[mvdgaag]

I think your thoughts of determinism all are based on the understanding of them on the 'axis' of time where causality is allways on this axis. While I think we should not treat time differently. It could be on any axis, like space or even parallel dimensions, etc.

You can imagine a deterministic universe as one of variables governed by rules. Then everything would be predetermined. If everything is predetermined you might see the universe as a large multidimentional picture (or a set of variables). When everything is governed by rules there is some ordering in this picture, because it looks like it does because of these rules. If you take out these rules, the picture could still be fixed, couldn't it?

When you mentally try not to separate these rules from the other variables then we could still have a fixed picture in which the rules (that we think govern the picture) are only a part of this picture. This is how I like to think off determinism; no confusing poolball causality analogies, just that everything is fixed.

About the combination of randomness and determinism... If everything would be purely random, but there are limited options, things would act deterministic on the surface, because they are the result of many random events that converge towards the mean. This mean looks like a deterministic truth, but actually is just a statisical value.

But lets assume there really is a combination of determinism and randomness. I think dr dotr's logic still stands. if we take his point 3 (determinism) from the mix, it's not a free action and if we take point 4 (randomness) out, it's not a free action.
If we take 25% determinism and 75% point randomness, it's 25% not free and 75% not free, which is 100% not free. So no free will...