Its been awhile since I was in school (for philosophy), or reading up on the current discussion, but as far as I know this is still a massive debate, with very little, if any, agreement between philosophers (or psychologists, or neurologists, or cognitive scientists, or programmers, or physicists, or whoever else's feild this topic touches).

That said, there is a large debate on whether there is a difference between agency as a thing, and the perception of agency. Go read up on Searle's Chinese Room, and the debate it has sparked (especially Dennett). Also read up on the whole thought-experiment of "p-zombies", which explores this very concept.

AFAICT there isn't a consensus on this topic at all.

I take a more existential stance on it; where it doesn't really matter since one can't live as if one doesn't have agency, so on a human level the debate doesn't matter either way, since agency is a necessary trait to existence.

    Ontically, though, I'm pretty sure agency is a dead horse unless we find something wrong with modern science. You can stretch things a bit (ala Dennett, again) by tying agency into the quantum realm, but you really just push the debate back a bit; is random, yet probabilistic, much better than classically deterministic? Neither leave room for an actual "you" driving you, barring theology and a Cartesian bag of worms. If humans are purely matter, and that matter follows the same laws as all other matter then agency is impossible. If we have something immune from the normal laws of physics, then how are we to ever prove this fact, and further how does this "spiritual matter" (or whatever) influence "actual matter"?

AND previously, don't forget.

Windows XP was awesome because it was better than pretty much everything before it (from MS, at least). XP, better than ME or 98 or 95, or 3.11.

Except that mobile gaming is a completely different beast from living room or PC gaming. Mobile gaming is about quick bites, simple controls, and shallow gameplay (this isn't a bad thing, per se). Mobile gaming is casual, by default. Its hard to get into an epic RPG while on the bus, or in the dentist's office. If I'm going to play something like Skyrim, I'm going to do it in a comfy chair, on a good screen, with mature controls.

Tethering a controller to your phone or tab is counterproductive, since you "un-mobiled" mobile gaming, by forcing someone to carry around a controller as well as their device.

Mobile isn't replacing anything, I wish that fallacy would die. Mobile is supplementing a certain part of traditional markets, but it isn't replacing the core of those markets. Looking at console and traditional game sales back this up, they aren't slowing down in relation to rise in mobile device sales. Nor will they, since they fill a very different niche than traditional consoles and PCs for gaming.

Same with the stupid trope that mobile will magically kill traditional PCs... This is said by people who never used their PC for anything more serious than email and light web browsing. There is very little in my daily computer tasks that can be moved to mobile, outside of light email and web duties. Sure, this is a gap MS is targeting (badly) with the Surface Pro, but suddenly we're not talking mobile anymore, but a traditional laptop with a floppy keyboard and optional touch controls. And still it isn't going to be as good as my large screen for most tasks.

I'm now picturing a family of four huddled in their backyard streaming watching movies on a 10" tablet. I feel kind of bad for them, since they could be inside, sitting in their living room watching it on an increasingly affordable giant HDTV.

That worked well for Abu Ghriab. The peons got the shaft, while everyone who was responsible and actually matters got off scot-free.

Thats pretty much how everything works, the people on the bottom take full responsibility, and basically shield everyone else with real power.

The Nuremberg defense is bull. If you're order to do something unconscionable/illegal, then both YOU and your superior who gave the order should be held equally responsible. This should follow all the way up, until we realize that this, being a democracy, is our fault as well. We voted for them, we condone their actions by not removing them, so we, the people, are fully guilty of all actions committed by our government.

Only nearly double, you mean.

The online issue isn't only a problem for Android... Apple really has the same issue, since pretty much every service is increasingly "in the cloud" for them as well.

That sort of is the point of mobile devices though... what good is a calendar that only resides on your tablet? The goal is to have it completely sync with everything, from your desktop PC to online services. I personally like the fact that everything is synced. On my N7, pretty much everything is automatically synced, from appointments, to bookmarks and contacts. I like this, since it makes management much easier than it used to be with my giant laptop.

I never said that tablets will kill PCs (they won't, but they will make a decent impact someday). OP said that they find tablets useless, and that was the point I was addressing. A ton of people find them convenient, and more are doing so every day. As I stated, I hated the idea, until I got a good one (I had, and hated, a 10" ASUS Transformer).

The fallacy at work here is that tablets and PCs are somehow competing, or mutually exclusive. I still use my PC, a lot. For the foreseeable future I'm not scrapping my PC, since I need it for work (content production, if you will), gaming, and more serious tasks. On the other hand my Nexus 7 has trimmed a couple hours of PC time from my day as well, since I can leisurely check my email, run some searches, keep some notes, check the news, and watch videos without being tied down by my computer, or by a beastly laptop. There is room for both, and will be for a long time.

As someone said here... PCs = content creation. Tablets = content consumption. If you look at tablets as a PC replacement, your looking at it wrong.

Either that or someone channel-flipped an IR picture, which is what it looks like. Either from a camera with a more permissive filter, without a filter (doubtful, since you'd also be exposing near UV as well as near IR), or from a standard camera with an IR filter screwed on. It could be any of these, since pretty much all IR shots need a ton of processing.

I keep meaning to get the filter on my old Kx modified, but I don't really trust any of the people doing it. I do shoot, sometimes, with screw-on filters, (both 720nm, and 760nm), but they are an absolute pain in the ass. The exposure times, even in full sun, are so long as to introduce a ton of noise. Focusing is all manual, since most AF sensors will misjudge, and your focusing in a near black view finder. Its a bit better on my m4/3 system, since the EVF is boosted a bit, but most m4/3 lenses have IR hotspots.

Further, and amusingly enough, most lens hoods are IR reflective. After my first long outing with my IR setup I discovered that every picture I took had green or blue ghosting from IR reflection, even from my matte hoods.

Poking at the picture further, I think you're right though; unless it was a very, very, still day, or very, very, bright out. There isn't any blur, AFAICT, from long exposure times.

It will come... perhaps not in the next couple years, but within a decade they will be cheap.

I agree, at the current price point it can make sense for some people, but I'm not one of them. While having a handheld x86 computer would be nice to have right now, most of the features it would add over my N7 are convenience features, not must-haves. If I was on the road more there would be a much stronger case for spending 700-800 for one.

For short missives; yes. For long correspondence; no. I mostly use it to sort my mail, flagging things for immediate actions, checking alerts, deleting junk, and such. Later, when time permits, I do the replying that needs more than a sentence or two on my desktop. This works fine, since my morning coffee time isn't for actual work. But it is nice to get the sorting out of the way before actually sitting down and being productive.

Pretty much. I don't have a problem with this, though. I don't expect to be productive on my tablet(s). When people complain about this, I always wonder why they don't complain about not being able to author books on their Kindle, or produce video on their TV.

The Windows tablet, or a tablet capable of running regular programs, would be nice, since I could get a bit more serious about things. Being able to fire up Photoshop, or Lightroom, or a full office suite on the go would be nice... Not as nice as a heavier laptop, or on my desktop, but it wouldn't be a feature I'd complain about.

My one concern, though, is having another throw-away computer. In 4 years the Windows tablet will be useless, and then what? Go buy another one, and trash it? Sell it on Craigslist for $25?

You might be the only one, these days. In the beginning of the tablet thing, I would have agreed with you... but now my Nexus 7 gets almost as much time as my beastly desktop. My desktop reigns supreme for actual work and gaming (Android/iOS games suck, as a rule), while my Nexus 7 is for sitting on the patio with a cup of coffee while checking my email/news. The Nexus also spends a fair amount of time in the kitchen for recipes, in the living room for quick Googling, etc... I'm not going to use it for editing photos, transcoding video, coding, or typing anything about 200 characters, though.

Now if my tablet could run full-blown Windows, at a good speed (better than a shitty unpowered Windows Starter-only netbook) it would be a very nice thing. Then, for instance, I could have done some basic Lightroom work on my recent trip (the screen would still suck compared to my large wide-gamut IPS panel). My girlfriends Netbook can barely run Picasa, so its flat out. My old 14" laptop could do it, but it is another fairly heavy thing to carry around... A 10" Windows tablet would be perfect.

Hell having a tablet/phone with an OS that doesn't feel like a damn toy would be nice... I'm not just talking about Windows, having full blown whatever distro you want would be awesome. Especially if they were cheaper than Windows 8. And Ubuntu x86 tablet would be perfect. Hell, better, since it could be tailored to hardware (Like iOS or tablet Windows), avoiding Linux driver hell.

But then again, I'd own the Windows 8 tablet (not RT) right now, but for the fact that it is horribly expensive. $1000 for a convenience item is stretching it, especially when it is hardly as convenient as anything else on the market... It weighs two pounds, and has some unimpressive battery life. Fix that, drop the price by half, and then we'll talk.

No, it is corporatism still. Who benefits? Private insurance companies. Well, and maybe the very bottom 5% of the population... If it was socialism (like single payer) everyone would benefit, except those who matter least (corporations).

Lose your job, and see how well you do. Especially if you have kids, disabilities, or health problems.

Now come back and tell me how "socialist" we are.

It could be genuine. I had a friend, with a masters in PoliSci, who adhered to this position, as did her professors (at Georgetown). I also had a couple of friends who went through the Iraq wringer (Army) who left the service with this point of view. It must be somewhat common, since we do manage to start unprovoked wars all over the place without any political fallout to those who started them...

Trolling or genuine, who knows?

Seriously though, if we take your argument at face value, we're forced to ask; who gets to police us? Also, who made our judgements the so-called correct ones? And how can we actually claim authority over international morality when we're pretty much assholes, and do pretty much everything we condemn in others?

Why would it have to be under $150? If we're talking industrial CAD applications, money isn't that much of an object as long as it is more effective/efficient. We're not talking hobby work, or making video game models here, we're talking rocket engines. If you can afford to manufacture a working rocket, and launch it, I doubt you care if you break $150 for an input device.

I can do most of my stuff with a $200 point and shoot camera, yet I have a fairly pricey kit... Why? Versitility and increased effectiveness. I don't own the most expensive (or even close to it), because there is a point, for what I need to do, where diminishing returns set in. If I really needed it, and made enough to warrant it, I'd cough up more.