In this case, the patent is considerably narrower than the headline would leave one to believe.

Even if someone did manage to get a patent granted on something like "bitfields", this would be an annoyance and not a tragedy, as the patent would never hold up-- it would be trivial to produce prior art to invalidate it.

I'm all for discussing patent reform, but it's a lot easier to do in terms of specifics. And, in this case, I don't see anything egregious. At least, not yet.