Health Care Bill - Geek Style

There are some things that only a geek could love about the proposed Senate Health Care Bill -- maybe the only things to love about it.

My U.S. Senator, Jim Webb, alerted me to the health care proposal linked from his Web site. I give him credit for that since I have sent him more than one email stating my opinion (not that he actually read it).

My first attempt to download and read this massive omnibus bill resulted in this error. My default reader couldn't open it, so I was forced to download Adobe Reader.

Sigh. Doesn't bode well.

• From the graphic you can tell that the file is a healthy size: 2.5 MB and 2,074 pages.
• According to the properties, the creating program is ACOMP.exe version 2.0, Nov 24 2008 on Windows-- possibly a custom typesetting system or even an AutoLISP compiler.

UPDATE (h/t kalendello) : ACOMP.exe appears to be the "creator" part of Adobe Distiller (a compiler) as seen in this similar code: /Producer (Acrobat Distiller 5.0.5 \(Windows\)) /Creator (ACOMP.exe WinVer 2.0 Nov 24 2008)

• The original file name is Merge2.lc; LC files may be Textbridge Classic bin file (aka Optical Software Recognition (OCR) scanner software).
• The PDF software used is Adobe Acrobat Distiller 9.2.0 (Windows)
• The PDF is secured by Password Encryption using 128-bit RC4
  
• The operating system used to create the file is Windows XP or later, as evidenced by the directory name DOCUME~1 (Documents and Settings) and confirmed by the lack of 8 dot 3 restrictions and long file name: patient-protection-affordable-care-act.pdf
• The user name and home directory of the person who created the final file is "bai".

Opening the file you can immediately see that the file was converted and merged from 9 separate XML files. The header on each page has the following line or similar:

O:\BAI\BAI09M01.xml [file 1 of 9] S.L.C.

• I have no idea what S.L.C. means.
• User BAI has a Windows networked mapped drive O: (home or shared drive?) that has a folder called BAI; the file name is BAI09M01.xml. BAI (user's name) 09 (2009?) M01 (no idea)
  

File 2 of 9 has this header:

O:\ERN\ERN09C11.xml [file 2 of 9] S.L.C.

• Again a mapped O: network drive, this time folder ERN (home or shared drive), ERN may be the user's initials.
• File 2 file name: ERN09C11.xml; ERN (user initials) 09 (2009) C11 (no idea)

The rest is just the same:

O:\MAL\MAL09863.xml [file 3 of 9]
O:\BAI\BAI09M04.xml [file 4 of 9]
O:\KER\KER09924.xml [file 5 of 9]
O:\MAL\MAL09852.xml [file 6 of 9]
O:\KER\KER09925.xml [file 7 of 9]
O:\ERN\ERN09B60.xml [file 8 of 9]
O:\OTT\OTT09505.xml [file 9 of 9]

So BAI, MAL, KER, ERN, and OTT put this document together. Interesting.

Other miscellany:

• Fonts: DeVinne, New Century Schoolbook, Times-Roman, Symbol, Gpospec5
• PDF version 1.5 (Acrobat 6.x), can be opened by Acrobat 6.0 or greater
• 8.5 x 11.0 paper
  

And we determined all that without any special tools at all. Remember to clean up your metadata!