Laughable. This would never stand the test of prior-art. I think I'll go patent merge sort...
"Method for the creation of order from chaos in the memory of a digital computing device".
By making it so broad you could theoretically sue any company.
Just because you are awarded a patent doesn't mean it's enforceable. Over-broad patents get challenged, and struck down.
In this case, the patent is considerably narrower than the headline would leave one to believe.
Even if someone did manage to get a patent granted on something like "bitfields", this would be an annoyance and not a tragedy, as the patent would never hold up-- it would be trivial to produce prior art to invalidate it.
I'm all for discussing patent reform, but it's a lot easier to do in terms of specifics. And, in this case, I don't see anything egregious. At least, not yet.
I think I should submit an application for "Method for mechanically solving all problems which are in principle computable."
What if Alan Turing had patented the 'Turing Machine', would we be where we are today in computing or would we be stuck somewhere in the 70's?
A (hypothetical) US patent on the Turing Machine would have stopped any attempts to build a mechanical device to Turing's Specifications (like this one: http://aturingmachine.com/index.php) for a period of 20 years.
It wouldn't stop anyone from building a device that is computationally equivalent to a Turing Machine; it wouldn't stop anyone from using the abstract notion of a Turing Machine as an intellectual device.
In short, a patent would have had no practical effect at all.
Now, let's imagine another alternative: one where Turing invented the Turing Machine, but chose not to publish it, as he was afraid of some better-financed competitor learning his "trade secrets" and exploiting the device before he could implement it himself. Where would we be then?
Patents are a trade-off. The inventor gets a monopoly for a limited period of time, in exchange for the idea being passed into the public domain after the monopoly expires. It's not a perfect system by any means, but it's not easy to dismiss out of hand.