It’s my wife’s birthday, today. Unlike last year, Meagan and I are able to spend our birthdays together this year, so at the very least, I’m enjoying her birthday more.

Happy birthday, Meagan!

Weapons sell for just £50 as suspects and victims grow ever younger — Times Online

Despite a ban on handguns introduced in 1997 after 16 children and their teacher were shot dead in the Dunblane massacre the previous year, their use in crimes has almost doubled to reach 4,671 in 2005-06. Official figures show that although Britain has some of the toughest anti-gun laws in the world, firearm use in crime has risen steadily.

I’m just shocked — shocked — that people who would violate a law prohibiting murder would also violate a law prohibiting guns. It’s just insanity to believe that a human being would have the capacity to murder another human being and also have the capacity to violate a gun law!

For what it’s worth, I respectfully urge any criminal considering entering my house without my consent to decide against that idea.

Gambling Dispute With a Tiny Country Puts U.S. in a Bind — NY Times

In 2003, Antigua filed a complaint with the WTO, claiming that the U.S. ban on online gambling violates its rights as a member of the WTO. Recently, the WTO has ruled in Antigua’s favor, a ruling with which I can’t say I’m altogether unhappy.

Complying with the W.T.O. ruling, Professor Jackson said, would require Congress and the Bush administration either to reverse course and permit Americans to place bets online legally with offshore casinos or, equally unlikely, impose an across-the-board ban on all forms of Internet gambling — including the online purchase of lottery tickets, participation in Web-based pro sports fantasy leagues and off-track wagering on horse racing.

But not complying with the decision presents big problems of its own for Washington. That’s because Mr. Mendel, who is claiming $3.4 billion in damages on behalf of Antigua, has asked the trade organization to grant a rare form of compensation if the American government refuses to accept the ruling: permission for Antiguans to violate intellectual property laws by allowing them to distribute copies of American music, movie and software products, among others.

Outside the Beltway makes some excellent points:

Let’s consider the possible outcomes of this case.

1. The U. S. could allow Americans to place bets legally with offshore casinos online.
2. The U. S. could ban all forms of Internet gambling.
3. The U. S. could refuse to comply and the WTO could impose some other penalty.
4. The U. S. could refuse to comply and the WTO could impose the penalty that’s been requested.

[…]

But it’s the final alternative that’s the most troubling. This goes far beyond allowing the 70,000 residents of Antigua to share DVD’s legally among themselves. It would turn the tiny country, once a haven for Caribbean pirates, into a haven for legalized intellectual property piracy of all kinds. Books, video, music, software, pharmaceuticals, the list is endless. U. S. intellectual property, on which it has based a substantial portion of its future, would be dead not merely in Antigua but everywhere.

For better or worse, though, the United States may not have an option but to regulate now. Surely the U.S. can’t refuse compliance with the WTO ruling if the WTO will grant the requested damages. Still, it would seem that if history is any predictor of future behavior, the WTO will provide damages other than those requested and make the WTO look extremely weak in the process. Nonetheless, that would be just another international news item that will quickly fade away.

Regardless, the most unfortunate consequence with a law against online gambling is that it isn’t stopping anyone. The necessary conclusion that must be drawn from that is that roughly $12 billion goes to the illegal activity — a significant portion to other countries — annually. On the one hand, that is money that could be taxed for revenue (and would, in a perfect world, reduce other tax rates in return); on the other hand, an individual country should be able to refuse some trade if the trade is contrary to its traditional cultural morals.

I decided to drop Juvenile Mediation today. The requirements of the course are such that I think it would add too much work and stress to my semester, and since the course is not required, it was an easy decision. I do think that the premise is interesting — you actually do clinical work related to mediating juveniles who have committed crimes — but it’s just not going to work out for me this semester.

There really isn’t much to say about school, other than the fact that the second year has started. About the only interesting news is that I have been accepted as a Staff Member of Law Review (Wikipedia link), which is honestly the only thing I wanted to accomplish in law school (other than getting the degree).

Counting with the two-hour credit for Law Review (I have to write a paper), I’m taking 18 hours this semester. That, with the two hours I received this summer for working at the D.A.’s office back home, will give me 20 hours over the summer and first semester of the second year. Hopefully, this means that I can slack off a bit towards the end of this whole process.

I moved back to Lillington, N.C., in preparation of the Fall 2007 semester at Campbell Law yesterday. Today, I sought access to my files back home in Shelby, N.C. — something that I often do. Unfortunately, my IP address has changed here in Lillington, and I had previously restricted SSH access to the specific computer at home to the old IP address. To make things worse, I also restricted remote management of my router to the same IP address. I still had SSH access to a throwaway computer back home.

What to do; what to do?

My first thought was to SSH into the unrestricted Linux box at home and use Lynx, a text-based CLI browser. Unfortunately, that didn’t work. The router required Javascript, and my installation of Lynx wasn’t up to the task.

So, in the deep recesses of my brain came a solution:

ssh -X -l helix [IP address at home of unrestricted computer] firefox

The “X” switch on SSH tells SSH to redirect the output over the SSH connection when the remote command is run. Therefore, I opened an instance of Firefox on my remote, unrestricted Linux box. I then opened 192.168.0.1 — the local address of my router at home — in that instance of Firefox. I made the necessary changes to remote management, and while I was there, I opened up the restricted computer to the new IP address.

Linux is pretty nifty, eh?

Blogger Finds Y2K Bug in NASA Climate Data — Daily Tech

Errors in programming, and the resulting data, have been found, leading to skewed data regarding global warming. Five of the top-ten hottest years on record occurred before World War II, and 1998, the long-touted “hottest year on record,” is now in second-place behind 1934.

While inspecting historical temperature graphs, he noticed a strange discontinuity, or “jump” in many locations, all occurring around the time of January, 2000.

These graphs were created by NASA’s Reto Ruedy and James Hansen (who shot to fame when he accused the administration of trying to censor his views on climate change). Hansen refused to provide McKintyre with the algorithm used to generate graph data, so McKintyre reverse-engineered it. The result appeared to be a Y2K bug in the handling of the raw data.

First of all, why wouldn’t the algorithms be published? In the name of science, if that really is the goal, all data should be published to guarantee no mistakes. In this case, it took a programmer to reverse-engineer the algorithm to find out that mistakes were made. Now, only three years in the past ten make the top-ten hottest.

McKintyre notified the pair of the bug; Ruedy replied and acknowledged the problem as an “oversight” that would be fixed in the next data refresh.

NASA has now silently released corrected figures, and the changes are truly astounding. The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place. 1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II. Anthony Watts has put the new data in chart form, along with a more detailed summary of the events.

There is still no mention of this on the mainstream media, to my complete lack of surprise. Such a skewing of the data would presumably have huge implications on the global warming propaganda machine; however, it remains to be seen if the public will be given the full information. (Don’t hold your breath, getting the correct information from the media is, at least at this point, a fantasy.)

NASA’s data corrections have been posted. A more in-depth look at the data can be found here.

For more of my opinions on “global warming,” check my ongoing global warming post.