Having had to deal with the medical world for the last few years with doctors trying to determine what is wrong with my wife (still no definitive answers yet), and have them treat her, I am shocked that something like this hasn't been done before.

Even a simple db that cross references diseases to symptoms / blood work results (and other test results) doesn't seem to exist. It's 2011, you'd think that doctors could order up a set of tests based on their initial thoughts, input the results to a program, and have the program guide them with possibilities to try and narrow down the search of what may be wrong. The symptoms that my wife has can be linked to MANY different diseases, but in the end, each disease has something that makes it unique. It should be a simple path of elimination. Test until you find the one disease that fits that persons set of results.

I'm not a medical doctor, but I've done a lot of research on the web about what is wrong with my wife (yes I know it's not all correct) and I'm shocked that twice now I've had to ask the doctor to perform some tests and find out if a certain condition exists, and it did. Simple, her symptoms are this, these blood tests could tell you yes or no if that's what you have.

Doctors seem to want to just prescribe something that should help the symptoms. How about we figure out what is wrong first and then treat appropriately?

I'm glad to see something like this finally being developed. Like I said, it's 2011, some of the ways things are these days is just crazy considering the computing power we have (personal, national, worldwide) available to us.

Years ago I watched the movie 'My Life' with Michael Keaton. The part I remember is that he was making videos for his unborn child (he was terminally ill in the movie) that could be watched later in life as a way to teach his child his values / ideas / etc. As hard as this would be for you and your wife to do, consider doing something similar. It could be as simple as a diary that your wife keeps for each of the children. Personalized for each person. She could place one entry per day per child. They could be simple things, or heavier subjects that your wife wants to try impart some of her wisdom onto your children for. Some subjects may not be appropriate today but will be necessary later in life. Dating, college, what to do with your life, how to deal with boys, how to deal with sex, etc. Some perspectives will probably be unique from your wife's point of view.

As a person who takes 100's of photos per month of my kids / family functions, and hours of video also, I realize that after someone is gone it isn't always the pictures and videos that keep the memories of someone alive. It's the small stuff. The things that happen in everyday life that we take for granted, until something like this happens.

I wish you the best for you and your family during this time of difficulty.

I'm not advocating that 'all' inventions / improvements should be 'given away'. It just seems like some things should be done for the good of mankind. I do believe that patents play a role in helping innovation when someone thinks they can make money from something. But that being said, as pointed out on /. so many times in the past, people / corporations abuse the patent process for monetary gain.

I guess what would be nice is to occasionally hear a story about someone who does invent something, and then they make the information available for anyone and everyone to benefit from. Just because it seemed like the right thing to do.

I'm not looking for Utopia, just a better balance between greed and paying it forward.

While this seems like a great idea for helping babies (I'm not a doctor), why can't they just publish the idea so everyone can benefit instead of just the cities / villages / towns / areas / families / whatever that can afford to buy one? The patent part is all about making money. At the expense of dying children. No different than drug companies (and many others) in my eyes. Although I do have to say that when I was their (apparent) age, I wanted to be filthy rich and didn't see anything wrong with that. Now that I'm (supposedly) more mature (and much older), I see things like this and wonder why can't people just do some things for the good of mankind? No I'm not naive, I just don't understand human nature sometimes.

I didn't RTFA, but I've seen the comment about a modern car having something like 100 million lines of code in articles before. Now, I am not in any way qualified to say that number is to large or to small. But as an embedded systems software developer, that seems like an INSANE amount of code. I'm the manager of the engineering department at my employer (small manufacturer in US) and I have very strict requirements for comments in code. Even if you count the lines of comments in our code (probably around 50% of the file content), our largest project to date is around 35,000 lines of C code. Now I realize that since we are targeting smaller 8 bit MCU's with limited resources, this limits what we can do.

But still, 100 MILLION lines of code? Does anyone have any input on whether or not this is accurate? Or do automotive software engineers like to comment their code more than anyone else?