Your appeal to "authority" doesn't change the fact that many of us have written data structures involving multiple traversal paths, that these paths are all lists, and that they are all linked, and further that in conversation with peers we have referred to them as Linked Lists.
Your appeal to "authority" requires the admission that Wikipedia actually supports the counter argument, while an Introduction to anything is hardly an appropriate authority for whether or not something is novel enough to be patented.
I'm glad you are responding to every single person claiming that their experience is wrong, because that provides ample opportunity to reduce your karma.
> Your appeal to "authority" doesn't change the fact that many of us have written data structures involving multiple traversal paths, that these paths are all lists, and that they are all linked, and further that in conversation with peers we have referred to them as Linked Lists.
Your argument doesn't change the fact that it's misleading to refer to any arbitrary linked data structure as a "linked list". You can call a skip list a linked list if you want, but that does't make it appropriate, and it doesn't redefine the language for the more general audience. Go ask your coworkers to draw a linked list on the board and see how many draw a multiply-linked list, or a skip list, or any number of other things that could be pedantically considered "linked lists".
Even if we were to accept the argument that "linked list" is just a generic term for data structures involving linked traversal paths, that would not make the HN title appropriate. If the term "linked list" were that generic, then it would be misleading to apply it to this patent, which clearly does not cover everything that would fall unto the generic "linked list" term.
> Your appeal to "authority" requires the admission that Wikipedia actually supports the counter argument,
Are you seriously trying to criticize my "appeal to authority" by making one of your own?
Nevermind the fact that Wikipedia didn't include the term "multiply-linked" until three years after this patent was granted...
> while an Introduction to anything is hardly an appropriate authority for whether or not something is novel enough to be patented.
Are you really that oblivious? I've said a dozen times that this is not a valid patent. That's not the point.
And an intro book is quite appropriate for establishing what a term covers to the general audience. If something is specialized enough that it's not covered in an intro book, then it's specialized enough that it should not be referred to by the generic term.
> I'm glad you are responding to every single person claiming that their experience is wrong, because that provides ample opportunity to reduce your karma.
Do you really think I care if you or someone else is childish enough to downvote all my comments?
I'm glad you are responding to every single person claiming that their experience is wrong, because that provides ample opportunity to reduce your karma.
Meta: Since your account is relatively new: I was ready to upvote your comment to try to bring it out of the gray text region (i.e. <=0), until I got to this paragraph. It's okay to think these things, but actually typing them out is considered bad form here. While we're on the subject, the rest of the comment does come across as a bit inflammatory.
Your appeal to "authority" requires the admission that Wikipedia actually supports the counter argument, while an Introduction to anything is hardly an appropriate authority for whether or not something is novel enough to be patented.
I'm glad you are responding to every single person claiming that their experience is wrong, because that provides ample opportunity to reduce your karma.