You are equating universities with trolls. It's easy to tell the difference. Universities have employees who are listed as inventors. Trolls don't. Universities license their patents on reasonable terms and seldom litigate or even threaten litigation. Universities are able to do this because their patents cover valuable technologies. Trolls Trolls buy up crap patents and wield them like a motorcycle chain wielded by a street thug on unsuspecting passers by to see who's got a wallet worth taking.
Yet, by your lights, none of the above is an abuse of process. Even the patents sold off by failed ventures are toxic. Relatively few things a zero-stage venture has implemented are worth patenting. Investors requiring ventures to file provisionals are proliferating crap patents. These patents become vanity vehicles, listing "inventors" who are polishing their resumes.
You say you can tell drug money from money carried by people who distrust banks. Yet here you are willfully blind.
Your comment is overshadowed by your emotion, which is a shame. It could've been much better. For example, if you have any source for "Universities license their patents on reasonable terms and seldom litigate or even threaten litigation," then that would be interesting. Or a direct, actionable suggestion about how the current system could change.
I'm worried that comments like yours will make people like rayiner less inclined to contribute to HN, especially with sentences like "You say you can tell drug money from money carried by people who distrust banks. Yet here you are willfully blind," which seems to be both an unrelated topic and a personal attack.
> The article equates non-practicing entities with trolls, which isn't really fair. Most universities, for example, are non-practicing entities
which pretty clearly is intended to mean that universities are not trolls.
Did you mean "you're distinguishing between them, but I don't"?
(I can't work out where you're expressing your honest opinion, where you're describing what you think is rayiner's opinion, and where you're being sarcastic.)
The singular "they" is as old as Chaucer and used by Shakespeare, Conrad, Austen, and EB White. The made-up word "ve" is, for what it's worth, an attempt to pick a usage fight that you won't win. :)
Join us in camp "gender-neutral singular 'they'". You have nothing to lose but your &c &c &c.
Singular they is one thing, specific-person they is another. I haven't actually checked, but I suspect that most-if-not-all of those historical instances are referring to a person in abstract, rather than a known person of unknown gender.
Regardless, I'm not necessarily expecting to win this usage fight, but for the amount of effort it costs me, I don't mind throwing in anyway.
No. Not so. You've already lost this fight. See the positive side: now you can use "they" instead of "ve" and not fight your autocorrect like I just had to.
Don't take my word for it. This is a whole section of the estimable Language Log blog:
> My claim has always been that you just can't get singular they with a proper name of a person as antecedent.
Which is precisely the situation where I'd be even more inclined than normal to use 've' over 'they'.
But on a meta-level... my prediction was actually somewhat irrelevant: "most-if-not-all of those historical instances are referring to a person in abstract, rather than a known person of unknown gender" would be true not because of historical author's choices of pronouns, but because of the things they were trying to say. It just isn't especially common to refer to a specific person when you don't know their gender. If historical authors did find themselves in that situation, I wouldn't be surprised to find them using singular 'they'.
And it's irrelevant beyond that, because even if historical authors turned out to do this all the time, it's not likely to change my own usage. I like gender-neutral pronouns, I think they fill a gap that 'they' doesn't, and I'm willing to take the hit (in occasional downvotes and in clarity to people not used to them) to use them.
(I've now spent way too much time on this relative to the amount I actually care...)
What you just said made no sense. You're saying that "precisely the situation where you'd be even more inclined than normal to use 've'" is the situation where you know the gender of the antecedent.
To the list of reasons not to torment your spellchecker, add that.
I lump usernames in with proper names. I guess if you don't lump them together, it's not precisely the situation. But I still feel like I can use that article as validation for not wanting to use 'they' in certain situations.
e.g. (if I didn't know your gender, like I don't know most genders on HN), I'd much prefer "tptacek said that ve likes bcrypt" over "tptacek said that they like bcrypt".
The example of VirnetX is interesting because it is "troll" in the eyes of many, but the patents it is suing on are from SAIC, with whom they are partnering with.
Yet, by your lights, none of the above is an abuse of process. Even the patents sold off by failed ventures are toxic. Relatively few things a zero-stage venture has implemented are worth patenting. Investors requiring ventures to file provisionals are proliferating crap patents. These patents become vanity vehicles, listing "inventors" who are polishing their resumes.
You say you can tell drug money from money carried by people who distrust banks. Yet here you are willfully blind.