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Listed below are comments made by The Count between Friday, 16th October 2009 and Thursday, 3rd December 2009.

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Wednesday 2 December 2009 11:29am on 03 Dec 2009 I did enjoy watching John Snow interview the people of Kettering and a snotty-nose Ed Milliband who looked like he'd been randomly stopped in the street (he seems to be prepared to be interviewed anywhere) from a roof-top terrace overlooking Copacabana beach. I look forward to next year when he'll interview people from above the arctic in his giant flying electric heater (it'll start "this is the amount of ice melt we are causing daily").

I need a Brasseye episode on climaggedon.
Tuesday 1 December 2009 00:30am on 02 Dec 2009 I thought Sting dealt better with being harangued than some politicans do. And auntie is a hypocrite just like Sting. What with Wednesday's show being from Washington with Gavin.
Thursday 26 November 2009 10:42am on 27 Nov 2009 The Channel 5 dude's comments last night didn't seem to hold up to much.
Is the reason why the BBC don't make dramas of the same quality as HBO really because people are on their back all the time? It's not because their commissioners lack the vision and believe to take a chance.
His belief that the BBC could launch a premium sports channel if they went subscription really doesn't seem to be backed up by the experience of previous companies who've tried (hello to you ITV Sport and Setanta - oh, oh no you don't exist anymore).
HBO have a hell of a lot more people who can subscribe to them than the BBC would as the US population is 4 times ours.
Also I always end up wondering if those who praise HBO have ever actually watched the channel. The number of repeats is mind blowing they show each program about 4 times a week. We get to see their hits (and they do make a lot of hits) rather than their misses.

I really don't understand why the BBC can't have a commercial and licence fee mix. BBC3 & BBC4 should have had advertising on them from the start.
Wednesday 25 November 2009 11:34pm on 25 Nov 2009 I don't know a great deal about economics and I've heard of externalities (positive or negative) now can that angry author dude have written the book he has without having done so.
I couldn't help wondering if he was hoping we'd pay him to go away.
Information: Have you ever paid for it? 5:47pm on 25 Nov 2009 Apps on the iphone are part of why I think things will go the way they will.
A number of apps are about coherently presenting content that you could get elsewhere but it's a pain to do it or it doesn't necessarily fit the screen well - stuff like that.
I'm surprised ISPs aren't trying to build a similar kind of set up - there are a fair number of people who really aren't that computer literate. An app that say helps your gran do her weekly shop on line might be more of a winner just saying "yeah but she can just do it on the website".

I don't know who is winning the iphone news battle. I'd have thought you are better placed to find that out than most of us.
You can get a version of Sky Sports for £6 a month but it appears that is only via wifi rather than the mobile network.
It hasn't been about long but it'll be interesting to see how that does.
Spotify which has been out on the iphone since the summer at £10 a month is another worth looking at.
I realise neither of those are news.

http://www.appstore.ca/2009/11/top-100-paid-apps-for-wednesday-november-4th-2009/
CNN, ESPN & The Weather Channel appear on this
http://www.appstore.ca/2009/11/top-100-free-apps-for-wednesday-november-4th-2009/
and ESPN, The Weather Channel, CNBC on this
So I'm guessing that is what Canada is doing.
Information: Have you ever paid for it? 3:44pm on 25 Nov 2009 Paul,
Do you have a fancy mobile? Should you have included it under your broadband bit? Phones are becoming a major access tool to information.
In some countries (India springs to mind) they are already the major access tool for the web.

I'm pretty sure I don't agree with The Huff's view on news going social. I rarely find myself discussing news with my friends - I discuss it with complete strangers at places like this.
Having said that to a certain extent news has always been social - it is after all just gossip about things everyone should care about.

I'm not sure about micropayments they seem a complete faff.
I think a subscription model is the most likely.
Content providers will need to get into bed with access providers for it to work though.
As you point out access providers have been unsuccessful at becoming content providers and this has generally been because their content has been crud. Some people managed to reside almost entirely inside AOL's walled garden for far too long though.
I can see envisage a situation where certain content is made available to you for a monthly fee. It is easiest to envision with film or music. A flat fee to your service provider for all you can eat access. But that needs to be a price which would be deemed low compared to what would be picked now for it to take off. E.g. all the music you want for £10-£15 a month.
They'll be less money from each customer but more customers. However I think what'll be acceptable will end up at a lower overall total than now.
It needs all the content providers and access providers to be in it together.
It essentially means that unless you are prepared to pay for it you won't get full access to the web.

I think copyright as a concept could come under threat - there is clearly a generation with no respect for it. What's to stop them - once they are in power - from removing it or altering it radically.
I'd say the common perception is that content providers are overpaying creators (and themselves) which is inflating prices - they need to be prepared to make less money and that means paying creators less.

I'm not convinced newspapers are currently creating enough that is worth paying for, and that'll be what puts them most at threat.
I agree that it's unlikely that anyone will be prepared for what is happening now type news. That can probably afford to be more functional than it is now.
I am aware that there are an increasing number of organisations that are creating their own news articles/packages that news organisations are just including because they lack the time to vet them properly, and they concern has to be that this will increase.

Personally I'll always be prepared to pay for the advice of some-one who trawls through all media available to tell me what is and isn't worth my time. The problem is finding some-one whose opinion you can rely on.
Wednesday 18 November 2009 - the plan so far 6:29pm on 18 Nov 2009 "a legal obligation to halve the budget deficit within four years"

or what?
The government fines itself?
Surely that's the height of meaninglessness.
Perhaps it could be something like the govt works on half wages for the year if they don't make it.

And does that just mean overspend half as much each year as we currently are?
I'd have thought we'd need to get that down lower than that and in shorter time if we have an real intention of curbing our current excesses.
Friday 30 October 2009 6:47pm on 30 Oct 2009 Whilst it's not listed above I assume that the dismissing of Prof. Nutt (with the letter in the Quango) will be discussed.

I found this from Mr Johnson concerning
"I cannot have public confusion between scientific advice and policy"
Which implies that Prof. Nutt has gone because he refused to fit science around the govt policy, which is a slightly disturbing attitude from govt.

I don't understand what the purpose of the classification system actually is. If it is to be based solely on scientific advice it seems odd to use it to scale the penalties for criminal activities which seems to be the main outcome of the grading system. I'd have thought the social rather than the personal impact of the drugs should be of more importance in classifing them and therefore a drug could be personally not particularly harmful but socially a potential menace in which case the opinion of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs wouldn't be as important.
Friday 23 October 2009 3:53pm on 23 Oct 2009 streetphotobeing
The link hasn't been deliberately stopped. The coding for the blog comments just doesn't like the colon in the web address. It thinks the path stops at the colon.
Personally, I blame the kids 3:34pm on 16 Oct 2009 It explains the obsession with "hard working families".
They are just talking about themselves.

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