Really, though, we are either in control of our faculties or we are not. If we're not, then we're just animals with no will. If we are, then this is no more concerning then someone plucking your heart strings to sell insurance. I highly doubt there is some subversive way they can force us to buy against our will using some sort of deep-seated neurological button. A shopping spree isn't exactly a survival mechanism.
But what is the "we" that is "in control?" I suspect that much of the time, when we think that we are in control, we are like the little kid you see at the arcade, having a great time playing a video game--except that he never put in a quarter, and he is only "playing" the attract mode. In other words, I think that our conscious mind mainly explains our decisions to itself, and probably makes very few of them.
It's not a matter of having control or not having control. Perhaps you actually make most of your decisions based on rational cost-benefit analysis, but at some point, you still have to factor in what you want--and that is an emotional matter. And if you are like most people, you probably have desires that are to some extent contradictory. So while an ad may not be able to force you to do something irrational, it may be able to present a purchase to you in the most favorable possible light, reminding you of the motivations that you have that would support that purchase.
I believe they should talk to people about the issues and the benefits instead of the constant name dropping of a few celebrities stem cells and cloning could *magically* heal.
Celebrities allow people to associate a human face with an illness that (if they are lucky) they've never had to face in themselves or a loved one. It's always easier to be compassionate toward a particular person than disease victims in the abstract.
Human cloning is scary stuff. What happens when we start to clone the "perfect" human for soldiers? Or when we clone too much that it leaves too little genetic diversity? Or worse, combining genetic manipulation with cloning, creating "super-humans", so-to-speak?
I think a lot of the fear of cloning is related to this idea that it is the leading edge of human modification. However, it is not. The true leading edge is gene therapy. And it is virtually unstoppable.
The problem is that the definition of a disease is very slippery. Discover a gene that determines whether somebody has perfect pitch? Congratulations! You've just discovered "Pitch perception disorder," a new genetic disease. And once you've identified a disorder, of course you need to treat it. Some parents are already treating small children with human growth hormone. This is not a gene therapy, but it illustrates how something that was once simply part of the normal range of human variation becomes a target for treatment once a "therapy" is available. Already, mutations are known that affect such things as muscle strength. Once gene therapy is refined, there will be increasing demand for treatment of increasingly minor "defects."
Of course, the problem is that changes in genes can have unintended consequences. Safety testing of gene therapies is going to be even more problematic than drug testing, because problems make take years, or even generations, to manifest. Expect some disasters that make thalidomide and diethylstilbesterol look like small potatoes.
I wouldn't worry about loss of genetic diversity, though. There are a lot of people on the planet. So even if 80% of them were cloned genetically modified, there would probably still be more genetic diversity than there has ever been in history.
I've been using an OGIO for many months now and I have to say it's the best backpack I've ever had. Lots of pockets and it has padding for the back which makes it not only comfortable but cushions the laptop nicely. The straps have padding too so they dont cut into your shoulders harshly when caring a heavy load.
I'll second this. I have an OGIO notebook backpack. It is the best-made backpack I've ever had. It has held up really well under heavy use.
The individual's responsibility begins where the corporation's ends. Now, I may not be the brightest bulb in the room, but I know that hot coffee probably shouldn't be in my lap. While I'm driving. And I know I shouldn't fuck with the lid on the cup full of hot coffee..in my lap...while I'm driving. This lady was stupid and it was partially her fault.
Minor problem: She wasn't driving . Not only wasn't she the driver, the car wasn't even moving.
If I wanted a cheap Mac (and didn't need portability), I'd look around for an older dual-G4 desktop, and load it up with 1-2 GB of RAM. The Mac really shines with dual processors and a good sized chunk of RAM. The OS seems to do a really good job of spreading the load between the processors. A dual-450 MHz G4 Mac feels very snappy, more so than, say, an 800 MHz single-processor Mac. It's not that it has a lot of raw power, it's that it never seems to bog down, no matter how many applications and windows you have open.
Re:I'm not convinced...
on
The Long Tail
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· Score: 1
It sounds great and I hope it is all true, but how can 'the tail' possibly pay for projects that cost hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars? Many movie, music, game etc depend on the hits to bring in cash to pay for the misses.
There are always going to be some projects that are so expensive that they have to be hits to make a profit. But even then, the long tail softens the downside, because most intended hits fail. The hits have to pay for the misses. So if the misses bring in more income, the hits don't have to be quite so big to be counted successes. So companies may be a bit more willing to take risks, even with big-budget projects.
Seems like an ingenious theory. But I don't quite see how the signal transduction works. How are vibrations supposed to couple to the conformational equilibrium of the receptor?
To sell this to me, they'll have to offer better than DVD quality--like HD. But the HDTiVo doesn't even connect to the internet yet, and it is sold only for DirecTV, who may well see this as competition.
I'm definitely hooked. It was quite slow in starting, and very mannered in style, but the sly humor kept me reading. Many of the "scholarly" footnotes are wonderful little fantasy vignettes. For a book about magic, there is a great deal of people talking about magic and very little of them doing it. But the magical scenes, when they occur, are quite satisfyingly magical.
It looks like occasionally the card with the HDMI on it gets jarred loose in shipping. Some people have simply taken off the lid and pushed it back into place. Others, less willing to mess around with a unit under warranty, have simply returned it for replacement.
Since bluffing is meant to fool human heuristics that judge the strenght of other players' hands based on those players' bets, why would a bot that works on probabilities NEED to consider bluffs?
Bluffs are also intended to foil human intuitive statistical analysis. The fundamental problem is that the strength of a perfectly rational player's hand can be determined from his bets. So the player must introduce noise or bias into his betting strategy to maintain the advantage of hidden cards. Since computers are even better at statistical analysis than humans, bluffing becomes more important, not less. The problem is that a bluffing strategy is itself subject to statistical analysis. Probably ultimately, there is no constant bluffing strategy that consistently beats sufficiently randomization.
SCO continues to fail to realize they're not trying this in any court of public opinion.
I'm not so sure. After all, public opinion influences stock price. So they announce a new legal tactic, the stock bobs up, and they sell. Then it gets revealed to be bogus and the stock slides and they buy. Even if SCO loses in court (and they may not even really expect to win), the principals will probably walk away rich men from churning their stock.
I have a Tivo and attempted to use the IR modules to control it before caving in and getting the serial control. From what I read the IR control is a pain in the ass and switches channels extremely slowly giving you a lag feel which for some is rather annoying. They don't mention that in this review though.
This is really a function of the cable box. Some are capable of receiving IR commands rapidly. A more significant problem is that some have a long "dead time" after seeing any IR signal, so any remote use at the same time can interfere with TiVo switching channels, unless you cover the sensor and IR module with electrician's tape. Best is if the cable box lets you use TiVo's serial cable.
The font used to make the memos was definitely not Times New Roman. It's weird that anyone could think that the fonts used in the memos are that font. Only someone who knows nothing about fonts, or someone who is mis-communicating, would say that.
I disagree. I'm a calligrapher, and I've worked with different typefaces for years. The resolution is so low that it is not possible to exclude specific typefaces other than by gross features, such as presence or absence of serifs or closed or open top to a "4". Due to the coarseness of the resolution, even baseline or fine character widths cannot be judged accurately. Perhaps somebody could do something with sophisticated image averaging (e.g. combining every letter "e" in all documents) but I haven't seen that attempted as yet. Certainly, within the resolution of the image, it cannot be distinguished from Times New Roman, and I can understand why somebody take the trouble to exclude Palatino as a possibility.
The emphasis on line lengths seems to be because that's the only thing that matches. The fonts are only somewhat similar. Within the lines, there are many cases of spacing mismatches.
The relative lengths of lines is the only feature that is absolutely characteristic, not merely of the typeface, but of the specific implementation of that typeface, and that is also sufficiently large-scale to survive any copying distortion/degradation that is not so severe as to render the document unreadable.
My guess is that you didn't read and understand everything he said. You are linking to him because he seems authoritative. Is that true?
No, because of my interest in calligraphy, I've followed the development of computer typography over the years from its very beginnings. His is the only writing on the subject that I've seen that evinces a correct understanding of how letter spacing has evolved over the years.
I thought every base had a printing office. A large enough base, or one with special responsibilities, would have a typesetter, I suppose. I haven't thought about that in many years, of course.
In fact, even after this time, nobody has managed to produce a single non-disputed military memo of the era that looks like it might have been typeset, or even produced on a high-end proportional spacing typewriter. The one typewriter that a few people have pointed to as possibly plausible does not produce matching line widths; it is doubtful that even a professional typesetter of the time could have done so, without making numerous intentional adjustments to tweak the widths. To cap it off, the typist from the office denies having access to any kind of typeset or near-typeset quality equipment that might have produced this kind of document.
It is ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT to the Bush documents that some machine that a critic has chosen cannot do typesetting. Just choose another machine that can.
However, it is not at all irrelevant that the only typewriter that anybody has suggested to be the origin of the message does not produce text with matching line lengths. Indeed, nobody has managed to find any system of that era capable of reproducing the line lengths, while a modern computer word processor does it perfectly with its default settings. Since algorithms of character spacing have evolved since the 1970's, it is astronomically improbably that any system of that era, known or unknown, typewriter or even typesetter will reproduce those relative line lengths.
"This typeface is the property of Monotype Typography and its use by you is covered under the terms of a license agreement. You have obtained this typeface software either directly from Monotype or together with software distributed by one of Monotype's licensees." Microsoft Word ONLY follows the information in this file.
If you are arguing that the document could also have been produced by another modern word processor, such as Open Office, using the same font definition, that is certainly true, although unlikely. What it could not be is a 1970's vintage system using the letter spacing methods of that time.
All of this should indicate that no one should be surprised if something typeset today looks exactly like something done so recently as 1972.
Anybody who knows about the evolution of character spacing since 1972 would be very surprised if the line lengths were the same, even though the individual characters might look identical.
Mary Carr Knox, Lt. Colonel Killian's secretary, supplied some valuable information
In particular, she has denied having access to any machine office capable of producing the typography in those memos.
The Selectric Composers could vary the letter and line spacing, so don't look for an exact match unless you have one of the machines and are willing to experiment.
You can vary this in Word, too. The amazing thing is that you don't need to. The relative line lengths come out exactly the same with Word's default settings. This would be an amazing coincidence if the document was not prepared in Word. Letter spacing has changed over the years, and even varies among versions of the same font, so it is next to impossible to get line lengths to come out the same in different versions unless you tweak it. In particular, the automatic spacing used by Word today is different, and more sophisticated that what was available even to typesetting machines, much less typewriters, in the '70's. You probably could approximate Word's spacing with the Selectric, but you'd have to work at it.
One of the documents released by the White House also had a superscripted "th". Why did typists superscript the "th" sometimes and not others? I don't know; maybe just to show they could. Maybe they were experimenting to learn more about their machines.
Perhaps so, but then you have to assume that by whim, the typist happened to hit on the same spacing pattern that Word uses to control the automatic superscripting, superscripting only when there is not space between the digit and the "th".
The forger was dumb, but the forger was smart? The forger was so dumb he did not think to switch to Courier as he was using Microsoft Word to type the documents? But, he was smart enough to vary the baseline in exactly the way a Selectric Composer would when it was not adjusted?
The variation of the baseline looks like digitization artifacts resulting from a scanned document not being perfectly aligned. I think the forger probably was smart, but overestimated how smart CBS was. I don't think the forger really expected to fool CBS for long, and he probably never expected CBS to make the documents public. Most likely, he was trying to draw CBS's attention to "the dog that didn't bark in the night" -- i.e. the documents that weren't in Bush's military record, but which should have been if regulations were followed. So he created mock-ups of the documents that should have been there, expecting CBS at some point to figure out that the documents were bogus, but that there was a real issue. Unfortunately, CBS wasn't that bright....
The thing that varies most, even among different implementations of the same "font" is the character spacing. So the fact that it is possible to type the same text into Microsoft Word and have the relative lengths of the lines come out exactly the same is very strong evidence.
Somebody has actually tried the same thing on the Selectric Composer. The line lengths don't match. Here is a more detailed explanation of why the exact spacing differs.
The fact that the subscripting of the "th" matches exactly the automatic subscripting rule in Word (which subscripts if and only if there is no space between the digit and the "th") is icing on the cake. Even if there were a ball with a custom superscripted "th" (for the test referenced above, the guy had to switch balls to get the small characters) it would be manual, not automatic as it is in Word.
I don't think anybody with even a nodding familiarity with typewriters and typesetting can doubt that these documents are forgeries. The interesting question then becomes: who forged them and why?
It's tempting to blame them on Republican agents provocateurs out to embarrass the Kerry campaign, but this doesn't hold water for a number of reasons:
1. They are such bad forgeries that it is surprising that they fooled CBS.
2. The Republicans have too much to lose by stirring up the question of Bush's military service.
3. If they were trying to frame the Democrats for making false claims, the claims in the letters would probably be more outrageous, for maximum embarrassment when the letters were showed to be bogus.
On the other hand, some of the same objections apply to the Democrats: Why such bad forgeries? Why such relatively mild content?
My theory is the following: I believe that the letters were fabricated by an anti-Bush source, but the perpetrator never intended or expected to fool CBS for long. Rather, the letters were mock-ups of documents that should have been present in Bush's military record, but are mysteriously missing, designed to draw CBS's attention to the absence of those very records. The letters are mild because, while they are fabrications, their content is substantially accurate--which is what fooled CBS into taking them at face value. I don't think the perpetrator expected the forgeries ever to become public--he was just trying to get CBS started investigating what was originally in the "holes" in Bush's military record. Unfortunately, the perpetrator underestimated CBS's gullibility.
Oh cry me a river. This is different from any other industry on the planet how exactly? Yet you rarely hear about multi-billion profits in the risky real-estate industry for example.
This is different in that I don't know of any other business in which the cost of product development is so high that it threatens the survival of the firm if it is not wildly successful. The closest thing to it is development of a big-budget movie. But it is not a perfect analogy because while it is possible for a studio to survive (and sometimes even do well) by making low-budget films, there is no way to make a low-budget drug (unless you can come up with a way to leech off of somebody else's development work--e.g. by manufacturing generics).
When most development projects fail, and costs are high, you get a hit-driven industry: all of the profits have to come from the minority of projects that succeed, and the company is highly motivated to maximize the profits from each success because they never know how long it will be until they get another.
Acquisitions happen regardless of success or failure and are primarilly driven by Wall Steet mad CEOs who attempt to create "value" for shareholders.
In the pharmaceutical business, acquisitions tend to happen because a company has not had a big hit in so long that their stock is in the toilet, they are at the point of running out of money for new drug development and as a result they become an attractive target for other companies that are looking to dismantle them and appropriate their assets.
That is why having public research and private manufacturing is the best combination: greed combined with fair and ruthless competition on a free and unrestricted playing field will motivate the manufacturers to make drugs efficiently and at lowest possible price. While free exchange of ideas in academia will produce a stream of discoveries as it always had before being taken over by the corporate greed. People who are now mercenaries, would simply go back to the labs sponsored by public and various foundations. And the market for inflated bogus "research" expenditures will simply disappear. All one has to do, to achive this, is to abolish the abysmal "Intellectual Property" law which is creating this and many other quagmires all over the landscape.
However, abolishing intellectual property would simply end the incentive for drug development, without replacing it with anything. To replace that with a publicly funded nationalized drug development industry would require massive additional investment, because there would no longer be a reason for private firms to pick up the enormous bill for safety and efficacy testing. And you expect this from a country that is not even willing to provide universal health care?
And one thing about the profit motive--to be profitable, the drugs have to actually work. Giving the government control over both the creation and the evaluation of all drugs would create a massive conflict of interest, and would politicize the drug development process--i.e. there would be a strong motivation to approve drugs whether they were safe and effective or not, to make it look tax money was being well spent. Frankly, I'd rather trust my health to the greed of the pharmaceutical companies before giving it over into the hands of the kind of government bureaucracy that gave us the Challenger disaster, the Columbia disaster, the bad Hubble mirror, and the Mars probe that crashed because there was nobody competent enough to check the conversion between feet and meters.
You know, you choose to be really blind about how things work. A company will do something if it brings 1% profit. Profit is proftit. As to "being able to afford safety testing", you are kidding, right? What does that mean? 100 sick people, 50 on placebo and 50 on drug? Paperwork to fill? Where does the money go? I know: artificial beaurocracy and massive profits of the companies conducting the "trial". Fuck, most of these poeple would pay to be in a trial for a potentially life-saving drug.
The safety and efficacy testing required by the FDA costs millions of dollars. If you really want to know "where the money goes" there is an extensive economic literature on the subject. Suffice it to say that it is expensive for the drug companies, who don't have "artificial bureaucracies" and who have every incentive to cut costs. And the reality is that many drugs fail at this stage of testing. So very often it is not "profit is profit"; instead it is extensive investment with no profit at all, typically followed by bankruptcy or hostile acquisition.
While it is an article of faith among many that the pharmaceutical industry as a whole reaps huge and unreasonable profits, this largely reflects a focus on the successes--a bit like judging the value of playing the lottery by talking only to the winners. What I've noticed is that a huge number of once-major pharmaceutical firms have disappeared or been absorbed since I began work in the field. Ever noticed how so many major pharmaceutical firms seem to have hyphenated names? This reflects a long history of failed businesses and acquisitions. Even a major pharmaceutical firm often cannot survive a late failure in drug development. And I know of numerous cases of smaller firms with promising drugs that went under, not because of any problem with the drug, but simply because they could not attract sufficient investment to bring the drug to market.
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Really, though, we are either in control of our faculties or we are not. If we're not, then we're just animals with no will. If we are, then this is no more concerning then someone plucking your heart strings to sell insurance. I highly doubt there is some subversive way they can force us to buy against our will using some sort of deep-seated neurological button. A shopping spree isn't exactly a survival mechanism.
But what is the "we" that is "in control?" I suspect that much of the time, when we think that we are in control, we are like the little kid you see at the arcade, having a great time playing a video game--except that he never put in a quarter, and he is only "playing" the attract mode. In other words, I think that our conscious mind mainly explains our decisions to itself, and probably makes very few of them.
It's not a matter of having control or not having control. Perhaps you actually make most of your decisions based on rational cost-benefit analysis, but at some point, you still have to factor in what you want--and that is an emotional matter. And if you are like most people, you probably have desires that are to some extent contradictory. So while an ad may not be able to force you to do something irrational, it may be able to present a purchase to you in the most favorable possible light, reminding you of the motivations that you have that would support that purchase.
I believe they should talk to people about the issues and the benefits instead of the constant name dropping of a few celebrities stem cells and cloning could *magically* heal.
Celebrities allow people to associate a human face with an illness that (if they are lucky) they've never had to face in themselves or a loved one. It's always easier to be compassionate toward a particular person than disease victims in the abstract.
Human cloning is scary stuff. What happens when we start to clone the "perfect" human for soldiers? Or when we clone too much that it leaves too little genetic diversity? Or worse, combining genetic manipulation with cloning, creating "super-humans", so-to-speak?
I think a lot of the fear of cloning is related to this idea that it is the leading edge of human modification. However, it is not. The true leading edge is gene therapy. And it is virtually unstoppable.
The problem is that the definition of a disease is very slippery. Discover a gene that determines whether somebody has perfect pitch? Congratulations! You've just discovered "Pitch perception disorder," a new genetic disease. And once you've identified a disorder, of course you need to treat it. Some parents are already treating small children with human growth hormone. This is not a gene therapy, but it illustrates how something that was once simply part of the normal range of human variation becomes a target for treatment once a "therapy" is available. Already, mutations are known that affect such things as muscle strength. Once gene therapy is refined, there will be increasing demand for treatment of increasingly minor "defects."
Of course, the problem is that changes in genes can have unintended consequences. Safety testing of gene therapies is going to be even more problematic than drug testing, because problems make take years, or even generations, to manifest. Expect some disasters that make thalidomide and diethylstilbesterol look like small potatoes.
I wouldn't worry about loss of genetic diversity, though. There are a lot of people on the planet. So even if 80% of them were cloned genetically modified, there would probably still be more genetic diversity than there has ever been in history.
I've been using an OGIO for many months now and I have to say it's the best backpack I've ever had. Lots of pockets and it has padding for the back which makes it not only comfortable but cushions the laptop nicely. The straps have padding too so they dont cut into your shoulders harshly when caring a heavy load.
I'll second this. I have an OGIO notebook backpack. It is the best-made backpack I've ever had. It has held up really well under heavy use.
The individual's responsibility begins where the corporation's ends. Now, I may not be the brightest bulb in the room, but I know that hot coffee probably shouldn't be in my lap. While I'm driving. And I know I shouldn't fuck with the lid on the cup full of hot coffee..in my lap...while I'm driving. This lady was stupid and it was partially her fault.
Minor problem: She wasn't driving . Not only wasn't she the driver, the car wasn't even moving.
If I wanted a cheap Mac (and didn't need portability), I'd look around for an older dual-G4 desktop, and load it up with 1-2 GB of RAM. The Mac really shines with dual processors and a good sized chunk of RAM. The OS seems to do a really good job of spreading the load between the processors. A dual-450 MHz G4 Mac feels very snappy, more so than, say, an 800 MHz single-processor Mac. It's not that it has a lot of raw power, it's that it never seems to bog down, no matter how many applications and windows you have open.
It sounds great and I hope it is all true, but how can 'the tail' possibly pay for projects that cost hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars? Many movie, music, game etc depend on the hits to bring in cash to pay for the misses.
There are always going to be some projects that are so expensive that they have to be hits to make a profit. But even then, the long tail softens the downside, because most intended hits fail. The hits have to pay for the misses. So if the misses bring in more income, the hits don't have to be quite so big to be counted successes. So companies may be a bit more willing to take risks, even with big-budget projects.
Seems like an ingenious theory. But I don't quite see how the signal transduction works. How are vibrations supposed to couple to the conformational equilibrium of the receptor?
Is it some 100% theoretical stuff or will it have technical repercussions in the short term ?
Generally, by the time somebody receives the Nobel Prize for a discovery, the "short term" is already over.
To sell this to me, they'll have to offer better than DVD quality--like HD. But the HDTiVo doesn't even connect to the internet yet, and it is sold only for DirecTV, who may well see this as competition.
Check out this web site
I'm not yet halfway, so this is not yet a review.
I'm definitely hooked. It was quite slow in starting, and very mannered in style, but the sly humor kept me reading. Many of the "scholarly" footnotes are wonderful little fantasy vignettes. For a book about magic, there is a great deal of people talking about magic and very little of them doing it. But the magical scenes, when they occur, are quite satisfyingly magical.
Okay, the high pixel density is neat and all, but can anyone name an application that would need a small screen with such high resolution.
A light head mounted display that projects a magnified screen image in the user's field of view.
It looks like occasionally the card with the HDMI on it gets jarred loose in shipping. Some people have simply taken off the lid and pushed it back into place. Others, less willing to mess around with a unit under warranty, have simply returned it for replacement.
Since bluffing is meant to fool human heuristics that judge the strenght of other players' hands based on those players' bets, why would a bot that works on probabilities NEED to consider bluffs?
Bluffs are also intended to foil human intuitive statistical analysis. The fundamental problem is that the strength of a perfectly rational player's hand can be determined from his bets. So the player must introduce noise or bias into his betting strategy to maintain the advantage of hidden cards. Since computers are even better at statistical analysis than humans, bluffing becomes more important, not less. The problem is that a bluffing strategy is itself subject to statistical analysis. Probably ultimately, there is no constant bluffing strategy that consistently beats sufficiently randomization.
SCO continues to fail to realize they're not trying this in any court of public opinion.
I'm not so sure. After all, public opinion influences stock price. So they announce a new legal tactic, the stock bobs up, and they sell. Then it gets revealed to be bogus and the stock slides and they buy. Even if SCO loses in court (and they may not even really expect to win), the principals will probably walk away rich men from churning their stock.
I have a Tivo and attempted to use the IR modules to control it before caving in and getting the serial control. From what I read the IR control is a pain in the ass and switches channels extremely slowly giving you a lag feel which for some is rather annoying. They don't mention that in this review though.
This is really a function of the cable box. Some are capable of receiving IR commands rapidly. A more significant problem is that some have a long "dead time" after seeing any IR signal, so any remote use at the same time can interfere with TiVo switching channels, unless you cover the sensor and IR module with electrician's tape. Best is if the cable box lets you use TiVo's serial cable.
The font used to make the memos was definitely not Times New Roman. It's weird that anyone could think that the fonts used in the memos are that font. Only someone who knows nothing about fonts, or someone who is mis-communicating, would say that.
I disagree. I'm a calligrapher, and I've worked with different typefaces for years. The resolution is so low that it is not possible to exclude specific typefaces other than by gross features, such as presence or absence of serifs or closed or open top to a "4". Due to the coarseness of the resolution, even baseline or fine character widths cannot be judged accurately. Perhaps somebody could do something with sophisticated image averaging (e.g. combining every letter "e" in all documents) but I haven't seen that attempted as yet. Certainly, within the resolution of the image, it cannot be distinguished from Times New Roman, and I can understand why somebody take the trouble to exclude Palatino as a possibility.
The emphasis on line lengths seems to be because that's the only thing that matches. The fonts are only somewhat similar. Within the lines, there are many cases of spacing mismatches.
The relative lengths of lines is the only feature that is absolutely characteristic, not merely of the typeface, but of the specific implementation of that typeface, and that is also sufficiently large-scale to survive any copying distortion/degradation that is not so severe as to render the document unreadable.
My guess is that you didn't read and understand everything he said. You are linking to him because he seems authoritative. Is that true?
No, because of my interest in calligraphy, I've followed the development of computer typography over the years from its very beginnings. His is the only writing on the subject that I've seen that evinces a correct understanding of how letter spacing has evolved over the years.
I thought every base had a printing office. A large enough base, or one with special responsibilities, would have a typesetter, I suppose. I haven't thought about that in many years, of course.
In fact, even after this time, nobody has managed to produce a single non-disputed military memo of the era that looks like it might have been typeset, or even produced on a high-end proportional spacing typewriter. The one typewriter that a few people have pointed to as possibly plausible does not produce matching line widths; it is doubtful that even a professional typesetter of the time could have done so, without making numerous intentional adjustments to tweak the widths. To cap it off, the typist from the office denies having access to any kind of typeset or near-typeset quality equipment that might have produced this kind of document.
It is ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT to the Bush documents that some machine that a critic has chosen cannot do typesetting. Just choose another machine that can.
However, it is not at all irrelevant that the only typewriter that anybody has suggested to be the origin of the message does not produce text with matching line lengths. Indeed, nobody has managed to find any system of that era capable of reproducing the line lengths, while a modern computer word processor does it perfectly with its default settings. Since algorithms of character spacing have evolved since the 1970's, it is astronomically improbably that any system of that era, known or unknown, typewriter or even typesetter will reproduce those relative line lengths.
"This typeface is the property of Monotype Typography and its use by you is covered under the terms of a license agreement. You have obtained this typeface software either directly from Monotype or together with software distributed by one of Monotype's licensees." Microsoft Word ONLY follows the information in this file.
If you are arguing that the document could also have been produced by another modern word processor, such as Open Office, using the same font definition, that is certainly true, although unlikely. What it could not be is a 1970's vintage system using the letter spacing methods of that time.
All of this should indicate that no one should be surprised if something typeset today looks exactly like something done so recently as 1972.
Anybody who knows about the evolution of character spacing since 1972 would be very surprised if the line lengths were the same, even though the individual characters might look identical.
Mary Carr Knox, Lt. Colonel Killian's secretary, supplied some valuable information
In particular, she has denied having access to any machine office capable of producing the typography in those memos.
The Selectric Composers could vary the letter and line spacing, so don't look for an exact match unless you have one of the machines and are willing to experiment.
You can vary this in Word, too. The amazing thing is that you don't need to. The relative line lengths come out exactly the same with Word's default settings. This would be an amazing coincidence if the document was not prepared in Word. Letter spacing has changed over the years, and even varies among versions of the same font, so it is next to impossible to get line lengths to come out the same in different versions unless you tweak it. In particular, the automatic spacing used by Word today is different, and more sophisticated that what was available even to typesetting machines, much less typewriters, in the '70's. You probably could approximate Word's spacing with the Selectric, but you'd have to work at it.
One of the documents released by the White House also had a superscripted "th". Why did typists superscript the "th" sometimes and not others? I don't know; maybe just to show they could. Maybe they were experimenting to learn more about their machines.
Perhaps so, but then you have to assume that by whim, the typist happened to hit on the same spacing pattern that Word uses to control the automatic superscripting, superscripting only when there is not space between the digit and the "th".
The forger was dumb, but the forger was smart? The forger was so dumb he did not think to switch to Courier as he was using Microsoft Word to type the documents? But, he was smart enough to vary the baseline in exactly the way a Selectric Composer would when it was not adjusted?
The variation of the baseline looks like digitization artifacts resulting from a scanned document not being perfectly aligned. I think the forger probably was smart, but overestimated how smart CBS was. I don't think the forger really expected to fool CBS for long, and he probably never expected CBS to make the documents public. Most likely, he was trying to draw CBS's attention to "the dog that didn't bark in the night" -- i.e. the documents that weren't in Bush's military record, but which should have been if regulations were followed. So he created mock-ups of the documents that should have been there, expecting CBS at some point to figure out that the documents were bogus, but that there was a real issue. Unfortunately, CBS wasn't that bright....
the second link was incorrect. Here is the right one.
The thing that varies most, even among different implementations of the same "font" is the character spacing. So the fact that it is possible to type the same text into Microsoft Word and have the relative lengths of the lines come out exactly the same is very strong evidence.
Somebody has actually tried the same thing on the Selectric Composer. The line lengths don't match. Here is a more detailed explanation of why the exact spacing differs.
The fact that the subscripting of the "th" matches exactly the automatic subscripting rule in Word (which subscripts if and only if there is no space between the digit and the "th") is icing on the cake. Even if there were a ball with a custom superscripted "th" (for the test referenced above, the guy had to switch balls to get the small characters) it would be manual, not automatic as it is in Word.
I don't think anybody with even a nodding familiarity with typewriters and typesetting can doubt that these documents are forgeries. The interesting question then becomes: who forged them and why?
It's tempting to blame them on Republican agents provocateurs out to embarrass the Kerry campaign, but this doesn't hold water for a number of reasons:
1. They are such bad forgeries that it is surprising that they fooled CBS.
2. The Republicans have too much to lose by stirring up the question of Bush's military service.
3. If they were trying to frame the Democrats for making false claims, the claims in the letters would probably be more outrageous, for maximum embarrassment when the letters were showed to be bogus.
On the other hand, some of the same objections apply to the Democrats: Why such bad forgeries? Why such relatively mild content?
My theory is the following: I believe that the letters were fabricated by an anti-Bush source, but the perpetrator never intended or expected to fool CBS for long. Rather, the letters were mock-ups of documents that should have been present in Bush's military record, but are mysteriously missing, designed to draw CBS's attention to the absence of those very records. The letters are mild because, while they are fabrications, their content is substantially accurate--which is what fooled CBS into taking them at face value. I don't think the perpetrator expected the forgeries ever to become public--he was just trying to get CBS started investigating what was originally in the "holes" in Bush's military record. Unfortunately, the perpetrator underestimated CBS's gullibility.
Oh cry me a river. This is different from any other industry on the planet how exactly? Yet you rarely hear about multi-billion profits in the risky real-estate industry for example.
This is different in that I don't know of any other business in which the cost of product development is so high that it threatens the survival of the firm if it is not wildly successful. The closest thing to it is development of a big-budget movie. But it is not a perfect analogy because while it is possible for a studio to survive (and sometimes even do well) by making low-budget films, there is no way to make a low-budget drug (unless you can come up with a way to leech off of somebody else's development work--e.g. by manufacturing generics).
When most development projects fail, and costs are high, you get a hit-driven industry: all of the profits have to come from the minority of projects that succeed, and the company is highly motivated to maximize the profits from each success because they never know how long it will be until they get another.
Acquisitions happen regardless of success or failure and are primarilly driven by Wall Steet mad CEOs who attempt to create "value" for shareholders.
In the pharmaceutical business, acquisitions tend to happen because a company has not had a big hit in so long that their stock is in the toilet, they are at the point of running out of money for new drug development and as a result they become an attractive target for other companies that are looking to dismantle them and appropriate their assets.
That is why having public research and private manufacturing is the best combination: greed combined with fair and ruthless competition on a free and unrestricted playing field will motivate the manufacturers to make drugs efficiently and at lowest possible price. While free exchange of ideas in academia will produce a stream of discoveries as it always had before being taken over by the corporate greed. People who are now mercenaries, would simply go back to the labs sponsored by public and various foundations. And the market for inflated bogus "research" expenditures will simply disappear. All one has to do, to achive this, is to abolish the abysmal "Intellectual Property" law which is creating this and many other quagmires all over the landscape.
However, abolishing intellectual property would simply end the incentive for drug development, without replacing it with anything. To replace that with a publicly funded nationalized drug development industry would require massive additional investment, because there would no longer be a reason for private firms to pick up the enormous bill for safety and efficacy testing. And you expect this from a country that is not even willing to provide universal health care?
And one thing about the profit motive--to be profitable, the drugs have to actually work. Giving the government control over both the creation and the evaluation of all drugs would create a massive conflict of interest, and would politicize the drug development process--i.e. there would be a strong motivation to approve drugs whether they were safe and effective or not, to make it look tax money was being well spent. Frankly, I'd rather trust my health to the greed of the pharmaceutical companies before giving it over into the hands of the kind of government bureaucracy that gave us the Challenger disaster, the Columbia disaster, the bad Hubble mirror, and the Mars probe that crashed because there was nobody competent enough to check the conversion between feet and meters.
You know, you choose to be really blind about how things work. A company will do something if it brings 1% profit. Profit is proftit. As to "being able to afford safety testing", you are kidding, right? What does that mean? 100 sick people, 50 on placebo and 50 on drug? Paperwork to fill? Where does the money go? I know: artificial beaurocracy and massive profits of the companies conducting the "trial". Fuck, most of these poeple would pay to be in a trial for a potentially life-saving drug.
The safety and efficacy testing required by the FDA costs millions of dollars. If you really want to know "where the money goes" there is an extensive economic literature on the subject. Suffice it to say that it is expensive for the drug companies, who don't have "artificial bureaucracies" and who have every incentive to cut costs. And the reality is that many drugs fail at this stage of testing. So very often it is not "profit is profit"; instead it is extensive investment with no profit at all, typically followed by bankruptcy or hostile acquisition.
While it is an article of faith among many that the pharmaceutical industry as a whole reaps huge and unreasonable profits, this largely reflects a focus on the successes--a bit like judging the value of playing the lottery by talking only to the winners. What I've noticed is that a huge number of once-major pharmaceutical firms have disappeared or been absorbed since I began work in the field. Ever noticed how so many major pharmaceutical firms seem to have hyphenated names? This reflects a long history of failed businesses and acquisitions. Even a major pharmaceutical firm often cannot survive a late failure in drug development. And I know of numerous cases of smaller firms with promising drugs that went under, not because of any problem with the drug, but simply because they could not attract sufficient investment to bring the drug to market.