: Post index out of bounds.
I disagree, on both counts, actually.
I would even opt out of the tornado sirens in my neighborhood if it were possible. You see, I live in an ancient one-story home without a basement. In all the years it has stood, no tornado has struck it, and if one did, being in the bathtub would likely not help me much anyway. It isn't like I can call the tornado department and have them come douse the thing. So, I go back to sleep, and trust that things will be okay. So far, so good. And in that light, I'd just as soon not be woken up in the first place.
Likewise, if you're going to have an alert system that people do want used, but never actually test it, why have it in the first place?
If this was only used for *real* emergencies, then you'd be right. Unfortunately, the bar for what constitutes an emergency will be constantly lowered until they're sending out alerts for the most inane crap imaginable.
For example, my wife works for a major university. After 9/11 they decided to create an alert system to keep employees and their loved ones informed in the event of major emergencies. The system was intended for things like terror attacks, earthquakes, tornadoes, alien invasion etc. My wife signed me up so that I'd get a text message when ever they issued an alert. At first, I'd get a text every few months as they periodically tested the system. Then they decided to use the system to warn people about violent crime anywhere near the campus. Then it was power outages. Pretty soon it was building maintenance issues. Now if someone on campus gets a hangnail, I receive a text message keeping me informed. It is indeed fucking moronic.
This NY system will start out the same way, and end up the same way. People will be getting alerts because of a traffic accident half way across the fucking state. People will hate it, and turn it off if they can, thus totally defeating the original purpose. If they can't turn it off, they'll totally ignore it and quickly dismiss the message without reading it, once again totally defeating the original purpose. It's a bad idea. There are plenty of other ways to inform people in the event of an emergency. This is just stupid and will be waste of money and effort.
Uhh... really? It's an *EMERGENCY*. I think when someone tries to go attack New York again, people will be willing to miss a few headshots to get the best possible warning they can.
Okay first, no one has ever 'attacked New York'. I don't even remember the English doing so during the Revolutionary War, though I'd be generous enough to grant you that. There has not since been a military threat to the entire population of that entire state. Period.
Second, the 9/11 events were a complete surprise. No warning would have done anyone a bit of good. The 'next terrorist attack' will almost certainly be the exact same sort of thing.
Third, how many of the occupants of World Trade I and II were on the damn xbox that morning anyway?
At least, in my head, these are rare occurrences on the scale of Katrina and 9/11 that people would be notified.
For 9/11, see above. Can't alert a surprise attack until it is far too late.
Katrina, on the other hand, was DECIDEDLY NOT a surprise. People had days and days of warning. They were also somewhat used to that sort of thing. It isn't as if additional notification would have changed the impact of the storm. Unless that information is from the future, and contains how surprisingly bad a particular storm will be, it would simply get filed alongside the other twenty-some-odd storms that hit that area per year.
The scenario you describe can certainly happen, but is also not inevitable.
I work for a major university myself, and similarly to what you described, we implemented an alert system after 9/11 ourselves.
It is opt-in. People can join and leave at will. This fact is critical to making it work.
Every single time a message goes out, we think about how many people will consider that usage frivolous, and how many will unsubscribe as a result. And we think about how many people will then not receive an alert that could have saved their lives, and how many dead students we might end up with as a result. When you spell it out in those terms, it becomes considerably easier to silence any requests to use the system for frivolous purposes.
I think the most frivolous things our system has been used for were "the weather on campus is so bad that you had better not come in today", and "the water in the dorms is contaminated, don't drink it, pick up fresh water at these locations instead". Also for bomb threats and stuff ("clear building ${FOO} as it may explode at any moment").
We do test the system, yeah, something like twice a year. And every single time we use other channels (eg. email, newsletters) to tell people ahead of time that we'll be testing it, when we'll be testing it, and how to opt in. This doesn't just warn them to explain and expect the interruption, it also ensures they can figure out if the messages aren't getting through to them! If you just do the test without letting people know ahead of time, then nobody will ever find out about the people who were supposed to be contacted but who weren't!
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That said, some system that ties directly into the gaming networks in some novel way is probably not necessary. I know exactly how I'd implement this for XBox Live.
What I'd do is set up a gateway between our alert system and MSN Messenger (or whatever the hell they call it these days). If you're signed into XBox Live with a silver or gold account, and you have an MSN Messenger account tied to it, you can receive instant messages on your console directly. They pop up in a little alert just like an achievement. If the message is short enough it goes into that alert, and if it's longer you have to go to the chat screen to read it. This is fine for this purpose, and will also get the messages out to some computer users and even some handheld users (okay, mostly just both of the WiMo users, but still).
That's what's moronic. Emergency Broadcast made sense because TVs were incredibly stupid and didn't have the ability to tell users anything other than what someone happened to be broadcasting.
Our machines have gotten a lot smarter since then. You don't need to interrupt a broadcast anymore, because a computer is capable of interrupting a user directly.
Let me give you an example of how dumb this is. Let's say it's 8 at night, and right now, there is an incoming ICBM. You're watching an episode of Hogan's Heroes that was broadcast at 3 in the morning, and your PVR is recording the 2009 remake of V.
Dumb tech: The V broadcast is interrupted by the government saying, "Hey, everyone, you might want to duck and cover." Your PVR dutifully records this so that on The Day After, when you watch V, you get to see the warning that was broadcast last night. Meanwhile, as the ICBM comes in, Hogans' Heroes plays uninterrupted. You don't duck and cover, and oops, you're not ever going to get to watch the warning in the middle of V explaining that you were supposed to duck and cover, because you got shredded by flying glass while you were obliviously watching TV. When they find your corpse, you're still wearing the monocle that you always wear when you watch Hogan's Heroes. You lose.
Smart tech: V is uninterrupted, since by the time you get around to watching it, there won't be any reason to duck and cover. There's just no reason to fuck with your recording. Your PVR is playing Hogan's Heroes, but also knows that there's this one government feed that you subscribed to, that you've said you want to see with great priority. Hogan climbs out of the tunnel and Sergeant Schultz sees him -- and even though this was broadcast many hours ago before anyone knew about the ICBM -- you don't get to find out if Hogan finally gets shot, because your TV says, "Hey, everyone, you might want to duck and cover." You duck and cover. After the explosion when things calm down, you get to watch what happens to Hogan and (this is the important part) your recording of V is intact without an obsolete warning, although there's this one spot in the recording where there's suddenly a lot of static and people said that shit wasn't going to happen with digital TV, so you feel ripped off. But at least your PVR did the right thing as well as it could. You (relatively, considering what all is happening, with the nuclear war raging and all that) win.
An internet-connected game system is like a PVR, in that it can be smarter. It's capable of listening for more than one thing, so that even the game server doesn't say anything about the ICBM, your game machine can still tell you about the ICBM. And people who aren't getting nuked don't have to worry about all this irrelevant-to-them server load interfering with their important game.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Alerts should be for things that require expedient action. When the levy breaks, for example.
Or during the Battle of Evermore?
It seems every time a natural disaster (or any other disaster) hits, there are always people that complain that they didn't know about it or something like that...
How about when there was a tornado warning around here and just as I was updating the radar that would tell me approximately where it is, the Emergency Broadcast System cut in on the cable TV and dropped my Internet like a brick. Thanks for nothing, EBS.