But this isn't a broad patent, it's in fact very specific in its claims, and no one here has managed to provide anything that resembles prior art for this patent. You should stop making ridiculous claims without any proof or facts to back them up.
You are being ridiculous. I worked with a similar system during my CS studies. I.e. artificial intelligence analysis of natural language input. Patenting such old known ideas is pure lunacy. Anyway, I view patenting such ideas as ridiculous even if they weren't known before. Such abstractions simply should be unpatentable.
Got a citation that has all the features of even the first claim? That's all that's needed. The patent doesn't claim a system which does analysis of natural language input, it claims a specific system for doing such. Again, find a citation and prove it isn't novel or inventive. Until then, why should anyone consider it invalid? The law must work on proof, not people saying "Oh yeah, I've totally done that before, trust me". If it's so obvious, then it should be easy to find a citation.
Also, why should inventive ideas in software be any less valuable and worthy of protection as inventive ideas for physical objects? This patent protects a very narrow scope, anything that infringed it would have to perform all the steps in the first claim and it seems to me that it wouldn't be too hard to design a similar system which doesn't infringe. It might not be dissimilar enough to get you a patent, but it also wouldn't infringe.
Also, why should inventive ideas in software be any less valuable and worthy of protection as inventive ideas for physical objects?
Why don't you go further with your logic. Why inventive math theories can't be patentable? Or may be abstract information theory itself? You can make it absurd by pushing the border in that direction. I draw the line at the point which excludes software and algorithms from patentability.
Besides the theoretical aspect of what should be patentable, there is a very pragmatic one, which was already brought many times, and all software patent proponents pretend that it doesn't exist - patent thickets. In case of hardware they aren't a major risk, but in case of software they are completely unavoidable and tend to be horrifically tense. It's a good enough of a reason to render software unpatentable, since in the case of software the patents don't serve their purpose, instead of promoting innovation, they stifle it. Whether you like it or not, that's how it works. Europe had enough common sense to forbid software patentability, but US didn't.
The line is drawn where the invention stops being a part of the useful arts, and an algorithm on its own is not useful, but a system using a new algorithm is indeed useful, and that's where the distinction between algorithms and software lies.
Patent thickets are indeed an issue, but they've been an issue several times in the past and the world didn't stop turning. See http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/69a96688-b776-11e2-841e-00144feabd... for a brief discussion. I completely agree the patent system is not perfect, but I do believe it's important to allow the small guy to come up with new inventions, be it software or not, and be able to protect themselves from having the big guy steal their ideas with nothing in return.
The patent system is a man made system, and all man made systems will be exploited by man if it is in their best interest, and that's exactly what big corporations are doing. But without the system, the little guy stands absolutely no chance against the big guy and with it they do. This is how innovation is encouraged by the patent system. You bet your arse that when a small company funded by those here gets their ideas stolen that people here will be up in arms. But if they have parents, they have a real method of recourse, whereas without, all they can do is call them out on it, but have no guarantee that they'll get anything at all. Without the patent system, we'd get rid of patent trolls, but we'd being in the much worse "Idea theifs", who steal the work done with other's time and investment to produce products for their own profit.
