[EAS] CAP, Text to Speech, and April 23

[Dave Turnmire]

Maybe it is just me, but it seems like people are making this more complicated than it needs to be.  This software update business boils down to the following key points:

1. Whether a particular vendor releases one software update or 20 in a given period of time, that vendor does NOT control how often WE engineers installs it!  As long as the vendor makes "Release Notes" readily available also, WE engineers can determine whether a particular update is worthy of our time and what priority to attach to it.
2. WE engineers can NOT install a software update that doesn't exist!    In some situations, installing a software update is a trivial effort (if all goes well anyway).  In other cases, 30 days is NOT a lot of time.  For instance, for radio stations that don't have engineers on staff and have limited finances available for contract help.  In those cases, absent significant equipment failure, that engineer may only make rounds occasionally, "catching up" on a variety of engineering tasks on the same trip. 

   A number of vendors have managed to make IPAWS work for months.  I haven't heard yet a convincing (to me) reason why SAGE should continue to wait.  Regarding "frequent" (certainly not in their case!) software updates... see #1 above.  The other reason I have heard is that they don't want to deal with tech support phone calls when FEMA messes with something.  But FEMA's RWTs seem to be pretty reliable for the last few months and SAGE (and others) can certainly put the word out that IPAWS is still in a shake-out period and not to worry about occasional glitches. 

   IMHO, it is past time for SAGE to get out a software release that addresses the TTS issue, IPAWS, and MyStateUSA compatibility issues.  If subsequent events lead to another software release.... see #1 above.

Dave