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Microsoft's Default Font Is at the Center Of a Government Corruption Case (thenextweb.com)

Calibri, a font that was created in 2004 and made default option on PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, and WordPad by Microsoft in 2007, is currently sitting at the center of a corruption investigation involving Pakistan's Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif. From a report: Accused of illegally profiting from his position since the 1990s, Sharif is now under investigation by the Joint Investigative Team -- a collective of Pakistani police, military, and financial regulators -- after a treasure trove of evidence surfaced with 2016's release of The Panama Papers. In a report obtained by Al Jazeera, investigators recommended a case be filed in the National Accountability Court after concluding there were "significant gap[s]" in Sharif's ability to account for his familial assets. [...] Sharif contends that neither he, nor his family, profited from his position of power, a denial that came under scrutiny today after his daughter and political heir apparent, Maryam Nawaz, produced documents from 2006 that prove her father's innocence. Unfortunately for the Nawaz family, type experts today confirmed the documents were written in Calibri, a font that wasn't available until 2007.

108 of 186 comments (clear)

  1. And his poor brother San Sharif... by dyfet · · Score: 5, Funny

    I could not resist...

    1. Re:And his poor brother San Sharif... by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      SanSharif would be him if found guilty.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    2. Re:And his poor brother San Sharif... by unixisc · · Score: 5, Funny

      And his humorous cousin Comic Sans Sharif

    3. Re: And his poor brother San Sharif... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You are RACIST!!!

    4. Re:And his poor brother San Sharif... by xevioso · · Score: 1

      I guess this is funny. OK. I approve.

    5. Re:And his poor brother San Sharif... by sl3xd · · Score: 1

      There are many words to describe Comic Sans, but humorous has never been one of them. It's less "comic" than it is "drunk and desperate."

      --
      -- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
    6. Re:And his poor brother San Sharif... by dcw3 · · Score: 2

      I hate you...I came to post the same thing. Bravo sir.

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    7. Re:And his poor brother San Sharif... by narcc · · Score: 1

      But ... It was stolen directly from the Fark headline for the same story.

      Maybe it's just too obvious...

    8. Re:And his poor brother San Sharif... by dcw3 · · Score: 1

      Maybe so, but I stopped reading Fark long ago when the boobies went away.

      --
      Just another day in Paradise
    9. Re:And his poor brother San Sharif... by LinuxIsGarbage · · Score: 1

      While I feel like part of me dies when I see signs and documents at work printed in Comic Sans, interestingly It can be a big help for people with dyslexia. With e-readers, either Comic Sans, or an official dyslexia font can open up a whole world of books.

    10. Re:And his poor brother San Sharif... by Bengie · · Score: 1

      Don't forget about his Japanese relative, Sharif-san

    11. Re:And his poor brother San Sharif... by strikethree · · Score: 1

      Well played kind sir. Very well played. :)

      --
      "Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
  2. Well, that didn't go well by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just ask Dan Rather how that sort of thing plays out.

    1. Re:Well, that didn't go well by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 1

      ...despite the fact that the content was correct, but they were reproductions being promoted as the genuine article. That little loophole got Bush off the hook and ruined Rather's career.

      Evidence? If the content was correct, you must have evidence that wasn't faked to that effect. I've never heard of any. If you know of evidence, I'm ready to listen. "Reproductions". Then where are the originals? The only evidence to these assertions I've ever seen are badly done fakes. That's not a "little loophole."

  3. Worst Font Ever by crow · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I despise Calibri. About half the emails I receive at work use it, and it's absolutely horrible for reading. Even comic sans would be better.

    Maybe it looks alright when printed out, but who prints anymore? On my screen it's painful. Microsoft is trying to gouge my eyes out. All they care is that people use a font that is only available with their products.

    1. Re:Worst Font Ever by DarkOx · · Score: 1

      Why are you allowing the sender to dictate what font you read e-mails in?

      --
      Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    2. Re:Worst Font Ever by crow · · Score: 1

      Apart from this one font, it works fairly well. It's important to specify a fixed-width font for code samples and such, but otherwise a variable-width font is good. If I had a plug-in to convert this one font to Ariel in Thunderbird, I would be quite happy.

    3. Re:Worst Font Ever by TeknoHog · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I despise Calibri. About half the emails I receive at work use it, and it's absolutely horrible for reading. Even comic sans would be better.

      Maybe it looks alright when printed out, but who prints anymore?

      You lost me at emails using fonts. For some weird reason, all of the emails I receive use the same X terminal font. I agree about printing, though, which is why we should stop aping ink-on-paper look on computers. This includes black text on white background, a choice once dictated by print technology, not so much reading ergonomics.

      --
      Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
    4. Re:Worst Font Ever by unixisc · · Score: 1

      Remember Postscript - as opposed to Microsoft's TrueType? Do things like LibreOffice or Calligra use that font system, or did TrueType win beyond Windows? Don't even know what iOS uses, despite having it. Or Android

    5. Re:Worst Font Ever by unixisc · · Score: 1

      On my kindle app, I've flipped it to white text on black background, which is a lot more soothing on the eye

    6. Re:Worst Font Ever by msauve · · Score: 1

      "Microsoft's TrueType"

      Uh, TT was created by Apple, and later licensed to and adopted by MS.

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    7. Re:Worst Font Ever by caseih · · Score: 1

      Apple's TrueType won the day, even converting Microsoft. Now all OS's use OpenType which is a successor to TrueType. All modern Linux apps can use either TrueType or OpenType fonts.

    8. Re: Worst Font Ever by corychristison · · Score: 1

      If you hate it that much, simply uninstall it.

    9. Re:Worst Font Ever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I agree about printing, though, which is why we should stop aping ink-on-paper look on computers. This includes black text on white background, a choice once dictated by print technology, not so much reading ergonomics.

      On my kindle app, I've flipped it to white text on black background, which is a lot more soothing on the eye

      I know some people prefer it that way, but due to persistance-of-vision artifacts, light text on dark backgrounds leaves me unable to see pretty much anything after a few minutes. It's actually physically uncomfortable. I have to change the website colors (using developer tools in browser) in order to read sites that are like that.

      (AC to preserve mods)

    10. Re:Worst Font Ever by war4peace · · Score: 1

      I found Ariel to be a shitty detergent.
      The car's fantastic, especially the Nomad, I wish I owned one.
      And I don't care about the princess.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    11. Re:Worst Font Ever by war4peace · · Score: 1

      Maybe on the Kindle.
      On a PC monitor it makes your eyes bleed after 5 minutes.

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    12. Re:Worst Font Ever by David_Hart · · Score: 1

      I despise Calibri. About half the emails I receive at work use it,.

      Well, you'll be happy to know that if you ever receive an email or a document from me it will be using Verdana. Just count your lucky stars that you aren't getting documents in Arial (shudder)....

    13. Re:Worst Font Ever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Nobody uses alpine or Claws Mail, except you. That's why you never get laid.

      Switch to Seamonkey, bro. Then you can set it to only use the fonts you specify. I only use Tex Gyre Adventor and Tex Gyre Bonum. The ladies won't leave me alone.

    14. Re:Worst Font Ever by GuB-42 · · Score: 1

      Corporate e-mail on a corporate computer where all settings are locked down.

    15. Re: Worst Font Ever by AvitarX · · Score: 1

      Pretty much all fonts are Open Type now. Even ones with a TTF extension.

      OTF is superior to PS or TT in that it combines the features of both and has a nice single file containing everything (screen display, print, ways to scale, kerning, ligatures, etc).

      It's been a while, but I believe in open type font can be postscript, it's just a far more convenient and universal file format to contain the postscript.

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
    16. Re:Worst Font Ever by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Maybe he likes to read things that don't get horribly broken or mangled.

    17. Re:Worst Font Ever by crow · · Score: 1

      You should consider that the font and images (though I don't load them by default) are part of the sender's expression. Email is about communication, and that is not just ASCII anymore. When the sender does it right, the fonts add to the communication.

    18. Re:Worst Font Ever by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      did you guys try adjusting it? for less blurry/more blurry whatever floats your boat.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    19. Re:Worst Font Ever by Quirkz · · Score: 1

      Tell me what my co-working is communicating by having a plaid background image tiled through all of their email.

    20. Re:Worst Font Ever by tepples · · Score: 1

      Corporate e-mail on a corporate computer where all settings are locked down.

      Still doesn't explain why your corporation lets the email determine what font is loaded off disk, parsed, and then used.

  4. Same issue as the Dan Rather/George W. Bush papers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I recall this same issue came up with the papers Dan Rather came up with about George W. Bush's military service. Just a note to all you forgers out there - use vintage equipment if you're producing documents after the fact! I presume we'll soon see a similar case where the tiny dots that printers produce will call out a printed document produced on a machine that did not exist at the time of printing.

  5. Sharif don't like it by scourfish · · Score: 5, Funny

    Rock the bad font
    Rock the bad font

    1. Re:Sharif don't like it by freeze128 · · Score: 1

      The kids today just don't get that post.

  6. Futile exercise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    In Pakistan, no high ranking politician has been convicted ever. They all make deal with each other rather than convict. Thus Musharaff sent Nawaz to exile and Nawaz has file case against Musharaff. All of this is done for political leverage. If they actually convict someone, the case gets over and leverage is gone. Expect the same to happen here. Only when nothing work, they eliminate each other. Mr. Bhutto was hanged and his daughter was shot dead. Another prime minister Liaqat was assassinated as well.

    1. Re:Futile exercise by KiloByte · · Score: 1

      And how is this different from most other countries? Take the US: the Nazi Cheeto made justice for the Mother of Lies a big part of his campaign, yet it doesn't look like there's any hope she'll get where she deserves. In return, the Cheeto expects the same courtesy for himself.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
  7. Reminds me of Dan Rather & CBS! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Dan Rather was adamant that they had genuine documents proving that George W. Bush shirked his duty in the Air National Guard and avoided being drafted to Vietnam.

    Unfortunately for Rather, these documents were conclusively shown to have been written with Microsoft Word, and Word wasn't around during the Vietnam era...

    Rather was shown to be a biased laughingstock with no credibility, and retired.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    1. Re:Reminds me of Dan Rather & CBS! by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 5, Funny

      Karl Rove is a genius; supplying fake documents of real facts to discredit the truth. Brilliant!!

    2. Re:Reminds me of Dan Rather & CBS! by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      It was the world's most intricate, flawlessly executed plan ever, ever.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    3. Re:Reminds me of Dan Rather & CBS! by Tailhook · · Score: 1

      Are there any Killian document believers still lurking around here? Despite the obvious nature of the fraud those people clung to their delusions for a long time; Bush Derangement Syndrome was a powerful thing.

      --
      Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
    4. Re:Reminds me of Dan Rather & CBS! by rholtzjr · · Score: 1, Troll

      They now just say it came from an anonymous source. No different from the Dan Rather blunder. And they wonder WHY not as many people take them seriously anymore. It is one of those things that make you go "hmmmmmm".

    5. Re:Reminds me of Dan Rather & CBS! by DarkOx · · Score: 1, Informative

      No but only because their memory are so sort they don't remember the last time the media collectively conspired to discredit the POTUS. They are all to busy now getting worked up over second hand accounts of e-mails provided by anonymous sources.

      --
      Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    6. Re: Reminds me of Dan Rather & CBS! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No. What happened was that Bush managed to turn the conversation from "what the fuck was Bush actually doing while in the military, and why are all the records missing," to "Dan got some fake documents so move along, nothing to see here."

    7. Re:Reminds me of Dan Rather & CBS! by dwye · · Score: 1

      Rather was shown to be a biased laughingstock with no credibility, and retired.

      Alas, he did NOT retire, just moved to a web-based publication that even MSNBC thinks is too biased against Republicans, conservatives, etc. He still gets trotted out, every so often, to comment on certain issues (much like Brian Williams still has a job).

    8. Re:Reminds me of Dan Rather & CBS! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      They are all to busy now getting worked up over second hand accounts of e-mails provided by anonymous sources.

      Donald Trump Jr is an anonymous source?

  8. OT: E-mail should not specify font by mi · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I despise Calibri. About half the emails I receive at work use it

    I despite people/software, which prescribe, what font the remote recipient is supposed to use to view your messages. Stick to the content, not presentation.

    Oh, and if your web-site insists on visitor loading and using particular fonts (except, maybe, for the icon-collections), you should kill yourself too. /rant

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
    1. Re:OT: E-mail should not specify font by Megol · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I generally agree with your post. There are very few valid reasons why a mail or a website should dictate how it should look at the receivers end, alas that's what you get when people prefer a nice surface rather than good content. Solution: fix people. ;)

      Your signature almost make me retract that agreement given that you obviously don't know what the words racist, dissent or patriotic means. Either that or you having a seriously bad sense of humor.

    2. Re:OT: E-mail should not specify font by Altrag · · Score: 2

      Except presentation is super important, at least for promotional and PR purposes. Graphic design is a major industry specifically because you're wrong.

      Sure if its just your coworker giving you a 2 sentence status update about some project or other they probably shouldn't be spending a bunch of time screwing around with fonts and colors and strong lines and whatever other graphic design BS that's way over my head.

      But the front page for a company website? It damned well better look good and the easiest / best way to do that is if you can fully control the layout. That's why you see websites that are strictly formatted for 1024 pixels width for example -- the designer decided that restricting the size to the largest "common" screen width they felt they could get away with rather than letting the browser fuck up their layout (you could rightfully argue that there are better ways to write webpages that still give you sufficient control over the layout, but they're much more complex and not everybody knows how to do that or has time/motivation to educate themselves in the latest tech when what they already know mostly does the job.)

      Basically, appearances matter, and fonts are part of appearance.

  9. It's the little details that trips people up by UnknowingFool · · Score: 1

    Reminds me whenPaul Ceglia sued Mark Zuckerberg saying Zuckerberg signed over 50% of Facebook to him.A detailed analysis of the emails showed that they had been fabricated due to small things like extra spaces in email headers that shouldn't be there and that the timestamps of the emails didn't correspond to Daily Savings time changes.

    --
    Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
  10. Does it really prove it? by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I have an ASCII file that was created back when I was in grad school. I open it in my favorite text editor and issue a print command. The default font chosen by the text editor did not exist back when I was in grad school. Does it mean the text file did not exist then?

    I don't know MsOffice font handling directives saved to the file. Does MsOffice explicitly names the default font in the save document? Or it just leaves it as "default font"? If a document is saved in the default font of 2006, and I open it today, does it display it in today's default font or will it use the default font of 2006?

    Please don't dismiss it some stretched speculation made just for the sake of argument. MsOffice files are very very convoluted. For a long time, changing your default printer would change the margins on the document. Every grad student who chose to write the thesis in MsWord discovered it to their consternation. Pagination and margins change randomly. If someone else using that computer changed the printer or installed a new font, the thesis file saved on disk would print differently and it would fail mechanical check in the Registrar's office.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    1. Re:Does it really prove it? by Known+Nutter · · Score: 2

      Did you consider that the documents were hard copies?

      No, you did not.

      --
      Beware of the Leopard.
    2. Re:Does it really prove it? by Desler · · Score: 1

      Does MsOffice explicitly names the default font in the save document?

      Yes. Why would it possibly do anything else?

    3. Re:Does it really prove it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      He's asking the question on how the font for a Word document is stored. Specifically, he's raising the following two scenarios, one of which is a convoluted way to suggest that the document isn't a forgery because the article only expresses that the document is from 2006 and provides no indication on whether the document may have been created in 2006 but printed only recently.

      Scenario 1: When the document is saved the font for the document is saved as Word's default font.
      Scenario 2: When the document is saved the font value for the document is only recorded if it was changed from Word's default font.

      In the case of scenario 1, then a document saved in 2006 should have opened with the font that was the default font in 2006, in which case the document is a forgery. In the case of scenario 2 the document would up displayed as Calibri in which case there's insufficient evidence from a paper version of the document to determine whether it is a forgery. It's only suggestive that it's forgery.

    4. Re:Does it really prove it? by rholtzjr · · Score: 2

      I don't know MsOffice font handling directives saved to the file. Does MsOffice explicitly names the default font in the save document?

      Word binary format. I will let you make that determination. A quick perusal says yes, it saves the specific fonts used inside the document throughout the document. That is why it allows you to mix fonts,size,bold,etc...

      Remember WYSIWYG standard?

    5. Re:Does it really prove it? by jm007 · · Score: 1

      changing printers would change margins etc. depending upon the capabilities of the printer... not random, but not nice either

      I usually had the most problems going between a laser printer to/from a color printer; for a long time, only the laser printers had margins that could be less than about 3/4" and inkjets required at least that; if I had composed something on a document with one printer as its default but later realized my error, it always meant going back and re-doing some formatting

      good times

    6. Re:Does it really prove it? by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 1

      So what does it do if the font I used in one computer is not available in another computer? Does it use default font? If the font used in 2006 doc is no longer available in 2017 and they opened it again to print it, what would it do?

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    7. Re:Does it really prove it? by Cajun+Hell · · Score: 2

      I had the impression that in TFA, the disputed documents were printed papers themselves, not files; their claimed physical age is what was used to give them an air of authenticity. Perhaps not?

      I have an ASCII file that was created back when I was in grad school. I open it in my favorite text editor and issue a print command. The default font chosen by the text editor did not exist back when I was in grad school. Does it mean the text file did not exist then?

      It means that the printout you hand over, wasn't really printed back then. You tell someone "ho ho ho, behold this physical piece of paper that I printed in 1989 on a HP Laserjet II!" You get a rusty key from somewhere, and then pull (with a stylish flourish) a dusty cloth off of an ancient filing cabinet. "How about that, the key still fits after all this time." You open the filing cabinet and it creaks, as though with great age. "Let's see, where would my old document be? Nope, this is the Declaration of Independence. Nope, this is the original handwritten manuscript of 'Macbeth.' Ah, here it is: METALLICA.TXT in the top line, and a 1989 date next to it, and you know a timestamp is very hard to fake! This paper has been lurking unseen in my filing cabinet all this time, waiting to once again be greeted by the harsh florescent lights of the 1980s but is now strangely bathed in LEDs, the likes of which people back then, could not imagine. Feel the history! But first, put on these latex gloves because there is no telling what will happen to this ancient paper after having been in storage for so long." But they call you on it, if they have a trained eye.

      They probably looked at the paper with great scepticism, due to your strange speech beforehand and the overdoing of theatrics. Who says "behold?" And am I really supposed to believe that since the filing cabinet is old, it must be dusty even though everything else in the room has been cleaned at least once since 2013? You should introduce documents more casually in my stories than you did in that one. No wonder you got caught!

      --
      "Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
    8. Re:Does it really prove it? by vux984 · · Score: 1

      "Word binary format. I will let you make that determination. A quick perusal says yes, it saves the specific fonts used inside the document throughout the document."

      What if the document originally existed as an RTF or TXT file or as a WordPerfect 5 for DOS file?

      Around 10 years ago, I converted an old DOS based Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet running on Windows 95 to system to Excel 2003 for someone. If they printed it out post-conversion it would have had the default Excel 2003 fonts I'm sure. But it easily went back to the early 90s.

      Likewise, imagine a document generated in 2006 in Lotus Notes and saved as RTF or something and then converted to Office 2007 a year later when the office switched systems. Then in 2008 some flunky prints a copy out and takes it home... where it surfaces in 2017 as evidence of 'thing' happening in 2006...

      How much weight do you really want to give the font used on that printout as to the authenticity of the document?

      For another example, I routinely save certain banking CSV exports at year end as part of my filings. They'll get printed in whatever font is the current default. So ... statement exports from June 2016; won't get the treatment until Mar 2017. I certainly hope that never comes to bite me in the ass -- when some genius in 2024 asserts that the Feb 2016 data is forged because the font used in the printout wasn't introduced by MS until 2017.

    9. Re:Does it really prove it? by rholtzjr · · Score: 1

      So now you want answer to how MS Word applications handle fonts no longer available. That you will have to ask MS. I just provided the answer to your previous question that they DO store font information in the document. Do a little research yourself. Instead of asking others to do the work for you.

    10. Re:Does it really prove it? by rholtzjr · · Score: 1

      Hmm, standard: something established by authority, custom, or general consent as a model or example

      Yea, I am pretty sure the term applies MORON.

    11. Re:Does it really prove it? by rholtzjr · · Score: 1

      What if the document originally existed as an RTF or TXT file or as a WordPerfect 5 for DOS file?

      Since RTF is an MS file format, then yes. it did and still does as well. See Below

      RTF Version 1.1 - Microsoft Word 4 - Year 1989 - Addition: font embedding - font data may be located inside the file

      As to how other applications handle RTF files, if they follow the RFC that is associated with it, then it should also utilize the font embedded within it to the best of its ability. How each and every word processor handles fonts embedded in documents is a pretty broad question though. Yes, there were word processors out there that could have possibly only supported certain versions of the RTF specification. There are also some word processors that strip out embedded font as well from certain types of file formats. RTF is one of them. But if it is a DOC file format, Word will use it as the font data is embedded in the document file itself.

    12. Re:Does it really prove it? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Does it use default font? If the font used in 2006 doc is no longer available in 2017 and they opened it again to print it, what would it do?

      That's irrelevant. If their goal is to prove that the document is from 2006, and the only proof they've got is a printed copy, and that printed copy isn't from 2006, then they're going to need some different proof. If they haven't got any, then the earliest they can place the document is sometime after the font was released.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    13. Re:Does it really prove it? by rholtzjr · · Score: 2

      Depends on what type of font it is and what file format the document was saved. Basically, there are 4 main types of font format used this day and age. Raster, Vector, TrueType, and Postscript (there is a newer one called OpenType which is TrueType with Postscript support). Here is a pretty good explanation So this I believe would be dependent on the word processor application and how it handles the different types of font formats. Since the font MAY be embedded in the document, the word processor will have to recognize it from the list of format from above. If it can't then I suppose that the word processor would warn the user that the document format could not be recognized and ask them if they would like to convert (fix) said document (at least one would hope it would ask).

      If you used Open Office and saved as a Word 97 document I would think that you would not run into the issue of it defaulting to Calibri. If saved as an RTF document it is possible that may be your culprit.

    14. Re:Does it really prove it? by ebvwfbw · · Score: 1

      These stories fall apart when they discover the new fonts. Just like the Bush bullshit document. Once they determined it was fake, they were able to trace it down to where it was faxed and who did it. He admitted he made it up.

      Used to be all you had to do to fool people was to put it in print. This is just an update, kind of. The journalists aren't interested in real news. There are hardly any real journalists out there anymore. They're only interested in pushing a political agenda. An agenda that will ultimately result in their demise.

  11. OT: Power of women by mi · · Score: 1

    his daughter and political heir apparent

    Maybe, the perceived mistreatment of females in the Islam-dominated societies is more nuanced than we usually think...

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
    1. Re:OT: Power of women by unixisc · · Score: 1

      There have been women who've come to power in Muslim countries, such as Benazir Bhutto, Hasina Wajed, Khalida Zia & Megawati Sukarnoputri. All of them were daughters or wives of former presidents/prime ministers. Only Muslim country I can think of where a woman came to power on her own merit was Turkey's Tansu Ciller: however, that was when Turkey was still under a Kemalist regime. Otherwise none of the above examples refutes the fact that in Islamic countries, women are little more than doormats

    2. Re:OT: Power of women by slew · · Score: 1

      his daughter and political heir apparent

      Maybe, the perceived mistreatment of females in the Islam-dominated societies is more nuanced than we usually think...

      In many countries, blood-line trumps all... Even Benazir Bhutto (first women leader of Pakistan) had a blood line...

      Heck even in the USA, George Bush and Obama were 11th cousins, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are 19th cousins...

    3. Re:OT: Power of women by Megol · · Score: 1

      Not really. Unless the "we" above is due to you having royal ambitions (or like carrying rodents - perhaps gerbils - with(in) you).

  12. Was the font available in 2006? by whoever57 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The article seems to confuse two issues: the creation of the font in 2004 and making it the default font in 2007.

    If it was available in 2004, but simply not the default, then the documents could have been created with this font in 2006.

    --
    The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    1. Re:Was the font available in 2006? by Guyle · · Score: 4, Interesting

      A pretty good case was made here that it was, in fact, available as early as 2005 and became part of Windows Vista in 2006, in addition to rolling out with Office 2007.

    2. Re:Was the font available in 2006? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      your honor, no one knows how to change fonts except nerds. is the defendant claiming to be a nerd?

    3. Re:Was the font available in 2006? by Desler · · Score: 1

      It was designed in 2004 but not released until the beginning of 2007.

    4. Re:Was the font available in 2006? by whoever57 · · Score: 2

      I think that the pretty good case doesn't look as good when you dig a little deeper.

      The page referred to in the forum you linked to doesn't seem to have the date show by google (Dec 7, 2005) anywhere in the actual page. Archive.org doesn't show anything for the site before 2015 and ... the domain name has a creation date of December 2014. It looks like Google is showing a bogus date.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    5. Re:Was the font available in 2006? by whoever57 · · Score: 1

      And if what I posted wasn't enough, the image shown on the page is a PNG image. PNG wasn't in use in 2005.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    6. Re:Was the font available in 2006? by sl3xd · · Score: 1

      Calibri was "released" with Windows Vista's rather large semi-public beta program as early as 2005.

      That possibility is the point any competent defense would try to make.

      That doesn't mean it was likely, which is prosecution's logical counterpoint.

      --
      -- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
    7. Re:Was the font available in 2006? by Khyber · · Score: 1

      What the fuck are you smoking? PNG was in use around 1996-1997. I remember that being a savable file format in Paint Shop Pro.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    8. Re:Was the font available in 2006? by whoever57 · · Score: 1

      Calibri was "released" with Windows Vista's rather large semi-public beta program as early as 2005.

      For sure, Calibri was released with Vista, but was it included in the first beta program releases of Vista?

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    9. Re:Was the font available in 2006? by whoever57 · · Score: 1

      What the fuck are you smoking?

      Nothing. But apparently "nothing" was effective at into turning 199x into 200x in my mind when I read the history of PNG.

      Another day, another mistake. Life goes on.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    10. Re:Was the font available in 2006? by scdeimos · · Score: 2

      Microsoft has questions about using Calibri in Word 12 back in 2005, https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.c..., so clearly it was generally available before 2006.

    11. Re:Was the font available in 2006? by sl3xd · · Score: 1

      I recall downloading the beta specifically so I could try the fonts.

      Though in all honesty, I was more interested in consoles.

      --
      -- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
    12. Re:Was the font available in 2006? by q4Fry · · Score: 1

      Another day, another mistake. Life goes on.

      And here I thought you were making a joke that just whooshed over Khyber.

  13. Re:Error.... by Rockoon · · Score: 1

    Also its unlikely that Microsoft invented the font, rather than acquired it from a 3rd party.

    I am not going to pretend to know whats going on in Pakistan politics, or even Pakistan computer system.

    --
    "His name was James Damore."
  14. Re:Printed at a later date? by Desler · · Score: 1

    It wouldn't have changed the font. Calibri became the default font for new docs but old docs weren't automatically converted to it.

  15. Re:Printed at a later date? by guruevi · · Score: 2

    Unless the old font didn't exist anymore on the computer and then Word will happily replace it. If it were PDF's that would be something different. You can't guarantee that a Word document will look the same in the future, it's why you don't use Word.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  16. Font =/= Typeface by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I have a font that has essentially the same typeface as old printed documents, and the same typeface as several other fonts which all produce the typeface differently, but documents predating my font aren't invalid.

  17. Not sure whether this is a legit complaint by guruevi · · Score: 1

    The typeface was commissioned in 2002, Office 2007 was RTM in November 2006, an early version was already available in 2005 though.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  18. The birth of "fake news" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Literally.

    CBS later claimed the memos were "fake but accurate".

    Seriously. They did just that.

    Why?

    Because they were demonstrably fake, but Texas libel law protects publishers who believe they are telling the truth no matter what.

  19. It goes to show you... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    You really have to add up the whole lifecycle costs to get the total cost of ownership of MS products. Initial setup costs isn't everything, you have to add in losing your loot ten years later.

  20. forensics by supernova87a · · Score: 1

    When physical documents, hard evidence, etc. go out the window in our all-digital future world, where will forensic proof like this still exist? Sometimes, the data is not just "the data"....

    1. Re:forensics by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 1

      When physical documents, hard evidence, etc. go out the window in our all-digital future world, where will forensic proof like this still exist?

      To some extent, it can still exist as part of the storage medium, especially if the data is written to write-once media. You can examine a CD-R under a microscope and determine that it was burned with a particular family of vintage 1998 CD burners and hasn't been tampered with since, but there's a good chance you can't prove that burner wasn't used in 2008. Certainly my '90s era burner still works. If I was a determined forger, I could probably find a partial spindle of blank CDs from the same era and create a document on a Pentium that would bear all the signs of having been created 20 years ago, even though I made it last week.

      What we need is a new type of write-once media that, if unwritten, intentionally decays into unwritability after a few months, but stabilizes if written to. The fabrication date would be prewritten at the factory. It would have to exhibit changes if attempts are made to artificially preserve it beyond its design lifetime in writable state, such as by freezing it. The writer should cryptographically sign the data as it writes it, too, independently of any existing signatures the data may have, using a unique private key built into the writer stored using the same tamper-resistant chips Apple and others are using in their phones. It should independently sign sectors of bytes as an integral part of the filesystem format. Writer manufacturer(s) should publish the corresponding public key to every writer made each month. Traceability to the writer and verifiability of the data integrity are only nice to have though. What's important is the unwritability of the media after a predictable elapsed time.

      Is there a chemist in the house?

    2. Re:forensics by JesseMcDonald · · Score: 2

      Your solution sounds complicated, and depends on specific storage mediums. Fortunately, there is a simpler alternative. This happens to be one of the things that blockchains are particularly good for. Whenever you create an official document, just sign it and upload the detached signature to the Bitcoin blockchain. In the event of a dispute over the historicity of the document you can point to the matching entry on the blockchain to prove that the document existed at that point in time. The proof-of-work algorithm and corresponding computation time expended by Bitcoin miners ensures that transactions older than a few hours are nearly impossible to tamper with.

      --
      "The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
  21. Re:Printed at a later date? by DarkOx · · Score: 1

    "it's why you don't use Word"

    No its why you don't use doc/docx as a storage format. Word is probably the best word processor out there when it comes to document production (provided you don't require strict type setting or page layout, where you would use tools like Tex and Quark depending on the objectives).

    What you probably should do is write most of your documents/reports/letters/etc in Word as its probably the fastest easiest way to compose something that looks nice enough.

    When you have something that is ready to call a final draft, you save it in a format that will include all the fonts and specify an exact layout like postscript/pdf, either by exporting or 'printing to it.' That way you get an unchanging document in a widely understood format for archive/distribution.

     

    --
    Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
  22. Re:Same issue as the Dan Rather/George W. Bush pap by deesine · · Score: 2

    TV journalists, and whistle blowers. A similar issue came up last month with government contractor whistle blower Reality Winners, who failed to realize every page from a color laser printer has an id pattern watermark. They're difficult to see without a loop and blue/black light. The printers I've used the pattern was in yellow, lower left corner of the page.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/te...
    https://www.eff.org/pages/list...

    --
    damaged by dogma
  23. I though ... by PPH · · Score: 2

    ... Pakistanis used that font which looks like a bunch of caterpillars crawling across a page.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
  24. The lawyer that made this observation by nuckfuts · · Score: 1

    is a genius.

    1. Re:The lawyer that made this observation by q4Fry · · Score: 1

      I would agree, except I bet it's on some "legal document authenticity checklist" somewhere. If it wasn't before, it sure is now.

  25. Re:Same issue as the Dan Rather/George W. Bush pap by dwye · · Score: 1

    Just a note to all you forgers out there - use vintage equipment if you're producing documents after the fact!

    Yes. Did NO ONE watch The Company (on CBS), back in the early 2000's?

    One episode had them faking a document from the Dalai Lama (or his advisors) from the 1950s saying that the USA could _not_ have a listening post into China, so that His Holiness (right title?) could have plausible deniability for anti-Chinese actions taken in the years before they invaded, took over, and started shipping in their excess Han population to make it permanent.

  26. Re:Same issue as the Dan Rather/George W. Bush pap by hvidstue · · Score: 2

    By loop, I assume you mean a magnifying glass or microscope?

  27. Re:Same issue as the Dan Rather/George W. Bush pap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    No, he means a Loupe, which is a specialized variant of a magnifying glass used by jewellers and others.

  28. Is this Correct ? by Tulsa_Time · · Score: 1

    "Calibri was available in the beta version of Windows in April 2004 also in the extended font package. More over the enterprise office edition had it as well. This claim is so wrong. There's also precedence set in a legal case where in accordance with the sworn the statement from Mr. Thomas - president FontsLab confirms that it was available for public use in Windows OS by 09 April 2004."

    --
    5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
  29. Can you change it? by lfp98 · · Score: 1

    If I go into Font, select Arial, click "Set as Default", select "All documents based on the Normal template", then "OK", the next new document has Arial by default. But if I close the program and restart, it's back to Calibri. Can't you change it permanently?

  30. Re:Printed at a later date? by gumbi+west · · Score: 1

    depends on if you're OK with watching word parse and layout your text and then slow down your machine when Word is just idling. I'm not.

  31. French? by DrYak · · Score: 1

    By loop, I assume you mean a magnifying glass{..}

    Either the above poster is french-speaking or only uses less frequent english words.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
  32. Re:Printed at a later date? by guruevi · · Score: 1

    Word is probably the worst word processor out there. WordPerfect is so much better and will properly warn you about incompatibilities.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com