Re: Warning of major NHS IT overspend

[Ian G Batten <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>]

On Tue, 02 Nov 2004, Brian Beesley wrote:
> > More to the point, in less than a generation it's likely that
> > specialised film emulsions will be ferociously expensive, because they
> > will no longer have the volume market to carry their fixed costs.
> 
> Umm. (1) make a big batch, it will keep for years; (2) self-fulfilling 
> prophesy which need not be believed.

Fine.  A trivial glance around the cameras in the hands of parents at
school events says you're wrong.  And I bet none of them have bought a
33rpm LP in a decade, either.  It's not enough for you not to believe
it, it requries large numbers of people to believe that digital cameras
are rubbish.  And they don't and won't, not matter how much you huff and
puff.

> > Non-specialised photographers will have abandoned film within a few
> > years, high-volume professional users already have, 
> 
> Survey in "Amateur Photography" dated 6th Nov 2004 shows more than twice as 
> many professionals use film only as use digital only. (Though about half use 
> both).

Note the words ``high-volume''.  Does any newspaper still have a
darkroom?

> The situation is rather different in that silver halide technology is so 
> simple that it's perfectly possible to coat your own film. After all, 
> photography existed before Kodak made it "convenient".

Sure.  And I really believe that radiography suites are going to do
that.  They're inherently digital anyway, because of CAT and MRI
scanners (which I presume you decry as useless and wasteful).  Why would
they want silver halide X rays, when all the rest of their imaging is
digital?

ian