>Ask 100 RANDOM software developers that have a college degree and 5 years of experience for a solution to this problem. I highly doubt more than 3 or 4 would come up with this idea in a reasonable amount of time.
Wouldn't that be an answer as well? I can't say that I'm a fan of patents in general (software or otherwise), but at least it would be a more honest test of whether it fits within the current rules.