# Does your industry/profession/field have a "holy grail" **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 4, 2004, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-your-industry-profession-field-have-a-holy-grail/273075 "2004-11-04T23:01:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-your-industry-profession-field-have-a-holy-grail/273075/21 "2004-11-05T17:02:10Z")
> [@chrisk](#): > > As an aside… would you have to publish the algorithm to collect the prize?? I might be better off not collecting, in that case. 🙂 You can’t patent an algorithm IIRC, so announcing it publicly would give everyone else an even footing on exploiting it. 😃 If you publish software that solves an NP-complete problem in polynomial time, it would be reverse-engineered very quickly. You might be able to sue, but the cat would be out of the bag. ---
**Author:** ![chrisk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@chrisk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chrisk)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-your-industry-profession-field-have-a-holy-grail/273075/22 "2004-11-05T17:04:43Z")
> [@ultrafilter](#): > > If you publish software that solves an NP-complete problem in polynomial time, it would be reverse-engineered very quickly. You might be able to sue, but the cat would be out of the bag. Note to self… figure out how to publish software that will make as much $$$ as possible before it gets reverse-engineered. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![scout1222](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/34f0e0/32.png) [@scout1222](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scout1222)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-your-industry-profession-field-have-a-holy-grail/273075/23 "2004-11-05T17:12:16Z")
Pharmaceuticals checking in here. I’d like to say that it’s a “cure for cancer” that everyone’s hoping for. And they are, to some extent. But I think the real holy grail is the real money maker - a pill that cures obesity. ---
**Author:** ![AsecretK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/7ab992/32.png) [@AsecretK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AsecretK)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-your-industry-profession-field-have-a-holy-grail/273075/24 "2004-11-05T17:40:04Z")
> [@tpayne](#): > > I’m in IT in health insurance. To me, the holy grail would be that all of the participants in our broken health care system would be communicating electronically in real time. Both the technology (encrypted XML) and the common data dictionary (HIPAA) exist today. > > Imagine going to the doctor and having your health care claim completely adjudicated in real time while you’re checking out at the front desk. We (the health insurer) would part with the claims payment money more quickly, but the savings in overhead - resubmitted claims, paper/printing, dual data entry, phone calls to member services centers and doctor’s offices - would be tremendous. > > Retail pharmacies have been doing this for years, but sadly it is still years away from being commonplace in my world. I am also in the heath insurance industry but our division deals with the pharmacy side. And yes the retail pharmacies have been doing this for years but one of our departments still bills on paper for certain clients (i.e. Rosters, HCFA 1500, Medicaid Forms and UCF forms) and they also still get paper remits from payers that need to be batched and keyed. We have a member services helpdesk and even in real time there are plenty of calls. I deal with the ASC X12N 835 file being created and recieved for clients. I know this file was created so it could be used by everyone in the healthcare industry but somedays it just hurts. My personal holy grail will be when I can look at this file in raw data format without having to reach for the spec every 2 seconds :smack: ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [November 5, 2004, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-your-industry-profession-field-have-a-holy-grail/273075/25 "2004-11-05T17:41:39Z")
> [@Middlecase](#): > > Wot, no Colin MacKenzie? See, but I thought they found quite a bit of his stuff. Certainly, Kiwi cinema will never be the same. 😉 And I’m obliged to add the lost _Ambersons_ footage in addition to the large silent list I posted (which did, obviously, include the missing von Stroheim material). ---
**Author:** ![vl\_mungo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/bc8723/32.png) [@vl\_mungo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vl_mungo)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-your-industry-profession-field-have-a-holy-grail/273075/26 "2004-11-06T01:05:07Z")
As a small business owner, our HG is known as “making a living”. As a record store owner, anything on [this site](http://eil.com/shop/presetlist.asp?pageID=247) would probably be a good place to start. For myself personally… **It Came From Canada Volume 4 (OG Records)** ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-your-industry-profession-field-have-a-holy-grail/273075/27 "2004-11-06T01:27:34Z")
In library preservation, a magic deacidification ray, I suppose. Something that’s cheap, saves brittle books (or we’d settle for saves almost-brittle books), and dosen’t hurt the ink or the binding or anything else about the item. Seems like we’ve mostly just given up on the acid paper problem because everybody hates microfilm and the problem is just so _big_ - all the money’s in digital preservation now. Expect that to be a serious train wreck in ten years. Keep your paper journals, folks. Seriously. Particularly the ones you’ve got articles in. ---
**Author:** ![Nametag](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nametag/32/406_2.png) [@Nametag](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nametag)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-your-industry-profession-field-have-a-holy-grail/273075/28 "2004-11-06T04:39:41Z")
> [@scout1222](#): > > Pharmaceuticals checking in here. > > I’d like to say that it’s a “cure for cancer” that everyone’s hoping for. And they are, to some extent. > > But I think the real holy grail is the real money maker - a pill that cures obesity. CURE?? Are you mad? The Pharmas would much rather develop a pill that, taken daily, will reduce obesity without dieting. And, of course, no harmful side effects appear until someone suggests making it OTC. ---
**Author:** ![Ilsa\_Lund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a6a055/32.png) [@Ilsa\_Lund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ilsa_Lund)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-your-industry-profession-field-have-a-holy-grail/273075/29 "2004-11-06T04:43:40Z")
> [@ArchiveGuy](#): > > See, but I thought they found quite a bit of his stuff. Certainly, Kiwi cinema will never be the same. 😉 > > And I’m obliged to add the lost _Ambersons_ footage in addition to the large silent list I posted (which did, obviously, include the missing von Stroheim material). I wasn’t implying it didn’t, just that I thought that the Stroheim footage might supercede some of the lesser known titles on the list. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2004, 8:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-your-industry-profession-field-have-a-holy-grail/273075/30 "2004-11-06T08:50:01Z")
I’m in consulting so I guess it would be a new paradigm that forces stakeholders to reevaluate their core values in response to dynamic shifts in industry benchmarking practices. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-your-industry-profession-field-have-a-holy-grail/273075.md?page=1)