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davepoth

Listed below are comments made by davepoth between Monday, 28th July 2008 and Monday, 7th September 2009.

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'They're going to be pretty demoralised' 3:44pm on 07 Sep 2009 To MAII, the US Government spends more or less the same per head of total population (based on Wikipedia, admittedly) as the UK does on the NHS.

To put that another way, if the US government stopped funding Medicaid, Medicare, and all of the federal and state government insurance schemes, it could put in place a system functionally identical to the NHS (I.e. universal coverage and free at the point of treatment) for no extra expenditure. This is based on the US spending about 16% of GDP on health, about 50% of which is government funded, and the UK spending about 8% of GDP on healthcare.

That should give you an idea of how wasteful the current system is in the USA. You should not have to pay any more for a good healthcare system. You should really be paying about half as much as you do now.
Healthcare row gets physical? 10:47pm on 03 Sep 2009 #41, If you consider the Second Sino-Japanese War (fought between an Allied and an Axis Country) as a part of WW2 (as many do) it started in 1937.
Gloomy Schumi faces up to failed Ferrari return 10:02pm on 12 Aug 2009 If there's anything we've learnt about the man it's that he hates to fail. I think the fact that he now has a struggle ahead of him to get back into F1 will make him a bit hungrier to get back onto the track.
No more bright sunny days 4:29pm on 23 Jun 2009 I still do all of my photography on a film camera. In black and white. In the same way that music producers will always go back to use vintage analogue equipment because despite all of the modern advances the old stuff does the job better, there will always be a place for film (I hope)
Cameron tougher on Lisbon? 2:38pm on 29 May 2009 to #14:

The problem with the Lisbon Treaty is that it's written in such a way so as to make it virtually incomprehensible to "the man on the Clapham Omnibus". For this reason alone it should have been rejected.
Paper Monitor 1:35pm on 19 May 2009 It hurts bad 'cos I was true to her
I'm regretting having anything to do with her
Wish I never bothered writing "Insania"
Welcome to some new initials - DRM, HDCP, DTCP and AACS! 3:06pm on 17 Apr 2009 I think the problem is that, in the main, people don't like the intrusion of the "Rights Holders" into their home with digital locks. But the owners of the content are able to set the terms by which it is licensed.

I know the reason that the HD content has to be locked is that it (in the form of Blu-ray sales) is an important source of revenue, and allowing people to make a perfect copy of that content for no charge would destroy that business model.

Media companies are struggling to reconcile their obsolete business models with today's reality. Even the BBC has these same issues; for example the BBC archive, which could be made available for everyone but isn't, so that the BBC's commercial arm can continue to make a profit from DVD sales.

Generally though the BBC's public service remit means that it is much better at providing content in a way that the public wants. I find the iPlayer absolutely invaluable for catching up on things I have missed, and for finding things that I didn't even know had been shown.

The suggestion that the HD protection is completely unbreakable is a bit silly however. DVD encryption was completely unbreakable until a 17 year old cracked it in his spare time, and the same thing will happen again for HD content.
Commercially funded 11:11pm on 19 Oct 2008 I'm all for the expansion of BBC Worldwide. It's there to commerically exploit the assets of the BBC, and it does that to great effect.

Although the net profit of BBCW is small at the moment, it is important to the BBC to provide an alternative revenue stream due to the uncertainty around the License fee (which I personally support).

The USA is a huge (and mainly english speaking)well developed media market, which is well in need of the sort of television that the BBC can provide, and provide at a profit. (I lived in the USA for a while and can safely say I could live without watching certain networks ever again).

As such BBCW would be mad to miss out on what is probably the best market for them.
Scrabulous users - stunned, bemused,baffled. 3:52pm on 25 Aug 2008 You don't seem to have mentioned that the Scrabulous developers have a new word game which looks somehow familliar called "Wordscraper"...
Nike v Adidas in the Top 40 9:42pm on 28 Jul 2008 Re: #2

Product placement has been in popular music for decades. Bob Dylan has been endorsing Cadillac since 1963 ("Good car to drive after a war")...

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