I've lurked at /. without posting for ages, mostly because I just don't have the time to interact like I used to.

But I've been clicking through the old RSS feed more and more lately, and when I saw the PAX Plague thread today, I came over to comment, since I'm kind of affected by the whole damn thing. I thought I'd take a look around since I haven't been here in awhile, and I saw that there are freaking ACHIEVEMENTS associated with our accounts. It's silly, and I'm sure it's been here forever, but I thought it was awesome and I was delighted when I read it.

I didn't realize how much I missed Slashdot until I spent some time here today, and I bet that anyone who joined in the last 2 years doesn't even give a shit about my stupid comments or anything, but it felt good to come back here, and feel safely among my people again.

This feels like a mega-spam entry, and I'm very self conscious about posting it, but I'm excited about this and I wanted to share . . .

I just published my third book, The Happiest Days of Our Lives. I mention it here because it's all about growing up in the 70s, and coming of age in the 80s as part of the D&D/BBS/video game/Star Wars figures generation, and I think a lot of Slashdot readers will relate to the stories in it.

I published a few of the stories on my blog, including Blue Light Special. It's about the greatest challenge a ten year-old could face in 1982: save his allowance, or buy Star Wars figures?

After our corduroy pants and collared shirts and Trapper Keepers and economy packs of pencils and wide-ruled paper were piled up in our cart, our mom took our three year-old sister with her to the make-up department to get shampoo and whatever moms buy in the make-up department, and my brother and I were allowed to go to the toy department.

"Can I spend my allowance?" I said.

"If that's what you want to do," my mom said, another entry in a long string of unsuccessful passive/aggressive attempts to encourage me to save my money for . . . things you save money for, I guess. It was a concept that was entirely alien to me at nine years old.

"Keep an eye on Jeremy," she said.

"Okay," I said. As long as Jeremy stood right at my side and didn't bother me while I shopped, and as long as he didn't want to look at anything of his own, it wouldn't be a problem.

I held my brother's hand as we tried to walk, but ended up running, across the store, past a flashing blue light special, to the toy department. Once there, we wove our way past the bicycles and board games until we got to the best aisle in the world: the one with the Star Wars figures.

I'm really proud of this book, and the initial feedback on it has been overwhelmingly positive. I've been reluctant to mention it here, because of the spam issue, but I honestly do think my stories will appeal to Slashdotters.

After the disaster with O'Reilly on Just A Geek, I've decided to try this one entirely on my own, so I'm responsible for the publicity, the marketing, the shipping, and . . . well, everything. If this one fails, it will be because of me, not because a marketing department insisted on marketing it as something it's not.

Of course, I hope I can claim the same responsibility if (when?) it finds its audience . . . which would be awesome.

Simple tasks like switching between Firefox and Thunderbird are driving the load on my machine up over 4, and if I'm trying to run Amarok at the same time, it drives it up to 8. In fact, my machine frequently climbs up into the 7-9 range, bringing my apps to a crawl and frustrating the hell out of me.

So I've decided it's time to buy a new computer. I'm going to replace my aging Sony Vaio desktop machine (which runs Linux) with something newer that has more RAM, a faster processor, and a bigger hard drive.

The thing is, I'm not entirely sure where to start looking. A quick walk through Circuit City a month or so ago lead me to believe I can get a rather "big" computer for as low as five hundred bucks, which further leads me to believe that if I were to buy something online, I can get a huge pile of RAM, a fast processor, and a big honkin' hard drive for even less.

I run Kubuntu, and use KDE as my desktop (though I occasionally switch to Gnome when I get bored) and I mostly use Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org, Amarok, and run PokerStars in wine. I'm looking for something that can do all of that without slowing my machine to a crawl.

Anyone have any suggestions on where to start looking?

Edit: I don't think I have the patience to build my own machine out of individual parts. I also don't have any real loyalty to any particular company or architecture. New Egg has lots of machines with AMD processors, and though I've always had Intel processors because more things seemed to run on x86, that's not as much of an issue as it once was, right?

The Akron Beacon Journal is reporting that the trial of the three election workers accused of rigging the 2004 presidential election recount in Cuyahoga County is finally underway. As you may recall, this was the case where poll workers "randomly" selected the precincts to recount by first eliminating from consideration precincts where the number of ballots handed out on Election Day failed to match the number of ballots cast and, then opening the ballot boxes in private and pre-counting until they found cases which would match up.

What is interesting here is that they have already admitted doing this and that it was clearly counter to the letter and the spirit of the law, but still insist it wasn't really wrong, presumably since they only did it to avoid having to go to the bother of a full recount as required by law.

So, coming down to the wire, we see that control of the US Senate is pretty much a toss up with a half dozen or so races potentially deciding if control lands in the hands of the Republicans, the Democrats, or some 3rd Party. According to a story in the Washington Post one of those races may come down to the choice of font used on the electronic voting machines in several counties.

Why? Because "although the larger type is easier to read, it also unintentionally shortens the longer names on the summary page of the ballot" -- shortening in the case of the Senate candidate meaning it leaves off his last name. This means he will be listed as "James H. 'Jim'..." on an ballot that also includes a "James T. 'Jim'..." running against a "James P. 'Jim'..." which is not expected to cause undue confusion.

Officials claim that it is simply a computer 'glitch' and should almost certainly be fixed by the 2007 general election.

OK, I could use some opinions / advice here.

I honestly can't tell if I've fallen for an elaborate troll or just run across someone who is English impaired.

The top of the thread in question starts out reasonably enough, but before too long it gets very odd. Its almost like I'm arguing with a really sophisticated chatbot or something. Or like that Monty Python argument sketch. Another thought that crossed my mind is that he may be trying to do a Colbert, and playing the part of an overly enthusiastic partisan for humorous effect.

So what do you think? Am I wasting my time on a really clever troll, or dealing with someone who is language impaired, or (I suppose it's possible) someone whose subtle wit is far beyond my ability to comprehend?

Thoughts?

--MarkusQ

I am absolutely stunned that Slashdot's editors would give credibility to a completely false story, pushed by a paid industry PR professional. As Rugrat said,

The "article" is not an article, but a press release written by an employee of a public affairs company.

"Tom Harris is mechanical engineer and Ottawa Director of High Park Group, a public affairs and public policy company."

For a website that spends so much time and energy combating FUD from Microsoft, and the MPAA and RIAA, it is baffling that FUD that was paid for and is pushed by the oil industry would make the front page here.

Come on, Slashdot. You can do better.

For the last year or so, I've been happily using Debian, with a mixture of sources so I was stable, but current, just like nearly everyone who uses Debian.

Then I tried to upgrade or something insane like that, using aptitude, and the whole thing went tits up on me. No amount of cussing, kicking things, or actual tinkering with the software could save my machine.

I thought about asking for some advice in the Debian forums, or on one of the lists, until I ran out of fingers in my entire family tree to count the times someone said some variant of, "Shut up, noob! Your stoopid and not leet leik I am! Go back to Winblows! Ha! HA! HA!!!1"

Yeah. Guess I'm not venturing into those waters, so I figured I'd just have to grab my network install CD and start over (luckily, I set up /home on its own partition a long time ago, so if I fuck something up really bad, I don't lose all my porn very important data.

The day I planned to reinstall Debian, I read that Dapper Drake had been released, and everyone loved it so much, they totally wanted to marry it. A friend of mine, who is wise in the ways of science and the air speed velocity of unladen swallows has also been singing the praises of Ubuntu for a long, long time, so I grabbed a Live CD to see what all the fuss was about.

Holy shit. What an awesome bit of work it is! It's the first Linux distro to find every single bit of hardware on my old Sony Vaio desktop machine, including all the USB ports. It looked great, too, and was the most "Mac-like" Linux I've ever used.

I realize that a lot of you are mocking me right now, but listen for a second: I'm not interested in hacking on my kernel to make sure something is detected during boot, or modifying all sorts of settings in a text editor just so I can make the damn thing find my camera . . . and don't get me started about CUPS. I love technology, and I love and fully believe in "free" as in speech, and I'm grateful for free as in beer. But also really into "works," as in just does. And on my machine here, Dapper Drake just works, and it's awesome. This is the Linux distro that I can take to my parents, and to my friends who are drowning in a sea of FUD, and convince them that they don't really have to be part of the Borg if they don't want to.

And ultimately, I believe that has to be our goal if we're going to convince people to give Linux a real, serious try as an alternative to Windows. We need to be able to tell them, with confidence, "Put this CD in your machine, and give it a try. I think you'll like it, because it just works."

Just critisize both major parties in the same post, and make a joke about blow-jobs for good measure..

--MarkusQ

(Cross-posted to WWdN)

The final table of the 2005 World Series of Poker started at 4pm yesterday afternoon, and wasn't finished until just after 7am today. I'm not sure, but I think that's a record. I'd call Pauly to be sure, but something tells me he's crashed out until at least Sunday.

Two qualifiers from PokerStars made the final table, and one guy, who qualified using free play points, made it to the final two tables, finished in 13th place, and won $400,000. Not bad for a freeroll!

Speaking of Pauly and PokerStars, we're doing a charity tournament on Sunday in memory of Pauly's friend Charlie Tuttle:

Charlie is from Clarksville, Tennessee and he's a twenty-six year old music enthusiast who loves hanging out and playing poker with his friends. Charlie was dealt a bad hand in life when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, which he has been battling this past year. A couple of weekends ago, he was hospitalized because two tumors in his chest pressed up against his lungs, causing him breathing problems. I don't have to tell you how serious his condition was.

Felicia Lee, who is fighting her own battle with cancer, knows several top professional poker players, so she got several of her friends to call Charlie: John Juanda, Marcel Luske, Max Pescatori, and Barry Greenstein to name a few. In fact, when Barry Greenstein won his bracelet in the $1,500 Pot-Limit Omaha event, he dedicated it to Charlie.

As Pauly wrote:

Situations like this one make you reassess what's really important in life. Las Vegas is a city built on greed. Poker is a game that often attracts some of the lowest forms of life. However, in the past two weeks, there has been a small group of professional poker players who have earned my respect and admiration. Amidst all the darkness and debauchery, I have caught a few glimpses of the bright side of humanity. The hearts of some of the biggest sharks in Las Vegas are filled with compassion.

Thank you, Charlie, for inspiring us all. We'll never forget you.

Charlie passed away on June 22 and his friends have organized a charity poker tournament this Sunday at PokerStars. It's going to be a lot of fun, and I hope to see lots of WWdN readers there.

Details:

SUNDAY, JULY 17th
18:00 EDT (15:00 CDT)
PokerStars
Buy-in is $20 — all of it goes to charity.
"WPBT Charlie Tournament" under Tourneys -> Private tab in the lobby

I'm sure this is just begging for vandalism (unless those douchebags have grown up and finally kissed a girl) . . . but there is an error on my Wikipedia page that needs to be corrected. I'd do it myself, but that's against Wikipedia editing policy.

I am not in Brother Bear. Willie Wheaton, Wil Wheaton, Jr., and Reginald Maudling (Mrs.) are all not me. I've tried to get this taken off imdb, but someone (well-intentioned, I'm sure) keeps putting it back, and Wikipedia editors (also well-intentioned) are putting Brother Bear back up . . . so we're in an infinite improbability loop, and my towel is getting dirty.

Would someone please correct that, and cite this journal entry so it doesn't get corrected back?

In a way, this reminds me of the Iraq prisoner abuse story, in that it seems to be getting coverage outside the US (especially the line " Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. " Which, coming in 2002, from a high level (albeit foreign) source, would be a rather big story, I would think.

Update: Well, a bit of noticeis being taken now.

From The London Times:

DAVID MANNING
From: Matthew Rycroft
Date: 23 July 2002
S 195 /02

cc: Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney-General, Sir Richard Wilson, John Scarlett, Francis Richards, CDS, C, Jonathan Powell, Sally Morgan, Alastair Campbell

IRAQ: PRIME MINISTER'S MEETING, 23 JULY

Copy addressees and you met the Prime Minister on 23 July to discuss Iraq.

This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents.

John Scarlett summarised the intelligence and latest JIC assessment. Saddam's regime was tough and based on extreme fear. The only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action. Saddam was worried and expected an attack, probably by air and land, but he was not convinced that it would be immediate or overwhelming. His regime expected their neighbours to line up with the US. Saddam knew that regular army morale was poor. Real support for Saddam among the public was probably narrowly based.

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

CDS said that military planners would brief CENTCOM on 1-2 August, Rumsfeld on 3 August and Bush on 4 August.

The two broad US options were:

(a) Generated Start. A slow build-up of 250,000 US troops, a short (72 hour) air campaign, then a move up to Baghdad from the south. Lead time of 90 days (30 days preparation plus 60 days deployment to Kuwait).

(b) Running Start. Use forces already in theatre (3 x 6,000), continuous air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus belli. Total lead time of 60 days with the air campaign beginning even earlier. A hazardous option.

The US saw the UK (and Kuwait) as essential, with basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus critical for either option. Turkey and other Gulf states were also important, but less vital. The three main options for UK involvement were:

(i) Basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus, plus three SF squadrons.

(ii) As above, with maritime and air assets in addition.

(iii) As above, plus a land contribution of up to 40,000, perhaps with a discrete role in Northern Iraq entering from Turkey, tying down two Iraqi divisions.

The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.

The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.

The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. The situation might of course change.

The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors. Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD. There were different strategies for dealing with Libya and Iran. If the political context were right, people would support regime change. The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work.

On the first, CDS said that we did not know yet if the US battleplan was workable. The military were continuing to ask lots of questions.

For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary.

The Foreign Secretary thought the US would not go ahead with a military plan unless convinced that it was a winning strategy. On this, US and UK interests converged. But on the political strategy, there could be US/UK differences. Despite US resistance, we should explore discreetly the ultimatum. Saddam would continue to play hard-ball with the UN.

John Scarlett assessed that Saddam would allow the inspectors back in only when he thought the threat of military action was real.

The Defence Secretary said that if the Prime Minister wanted UK military involvement, he would need to decide this early. He cautioned that many in the US did not think it worth going down the ultimatum route. It would be important for the Prime Minister to set out the political context to Bush.

Conclusions:

(a) We should work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action. But we needed a fuller picture of US planning before we could take any firm decisions. CDS should tell the US military that we were considering a range of options.

(b) The Prime Minister would revert on the question of whether funds could be spent in preparation for this operation.

(c) CDS would send the Prime Minister full details of the proposed military campaign and possible UK contributions by the end of the week.

(d) The Foreign Secretary would send the Prime Minister the background on the UN inspectors, and discreetly work up the ultimatum to Saddam.

He would also send the Prime Minister advice on the positions of countries in the region especially Turkey, and of the key EU member states.

(e) John Scarlett would send the Prime Minister a full intelligence update.

(f) We must not ignore the legal issues: the Attorney-General would consider legal advice with FCO/MOD legal advisers.

(I have written separately to commission this follow-up work.)

MATTHEW RYCROFT

My last two funny posts (here and here) got nothing but serious responses..and one even got modded "Informative."

It

was

a

joke...

Arrrrrrrrrrgghhhhh!

Pauli's exclusion. Naievely put, two things cannot share the same state. Simple.

Let's tweak it a little, and see what happens in a given case. And yes, I do have an agenda with this. In no way do I suggest that any of this is correct, or relevent. It *will* be consistent relative to itself, however.

We're going to change Pauli to include the object in question - no two states the same, which includes the object itself. Once it is in a given state, it *must* change.

Now, let's make a 5-space. It'll be our typical XYZ, plus a B that we don't perceive (which is just a plain-old axis, just like X and Y and Z, and it is orthogonal to them), and a time (which is also just a plain old axis, orthogonal to the rest).

Let's stuff a singularity S at our origin. Our universe is born, we now have an object, and it has "state" as defined by our space. There's a problem - S has state, and our modified Pauli says it has to change. So, it moves. How far? How fast? Well, far and fast enough that it'll resolve the exclusion - per "tick" of the clock, it'll move its own radius from where it was. Also note it cannot go backwards - that "state" is already occupied.

Note that it doesn't matter what direction it goes - any will do. Just for yucks, let's say it initially started moving along B. We can easily have picked X or Y, but let's pick B.

Within the XYZ subspace, S isn't moving. Neat, huh? That's why we picked B.

So, let's give our little friend a kick in the pants. We induce a small velocity along X.

Question - it's been trucking along B in order to resolve the exclusion, at the rate of one radius per tick. Now that there's an X componant to it's velocity, does it need to travel along "B" a full radius?

Nope, it doesn't. "Speed" along B will decrease. In fact, if we "kick" up the speed along X to the point where S is now moving "one radius per tick", any speed along B will go to zero, won't it? After all, the displacement "per tick" along X is now adequate to fully resolve our exclusion.

So, we've created an interesting game which effectively has a similar rule to one in real life - there's no such thing as a standing wave.

We can expand our game a little bit - let's get rid of B.

Instead, let's say S initially "decided" to start travelling along T. How far, how fast? Again, one radius. (Yeah, I know there's a contradiction floating around here in regards to the definition of Time. If we're allowed to neglect friction, we can neglect this too. We're demonstrating a concept.)

So, S is cruising along T... and again, within our XYZ subspace, you and I would not perceive it as moving. We start our displacement along X - and S slows down along the T axis. How much? Well, Pythagoras solved that one - a^2 + b^2 = c^2. Keep pushing S faster along X, and displacement along T slows down even further. Finally reach the speed along X that resolves the exclusion? Displacement along T stops dead in its tracks. S is still moving, though, you'd better believe it.

Let's modify our game once again. By virtue of the exclusion, we've effectively asserted that S must move one radius per tick. The result, when XYZT is viewed as "flat" and "static" (unchanging) is that S is a long smear. There is no "time" in this view; all of the positions of S are kinda glued together to form a solid extrusion.

We're going to add a new assertion - when our space is viewed this way, S must be *continuous*. No gaps, breaks, cuts, jumps. Switching back to our "more normal" 3-space + time, this means that S *must* move one radius per tick, never slower, and *never faster*.

Moving faster, after all, would cause a break in the continuity we just defined.

So, let's replay our game one more time. Add speed along X, and T slows down etc. Keep going faster along X until displacement along T stops. Try to go even faster along X - and you can't, you'd "break" the smear (extrusion).

Do NOT try to apply this game to real life; the first thing you'll notice is that, if you *reduce* the speed along X, the exclusion must be resolved by a displacement along another axis - and no duh, that's the whole point of the game. But you'll notice that there is no rule for *which* axis that'll get picked - B, Y and Z are all just as likely. We don't observe that in real life, though - when I hit the brakes on my car, it doesn't usually start sliding sideways or flying. Usually.

Still, it's interesting to see the effect.

If you're *really* bored, (and I mean **really**), follow up on the a^2 + b^2 = c^2 thing. It'd be merely an exercise, but attempting to relate it to inertia / mass increases at relativistic speeds might be fun (even if futile).

Regarding space being a 3D thing or not - it's all about perception, and perception is why it's such a challenge.

Consider something, a game merely provided as a thought experiment.

Consider a creature who lives in a 2D world... that is, his perception is limited to exactly one single plane that is infinitely thin. Grab a stiff sheet of paper, neglect friction, and pretend it has no thickness. We're going to try to see what our creature sees, the same way he sees it, and eventually see how it scales as "dimensional perception" increases.

Take a round pen, and "intersect" the middle of it with our plane. ----|-----
Our creature will perceive the pen as a circular wall... remember, he has no concept of "up" and "down". Easy.

Spin the pen in various directions, and note what happens - and remember, we're only interested in that infinitely thin section that our creature can perceive. You can produce spin 0 (if the pen is a cyllander), spin 1, spin 1/2, spin 2... you can create all types of "spin" based on the direction you rotate it. Interesting. Note that this is not necessarily the same "spin" that the quark-heads talk about, but it demonstrates a fair part of the concept. It certainly demonstrates the concept of things "coming into view", and will probably make our poor creature pull his hair out. It's especially interesting because our creature sees the pen changing - shape, size, you name it - but you and I know that the damned pen isn't changing one bit.

Now for a really neat demo - tilt the pen, and hold it still. ------/-----
Without rotating the pen, move it straight up or down. What's our creature going to perceive? Yep... he'll see the "pen" (the big circular wall, which is now an oval due to the tilt) moving across his plane. That's neat, and a good concept demonstrator - but it isn't the really cool part. The really cool part is that he'll see the pen moving along the X-Y plane- despite the reality that it's really moving along the (unperceived) Z axis. You can see that the pen has no horizontal motion whatsoever - yet, horizontal motion is exactly (and only) what he perceives. Take a second to reenforce why he perceives it that way, and make the reasons work. Remember, we don't care what his perception is, there is no horizontal motion in reality. The motion is all in the unperceived vertical. Period. The only thing changing (not moving, but changing) is the point of intersection with his ability to perceive, the cross-section within his perception.

Finally, grab a more complex object. Something fun - a coffee mug perhaps, or a fork, or even a pair of scissors. I'll use scissors, because I enjoy cutting things... and when we're done, we can use them to wreck havoc on our creature's universe.

Open the scissors up a little, and hold them below the sheet of paper. What's our creature going to perceive? Nothing.

Now, lift the scissors and stick the points into our creature's plane of perception.
-\/-----
OO
Our creature will perceive the scissors as intially one, then two completely separate objects as the points come into view, right? And what else... they will appear to spontaneously exist. Of course, you know that the scissors have always been there, just not within the creature's view.

Things get interesting, though - if our creature decides to kick one of those objects, he'll notice that the other object moves a little. It'll make no sense to him - the two objects have nothing to do with each other, yet they almost seem to be... I dunno... entangled somehow. (And no, I'm not suggesting that this is how entanglement or pair production works, this is just a method of showing how a limited perception can create the illusion of such a thing.)

Move the scissors up, and notice that our creature would see the two objects moving toward each other, and also get bigger (as each blade gets thicker). Keep moving up, and our creature will be astonished when they actually merge (at the hinge-point). Keep moving up more, and more, and the creature will become baffled as the merged object suddenly breaks back into two separate pieces, moving away from each other. Move it up some more, to the handles and beyond, and our creature will see the two chunks break into four (when the handles are intersecting) then back to two (and the end of the handles), then suddenly shrink away to nothing!

Wash, rinse and repeat the game with something incredibly complex, like a lawnmower. Our poor creature is going to need a good stiff drink after trying to explain this one to his friends, I tell ya...

The one very cool thing about this entire game (and it is merely a game, it is not reality by any stretch) is that we've beaten the 2D perception of a 3D object to death, so we can see how it scales up. What we can do now is repeat the game, using a 4D object - namely, let's introduce what we perceive to be time into our game. Do this any way you like - open and close the scissors, spin them as you move them up and down, let them rust, whatever. You will rapidly discover that our (now hopelessly confused) creature cannot differentiate the 3D game from 4... he won't be able to tell how many dimensions we're throwing at him. He'll perceive them all as one single "dimension" that he calls "time". Think about when we played the game the first time - what we call Z in our perception, would be "time" in his, right? We then replay the game with both our Z and our time, it's still just "time" in his. He cannot tell if there is only one unperceived dimension, or one hundred... these extra vectors are all summed together into one, for him.

Now, stick your head out the nearest window, and watch a car drive by. You should be able to see it in a whole new way - as if you were some poor (hopefully drunk, by now) creature, perceiving a shifting 3D cross-section of a god-knows-how-many dimensional *static* object. There's still motion, for sure - but it isn't necessarily the object that's "moving", is it :) The thing that's actually moving just might be the point of intersection between our... uh, perspective-space and the object, and the "object's motion" is merely a side-effect of us only seeing a limited cross-section of a larger-dimensional solid.

I'm not suggesting that this is the case, but suddenly a photon spontaneously changing into an electron/selectron pair that move away from each other suddenly takes on a whole new... view. Or, the right-hand-rule - an electron following a helical path in an E-field? What if we took our pen, and made it wobble as it moved along? Fun games, regardless of how wrong they are.

It's all about perception, or lack thereof.