"Let's do it in JavaScript!"

"Fun" might be another word? I do happen to know who enjoys digging through binary files, the souls who reverse engineer things! Maybe the GP is one of those who uses a hex editor for everything? The proverbial sledge hammer (of file editing).

There are many things that are farmed out as well, take tax credits. In a nutshell Businesses may be applicable for these if they hire employees from certain areas for example. Traditionally this might be handled in-house, or farmed out to an accountant/firm, who then might farm it out again to a firm that specializes in these things, who again farm it out to cheap data processing labor. It's quite a rabbit hole, imagine insurance companies! A project our company developed generated and processed these tax credits in batches in seconds. The system needed to be accurate an used shape files to define areas and performed multiple look ups using different maps for fail overs. This process illustrated some awesome exceptions with resolving addresses. The entire tax credit industry exists because of lobbying and ultimately the product wasn't marketed.

I tried to find this, can you cite this at all? I spent about an hour searching. Seems like this could be a really interesting hobby project site.

The longer the sentence the more likely one is to re-offend?

This would only affect those who are 1) serving time 2) doing drugs. Since there isn't any language that applies to only certain skin tones, it applies to all inmates convicted of these crimes. Also, seems like a small voting block to be concerned about, [warning pdf]why wouldn't they go for the smaller ones first? Perhaps it has to do with money? See below.

Researching incarceration by race, I began by looking for bias in sentencing (is it judges etc.) I learned a large part of the harshness revolves around crack cocaine sentencing guidelines. Police operate by going into areas of poverty and performing sweeps. If you have a prior the sentence increases, it's like a feedback loop. Different classes of people do different drugs. Whites, for example, are more likely to be Methamphetamine users. Sentencing has increased for across all races however there remains a gap.

It largely, in my opinion, seems more of a socioeconomic issue than anything. I'd say a stronger argument would be the breakdown of the nuclear family and poverty. See the link below for the Moynihan Report, which was done in 1965 and recently revisited.

The Black Family: Five Decades After the Moynihan Report. Although I encourage everyone to view the report, for the lazy here are some highlights.

Among the findings in “The Moynihan Report Revisited”:

• The statistics that so alarmed Moynihan have only grown worse, not only for blacks, but for whites and Hispanics as well. Today, the share of white children born outside marriage is about the same as the share was for black children in Moynihan’s day. Meanwhile, the percentage of black children born to unmarried mothers has tripled, remaining far higher than the percentage of white children born to unmarried mothers.
• In 1960, 20 percent of black children lived with their mothers but not their fathers; by 2010, 53 percent of all black children lived in such families. The share of white children living with their mothers but not their fathers climbed to 20 percent in 2010, up from 6 percent in 1960.
• There has been a marked retreat from marriage. In 1960, just over one-half of all black women were married and living with their husbands, compared with over two-thirds of white and Hispanic women. By 2010, only one-quarter of black women, two-fifths of Hispanic women, and one-half of white women lived with their spouses.
• That the decline of traditional families occurred across racial and ethnic groups indicates that factors driving the decline do not lie solely within the black community but in the larger social and economic context. Nevertheless, the consequences may be felt disproportionately among blacks as black children are far more likely to be born into and raised in father-absent families than are white children.

In addition there's also some related highlights from 50 years on the War on Poverty and here too, which illustrates the rise in unwanted pregnancies, single parent households.

Perhaps it has to do with where they're done? Open air vs indoor?

Do you also like to spell it Boxxing?

"in debt to China" TL;DR. Vast majority of the debt is domestically held, saying China "owns" the U.S. or any other country for that matter is nonsense.

Wonder if their IT was outsourced?

For the record this event couldn't have happened to a better company. Since we're talking individuals and not collections of people: It's not just these parts, for example take violations of prisoners, specifically rape jokes. How are those convicted of sex crimes, say involving children (Sandusky) treated inside the system?

All non-military personnel are civilians, this includes police.

Offtopic: Ah that joke, reminds me of this scene from The Pink Panther. (sfw)

1914 is not the 19th century. I imagine this person still uses 'turn of the century' to refer to the 1900s, too. In a similar vein, an actual 19th century computer, there is Babage's Difference Engine (tighter shots here) which is very impressive to watch as well.

Broke into an open network eh?

You seem to have a pretty good understanding of the topic and I'd like to expand upon it. I've worked with several payment processors and been involved with many systems which handle credit card data and PCI compliance has very a specific definition (expanded, see also) about what card holder data is. Your first and last name, billing address, expiration, last 4 and the card type are not card holder data. Plenty there to "track" legally without touching the PAN (Primary Account Number). That said, I have no desire to see CurrentC implemented.

This doesn't even really touch companies like Acxiom. Here's a little scoop on the whole data broker thing for those unfamiliar with the scope of collection.

Hahaha.

How many blogs can you go back 30 years on? I've had paper last far longer than any computer.