The point isn't "wow, I can scan any document and paste it into Microsoft Word as a gif image". The point is
1: "wow, if I write this into Microsoft Word 2004 with default settings without adjustment, and print to file, and place it on top of the CBS memo, they match. What's the chance of that?" (remember aliasing and faxing causing jagged letters)
And
2: "Wow, we can't find a single typewriter in existence in the early 1970s that has all the typographical characteristics that the documents have"
I don't use "right" or "left" blogs as my final judges on news. For example, "left" blogs (in this case the Daily Kos) correctly pointed out that the government paying somebody to secretly shill for them was different than a political campaign paying bloggers displaying notices that may or may not have been prominent enough. And the "right" bloggers (Little Green Footballs etc.) were correct about the memo story.
And please reference your claim "even experienced typographic experts who are Democrats and Kerry supports have analyzed it to death and concluded they were obvious fakes made in Word."
He may have been referring to Joseph M. Newcomer, Ph.D., the most prominent example, who isn't a document examiner, but a computer typesetting expert. And with all certified document experts that have examined the documents either concluding that they are forgeries or being unable to reach a conclusion, what are the odds that all those certified experts are evil Republicans? Even the CBS-hired panel expert concluded that the documents were forgeries.
Going on harping on this story is like saying that Saddam had massive stockpiles of French WMD at the day of the invasion, and that extraterrestials lifted them out of the country before they could be found. Is it POSSIBLE? Yes, maybe. But it's rather ridiculous.
Speaking of that scene... why don't we ever hear about the satellite that is filming the capture? Or are the images provided by a high-powered telescope on the moon?
Joseph Newcomer doesn't go as far as the blogs did. He won't accuse Hailey of fraud and call for his firing, but he does accuse Hailey of doing bad research.
Personally, I was one of the people who did a directory listing of Hailey's web folder and found unfinished photoshop files before and after he put in superscripts, and the report before he altered it. Saving to several files for safety can bite your arse if you're committing a fraud. Phooey.
"social bond between the source and a producer, Dan Rather, etc"
Yes. Dan Rather and Mary Mapes had friends among Texas Democrats, so you've got your connection there. As you said, I think the documents were passed along in a "Telephone" or relay manner, gaining credibility. It certainly helped that some of those who passed the documents were psychiatric cases and/or desperately wanted them to be real.
"The penalty to the source if CBS caught the forgery is nil"
- Possible criminal action - Election-year tampering scandal that would have hurt Bush more than this nonsense hurt Kerry.
How do you make that out from the aliasing? I think higher quality scans were comming out now, but I haven't found them yet.
If you're serious about this, you should get in contact with a blog or a newspaper, or maybe write to one of the document experts that have made statements about the memos.
The attempts that I have seen at authenticating the memos so far were
- An expert that only looked at signatures, but was passed off by CBS as if he had authenticated the documents as a whole. - A typewriter repair man who was not a document examiner - Somebody who typed out the text on a typewriter and compared it side by side with tiny images. An overlay showed this to be totally wrong. - This man Hailey who cut and pasted, in photoshop, single characters from several different fonts, and concluded that they could be made with a typewriter font.
Still, nobody has come up with this mythical machine that could exactly replicate Microsoft Word with default settings.
Wasn't it some mystery woman on an animal show who gave them to him, and then he copied them and burned the "originals"? That's the latest I heard, but I didn't pay attention during Christmas. (Tsunami etc.)
It's part of the report, but it's hardly an ommission on the Slashdot editors' part.
If we had to cover all the relevant points, it would need a feature sized article.
- The firings. - The reasons given for the rush to air. - The reasons for the sone-walling and outright dismissal of any critisism - The suggested remedies. - Concluding that there was no bias, despite the evidence. - Coordinating with a political party. - Mapes' response. - The typography expert concluding that the documents were computer generated, but the overall panel witholding a conclusion on it. - The things you mentioned (Mapes being told: No pilot waiting list, Bush voluntered for Vietnam service during his TANG stay.) - "The false statement in the September 8 Segment that an expert had authenticated the Killian documents" - The reactions from other media. - The central role of debunking the story. And in cheerleading it, and in touting "fake, but accurate" expert. - The DDoS attacks and blog worms shutting down some of the blogs central to this story.
But how could they know that CBS would be so gullible as to fall for some.doc's?
My theory: It started as a joke when the Bush AWOL story started circulating. Then it got passed on from hand to hand gaining credibility; in which case there's some prankster sitting around both snickering/crying and fearing prosecution.
Or it could be this Martin Heldt guy that started researching it and was told that he didn't have a smoking gun.
Then there's the shady hand-overs, Burkett claiming copying them and then burning the originals, etc.
It's all a bad agent movie that got side-tracked from the fighting terrorism stuff.
Mapes was actually told, by more than one person, that the unit actually DIDN'T have a waiting list for becomming a fighter pilot. There were waiting lists for becomming a regular enlisted man (ground crew etc.) in the TANG, though. (One of the guys said they didn't have a waiting list at ALL.)
Mapes was also told that after training, Bush Jr. volunteered to go to Vietnam, a request that was denied because he had to few flying hours.
BTW: Is David Boise's schedule free to represent her in the wrongfull termination lawsuit?
"The panel did not conclude the documents were forgeries."
But their document expert concluded, categorically, that the documents were produced on a computer after the 1970s. That's pretty close to saying "forgery". The only reservations against declaring them a forgery, that I can think of, is that they were copies, that time travel could be at play here, or the remote possibility that they were indeed TANG documents about ANOTHER Lt. Bush from the 1990s misdated to the 1970s.
"We didn't find any actual [political] bias."
To do that Mapes & Co would have to admit it, or submit to polygraphs or whatever. But Mapes' emails show how she was trying to get the documents from Bill Burkett by connecting him with the DNC, and by getting him a book deal. Something about affecting the momentum of the campaign.
But is bias onlyt a clearly stated policy of working for one of the candidates, which she came pretty close to doing, or is bias also letting yourself be affected by wishing that the story is true?
Something rather unimportant to our world today turned into quite farce. But aren't anybody going to look at WHO actually made the documents? It's illegal to forge military documents, and some states have laws against trying to influence elections with false documents.
But also: Warner Brothers managed to LOSE the cgi files. They were kept in anticipation of re-rendering the show in HDTV when hardware was faster. (Would have come in handy when making the DVDs)
But they managed to lose the cgi files, so for the "Legend of the Rangers" failed pilot, they had to make new models. And I think they used Maya instead of Lightwave for that.
After these kinds of results, questions are raised about the way these tests have been conducted, and wether there are better tests. I've heard ROSE, The Relevance of Science Education fielded as a better alternative, and that Norway would do better if there was just fewer countries in the test.
But this time, Norwegians went down the ranking since the last PISA-test. If this an absolute decline, the debate about better tests is not as relevant: Norwegian children today do worse than they did a few years ago.
Some politicians call for more teachers. But Norway uses a lot of resources for education allready. When it comes to learning for each dollar/krone/pound we're among the worst.
Lack of basic skills in maths and language is also hampering higher education and the workplace. It results inn worse economic results.
One possible correlation could be that Norwegian classrooms are among the most noisy and least disciplined. Improving that situation could improve the results.
One of my associates suggests that the really good teachers should be given bonuses. But how will that go over with unions and people who want to keep people "equal" at all cost?
If they wanted to gain sympathy, I think they'd just pull out the power cord again. If they went for defacement, I think they'd make it a much more childish one. Do you really think that there is anybody left at SCO with a subtle bone in their bodies? If it's a joe-job they must have gotten help from the Microsoft® marketing department. They're elite. Remember, they've been selling junk as gold for 20 years.
I think this is a cracker, and we shouldn't be cheering him on.
Disclaimer: SCO never surprises me with their stupidity, so I'm going to withold judgement untill we see an arrest.
Slashdot Mirror
The point isn't "wow, I can scan any document and paste it into Microsoft Word as a gif image". The point is
1: "wow, if I write this into Microsoft Word 2004 with default settings without adjustment, and print to file, and place it on top of the CBS memo, they match. What's the chance of that?"
(remember aliasing and faxing causing jagged letters)
And
2: "Wow, we can't find a single typewriter in existence in the early 1970s that has all the typographical characteristics that the documents have"
I don't use "right" or "left" blogs as my final judges on news. For example, "left" blogs (in this case the Daily Kos) correctly pointed out that the government paying somebody to secretly shill for them was different than a political campaign paying bloggers displaying notices that may or may not have been prominent enough. And the "right" bloggers (Little Green Footballs etc.) were correct about the memo story.
And please reference your claim "even experienced typographic experts who are Democrats and Kerry supports have analyzed it to death and concluded they were obvious fakes made in Word."
He may have been referring to Joseph M. Newcomer, Ph.D., the most prominent example, who isn't a document examiner, but a computer typesetting expert. And with all certified document experts that have examined the documents either concluding that they are forgeries or being unable to reach a conclusion, what are the odds that all those certified experts are evil Republicans? Even the CBS-hired panel expert concluded that the documents were forgeries.
Going on harping on this story is like saying that Saddam had massive stockpiles of French WMD at the day of the invasion, and that extraterrestials lifted them out of the country before they could be found. Is it POSSIBLE? Yes, maybe. But it's rather ridiculous.
a: It wasn't "Intel Inside". A "mark of quality" to dummies who had no idea what Intel was.
b: "Who needs more than 640k"? And "multitasking is only a gimmick".
c: People are afraid of change. And IBM compatibles were becomming the status quo.
d: Commodore sucked at marketing. *
e: Some machines they were not able to produce fast enough to satisfy demand. (I'm thinking of the Amiga CD32 here. Not a business machine though.)
*: Counter-example: www.commodorebillboard.d
Speaking of that scene ... why don't we ever hear about the satellite that is filming the capture? Or are the images provided by a high-powered telescope on the moon?
Yes. Miyazaki doesn't like self-righteousness, wether it's from environmentalists or whoever, so he doesn't want to fall into that "trap" himself.
Joseph Newcomer doesn't go as far as the blogs did. He won't accuse Hailey of fraud and call for his firing, but he does accuse Hailey of doing bad research.
The Bush "Guard memos" are forgeries!: The Columbia Journalism Review
Personally, I was one of the people who did a directory listing of Hailey's web folder and found unfinished photoshop files before and after he put in superscripts, and the report before he altered it. Saving to several files for safety can bite your arse if you're committing a fraud. Phooey.
"social bond between the source and a producer, Dan Rather, etc"
Yes. Dan Rather and Mary Mapes had friends among Texas Democrats, so you've got your connection there. As you said, I think the documents were passed along in a "Telephone" or relay manner, gaining credibility. It certainly helped that some of those who passed the documents were psychiatric cases and/or desperately wanted them to be real.
"The penalty to the source if CBS caught the forgery is nil"
- Possible criminal action
- Election-year tampering scandal that would have hurt Bush more than this nonsense hurt Kerry.
Look at the Wikipedia article about this. Font developers said that there were slight variations in spacing between versions of the same font.
Faxing: Fau^Hxed Bush Memos
Thanks to Wikipedia.
How do you make that out from the aliasing? I think higher quality scans were comming out now, but I haven't found them yet.
If you're serious about this, you should get in contact with a blog or a newspaper, or maybe write to one of the document experts that have made statements about the memos.
The attempts that I have seen at authenticating the memos so far were
- An expert that only looked at signatures, but was passed off by CBS as if he had authenticated the documents as a whole.
- A typewriter repair man who was not a document examiner
- Somebody who typed out the text on a typewriter and compared it side by side with tiny images. An overlay showed this to be totally wrong.
- This man Hailey who cut and pasted, in photoshop, single characters from several different fonts, and concluded that they could be made with a typewriter font.
Still, nobody has come up with this mythical machine that could exactly replicate Microsoft Word with default settings.
Did a lot of typesetters have the same spacing as TrueType-style ABC dimensions horizontal spacing?
However, when I looked at them, I laughed. The documents have a defect that was produced when machines at that time were not properly adjusted.
What defect? Does it have a name, or can you describe it to us?
Could it be introduced by the sampling in copying and faxing?
It's nice to talk to somebody who had some experience with this.
Wasn't it some mystery woman on an animal show who gave them to him, and then he copied them and burned the "originals"? That's the latest I heard, but I didn't pay attention during Christmas. (Tsunami etc.)
It's part of the report, but it's hardly an ommission on the Slashdot editors' part.
If we had to cover all the relevant points, it would need a feature sized article.
- The firings.
- The reasons given for the rush to air.
- The reasons for the sone-walling and outright dismissal of any critisism
- The suggested remedies.
- Concluding that there was no bias, despite the evidence.
- Coordinating with a political party.
- Mapes' response.
- The typography expert concluding that the documents were computer generated, but the overall panel witholding a conclusion on it.
- The things you mentioned (Mapes being told: No pilot waiting list, Bush voluntered for Vietnam service during his TANG stay.)
- "The false statement in the September 8 Segment that an expert had authenticated the Killian documents"
- The reactions from other media.
- The central role of debunking the story. And in cheerleading it, and in touting "fake, but accurate" expert.
- The DDoS attacks and blog worms shutting down some of the blogs central to this story.
But how could they know that CBS would be so gullible as to fall for some .doc's?
My theory: It started as a joke when the Bush AWOL story started circulating. Then it got passed on from hand to hand gaining credibility; in which case there's some prankster sitting around both snickering/crying and fearing prosecution.
Or it could be this Martin Heldt guy that started researching it and was told that he didn't have a smoking gun.
Then there's the shady hand-overs, Burkett claiming copying them and then burning the originals, etc.
It's all a bad agent movie that got side-tracked from the fighting terrorism stuff.
Mapes was actually told, by more than one person, that the unit actually DIDN'T have a waiting list for becomming a fighter pilot.
There were waiting lists for becomming a regular enlisted man (ground crew etc.) in the TANG, though. (One of the guys said they didn't have a waiting list at ALL.)
Mapes was also told that after training, Bush Jr. volunteered to go to Vietnam, a request that was denied because he had to few flying hours.
BTW: Is David Boise's schedule free to represent her in the wrongfull termination lawsuit?
Times New Roman was used from the early 1930s. But Microsoft Times New Roman was a later development.
"The panel did not conclude the documents were forgeries."
But their document expert concluded, categorically, that the documents were produced on a computer after the 1970s. That's pretty close to saying "forgery". The only reservations against declaring them a forgery, that I can think of, is that they were copies, that time travel could be at play here, or the remote possibility that they were indeed TANG documents about ANOTHER Lt. Bush from the 1990s misdated to the 1970s.
"We didn't find any actual [political] bias."
To do that Mapes & Co would have to admit it, or submit to polygraphs or whatever. But Mapes' emails show how she was trying to get the documents from Bill Burkett by connecting him with the DNC, and by getting him a book deal. Something about affecting the momentum of the campaign.
But is bias onlyt a clearly stated policy of working for one of the candidates, which she came pretty close to doing, or is bias also letting yourself be affected by wishing that the story is true?
Something rather unimportant to our world today turned into quite farce. But aren't anybody going to look at WHO actually made the documents? It's illegal to forge military documents, and some states have laws against trying to influence elections with false documents.
I knew that, but was keeping it simple. Actually the game engine was developed as part of two projects at the same time.
...yes at least the mods keep us happy after the The Babylon 5 Combat Simulator was canceled by Sierra.
I'm looking forward to the fan film Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning getting Finnished.
Movies on another site, the space battles, are kind of amusing, but pretty silly.
See the other replies.
But also: Warner Brothers managed to LOSE the cgi files. They were kept in anticipation of re-rendering the show in HDTV when hardware was faster. (Would have come in handy when making the DVDs)
But they managed to lose the cgi files, so for the "Legend of the Rangers" failed pilot, they had to make new models. And I think they used Maya instead of Lightwave for that.
...Not to mention lots of teachers in our parliament. That's a recepie for disaster, apparently??
Priests in this country need to study for years.
I think standardized testing is an important tool in improving education, along with individual follow-up.
After these kinds of results, questions are raised about the way these tests have been conducted, and wether there are better tests.
I've heard ROSE, The Relevance of Science Education fielded as a better alternative, and that Norway would do better if there was just fewer countries in the test.
But this time, Norwegians went down the ranking since the last PISA-test. If this an absolute decline, the debate about better tests is not as relevant: Norwegian children today do worse than they did a few years ago.
Some politicians call for more teachers. But Norway uses a lot of resources for education allready. When it comes to learning for each dollar/krone/pound we're among the worst.
Lack of basic skills in maths and language is also hampering higher education and the workplace. It results inn worse economic results.
One possible correlation could be that Norwegian classrooms are among the most noisy and least disciplined. Improving that situation could improve the results.
One of my associates suggests that the really good teachers should be given bonuses. But how will that go over with unions and people who want to keep people "equal" at all cost?
More links for Norwegians: Norske elever nedover i rangering
If they wanted to gain sympathy, I think they'd just pull out the power cord again. If they went for defacement, I think they'd make it a much more childish one. Do you really think that there is anybody left at SCO with a subtle bone in their bodies?
If it's a joe-job they must have gotten help from the Microsoft® marketing department. They're elite. Remember, they've been selling junk as gold for 20 years.
I think this is a cracker, and we shouldn't be cheering him on.
Disclaimer: SCO never surprises me with their stupidity, so I'm going to withold judgement untill we see an arrest.
Biometrics, presumably