Meet the Font Detectives Who Ferret Out Fakery (wired.com) 72
New submitter rgh02 writes: Earlier this year, the former prime minister of Pakistan and his family came under scrutiny thanks to revelations in the Panama Papers. The smoking gun in the case of a forged document was none other than a font -- Calibri, which, as it turned out, wasn't even available until after the document had allegedly been signed and dated. This is not the first or the last time typography helped crack a case, and often with help from experts appropriately referred to as the 'font detectives.' At Backchannel, Glenn Fleishman dives into the adventures of the experts ferreting out fakery with their knowledge of fonts and the high-profile cases they've found themselves involved in.
Let's not forget "Memogate" 2004 (Score:5, Informative)
Credulously accepting Times New Roman in MS Word as a typewriter font is what got Dan Rather into trouble.
Re:Let's not forget "Memogate" 2004 (Score:5, Informative)
The "fake, but true" narrative. The memo was fabricated whole cloth. The guy admitted it was a fake.
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Without the memo, there is no such "fact." That was the smoking gun. Everything else speculation.
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Maybe you should stop listen into those alt-left noise machines and learn some of the real world facts.
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What's interesting is that if you read the Thornburgh-Boccardi report, Mary Mapes (the person who was investigating this story for CBS, and was fired along with Rather) had actually found several witnesses who indicated that GWB volunteered for service in Vietnam while at the Texas ANG, but didn't have enough flight hours to qualify. Among witnesses mentioned include a TexANG flight instructor and LTC Killian's son.
See pages 61 and 130:
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/... [cbsnews.com]
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That has been well established and corroborated by many witnesses.
Many (most?) of those witnesses turned out to be either lying or mislead into giving a false testimony. See page 129 in the Thornburgh-Boccardi report for example:
http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/... [cbsnews.com]
Practically the only witness who wasn't would be Killian's secretary, who came out of the woodwork after the fact. There were also many witnesses who recalled GWB volunteering for 90 days of service in Vietnam under a program they had at the time, but he didn't have enough flight hours to qualify. See page 61 and 1
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In fact, come to think of it, reading back in Killian's secretary's comments, she admits she had no firsthand knowledge about GWB, while shortly thereafter saying it was correct...Both statements seem contradictory, so she shouldn't be considered a reliable witness either.
The memos were fake (Score:2, Informative)
The whole thing stinks. Like it was cooked up to shut down talk about why it was Bush Jr ended up with such a desirable position in the first place. During the latest election there we
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Bush didn't write a letter declaring his hatred for the military, did he?
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Bush Jr's b.s. "service" was real. It was painfully obvious he landed a cushy position with the Airforce he had no business or qualifications for and that his father's connections got him that (and kept him out of war zones). What's more, his opponent Kerry actually went to 'Nam and somehow managed to get branded a coward.
Kerry went to 'Nam all right, but did a lot of questionable things in conjunction with that service, including staging himself "in battle" so that he could film himself, labeling himself and his fellow soldiers "war criminals", claiming to have thrown his medals over the White House fence and later saying he "borrowed" somebody else's medals to stage that as well, not to mention all his Swift Boat claims that were refuted by people who served with him. I won't call him a coward because I haven't studied the
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not to mention all his Swift Boat claims that were refuted
Friend, there's a reason that slandering someone with fake allegations is called swiftboating - all of the 'refuting' turned out to be BS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Re:Let's not forget "Memogate" 2004 (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, yes. "It was all fake from beginning to end, but it was true anyways! I have no actual evidence, but I know in my heart it was true!"
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Never claimed to have a built-in "truth detector." That's the province of people who know Bush is guilty with no evidence. Also, who's Seth Rich and what about his murder?
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Sad thing was the substance of the report was actually true. But that didn't matter.
How do you know that? Where is the real document that proved that?
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How do you know that? Where is the real document that proved that?
If you are really interested in the subject you could start with the Wikipedia article. I notice that many of its citation links are broken (a constant problem there) but you can find references to many "documents" indicating that GWB basically stopped flying for the TNG before his obligation to do so was up.
However most people are more interested in defending their predetermined political position rather than looking at evidence so I have no real hope of anyone here paying attention.
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When an allegation is made, you cannot be disappointed in people for asking for proof. Like, real proof; not fake memos or poorly-cited Wikipedia articles. If everyone was more skeptical and had a higher bar of what proof was, all this "fake news" bullshit on social media would be a complete non-issue.
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You've got it backwards: when you make a claim, you have to provide the evidence, not tell people, "You have to go find the evidence I'm not willing to research."
How dare these people not look at the evidence you can't be bothered to show!
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Which wikipedia article? This one?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I don't see anything like that in it. I do see this:
Mapes and Dan Rather, among many other journalists, had been investigating for several years the story of Bush's alleged failure to fulfill his obligations to the National Guard.[17]
In other words, they were investigating it, but there were no documents, witnesses, or other evidence. And yes, the reference is broken.
Another interesting bit:
On November 9, 2005, Mary Mapes gave an interview to ABC News correspondent Brian Ross. Mapes stated that the documents have never been proved to be forgeries. Ross expressed the view that the responsibility is on the reporter to verify their authenticity. Mapes responded with, "I don't think that's the standard." This stands in contrast to the statement of the president of CBS News that proof of authenticity is "the only acceptable journalistic standard."
And this one:
Also on September 10, The Dallas Morning News reported that "the officer named in one memo as exerting pressure to 'sugarcoat' Bush's military record was discharged a year and a half before the memo was written.[75] The paper cited a military record showing that Col. Walter "Buck" Staudt was honorably discharged on March 1, 1972, while the memo cited by CBS as showing that Staudt was interfering with evaluations of Bush was dated August 18, 1973."[76]
If anything, the wikipedia article on this has an overall tone of saying that the CBS narrative at the time was fraudulent; far removed from the "fake but accurate" narrative you are trying to push.
Re: Let's not forget "Memogate" 2004 (Score:2)
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That's what the fucking news was calling it back then. Blame them.
Font Detectives (Score:5, Funny)
This sounds like the least interesting crime show I have ever heard of, and I will not watch the dramatization even if Tom Hanks plays the lead.
Re:Font Detectives (Score:4, Funny)
even if Tom Hanks plays the lead
Stand by for outrage when they select Idris Elba.
I Wonder... (Score:2)
When did Comic Sans appear?
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Re:I Wonder... (Score:5, Funny)
I don't need Google. It appeared the day Lucifer and his angels rebelled against God. It was formed in the fires of hell, created to hold the damned for all eternity. It is first of the horsemen of the Apocalypse, to be followed by Papyrus, Bleeding Cowboy, and finally the anti-christ, the false messiah, Helvetica.
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You can tell this is false because hell didn't exist until the rebellion was crushed so a font forged un hell couldn't have been created when the rebellion began.
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Perhaps... but the OP didn't ask when (or how, or why) it was created, he asked when it appeared. Presumably "appeared" would typically mean appeared to people with a typical range of perceptual ability.
Besides... I would suggest that Comic Sans isn't even really that bad a font by (most) objective measures. The single biggest complaint that most can legitimately make about it is that it suffered hugely from overuse in contexts where a whimsical looking font was not actually appropriate (resume's, corp
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Perhaps... but the OP didn't ask when (or how, or why) it was created, he asked when it appeared. Presumably "appeared" would typically mean appeared to people with a typical range of perceptual ability.
I don't think you picked up on this, but... I was joking.
How to get answers on the internet (Score:5, Funny)
If instead you would have typed that exact question into a search engine instead of your comment, I'm sure you would receive a more informative answer than this cheeky wisecrack comment.
The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask the right question but to post the wrong answer.
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Complementary Comic about Comic Sans [garethjmsaunders.co.uk]
Re: I Wonder... (Score:2)
You misspelled Aldus Pagemaker but we don't mind. Everybody knew what you meant.
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Watermark in the font? Like a character that's unique to the font so that it's clear that it's the font in-use?
Maybe, maybe not? (Score:2)
I'm not trying to defend anyone here, but this sentence bugs me:
"Calibri, which, as it turned out, wasn't even available until after the document had allegedly been signed and dated."
Should it rather be:
"Calibri, which, as it turned out, wasn't even available legally until after the document had allegedly been signed and dated."
Would it be possible he used a pirated copy that was released earlier, making the document legit?
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Depends on when it was actually developed, and how it was released. If it wasn't even developed yet or was still restricted to the lab, then no. And even if it existed but wasn't part of a mainstream distribution and still required extraction from a Beta release of some product, it still casts doubt that it would have been used by those who put forth the document. Most people aren't going to go through the effort to get new fonts like that.
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fixedsys to avoid date conflicts (Score:3, Interesting)
I try to use fixedsys [wikipedia.org] fonts such as system in all of my writing they are widely accepted and have a tested user base. On top of that the system font avoid most modern time based conflicts as it dates back to the 1980's. It takes low resources and low resolution to create on a display device. I would encourage everyone to use system font and avoid all the painful issues of compatibility, performance, and legal ramifications that other much newer fonts can have.
Re: fixedsys to avoid date conflicts (Score:3, Informative)
I try to use my manual Smith-Corona. There is something nostalgic about having to use a lower case 'l' for the numeral 'one' because your keyboard doesn't have a key for 'one.'
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There are kits to convert them into computer keyboards.
Unicode characters for Mr and Mrs, but that would require a custom driver or at least a keyboard layout.
Dupe... And Spam (Score:2)
rgh02 [slashdot.org] is a spammer who also upvotes other articles from his employer.
If this story sounds familiar its because it was done [slashdot.org], twice [slashdot.org].
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This is not a dupe. This is a new story (from Sept. 13) about the "Sharif" incident AND OTHERS.
RTFA.
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Shouldn't you get the facts before you comment?
The circle is complete (Score:4, Interesting)
Fonts of knowledge researching fonts for knowledge.
With all this technology (Score:2)
Man, it's getting so hard to cheat these days.