It will never end... sad

[Stephen Eisel]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s9StxsF ... e=youtu.be

[Jim O'Bryan]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s9StxsFllY&feature=youtu.be

Stephen

This entire thing is fascinating. Watched it twice, sent it to friends in the business. I did
the same thing in Illustrator. There are even other points they never brought up.

Simple to explain away, but the fact is not one exaggeration or untruth in this.

Then, you have the crazy overstatements on both sides. Reminds me of the discussion
on the moon landing.

It is just pretty wild.

Me personally, could care less, but the video and discussion is fascinating.

Thanks.

.

[Will Brown]

I'm no fan of the so-called birthers. What little I know of image processing is consistent with what is in the film, but I'm certainly not an expert. However, in the absence of evidence contesting the findings, I will accept that the posted document has been altered.

My question is why was it altered? Why would anyone. faced with the issues raised by the birthers, alter a document that apparently would have put the matter to rest. That's like getting into a mud slinging contest, and throwing mud on yourself. They have managed to keep alive this controversy, rather than ending it.

I think our political class has become enamored with image, rather than substance, and I don't think this disease is limited to one party. Rather than doing the hard work of solving our serious problems, they spend their efforts in trying to find or create peripheral points that make the other side look bad and themselves look good. Once you are infected with that mind-set, it makes sense to spend your resources prettifying a document rather than doing something useful.

If anything, this episode should teach us to question anything a politician says or writes. Of course, it would be fatal for any politician to be scrupulously honest in his public dealings.

[Brian Pedaci]

If Fox News says the elements displayed in Illustrator are normal and not evidence of a forgery, well then by goodness I'm going to believe them for once.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/04/29/expert-says-obamas-birth-certificate-legit

Expert: No Doubt Obama's Birth Certificate Is Legit
“You should not be so suspicious about this,” Tremblay told FoxNews.com, dismissing the allegations.

He said the layers cited by doubters are evidence of the use of common, off-the-shelf scanning software — not evidence of a forgery. “I have seen a lot of illustrator documents that come from photos and contain those kind of clippings—and it looks exactly like this,” he said.

Tremblay explained that the scanner optical character recognition (OCR) software attempts to translate characters or words in a photograph into text. He said the layers cited by the doubters shows that software at work – and nothing more.

“When you open it in Illustrator it looks like layers, but it doesn’t look like someone built it from scratch. If someone made a fake it wouldn’t look like this,” he said.“Some scanning software is trying to separate the background and the text and splitting element into layers and parts of layers.”

Tremblay also said that during the scanning process, instances where the software was unable to separate text fully from background led to the creation of a separate layer within the document. This could be places where a signature runs over the line of background, or typed characters touch the internal border of the document.

“I know that you can scan a document from a scanner most of the time it will appear as one piece, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no software that’s doing this kind of stuff,” he said, adding that it’s really quite common.

“I’d be more afraid it’d be fake if it was one in piece. It would be harder to check if it’s a good one if it’s a fake,” Tremblay said.

[Jim O'Bryan]

Brian

I do not think it is a fake, but I do not by Fox News' story either.

I have never in all my years of doing scanning and work had a document come in layers.

Not aware of any setting that would allow it to happen.

Something else that is never mentioned in the 1/2 I saw was the white glow around the
text that makes it stand out from the back ground. Then the is the shadow on the inks that
is not reflected in the paper behind it.

However, the replace or corrected type is over the corrected area damn near perfectly so
that it would seem like no changes were made.

My theory would be someone scanned in a very old document and "freshened" it up for
easier reading and understanding.

I could be wrong about all of this, however, I do find it fascinating that this document was
placed this way on the White House website. As it does seem to do the very same thing
so many other things do with the moon landing, gives you enough pause to say, Damn,
why? Perfect conspiracy BS.

Me personally, I could care the guy is doing a better job than the others would have.

And yes I believe he is an American, and was born one.

FWIW