I store faiths in ints so they roll over to positive and I feel better for a while.

I have a patent on that. Pay up.

(had to get that out of my system. feel better now.)

Stored my bank balance in an int too. You'll have to wait for it to roll over.

how's this for a meta-ironic comment: when I read your first 2 sentences, I immediately thought of a joke that I was going to make along the lines of, "sorry I have a patent on systems allowing you to submit a negative amount of faith in something, pay up or shutup!"

Then I read your last 2 sentences. Too weird! Also goes to show, again, what a joke the patent system is. Multiple people can "independently" come up with the same "innovation", given reasonably similar skills and context.

That's what the `non-obvious' restriction should be good for.

You shouldn't loose faith because of yet another silly example of what can be patented. The main problem is that it can be defended in court to the extent where most people can't take on a wealthy patentholder, no matter how ridiculous the patent.