Programming is Creative

I was reading FSDaily (or something like that) a few days ago when I came across this submitted article.
The blog author posits in this article that the reason software shouldn't be patentable is because it is, at its core, a very large binary number. The author elaborates by saying that if one was to create a program that wrote a random series of binary digits to a file in an infinite loop and this program was repeated ad infinitum, eventually every program ever devised in the past, present, and future would be (re)created.
Upon reading this article at first, I was taken by the argument and by its simplicity. However, [this information is strictly private], I realized that this particular argument against software patents falls flat. This is because of the Infinite Monkey Theorem. (Wikipedia is an excellent resource with regard to this. For the readers who choose not to trouble themselves with clicking on another link, the Infinite Monkey Theorem states that if a monkey typed at a typewriter continuously for all of eternity, eventually the monkey would type out every work mankind has ever written. Traditionally, this is stated as "the monkey would eventually type out all the works of Shakespeare", and I will go with this statement for argument's sake.)
One could similarly posit that all the works of Shakespeare are merely very long strings of characters from a set of 27, and that they could similarly be taken at random. Yet this seems to make Shakespeare less of a genius.
Similarly, calling a computer program "just a number" demeans the work a programmer must put in to actually arrive at that "number".
Of course, this doesn't mean that software should be patentable. All this means is that programming is a creative work and programs aren't "just numbers" any more than books are just very long strings of letters, spaces, and punctuation; hence, the argument against software patents should not rest on calling software "just a number".

Shakespeare's King Henry V: Full of Cliches

(For some reason on Linux Mint I can't get the keyboard shortcuts for accented letters to work right and it's a pain to manually insert them one at a time, so bear with me.)

OK, this post has nothing to do with Shakespeare, except that I was recently reading Lawrence Lessig's book Free Culture and I came across a passage telling of a person who thought that Shakespeare's play King Henry V was full of cliches.
(For those of you who don't get it, that play originated almost all of the phrases that the person in question called "cliches".)

Basically, I wanted to avoid the cliche of eponymously (is that even a word?) titling my first blog. As it seems, I have failed miserably.

In this blog, I will be discussing science, technology, politics, ethics (somewhat), other current events, cars, video games, movies, and basically anything else that comes to my mind.

That said, for any blog I follow, my favorite part (just above reading the blog post itself) is to read the user comments. They are sometimes funny and often provide great additional insight into the topic at hand (grammar?). I strongly encourage those who read this blog to comment; I also would love to hear criticism about anything I've written (and I'll respond to you or update the post in question ASAP). That said, please keep comments reasonably on-topic, constructive, and polite; as Ken Starks, the founder and leader of the Helios Project says,

Please post anything you want but do it with the thought of an 11 year old child sitting next to you. Our kids get exposed to enough garbage in the world, let's not add to it here. We can't "clean up" the internet, but we can do our part not to add to the garbage pile.

By the way, his project aims to give Linux-equipped computers away for free or for a nominal price (as far as I know) to financially disadvantaged families; his charity is non-profit but gladly accepts donations, so if you have money lying around, you want to do something charitable, and you support the cause of free software and the benefits it can bring to anyone (and specifically in this case financially disadvantaged families), I would encourage donating to him: http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/
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(Disclaimer: I don't personally know him.)

If there is anything else you have to say or want me to talk about, please do let me know.
Happy reading!