I disagree. I don't think Bill Gates could change a thing about Microsoft's downward spiral.

I've been around long enough to see the arc of MS's success since Windows 95 (wasn't paying close attention before that).

I never saw a company that could really create products that consumers demanded on their own merits.

What I saw instead was a company that got itself into a critical, un-dislodgeable, dare I say it - monopolistic - position in the PC market and milked that for all that it was worth.

Now, finally, after 20 years, the market is moving to a place where there is less dependence on the Windows operating system; alternative platforms are finally big enough to start makign Windows irrelevant.

Microsoft will never be able to produce the next greatest product because they never created a next greatest product. They just rode their lynchpin position in the PC stack to undeserved fortune. And without the DNA to actually innovate, they have absolutely no hope of making inroads into markets that they didn't luck into back in 1982.

Good riddance, Microsoft. Never has so much money been pumped into such an undeserving company.

However, 6.3" just seems like a deadzone. Too big to hold in a hand and use effectively, unless you're Shaq, but smaller than a 7 or 8" tablet like the Nexus 7

Don't forget that the correlation between screen size & device size is not neccessarily linear. Samsung managed to increase the screen size of the S4 (over the S3) by 1/5 of an inch while (slightly) reducing the phyiscal dimensions of the phone.

The Nexus 7 has a massive bezel, these devices do not & will be smaller than the 0.7 inches you'd expect placed side-by-side with a Nexus 7.

The preferred phrase, which has been used by at least two of our Prime Ministers, is 'arse end of the world.' It wasn't a specific reference to the internet, but it's nice to see our national epithet is so flexible.

Dropbox can only store files locally if you have local storage.

According to the age, Snowden has withdrawn that request. Mr Snowden withdrew his Russian asylum request because of a demand that he stop harming US interests by leaking documents

True. For an adult worker the minimum wage is $15.96 ($US16.45) per hour. At casual rates (no sick leave or paid holidays) that works out to just over $19 ($US19.60) p/h.

Teenagers get a bit less. My 15yo daughter gets $10.50 p/h in her weekend job.

When we bought the DVD set I watched Jurassic Bark once and swore never again. No show has ever reduced me to a blubbering mess that quickly (although the opening scene of Pixar's 'UP' is a pretty close second.)

In fact, a small, brown unloved mongrel who looked just like Seymour owes his life to my family seeing that episode.

And if I remember rightly, that change didn't go down too well in Australia.

Totally agree with you regarding moronic UI designer arrogance. It is the same attitude that gives us 'mobile' versions of websites (often without any way back to the normal version than changing the User Agent string in your device's browser) which disable zooming. The only justification I've heard is that it 'preserves the integrity of the design' which matters not one fucking iota if the user can't actually see the content that the design is meant to be presenting.

Tracking the baton movement could be fairly difficult though. Even squeezing out a beat while concentrating on singing might be more difficult than it appears. I mean, just following the conductor rather than the musicians around you can be a challenge even for experienced musicians. I've done a fair bit of conducting, and I know how hard it can be to get a band to realise you actually want them to go a bit faster! Getting someone to do that and communicate it in two dimensions in real time while actually singing properly... that would be a special singer indeed!

Actually, that could be a rather interesting exercise. Getting members of the choir to track the conductor's movement on someone else's hand (who then have to concentrate on the hand signals rather than what other people are singing) could be a good way to reinforce the importance of paying attention to the dude/dudette with the stick!

I've been sitting at my desk for the last couple of minutes studying my own conducting style. I've always tried to maintain a very clear beat (a lot of my conducting over the years has involved beginner bands, so communicating where the beat is is far more important than it might be in more professional outfits.)

Anyway, I've noticed that my style is very three dimensional. My upbeat, for example, starts near my sternum, goes out from my body and follows a roughly circular path back to near my forehead. The other beats seem to do similar things. Now that I'm looking at it, that back-and-forward axis is quite pronounced, and may explain why my tuba players (who sit on my immediate right) never complain that they can't read my conducting.

Which goes to your original point---depending on the conductor, a side mounted camera might actually work, so long as it can still read two directions.

The problem I have now is that I'm going to be very, VERY conscious of my style come Thursday night!

The reason (I'm spitballing here) that I think the beat come at the point of highest acceleration is that that is the point when the conductor applies the most force to his or her arm. It's been years since I studied physics (or physiology) but I imagine that would be very close to the point of highest acceleration.

All that said, I've had conductors that seem to anticipate their own beat. For them, the beat actually comes just after they hit the bottom. In fact, it probably come at the moment of highest acceleration of the little 'bounce' that follows the beat (which is probably the curve upwards you mention).

You're certainly right about the other cues. They're probably not so important though, so long as the song goes more or less as it does in rehearsal. A blind person will have some idea of what is about to happen (although I'll grant that it's not ideal.) Guessing the exact moment when the first note is meant to be sung to within a very small fraction of a second isn't something I'd enjoy.

Dunno about kittenman, but we still call them that in Australia. I do speak (and prefer) the 1/(power of two) system though. If my daughter's education is anything to go by, it seems the systems are used interchangeably in schools.