Oops. my bad. Just noticed that under "Related US Application Data" it calls out that this is a division of another patent, filed Oct 2, 1996. Now that *is* interesting.
Are you sure that this idea was 'obvious' in 1996? I was in college studying bending beams at that time and sure as heck hadn't thought of downloading episodes of comedy podcasts. I can't say what everyone else was up to.
For reference, the claim on this patent is pretty much the same: 1. A player for reproducing selected audio program segments comprising, in combination: means for storing a plurality of program segments, each of said program segments having a beginning and an end, means for receiving and storing a file of data establishing a sequence in which said program segments are scheduled to be reproduced by said player, means for accepting control commands... means for continuously reproducing said program segments in the order... [+ bunch of controls for navigating media]
Again, IANAL, but this seems to be a description of something that might well have been a new idea in 1996. I dunno. The obviousness test is an interesting one, and I still can't figure why they can go after media producers, when the patent sounds like it would result in Apple, Sony and the software/device people infringing.
(IANAL, but) that's not how patents work: you're reading the preferred embodiment, which apart from showing that they've figured out *a way* to do this, doesn't really matter at all. The important bit (what determines infringement) is the claims, starting on page 32 (col 46), of which there are 35. To make it even easier, you only really have to read the independent claims (1, 13, 23, 31). Every numbered claim that includes the text "as set forth in claim X" doesn't matter unless you're infringing claim X.
So let's look at independent claim 1: "What is claimed is: A media player for acquiring and reproducing media program files which represent episodes as said episodes become available, said media player comprising: a digital memory, a communication port..., a processor..., an output unit for reproducing... the media files."
Sounds like iTunes. Version 4.9 of iTunes, launched in June 28, 2005 was the first to have podcast support (according to Wikipedia). I don't even slightly believe that iTunes was the first podcast player.
I'm guessing claim 31 is the one that they're attacking Adam et al with, but it does seem like this patent talks about the enabling technology, but the people who product the content. Still, I'm sure they have lawyers that can reasonably read it that way.
These things are (sometimes) intentionally broad, but it's the job of the examiner at the USPTO to figure out if these claims pass the usual tests: obviousness ("to one skilled in the art"), novelty ("prior art") and eligibility (ie. not a matter for copyright, like, say, a trademark). Obvious to you because you've been using podcasts for a decade is not the same as obvious to someone at the time this was filed, but the priority/filing date here is Mar 4th 2009.
Hmm. Well, is the claim obvious for 2009, given iTunes 4.9 was launched in 2005? Seems so to me, but like I say, IANAL.
Funny, since that's what Sony themselves did by stuffing Blu-Ray into the PS3. They sacrificed a ton of market share by conceding the price-point (and arriving late to market) in the interests of forcing the market to adopt own their proprietary storage media format. It completely worked, and in the long run I imagine it'll turn out in their interests to have done so...
Having worked as an engineer and a manager in Silicon Valley, I see his point. But I've also worked in Germany, and it's interesting to see how many senior business leaders in Germany are engineers. I personally think that as a culture we (American engineers) devalue and even laugh at leadership skills. We think they're irrelevant to being a good engineer: call it Dilbertism.
Culturally, German engineers (in comparison) see leadership of people and teams as one of their natural requirements. Engineers are reknowned for their high-handedness and taking lead in any given situation. I remember trying being in an informal situation setting a large number of tables for a party: when I started suggesting a plan, two german language students started saying "look at the engineer, taking over as usual".
So, again, as an ex-engineer, I think our mutually reinforced disparagement of managers is part of the problem. Leadership is something we should be naturally good at, and all engineers offended by Juan's assertion should take it as a challenge, not an insult.
Funny that you chose chickens out of that list. How about pigs? Pretty well known to be one of the smarter mammals around. At least, they've never launched a pointless war to my knowledge.
They don't even have to say anything: she knows her job depends on co-operating. Bottom line is that she doesn't own Yahoo, she is a servant of the shareholders - she is expected/obliged to put their interests first.
OK, she could decide to not comply, or blow the NSA's cover on the extent of spying, but if she took Yahoo into direct conflict with the Federal Government over a personal opinion I doubt she'd stick around in the job for 24 more hours before the board decided she had to go.
It's the kind of kind of grandstanding that Jobs might have got away with (what you gonna do, fire me?). Zuckerberg is an interesting case: he still owns nearly 25% of Facebook, so his chances of being summarily fired are less. Still, I find it hard to imagine a CEO deliberately risking jail and being allowed to continue to serve (as the share price plummeted)
No need for threats and blackmail: the market does it for you...
Bruce Schneier is on the team reviewing the docs, so it's safe to say that they're pretty technically competent when it comes to encryption: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Schneier
I think people are quick to fit the evidence to the theory, although I agree that some of the iOs 7 design is surprising. Personally, I like surprising, but I'm curious to see how well it works in practice.
On the more general point, the back of the iPhone 3G was plastic. The original iPod is made of plastic (for, like, a decade). As is the MacBook. and the original iMac was too, which essentially defined Jobs/Ive's design first approach. Jobs never had a problem with a plastic, properly applied. He had a problem with screws, but that's another story.
He also blessed precisely this route to diversification, cannibalising the heck out of the iPod (very expensive, and a huge money maker at the time) with the Nano and the Shuffle to spread downmarket and dominate the market. Worked pretty well that time around. I think they have to compete with the cheaper devices - they learned the lessons of the 90's. Owning the upmarket is fine, but you'll get squeezed year by year and people catch up with your quality (think Windows). Pay the same attention to detail for a cheaper product and you can outflank the cheaper providers by applying your brand halo.
"Google Doodles like this do rub me up the wrong way. For a start, the person concerned is often an obscure one (or at least obscure outside the US - the US-centric doodles end up on Google UK, where they probably don't belong)." I'm confused: you object because you learn something? Maybe I misunderstood. Personally, I prefer the ones I don't know... (sorry if this seems snotty - I'm perfectly sincere.)
"Getting a movie made in Hollywood is like trying to grill a steak by having a succession of people coming into the room and breathing on it." Douglas Adams
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_and_agriculture#Food_security Your scenario of cutting emissions causing collapse is not clear to me - please explain. I'm not advocating cutting all emissions - increasing carbon efficiency of existing modes of production is the main tool in the toolbox.
ok, this stinks of troll, but I'll take it: "So calm the fuck down about religion, deniers, AGW, man made causes, SUVs, smug ass Californians, and Al Gore. Just realize accordingly, spend less money on ski equipment and more money on boats."
I dig your cool complacency, and actually I kind of agree. Global climate change probably won't make much of difference to your life during your lifetime, and maybe not even to your kids. Because you're rich. You can afford to pay 50% more for food (as agriculture is disrupted): the worst that will happen is you might move house, accept a slightly lower standard of living and bitch about the price of things. Oh, and 'buy more boats'.
It's the poor who will pay. I don't mean the middle class, I mean the 1 billion+ people who live on less than $1 a day. They will starve in greater numbers and die in greater numbers - they can't move, or "buy less ski equipment". I get that you don't care about that, but I hope that as a society we can bring ourselves to give a shit.
Another weird thing about those books: great as they are (Pirsig's was my instinctive answer to the question posed) both of their sequels (Lila, Te of Piglet) are quite terrible, dull and to be avoided. For some reason they both lapse into a similar mode of complaining about the modern world, feminism, etc, etc...
;) +1 insightful! Not entirely true, though: people like Karim Rashid and Philippe Starck are the real high-priests. SJ did believe that the user experience wins over everything else - it's just he also believed in polling a user-group of precisely 1 person.
You're right: the summary dramatically undersells what Bill Moggridge achieved: he was a passionate believer that the experience of a product was the true definition of success (not the look or even the functionality), and that only you could only design great products by deeply understanding your users. Essentially, he took design out of the hands of the 'high-priests' of taste and aesthetics, and put the power back in the hands of the users.
This drove him to co-found IDEO (full disclosure - I'm an ex-employee), which gave him the leverage take interaction design (a term he invented: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interaction_design#History) beyond GUI's to all products and services, and to define a lot of what matters most about design today.
Well, if you're willing to trust uncited Wiki-facts, Carl Sagan negotiated with the rights-holders specifically to get permission for playing the pieces of music copyright-free outside of the solar system. It's a cool work-around: of course pretty much any recorded performance has copyright restrictions, but Carl Sagan figured the disk itself wasn't intended to be played by any human so legally he just needed rights outside some geographically restricted zone (say, the entire solar system) to have all the rights he needed to create potentially the widest distribution mixtape of all time.
We're arguing across each other: You're arguing about about what Apple will do with this patent, based on past example, and I'm arguing that the patent, as filed, is entirely reasonable and valid. Both can be true.
I think you're arguing that Apple shouldn't be allowed to patent their designs because they are too simple, right? Their 'efficiency' is the problem. I can't imagine how you'd decide whose designs are 'complex enough' to be worthy of protection.
I've looked at this patent 3 times and I don't see how you decided that Apple are doing what you say they are: it's honestly just a set of pictures of their product. There's no 'claims'. In the text they describe it as "an ornamental design". I think you're saying that it's not ornamental because it's too simple, but what can be done about that? Disallow simple design from any protection? Force Apple to add curlicues?
At the end of the day, the decisions on infringement are made by a court based on whether it would cause confusion with customers. On the issue of wedge-shaped computers, there is plenty of prior art (passim) that means this is not a 'wedge-shaped' land-grab, and wouldn't work if it was. Design patents do not include prior art searches, AFAIK.
If you take a look at the linked patent, you'll see it is essentially nothing but pictures of the MacBook Air, with no commentary on what features are/aren't protected. You'd expect Apple to do nothing less, and they aren't make any specific claims about edges/corners/wedges. Just 'something that looks like this'.
Design patents are (by intent) subjective. If you came up with a soft-drink with a logo in your hand-writing, there has to be a process to decide if you were deliberately trying to mislead people into thinking it was Coca-cola, but we don't want rules defining what your hand-writing is supposed to look like. So Coca-cola just submit pictures of the logo, and we figure the rest out later.
If your objection is the existence of design patents, then fair enough. A judge taking a point of view on 'generic elements' is healthy and normal part of the process.
This is a DESIGN patent, not a UTILITY patent. It protects a very specific appearance of a thing. Essentially, if you made something similar enough to this that it could be easily confused by a customer, you infringe.
You can make all the wedge-shaped laptops you like. Apple is not pretending to ANYONE that they "invented" wedge shaped computers.
We do this EVERY time a design patent comes up on Slashdot. Editors: please take 15 mins to learn the difference between design and utility patents if you're going to persist in posting up flamebait articles on the topic.
Your example could hardly better contradict your point: Universal healthcare in the UK (the NHS) was implemented nationwide in about 3 years, covering 50million people with comprehensive and free healthcare (give or take a modest prescription fee at the time). It replaced a complex network of private, state (county) and charity organizations, and came up against bitter opposition from the vested interests in private healthcare at the time. It has its limitation, but public support for it is consistently very strong.
I appreciate your point on IT systems is probably true, and this project is clearly a disaster - but expanding it to general provision of healthcare ignores every functional single-payer system in the world.
You can tell the Roadster served it's purpose because "Besides building its own cars, Tesla has a business partnership with Toyota Motor Co (TM) to produce a plug-in electric version of the RAV4 SUV and a deal with Daimler (DDAIF) to provide batteries for an electric version of the Smart ForTwo minicar."
That's Toyota, developer of the Prius, admitting that Tesla have technology and know-how that they need. That's what the Roadster bought Tesla.
I checked out the reference (since removed, oddly) that people who are bipolar often keep long-term records of medication schedules and effects (page 2) and historic record of major 'episodes' (page 1) so that they can use them to try and build a personalized medication schedule over time on a bipolar support forum, and it checks out. It's also true that people with bipolar disorder are encouraged to keep them secret, and so would be like to keep coded versions of these notes in case they were found.
---- (from the comment - 'John')
It is a shorthand log of historic episodes in the mid seventies on (page 1, actually written second, but numbered one to keep events in chrono order) and medications taken with the effects listed. The key at the end is day week month year morning day latenight. It was started on page 2 and then page 1 was added as a log of the earlier childhood which is the basis for diagnosis and the "page 2" is indepth records of changes in meds. The 3 month periods are normal with bipolar episodes in the 4th QTR (September through December in the seventies. These seasons suggest seasonal disorder.
ALPNTE GLSE-SE ERTE
A: Latenight, Phenergan, taken in evening G: Latenight Serenace/Seroquel or Seroquel/Serenace Extended Release Taken Evening
VLSE MTSE-CTSE-WSE-FRTSE V: Late Serenace Morning take Serenace
On page 1 are lists of manic episodes
(FLRSEPRSEONDE71NCBE)
From late september really severe episode on December 1971: No cause before episode (CDNSEPRSEONSF/DE74NCBE)
Chronic Depression in September, really severe episode on the start of December in 1974, no cause before episode
26MLSE74SPRKSE29KENOSOLE173R7RSE
2x 6mg Serenace in 1974 or 2x 600mg Seroquel in 1974 99-84.B2UNEPLSENCRSEAOLTSENSKSENRSE
1999 through 1988 NSREOUSEPUTSEWLDUCBE(3XORL)
D-W-M-YH/MD/IL XDRLX Day weekday month year: morning day or latenight
--- (further comment from 'John') I'm bipolar and we are told to keep such logs in short-hand because, though we are protected by laws, we are told to stay in the closet, because so many violent crimes are caused by bipolars. If we just came out of the closet, people might realize that those of us who are medicated are fully functional and safe. And we are 2 to 10 % of the population, possibly from recent environmental and stress related aggrevators. But it does take very detailed traking to get our medication right and knowing the triggers is key: week days might relate to work triggers, months to seasonal disorder and times of day are critical to knowing when to take meds and how much. The nature of this note suggests that he is having an episode and is thinking faster than he can write.
Slashdot Mirror
Oops. my bad. Just noticed that under "Related US Application Data" it calls out that this is a division of another patent, filed Oct 2, 1996. Now that *is* interesting.
Are you sure that this idea was 'obvious' in 1996? I was in college studying bending beams at that time and sure as heck hadn't thought of downloading episodes of comedy podcasts. I can't say what everyone else was up to.
For reference, the claim on this patent is pretty much the same:
1. A player for reproducing selected audio program segments comprising, in combination:
means for storing a plurality of program segments, each of said program segments having a beginning and an end,
means for receiving and storing a file of data establishing a sequence in which said program segments are scheduled to be reproduced by said player,
means for accepting control commands... means for continuously reproducing said program segments in the order... [+ bunch of controls for navigating media]
Again, IANAL, but this seems to be a description of something that might well have been a new idea in 1996. I dunno. The obviousness test is an interesting one, and I still can't figure why they can go after media producers, when the patent sounds like it would result in Apple, Sony and the software/device people infringing.
(IANAL, but) that's not how patents work: you're reading the preferred embodiment, which apart from showing that they've figured out *a way* to do this, doesn't really matter at all. The important bit (what determines infringement) is the claims, starting on page 32 (col 46), of which there are 35.
To make it even easier, you only really have to read the independent claims (1, 13, 23, 31). Every numbered claim that includes the text "as set forth in claim X" doesn't matter unless you're infringing claim X.
So let's look at independent claim 1: ... the media files."
"What is claimed is: A media player for acquiring and reproducing media program files which represent episodes as said episodes become available, said media player comprising: a digital memory, a communication port..., a processor..., an output unit for reproducing
Sounds like iTunes. Version 4.9 of iTunes, launched in June 28, 2005 was the first to have podcast support (according to Wikipedia). I don't even slightly believe that iTunes was the first podcast player.
I'm guessing claim 31 is the one that they're attacking Adam et al with, but it does seem like this patent talks about the enabling technology, but the people who product the content. Still, I'm sure they have lawyers that can reasonably read it that way.
These things are (sometimes) intentionally broad, but it's the job of the examiner at the USPTO to figure out if these claims pass the usual tests: obviousness ("to one skilled in the art"), novelty ("prior art") and eligibility (ie. not a matter for copyright, like, say, a trademark). Obvious to you because you've been using podcasts for a decade is not the same as obvious to someone at the time this was filed, but the priority/filing date here is Mar 4th 2009.
Hmm. Well, is the claim obvious for 2009, given iTunes 4.9 was launched in 2005? Seems so to me, but like I say, IANAL.
Funny, since that's what Sony themselves did by stuffing Blu-Ray into the PS3. They sacrificed a ton of market share by conceding the price-point (and arriving late to market) in the interests of forcing the market to adopt own their proprietary storage media format. It completely worked, and in the long run I imagine it'll turn out in their interests to have done so...
Having worked as an engineer and a manager in Silicon Valley, I see his point. But I've also worked in Germany, and it's interesting to see how many senior business leaders in Germany are engineers. I personally think that as a culture we (American engineers) devalue and even laugh at leadership skills. We think they're irrelevant to being a good engineer: call it Dilbertism.
Culturally, German engineers (in comparison) see leadership of people and teams as one of their natural requirements. Engineers are reknowned for their high-handedness and taking lead in any given situation. I remember trying being in an informal situation setting a large number of tables for a party: when I started suggesting a plan, two german language students started saying "look at the engineer, taking over as usual".
So, again, as an ex-engineer, I think our mutually reinforced disparagement of managers is part of the problem. Leadership is something we should be naturally good at, and all engineers offended by Juan's assertion should take it as a challenge, not an insult.
Funny that you chose chickens out of that list. How about pigs? Pretty well known to be one of the smarter mammals around. At least, they've never launched a pointless war to my knowledge.
They don't even have to say anything: she knows her job depends on co-operating. Bottom line is that she doesn't own Yahoo, she is a servant of the shareholders - she is expected/obliged to put their interests first.
OK, she could decide to not comply, or blow the NSA's cover on the extent of spying, but if she took Yahoo into direct conflict with the Federal Government over a personal opinion I doubt she'd stick around in the job for 24 more hours before the board decided she had to go.
It's the kind of kind of grandstanding that Jobs might have got away with (what you gonna do, fire me?). Zuckerberg is an interesting case: he still owns nearly 25% of Facebook, so his chances of being summarily fired are less. Still, I find it hard to imagine a CEO deliberately risking jail and being allowed to continue to serve (as the share price plummeted)
No need for threats and blackmail: the market does it for you...
Bruce Schneier is on the team reviewing the docs, so it's safe to say that they're pretty technically competent when it comes to encryption:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Schneier
I think people are quick to fit the evidence to the theory, although I agree that some of the iOs 7 design is surprising. Personally, I like surprising, but I'm curious to see how well it works in practice.
On the more general point, the back of the iPhone 3G was plastic. The original iPod is made of plastic (for, like, a decade). As is the MacBook. and the original iMac was too, which essentially defined Jobs/Ive's design first approach. Jobs never had a problem with a plastic, properly applied. He had a problem with screws, but that's another story.
He also blessed precisely this route to diversification, cannibalising the heck out of the iPod (very expensive, and a huge money maker at the time) with the Nano and the Shuffle to spread downmarket and dominate the market. Worked pretty well that time around. I think they have to compete with the cheaper devices - they learned the lessons of the 90's. Owning the upmarket is fine, but you'll get squeezed year by year and people catch up with your quality (think Windows). Pay the same attention to detail for a cheaper product and you can outflank the cheaper providers by applying your brand halo.
Dear the internet,
despite your declaration of love, I see you've been unfaithful lately:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Usage_share_of_web_browsers_(Source_StatCounter).svg
hugs,
Mozilla
"Google Doodles like this do rub me up the wrong way. For a start, the person concerned is often an obscure one (or at least obscure outside the US - the US-centric doodles end up on Google UK, where they probably don't belong)."
I'm confused: you object because you learn something? Maybe I misunderstood.
Personally, I prefer the ones I don't know... (sorry if this seems snotty - I'm perfectly sincere.)
"Getting a movie made in Hollywood is like trying to grill a steak by having a succession of people coming into the room and breathing on it."
Douglas Adams
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_and_agriculture#Food_security
Your scenario of cutting emissions causing collapse is not clear to me - please explain. I'm not advocating cutting all emissions - increasing carbon efficiency of existing modes of production is the main tool in the toolbox.
ok, this stinks of troll, but I'll take it:
"So calm the fuck down about religion, deniers, AGW, man made causes, SUVs, smug ass Californians, and Al Gore. Just realize accordingly, spend less money on ski equipment and more money on boats."
I dig your cool complacency, and actually I kind of agree. Global climate change probably won't make much of difference to your life during your lifetime, and maybe not even to your kids. Because you're rich. You can afford to pay 50% more for food (as agriculture is disrupted): the worst that will happen is you might move house, accept a slightly lower standard of living and bitch about the price of things. Oh, and 'buy more boats'.
It's the poor who will pay. I don't mean the middle class, I mean the 1 billion+ people who live on less than $1 a day. They will starve in greater numbers and die in greater numbers - they can't move, or "buy less ski equipment". I get that you don't care about that, but I hope that as a society we can bring ourselves to give a shit.
Another weird thing about those books: great as they are (Pirsig's was my instinctive answer to the question posed) both of their sequels (Lila, Te of Piglet) are quite terrible, dull and to be avoided. For some reason they both lapse into a similar mode of complaining about the modern world, feminism, etc, etc...
;) +1 insightful!
Not entirely true, though: people like Karim Rashid and Philippe Starck are the real high-priests. SJ did believe that the user experience wins over everything else - it's just he also believed in polling a user-group of precisely 1 person.
You're right: the summary dramatically undersells what Bill Moggridge achieved: he was a passionate believer that the experience of a product was the true definition of success (not the look or even the functionality), and that only you could only design great products by deeply understanding your users. Essentially, he took design out of the hands of the 'high-priests' of taste and aesthetics, and put the power back in the hands of the users.
This drove him to co-found IDEO (full disclosure - I'm an ex-employee), which gave him the leverage take interaction design (a term he invented: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interaction_design#History) beyond GUI's to all products and services, and to define a lot of what matters most about design today.
Well, if you're willing to trust uncited Wiki-facts, Carl Sagan negotiated with the rights-holders specifically to get permission for playing the pieces of music copyright-free outside of the solar system. It's a cool work-around: of course pretty much any recorded performance has copyright restrictions, but Carl Sagan figured the disk itself wasn't intended to be played by any human so legally he just needed rights outside some geographically restricted zone (say, the entire solar system) to have all the rights he needed to create potentially the widest distribution mixtape of all time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyager_Golden_Record
We're arguing across each other: You're arguing about about what Apple will do with this patent, based on past example, and I'm arguing that the patent, as filed, is entirely reasonable and valid. Both can be true.
Feel free to take the last word...
I think you're arguing that Apple shouldn't be allowed to patent their designs because they are too simple, right? Their 'efficiency' is the problem. I can't imagine how you'd decide whose designs are 'complex enough' to be worthy of protection.
I've looked at this patent 3 times and I don't see how you decided that Apple are doing what you say they are: it's honestly just a set of pictures of their product. There's no 'claims'. In the text they describe it as "an ornamental design". I think you're saying that it's not ornamental because it's too simple, but what can be done about that? Disallow simple design from any protection? Force Apple to add curlicues?
At the end of the day, the decisions on infringement are made by a court based on whether it would cause confusion with customers. On the issue of wedge-shaped computers, there is plenty of prior art (passim) that means this is not a 'wedge-shaped' land-grab, and wouldn't work if it was. Design patents do not include prior art searches, AFAIK.
If you take a look at the linked patent, you'll see it is essentially nothing but pictures of the MacBook Air, with no commentary on what features are/aren't protected. You'd expect Apple to do nothing less, and they aren't make any specific claims about edges/corners/wedges. Just 'something that looks like this'.
Design patents are (by intent) subjective. If you came up with a soft-drink with a logo in your hand-writing, there has to be a process to decide if you were deliberately trying to mislead people into thinking it was Coca-cola, but we don't want rules defining what your hand-writing is supposed to look like. So Coca-cola just submit pictures of the logo, and we figure the rest out later.
If your objection is the existence of design patents, then fair enough. A judge taking a point of view on 'generic elements' is healthy and normal part of the process.
This is a DESIGN patent, not a UTILITY patent. It protects a very specific appearance of a thing. Essentially, if you made something similar enough to this that it could be easily confused by a customer, you infringe.
You can make all the wedge-shaped laptops you like. Apple is not pretending to ANYONE that they "invented" wedge shaped computers.
We do this EVERY time a design patent comes up on Slashdot. Editors: please take 15 mins to learn the difference between design and utility patents if you're going to persist in posting up flamebait articles on the topic.
Your example could hardly better contradict your point:
Universal healthcare in the UK (the NHS) was implemented nationwide in about 3 years, covering 50million people with comprehensive and free healthcare (give or take a modest prescription fee at the time). It replaced a complex network of private, state (county) and charity organizations, and came up against bitter opposition from the vested interests in private healthcare at the time. It has its limitation, but public support for it is consistently very strong.
I appreciate your point on IT systems is probably true, and this project is clearly a disaster - but expanding it to general provision of healthcare ignores every functional single-payer system in the world.
"Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day"
You can tell the Roadster served it's purpose because "Besides building its own cars, Tesla has a business partnership with Toyota Motor Co (TM) to produce a plug-in electric version of the RAV4 SUV and a deal with Daimler (DDAIF) to provide batteries for an electric version of the Smart ForTwo minicar."
That's Toyota, developer of the Prius, admitting that Tesla have technology and know-how that they need. That's what the Roadster bought Tesla.
Well, I don't think anyone knows yet, but the 'medication schedule' reference probably refers to this comment hanging off this Yahoo News article that I personally found pretty convincing (sorry - I don't know how to link to the comment directly, but it's from 'John')
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110329/ts_yblog_thelookout/fbi-asks-public-for-help-breaking-encrypted-notes-tied-to-1999-murder#mwpphu-container
I checked out the reference (since removed, oddly) that people who are bipolar often keep long-term records of medication schedules and effects (page 2) and historic record of major 'episodes' (page 1) so that they can use them to try and build a personalized medication schedule over time on a bipolar support forum, and it checks out. It's also true that people with bipolar disorder are encouraged to keep them secret, and so would be like to keep coded versions of these notes in case they were found.
----
(from the comment - 'John')
It is a shorthand log of historic episodes in the mid seventies on (page 1, actually written second, but numbered one to keep events in chrono order) and medications taken with the effects listed. The key at the end is day week month year morning day latenight. It was started on page 2 and then page 1 was added as a log of the earlier childhood which is the basis for diagnosis and the "page 2" is indepth records of changes in meds. The 3 month periods are normal with bipolar episodes in the 4th QTR (September through December in the seventies. These seasons suggest seasonal disorder.
ALPNTE GLSE-SE ERTE
A: Latenight, Phenergan, taken in evening G: Latenight Serenace/Seroquel or Seroquel/Serenace Extended Release Taken Evening
VLSE MTSE-CTSE-WSE-FRTSE
V: Late Serenace Morning take Serenace
On page 1 are lists of manic episodes
(FLRSEPRSEONDE71NCBE)
From late september really severe episode on December 1971: No cause before episode
(CDNSEPRSEONSF/DE74NCBE)
Chronic Depression in September, really severe episode on the start of December in 1974, no cause before episode
26MLSE74SPRKSE29KENOSOLE173R7RSE
2x 6mg Serenace in 1974 or 2x 600mg Seroquel in 1974
99-84.B2UNEPLSENCRSEAOLTSENSKSENRSE
1999 through 1988
NSREOUSEPUTSEWLDUCBE(3XORL)
D-W-M-YH/MD/IL XDRLX
Day weekday month year: morning day or latenight
--- (further comment from 'John')
I'm bipolar and we are told to keep such logs in short-hand because, though we are protected by laws, we are told to stay in the closet, because so many violent crimes are caused by bipolars. If we just came out of the closet, people might realize that those of us who are medicated are fully functional and safe. And we are 2 to 10 % of the population, possibly from recent environmental and stress related aggrevators. But it does take very detailed traking to get our medication right and knowing the triggers is key: week days might relate to work triggers, months to seasonal disorder and times of day are critical to knowing when to take meds and how much. The nature of this note suggests that he is having an episode and is thinking faster than he can write.