Sounds like more spamigation - throwing out as much litigation as possible hoping something sticks.

That's because your notion of "the greatest country on earth" is a myth and something we in Europe laugh at. You may believe the myth, but worldwide data says that even little Ireland is rated higher in (for example) press freedom, health care and education that you are. Get a grip, man. It's a fairytale you've been told from birth. That's all.

Ours is a country where a lady can sue and be awarded $3 million because she spilled hot coffee on herself in a McDonald's drive through...

And congress can humiliate corporate America for their salaries and perques while ordering $550 million in private jets for themselves.

Reforms will never come as long as one of the major political parties remains in the pocket of the trial lawyers.

This country is so broken.

And yet it appears to still be the greatest on earth.

That's not saying much for us as a species, is it? :-)

The fact that someone can patent an idea like the "simultaneously notifying large numbers of people about emergencies through multiple communication gateways, such as cell phones, pagers and e-mail" shows that either the people that made the law or the people that decided the patent are morons.

It is as simple as that. And I'm not trolling.

Besides, a patent on the idea of "distributing emergency information to a large number of people" is just plain ridiculous. How can you patent that in a world where radio, television, smoke signals and *shouting a bit* already exist? It's moronic.

Twitter has nothing to fear from this joke of a company trying to push its own products at the expense of reality.

Seems like the same idea. I get countless emails (or text messages) about local road closures, flood watches, severe storm cells, even insecticide spraying.

If there's a "true emergency" I'll trust the EAS and word of mouth to spread the panic. That being said, I wish I could get my local storm warnings via Twitter instead.

I think the primary concern in any emergency should be getting the word out, as quickly as possible, by any and all channels available -- not first stopping to consider who holds a patent or which one has the most rock solid infrastructure. Twitter is just a part of the communication spectrum, like email or SMS. Should email be an EBS? Should SMS? Not exclusively.

1. Patent trolls
2. Purveyors of DRM ( including the people who just came up with the CMX file format to replace MP3 )
3. The decision makers at the Apple app store
4. Any congressman who voted against Net Neutrality

...in order to hasten their extinction.

You're joking right? That's like saying your ibook would make a great cloud server. Please! EBS's are highly sophisticated, are incredibly careful about uptime, and hence are very expensive. It's Corolla v Lexus.

I like Corollas and iBooks, but I know they are not heavy duty equipment. I'm a Twitter nerd, but there's no way that Twitter is or should be an EBS.