If anyone read my rant from yesterday on the patent system, you may be interested in this.  Slashdot today has a great example of what big companies like Microsoft do can do with unlimited funds - Microsoft Patents 'IsNot' Operator.  From here, you can follow links directly to the patent itself.  In fact, here's the abstract from the patent:

IS NOT OPERATOR

A system, method and computer-readable medium support the use of a single operator that allows a comparison of two variables to determine if the two variables point to the same location in memory.

WTF?  I'm not sure I understand the big global issues well enough to comment on Microsoft's handling of their offshore patent war, but again, this really points out a big problem with our patent system! I mean, what's next?  Patenting the curly brace?  Patenting boolean math?  F!!!

-Brendan