Ultimately though, they only have the authority to regulate what features are sold in cars as they leave the factory (this power derives from the Interstate Commerce Clause). It's up to state governments to set the rules of the road and penalize drivers for breaking those rules. As to whether or not the Constitution allows them the authority to regulate apps isn't so clear. If they are sold commercially in interstate commerce, then they might have such authority, but there might also be First Amendment issues as software has been classified by at least some courts as a form of protected speech. And I'm not sure how freeware would fit into all this. Personally, I think it would be best if the NHTSA stuck to offering guidelines and leave it up to the states to pass the actual laws.

You may want to look into pandas as a middle ground. It's great for sucking in tabular or csv data and then applying statistical analysis tools to it. It has a native "dataframe" object which is similar to database tables, and has efficient merge, join, and groupby semantics. If you have a ton of data then a database and SQL is the right answer, but for a decent range of use cases in between pandas is extremely powerful and effective.

Python has the default implementation CPython which compiles python to an interpreted bytecode; there's also Jython which compiles to JVM, and IronPython which compiles Microsoft's CLR. There's also Cython (which requires extra annotations) which compiles to C and thence to machine code, and numba which does compilation to LLVM. Finally there's Pypy which is a python JIT compiler/interpreter written in a restricted subset of Python.

Thanks for the link. Thus my whining at a patently absurd phrase actually taught me something nice!

Does it mean hygrogen & oxigen are separately bound up in rock?

Quite frequently, if they're anything like me. For me it goes something like this: if I've been looking in the mirror on a cold, winter day, I'm usually kind of depressed, cause I wish it were bigger. But if it's a particularly warm day, or if I just got out of a hot shower, I think "AWESOME. That looks great!" and I can't wait to head for the nude beach. I imagine most guys have similar thoughts even if not as frequently as I do. But it has nothing to do with guns, so I guess I agree with your basic point.

I guess it would be called a "phallacy".

Obviously, I was referring to the mugger. Did you even read what I was responding to?

Well, if private credit agencies had a tendency to show up at my doorstep, point a gun in my face, and order me to hand over my credit records, then I'd say you had a good point.

From the article:

The key difference is that private credit rating agencies don't have the legal authority to compel you to provide them with any information. They might use some underhanded means to obtain some of that information, but they can't send you to prison for not telling them what they want to know. The government, however, does have that power. It is the powers of compulsion, not the database itself, which has me worried.

I'm not saying that this interpretation is necessarily wrong, but... it's quite wide in scope. It seems like you are saying that not only would hosting NC content on a site with ads be disallowed, but that merely prominently linking to such content from a site with ads would be disallowed, as would any advertising for any commercial software or hardware which implied that NC content could be accessed.

Furthermore, the suggestion that if some people sometimes pay for a particular activity, then all instances of that activity must be commercial in nature -- wow, now that has some implications!

This is exactly the problem with "NC". To you, this is "clear commercial use". Is it because a big company is involved? Two companies? We assume money is changing hands, but... maybe it's not. The license says "primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation". What if the money goes towards "supporting the community"? What exactly is "commercial advantage" in this context? I'd have to ask a lawyer, and... unless I was paying them to advise on a specific case, I doubt they'd actually give a straight answer.

Overall, "noncommercial" licenses are problematic and should be avoided. I understand the intention, but it's hard to make a license that actually gets there.

But the poor would only have to pay if they LOSE. If they have a legit lawsuit, that wouldn't be an issue.

Changing a registry key in and of itself isn't illegal. But doing so to misrepresent that you paid for something you didn't, and obtaining that something through the Internet violates at least two federal laws: wire fraud and the computer fraud and abuse act. You are gaining access to software hosted on a computer that don't rightfully have access to (computer fraud and abuse act), and you are causing false information to be sent on the Internet for financial gain (wire fraud). Both are federal felonies. In addition, you are probably committing several civil infractions including copyright violation and violation of license agreements. If you want to keep getting updates from Microsoft for XP you can pay for them like everyone else.

True, also mentally ill people often have trouble getting good jobs if any jobs at all. Many live on government assistance and are well below the poverty line. And it is well known that poverty is correlated with a shorter lifespan. Many simply cannot afford healthy lifestyle choices, such as nutritious food or preventive medical care.

It's good if you have the money. R is free, while SPSS is fairly expensive, as is its main competitor SAS. I see R as competing not with general purpose languages like Python, but rather with commercial statistics packages like SPSS and SAS. While it may have more of a learning curve than these packages, it is free software, which makes it very attractive for many users.