Then-PFC, now-SGT Bergdahl may in fact have deserted his post. There are certainly credible accusations to that effect, and if so, then he should be tried and convicted for the crime. But it's a whole lot easier to investigate those charges with him here, and we don't let the Taliban mete out justice for us.

The military idea of "taking care of your own" has a lot of different aspects. Holding the line and leaving no one behind are obvious; less obvious, perhaps, is that our people are ours. Loon or no, deserter or no, even traitor or no, whatever else Bowe Bergdahl may be he is someone who raised his right hand and took the oath, and that means that whatever reward or punishment he receives is ours and ours alone to give.

It astonishes me sometimes, having at this point been out of the service several more years than I was in it, how strong and pure those ideas still are in my head: how much "us" the profession of arms still is to me, and I suppose always will be. I'm a civilian and happy to be one now, but both the infantryman and the medic are still very close to the surface. The latter is concerned mainly with bringing back the wounded--and the former is ready, willing, and perhaps even eager to kill anyone who stands in the way of that mission.

Whatever else we did, whatever else we may do, we had to bring him home.

[cranky rant warning]

"Lies, damned lies, and statistics." It's coming up again with depressing frequency, being used as an argument instead of a snide observation.

Okay, here's the thing. Can you lie with statistics? Sure. Statistics is a branch of mathematics*, and math is a language; you can lie in that language as easily as in any other. Does this mean all statistics are lies? No more than all statements in any language are lies--and if you believe that, you've gone so far down the rabbit hole of anti-intellectual mysticism that you'll probably never find your way out.

Meanwhile, in the real world, and in the ever-expanding torrent of data we have about that world, statistics as a discipline is pretty much the only hope we have of understanding anything. The low-hanging fruit has been picked. The equations we learn in Physics 101 are as valid as they ever were, but they're not nearly enough. No matter how certain you think you are, no matter how many times you repeat your experiment and get the same result, if you don't do the statistical tests you don't actually know whatever it is you think you know. And if you do the tests--well, you may still be wrong, but you can at least quantify your uncertainty. And you have to do that, because you can always be wrong.

None of this is meant to defend the misuse of statistics, any more than as a writer I'd defend the misuse of natural language. People can and do wilfully misinterpret statistics, or cherry-pick them, or just outright make them up, and those are bad things. Guess what? They do that with every other kind of statement too. At least half of statisticians' job is fact-checking, and it's a charge we gladly accept.

So the next time you're tempted to say "lies, damned lies, and statistics," or "figures don't lie but liars figure," or "correlation does not imply causation" or any of its variants, or post the umpteen-thousandth link to "How To Lie With Statistics," and think you're being clever--please, just stop. Because one thing I am so sure of that I don't even need to put a p-value on it is that if you feel the need to resort to any of those lazy, thought-free responses, you don't know enough about the issue at hand to have an informed opinion, and the best thing you can possibly do for yourself and everyone else is to keep quiet.

*Opinions vary on this issue, but if statistics isn't exactly a branch of mathematics, we can at least say that math is the language in which it's written.

When StarCraft II came out I bought it. Unfortunately I didn't play for too long. My machine could barely run it. As I progressed through the campaign it became increasingly laggy as the scenarios became more complex. There were also some fundamental changes to gameplay that I didn't care for. I never liked the missions where I didn't build a base but instead followed a path, picking up a few units here and there. There were these along with missions that were very time oriented and you have to constantly hurry. So I stopped playing.
 
I was sitting last night, just relaxing, and thought - that Macbook pro I just got is pretty beefy. I wonder what good games are around for Mac. I was looking at some lists, realized when I saw SC2 on one that I already owned it - and installed it on my machine. I've been watching a lot of SC2 matches on youtube. I'm a HuskyStarcraft fan. That's gotten me to thinking about playing some on battlenet. I know I'll never be that good - but especially after watching his Bronze League Heroes casts, I think I could still have fun. It seems I have a better chance of getting matched up with people closer to me in ability than I did with the old original StarCraft.

Very recently my Fedora machine stopped booting to the graphic login. It would be humming along, I'd see my little "f" appear, then I'd drop back to a text list of boot up events and it would just sit there. I could hop over to another tty and log in and then startx and log into KDE.
 
I've been busy so I didn't have time to try and figure it out. Today I finally could do a little research. I found stuff like this and this. There was a lot of other stuff too - but what I couldn't find is a single explanation of just what is going on that I could understand. I hate changing stuff in my system without knowing why I'm doing it or exactly what it is I'm doing.
 
In this case a quick "mv /var/log/journal /var/log/journal.org" did resolve my issue immediately. On reboot everything performed normally. But why? And this has been going on for a long, long time. That first link is a bug report that was opened just shy of a year ago. Not sure why it just hit me within the last few weeks. I'll keep digging when I have time to see if I can ever find an explanation of just what is going on.

Wont say what site or where - but I'm working on migrating something that was hosted in one of our offices to a shared hosting environment.

They had everything you can imagine copied into the site folder so I'm working through and removing stuff I don't need to upload to the new host. I find a directory that has phpmyadmin stuff in it. On a whim I pull up the production site in my browser and head over to that folder - logs me in automatically and I can browse all tables in the db. Just told the new ops director and I think he might pop a few veins.

I am currently using a Moto G as my primary phone for a bit. I brought it with me to Moscow. As soon as I got here I started getting "Emergency Alerts" like crazy. I think I had 40 or so the first afternoon.

So I googled it and found out about a US system for this kind of thing. I also found out how to turn it off. I couldn't find any info. on an equivalent Russian system. Whatever is making it happen, I can't read them. I just see random characters on my phone. Maybe if I used Russian the characters would render properly - dunno.

Anyway it's so odd that I thought I would mention it.

This is the Voice of Freedom broadcasting from somewhere in MagyarorszÃg.

I'm exhausted - should have never gotten the CBS NCAA tourney feed working at home. Slept 2 hours this morning. Fly to Moscow Wed a.m. dark and early. Life is hectic and I just keep looking at April 6th and telling myself I just have to make it that far.

I'm being melodramatic but this next couple weeks will be rough. Last week was superb - I'll post a write up later.

Pax

I havenÂt been here for years!

Whassup?

Picked up my new 13" Retina Macbook Pro ( not the same as a plane Macbook Pro - these guys are so good at marketing.) I've been using it for two weeks. I'm learning.
 
My favorite surprise was when I opened up the terminal app and started trying out commands. Everything was working so I went to see what environment I was in and saw that it was bash. This made me very happy.
 
I think on the gui end it is o.k. I prefer but I'm getting use to the way OS X wants me to do things. I've had to learn some weird gestures to get at what I want quickly.
 
Here are some of the issues so far. Installing software sucks. It comes in different file formats and how it gets done varies wildly based on where I get it from. It's confusing as all get out. Without a package manager I guess updates will be on a per software basis and apparently uninstalling means removing the program and then hunting down any bits it leaves behind. That's pretty idiotic. I had a hard core Mac guy try to explain to me why this was better.
 
There is this gigantic track pad below my keyboard and I wouldn't care if palm detection or whatever you want to call it worked better. As I type this the window is scrolling up and down as my hands periodically bump into the track pad. So far I can't find a setting that lets me try to fix this sorry state of affairs. This is my big issue with the lack of options. If things work correctly it's fine. If they don't, you are just hosed. And it never works correctly as much as the people who make these things think it will.
 
Battery life on all Apple products I've interacted with lately is just flat out impressive. This laptop is no exception.
 
It's the most expensive laptop I've ever owned. That changes my whole approach to how I travel with it. I have to be a lot more careful. I didn't realize how much I appreciated not worrying about my $400 Acer so much. This is more on me I guess but it's still a function of the machine. I do appreciate that full disk encryption is now a part of the OS. This puts it ahead of windows and helps it catch up with Linux a bit.
 
When Mac people are explaining some amazing feature to me that I've been using in KDE for years and years I do chuckle a little inside. Virtual desktops for example.
 
Multimonitor support is weak. It doesn't work as well as it does on my Win 7 machine. I don't think I'm alone in this. When I go to conferences it's a pretty steady stream of guys coming up to present and plugging their machines into the projector. It's the Mac guys that have the most trouble.
 
Speaking of that - my life was increasingly becoming dongle/incompatible power cord free. Apple just set me back quite a few years as I am not back to carrying around a bunch of wire and related junk that all just do one thing for one machine. I am not a fan of that whole mess.
 
It's very early on. I may end up turning into a true believer. Or maybe I'll have better options by the time I'm ready for a new machine. I'd love something with this build quality that ran Fedora well.

The fact that slashboxes have stopped working and I didn't see links for writing journals in the beta has me thinking that the site will move away from the level of personalization that it had before. So I'm thinking through what I'll do as a replacement. The idea I keep coming back to is I may go ahead and use a subreddit as my new journal. It would be a place I could post - people could follow it and respond if they were interested. It's possible to set one up so that people can read and comment but they can't submit posts themselves - basically what the slashdot journal is.

That seems the easiest. I have my blog too - but I've always liked having a 'spot' that is part of something bigger where I can post like this.

n/t

Next week my wife is in Antalya for a conference. The day after she gets back I fly to Manila. I start by going backwards - which I usually try to avoid but it was impossible this time. I go to Amsterdam, then to Tapei and finally I will arrive in Manila. The upside, I guess, is that Schipol is a nice airport. Not as nice as Munich International, but nice.
 
My schedule there is 3 days of meetings, a day off and 3 more days of meetings. The day off we are touring Corregidor and I'm really looking forward to that. I've been to PI quite a few times back in the day when I was a trusty shellback and what not. I flew into Manila when I was just out of boot and on my way to my first command. Didn't really see any of the city though. We arrived late at night and they put us on a bus out to Subic. Should be nice. Nice and hot anyway. I'll be going from highs around 10 (admittedly warm for this time of year) to highs around 30. Between that and the humidity I'm gonna be looking forward to getting home as far as the weather goes. A little practice for when we are in Phoenix this summer.
 
After I get back from Manila I'm home for a few weeks and then I head back to Moscow. I come back from there to Hungary but instead of going home I'll be working at a conference in VisegrÃd. I'm giving presentations on some new mobile tools that we are rolling out this year. It's a nice place but I'll be glad when that is done and I'm back home in my own bed. My sweet, sweet American king size bed that sits up on a frame and box springs. I do love Europe so much but not the beds as often.
 
I've heard - just heard - that there is a way as an American to get a 3 year, multiple entry tourist visa for Russia. I'll be looking into that this summer. That's the only pain to going. Wizzair makes Moscow close and cheap. It's getting the visa that makes it a hassle. I get a visa like that I could just about pop over there whenever the mood hit me. When I wrap up the stuff I'm doing at the Moscow office I really want to get up to our office in St. Petersburg.
 
I finished up the Coursera Android course and I pick up my new Macbook pro when I'm in Manila. Then I'll start working on learning iOS development.
 
Oh - that brings me around to an interesting and tech related thing. I have enjoyed using Android Studio which is built on JetBrains stuff. And last year-ish (2012 maybe even?) I bought licenses for some of there stuff when they did this crazy sale. I'm looking at doing a lot more dev myself - html/js/css stuff, java, php - all kinds of junk. So I figured I'd see about just renewing the license on IntelliJ. The problem is their options just didn't work for me. $100 to renew a personal license is a little steep. I could reimburse it but then it's a commercial license and that's triple. They have a free license for FOSS projects but honestly while I slap open licenses on the stuff I do, none of it meets their criteria for community involvement. I'm not a student either. So I'll be going with other options. Maybe Eclipse

To whom it may concern:

A while back, I was invited to take a look at the Slashdot beta. I looked at it and quickly decided that it was too painful to use, and hoped (vainly, I knew) that it would die a quiet death. Today, when logging into Slashdot, I was greeted with this cheery message:

MOVIN' ON UP. You are on Slashdot Classic. We are starting to move into new digs in February by automatically redirecting greater numbers of you. The new site is a work in progress so Classic Slashdot will be available from the footer for several more months. As we migrate our audience, we want to hear from you to make sure that the redesigned page has all the features you expect. Find out more.

In other words, we have here all the signs of a corporate "beta" site that will be rolled out regardless of user reaction. Let me be quite clear: "all the features I expect" are already on Slashdot (what you're adorably calling "Classic"). It works. It's not broken. Don't try to "fix" it, because the proposed "fix" irrevocably breaks the entire Slashdot look and feel.

When the beta becomes the only option (and I know it's almost certainly "when" at this point, not "if") Slashdot will become a ghost town. You will have killed what was once one of the most lively, interesting, and important sites on the web. I've loved this site for fifteen years now, but I'm not going to make myself suffer for the zombie wreck of something that used to be great.

Sincerely,
Daniel Dvorkin
UID 106857

To whom it may concern:

A while back, I was invited to take a look at the Slashdot beta. I looked at it and quickly decided that it was too painful to use, and hoped (vainly, I knew) that it would die a quiet death. Today, when logging into Slashdot, I was greeted with this cheery message:

MOVIN' ON UP. You are on Slashdot Classic. We are starting to move into new digs in February by automatically redirecting greater numbers of you. The new site is a work in progress so Classic Slashdot will be available from the footer for several more months. As we migrate our audience, we want to hear from you to make sure that the redesigned page has all the features you expect. Find out more.

In other words, we have here all the signs of a corporate "beta" site that will be rolled out regardless of user reaction. Let me be quite clear: "all the features I expect" are already on Slashdot (what you're adorably calling "Classic"). It works. It's not broken. Don't try to "fix" it, because the proposed "fix" irrevocably breaks the entire Slashdot look and feel.

When the beta becomes the only option (and I know it's almost certainly "when" at this point, not "if") Slashdot will become a ghost town. You will have killed what was once one of the most lively, interesting, and important sites on the web. I've loved this site for fifteen years now, but I'm not going to make myself suffer for the zombie wreck of something that used to be great.

Sincerely,
Daniel Dvorkin
UID 106857

When we moved to Hungary we had to buy appliances as Europeans believe in big power. And I wouldn't want to have shipped stuff like that anyway. We bought a refrigerator from Bosch because we figured it would be high quality.
 
The compressor on it died the 28th of December. We called out a guy and he informed us that he could replace it for about $250 or we could have it done under warranty. We thanked him and called the warranty people. They came out and told us it would take a week to get the new part. That week turned into two. Finally a guy came out to install it. We were done.
 
That night it died. I think he put it in wrong but I'm not sure. Either way I had to call them back out. They new guy that came said the new compressor was "kaput" and that it would take a week to get one. That was last Tuesday. They are supposed to come put it in tomorrow. So we are coming up on real close to a month.
 
I don't think I'll be buying one of their products again after this.