I would expect this kind of shoddy spelling from The Sun, but not Engadget.

My current timepiece is nonexistant

My current timepiece is nonexistent.

I kinda made a mash of it. You know how people say that there are 3 dimensions of space and 1 dimension of time? (Well physics theories may say otherwise, but at least the world that we see around us has 3 dimensions of space and 1 dimension of time.) To be more accurate, what they really mean is 3 linearly independent dimensions of space and one independent dimension of time. All of these dimensions are orthogonal, meaning that you can move in one dimension and not have any affect on your position in another dimension. That 's what makes them the basic set of dimensions we understand.

You can draw an infinite number of vectors in 3d space willy nilly if you want. Just point in any direction and that is a dimension of space, but you can only make 3 linearly independent dimensions of space. 4 dimensions of space wouldn't be hard to define if they were inter-dependent. You can actually get 6 basic dimensions if you include pitch yaw and roll. And if you aren't talking about 3d space or time at all, (and it would be logical to assume that for extra inputs on a mouse) then a linearly independent dimension can just be any arbitrary input that you give it. A standard mouse or trackball has two dimensions of input. If you have somehow have two mouses hooked up to your computer, then you have 4 dimensions of input. A scroll wheel adds another dimension of input. Toss another scroll wheel in there and you have another dimension to play with.

It is entirely possible to have four linear dimensions of input on a mouse. Nowhere does it state that these dimensions are orthogonal, linearly independent directions in space, or that one of them goes into the future.

don't bother coming back

so does paintball

It's funny that we are now catching up to the ideas of a man that lived almost 100 years ago.

Anybody who has to make engineering drawings or any type of technical drawing would probably be writing in all caps.

For those who are worried about being spied on by the government, let's do some math.

Lets say hypothetically that the NSA monitors the actions of every single American. This program would cost billions and billions in equipment and manpower. But anyways, lets also say that there are 5000 terrorists in the USA, that the NSA would like to find. Now with all their fancy equipment and monitoring devices, they must be pretty good at telling who's a terrorist and who's not, right? So maybe they have a 99.9% accuracy rating for differentiating Jihad Jafir from regular Joe. Well there are about 300 million people in the United States. That means 300 000 false positives and 4995 real terrorists. So for every terrorist they arrest, they'd be arresting 60 regular citizens. So either they arrest all 304 995 together and people get really mad or they let the terrorists get away.

My point is that mass surveilance is a statistically useless way of finding a small number of people inside a large population.