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Moderated Obama birth certificate CT / SSN CT / Birther discussion

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thedopefishlives said:
Not to mention that the whole PDF thing is a red herring to begin with. The PDF could be as fake as Robert's blow-out drawing and it would not change anything. The actual paper copies of the birth certificate have been seen and verified by the relevant authorities. Game Over. The PDF being legit is just icing on the cake, at this point.
Click to expand...

Yes. Apparently Robert's "theory" is that after obtaining the long form COLB from the state of Hawaii, and showing it to several journalists, they then created a fake scan with altered information and posted it on the web, but somehow nobody noticed the difference.

It sounds pretty stupid when it's put that way, but only because it is.

Obama's grandmother said he was born in Kenya. (Actually Obama's non-English-speaking Grandmother answered "yes" to a misunderstood loaded question passed through an interpreter, then repeatedly said he was born in Hawaii.)

Obama won't show us his birth certificate.

A COLB isn't a real birth certificate, and the scanned PDF posted on the web is a fake. If he'd provide his long form birth certificate, he could clear the whole thing up.

The scanned image of of the long form posted on the web is a fake (sound familiar?) Notice any goalposts moving?
 
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Robert Prey said:
"Groups" each on a separate layer. Obviously.
Click to expand...

Watch your own video again.

ETA: I spent the last year working with "interestingly" layered XML-Documents where a layer contains one or more other layers. The XSD for that makes sloppily coded XML-programs crash even though it is valid. Compared to that PDF files have butt ugly syntax but aren't very complicated otherwise.
 
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Here is the Obama PDF hierarchy

  • Document
    • Catalog
      • Pages
        • Page 1
          • Raster Image ProcSet
            • Image 1
            • Image 2
            • Image 3
            • Image 4
            • Image 5
            • Image 6
            • Image 7
            • Image 8
            • Image 9

Here is the equivalent Illustrator document hierarchy after the Obama PDF is imported

  • Document
    • Layer 1
      • Clip Group 0
        • Clip Path
        • Clip Group 1
          • Pixel Map Object 1
        • Clip Group 2
          • Pixel Map Object 2
        • Clip Group 3
          • Pixel Map Object 3
        • Clip Group 4
          • Pixel Map Object 4
        • Clip Group 5
          • Pixel Map Object 5
        • Clip Group 6
          • Pixel Map Object 6
        • Clip Group 7
          • Pixel Map Object 7
        • Clip Group 8
          • Pixel Map Object 8
        • Clip Group 9
          • Pixel Map Object 9

By comparison, here's the structure of the optimized PDF of the Photoshop User cover I scanned this morning.

  • Document
    • Catalog
      • Pages
        • Page 1
          • Raster Image ProcSet
            • Image 1
            • Image 2
            • Image 3
            • Image 4

And here is the object hierarchy reported by Illustrator when I imported that PDF

  • Document
    • Layer 1
      • Clip Group 0
        • Clip Path
        • Clip Group 1
          • Pixel Map Object 1
        • Clip Group 2
          • Pixel Map Object 2
        • Clip Group 3
          • Pixel Map Object 3
        • Clip Group 4
          • Pixel Map Object 4

Now the reader might legitimately ask two questions.

First, why does Illustrator put each subimage into its own "Clip Group?"

The simple answer is because Illustrator is stupid. As Abbadon has lamented, importing PDFs into Illustrator is a losing proposition. "Clipping" in general computer graphics terms means displaying only part of a raster image. One "clips" the image to the viewport, for example, not displaying the parts of the picture that are not within the scrollable viewport in a window. One can also clip an image to an arbitrary shape, in cookie-cutter fashion.

In PDF terms, clipping occurs first by means of a rectangular viewport representing the printable and visible portions of the media, then optionally by means of a bitmask -- an image composed only of black-or-white pixels that determine which source pixels find their way into the destination raster. Because PDF drawing commands can reset the graphics state easily in the middle of rendering an object, there is a shortcut you can use in PDF to "mask out" the cumulative image. This is what was done in the Obama PDF, and what is commonly done as part of PDF optimization -- it replaces unnecessarily "deep" or unacceptably "noisy" portions of a scanned image with single-bit values that invoke the known value of the otherwise ephemeral graphics state.

In Illustrator terms, clipping is done at a higher geometric level. Underlying objects are clipped to the outline of high-level objects (e.g., paths and text) according to standard set-operation combinations. Parts of objects that lie within the boundaries of other objects are said to be clipped by them. Illustrator puts these in a special type of group called a Clip Group because the computations that resolve the visible portions of an object among possibly dozens of object interactions are complex and time-consuming. Identifying that group for special handling allows Illustrator to cache the interaction results and store (behind the scenes) intermediate clip regions.

Illustrator can use opacity masks to clip, but even these are typically created and stored as parameterized objects (e.g., gradient descriptors). You have to go to extreme lengths to get Illustrator to recognize an imported bitmap as an opacity map, and still the best method is for Illustrator to trace the bitmap as path object. Illustrator's importer defers that decision. But still when it sees a PDF object described as /XObject /Subtype /Image /ImageMask true /BitsPerComponent 1, it recognizes it as something that eventually will need to be clipped in some fashion or another. Hence it creates a clipping group for it provisionally, even if the group ends up being degenerate in the Illustrator data model.

As elaborated in the PDF documentation, this is not a new Layer. This is Illustrator's best stab at representing a PDF object in a way that will allow it to be rendered and represented appropriately in Illustrator's dissimilar data structure and rendering model. It turns out the Clip Group contains only the clipping mask (to be interpreted either as a path-generator or an opacity mask) and simply modifies the accumulated group graphic state as the rendering pipeline proceeds.

Second, Robert's quote indeed mentions layered content; what does that hierarchy look like?

I have a simple but valid Illustrator document as follows

  • Document
    • Registrations Layer
      • Crop Mark Group
        • Crop Mark 1
        • Crop Mark 2
        • Crop Mark 3
        • Crop Mark 4
      • Registration Mark Group
        • Registration Mark Cyan
        • Registration Mark Yellow
        • Registration Mark Blue
        • Registration Mark Black
    • Raster Content Layer
      • Image 1 Group
        • Production Still Photo
        • Text Object for Caption 1
      • Image 2 Group
        • Cast Thumbnails
        • Text Object for Caption 2
    • Vector Content Layer
      • Rectangle Gradient Object
      • Text Object for Cast List and Production Credits
      • Title Group
        • Text Object for DVD Title
        • Horizontal Rule 1
      • Horizontal Rule 2

In the Illustrator Layers pane, each of those entities will have its own line item entry, but only three of them are Layers. The rest are either user-defined groups or displayable objects I've created within those layers and groups.

Exporting to PDF, I get this:

  • Document
    • Catalog
      • Pages
        • Page 1
          • Raster Image ProcSet, CYMK color space, 8 bits per component
            • Production Still Photo
            • Cast Thumbnails
          • Text ProcSet, Font Showtime
            • Caption Text 1
            • Caption Text 2
            • Cast List and Production Credits Text
          • Text ProcSet, Font LaFleur
            • DVD Title Text
          • PDF Drawing ProcSet
            • Crop Mark 1
            • Crop Mark 2
            • Crop Mark 3
            • Crop Mark 4
            • Registration Mark Cyan
            • Registration Mark Yellow
            • Registration Mark Blue
            • Registration Mark Black
            • Rectangle Gradient Object
            • Text Box
            • Horizontal Rule 1
            • Horisontal Rule 2

Now as a tangential exercise, here's what I get when I import that PDF back into Illustrator

  • Document
    • Layer 1
      • Clip Group 0
        • Clipping Path
        • Crop Mark 1
        • Crop Mark 2
        • Crop Mark 3
        • Crop Mark 4
        • Registration Mark Cyan
        • Registration Mark Yellow
        • Registration Mark Blue
        • Registration Mark Black
        • Production Still Photo
        • Text Object for Caption 1
        • Cast Thumbnails
        • Text Object for Caption 2
        • Rectangle Gradient Object
        • Text Object for Cast List and Production Credits
        • Text Object for DVD Title
        • Horizontal Rule 1
        • Horizontal Rule 2

Why aren't my layers and groups preserved? Because PDF doesn't know how to represent them effectively. So everything gets imported into a single Illustrator layer.

Now if I open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Professional 9, I can select a Layers pane on the left. It initially shows me zero layers. That is, there is no "default layer" in PDF land. I can create the first layer ("Jay's New Layer"), but to add content to it I can only import it in the form of another PDF document. So if I do that by importing a simple multimedia document (the data sheet for an accelerometer) into my newly-created Layer in Acrobat.

  • Document
    • Catalog
      • Pages
        • Page 1
          • Raster Image ProcSet
            • Product Illustration
          • PDF Drawing ProcSet
            • Product Diagram
            • Product Table Outline
          • Text ProcSet, font Garamond
            • (many text objects)

Saving the result as a new PDF, I get this:

  • Document
    • Catalog
      • Pages
        • Page 1
          • Raster Image ProcSet, CYMK color space, 8 bits per component
            • Production Still Photo
            • Cast Thumbnails
            • Product Illustration
          • Text ProcSet, Font Showtime
            • Caption Text 1
            • Caption Text 2
            • Cast List and Production Credits Text
          • Text ProcSet, Font LaFleur
            • DVD Title Text
          • Text ProcSet
            • (many text objects)
          • PDF Drawing ProcSet
            • Crop Mark 1
            • Crop Mark 2
            • Crop Mark 3
            • Crop Mark 4
            • Registration Mark Cyan
            • Registration Mark Yellow
            • Registration Mark Blue
            • Registration Mark Black
            • Rectangle Gradient Object
            • Text Box
            • Horizontal Rule 1
            • Horisontal Rule 2
            • Product Diagram
            • Product Table Outline
          • Optional Content Group - "Jay's New Layer", intent logical-grouping, visible, non-scalable
            • External ref. to Product Illustration
            • External ref. to Product Diagram
            • External ref. to Product Table Outline
            • (many external references to text objects)

The rendering order and grouping remain unchanged. We've only added a new section that says for some purpose we can treat those objects similarly. In this case I've made it so that they can be made visible or invisible as a group (i.e., in an interactive PDF viewer) and that they should not be scaled if the user zooms into the document (useful for annotations). The grouping reasons are literally infinite.

Import this "layered" PDF back into Illustrator. What do we get?

  • Document
    • Layer 1
      • Clip Group 0
        • Clipping Path
        • Crop Mark 1
        • Crop Mark 2
        • Crop Mark 3
        • Crop Mark 4
        • Registration Mark Cyan
        • Registration Mark Yellow
        • Registration Mark Blue
        • Registration Mark Black
        • Production Still Photo
        • Text Object for Caption 1
        • Cast Thumbnails
        • Text Object for Caption 2
        • Rectangle Gradient Object
        • Text Object for Cast List and Production Credits
        • Text Object for DVD Title
        • Horizontal Rule 1
        • Horizontal Rule 2
        • Product Illustration
        • Product Diagram
        • Product Table Outline
        • (many text objects)

Why didn't Illustrator recognize the optional-content group as a layer? Because content-groups are not layers the way Illustrator understands them.

Because an Illustrator document is ruthlessly hierarchical, an object can appear only in one group, series of enclosing groups, and layer. But in PDF land we can say this

  • Content Group 1 "Jay's Layer"
    • External ref. to Object 42
    • External ref. to Object 79
  • Content Group 2 "Robert's Layer"
    • External ref. to Object 13
    • External ref. to Object 79

It's perfectly valid PDF, but to try to import PDF content groups like this into Illustrator as layers or even ordinary object groups would require an object to be in more than one Layer. Which, naturally, Illustrator can't do. So programs that interpret PDF files generally ignore OCGs unless they can be absolutely sure they were the ones who created it in the first place.

The only program that will interpret generic OCGs is ... Acrobat. And why? Because Acrobat's data model is guaranteed to be the PDF data model, by design.

This dilemma exists because while OCGs can represent original layers, they are not required in PDF terms to do so. They are employed to serve whatever purpose the PDF author (not the original author) intends. Hence it is unwise for a PDF importer to assume that OCGs he encounters in PDF files will be compatible with his data model.

Oh, and this facility doesn't exist in PDF 1.3, the version that Obama's PDF is written in.

So let's revisit Robert's quote again. InDesign will let you create a number of printed and interactive publications. If you're foolish enough to design a web site in InDesign, interactive content will be represented in a PDF export with OCGs having a certain intent setting. And that means when you go to print them, those stupid OCGs (which may derive from InDesign "Layers" that represented interaction panes) give you all the optional content at once -- which doesn't look good on paper.

That's why Robert's quote is limited to (a) PDFs exported from InDesign documents, (b) printing on paper, and (c) PDF versions that support optional content.
 
jadebox said:
In this case though, RP's experts are just people quoted on the sites he copies text from.
Click to expand...

Agreed. If Robert goes to a web site that supports his beliefs, and a name appears on that web site, then that person "is a well-qualified expert."

If, on the other hand, Robert goes to a web site where people challenge his beliefs, and a name appears on that web site, then that person "cannot possibly be an expert."

Apparently names on web sites have different values depending on whether they agree with Robert Prety.
 
Robert Prey said:
Because I don't engage in childish word games. That's the favorite toy of others who call them selves "experts" on this board. Yes one layer till you open it up. And it does say "group". But each group is on a separate layer. Obviously.
Click to expand...
Actually it is obvious that you are playing childish word games. And it's equally obvious to anyone who can read a hierarchical tree that all those groups are in one, and only one, layer. Obviously.
 
CORed said:
Yes. Apparently Robert's "theory" is that after obtaining the long form COLB from the state of Hawaii, and showing it to several journalists, they then created a fake scan with altered information and posted it on the web, but somehow nobody noticed the difference.
?
Click to expand...

Not even you bothered to notice. Like how about that blue background in the AP "copy" but green background on the PDF?
 
Mudcat said:
Robert's claim, which you quoted, is starting to sound like his claim that "LHO is wearing someone else's chin" in the JFK assassination thread because he couldn't understand change in light in angle can make people look different.

Now Robert, I don't understand PDF that well but it sounds like it operates similarly to Photoshop or GIMP (which I do understand).

Even a rank amateur like myself knows to merge layers as part of the clean up process, and it's not hard to do. Not doing it is extremely sloppy and I'd expect that if the government was to forge a document they'd merge the layers as well.

And yet you'd have us believe that they were so lazy or grossly incompetent that they failed to do so with a 'forged' document that could possibly be very damning?
Click to expand...

Yeah, well it's such a bad fake, some people think it is intentional.
 
Robert Prey said:
Not even you bothered to notice. Like how about that blue background in the AP "copy" but green background on the PDF?
Click to expand...

Color-space conversions and output device color gamuts are another topic we can discuss. Or rather, another topic I can discuss over your head.

You failed to address the key absurdity in the Birther argument expressed in that post. Kindly stop trying to derail the discussion into irrelevant minutiae and answer the question.
 
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jadebox said:
We know that they are actually objects, not layers!

Seriously, though, I think the conspiracy nuts definition of "expert" is simple. It's "someone that echoes what I believe." Anyone that disagrees is not an expert because they are, obviously, wrong.

In this case though, RP's experts are just people quoted on the sites he copies text from. As far as trolls go, he's not very original.

-- Roger
Click to expand...

Yeah, like Adobe for example.

http://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/printing-complex-pdfs-acrobat.html

"PDF files can contain layered content if they are created from layered documents by using applications such as Adobe InDesign. As a result, a single page of the PDF file can contain different layers with different content."

Somebody's really going to have to expose this pseudo-expert named Adobe.
 
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Robert Prey said:
Somebody's really going to have to expose this pseudo-expert named Adobe Robert Prey.
Click to expand...

ftfy

It has been addressed at length why your misinterpretation of an Adobe help file for Acrobat has no bearing on your claims regarding the PDF of Obama's birth certificate. You don't know what you're talking about. Don't try to lay that sin at Adobe's feet.
 
Dcdrac said:
Rp it has been shown that Jay knows about PDfs and you do not.

It has been shown you have no experts to back up your case.
Click to expand...

Quite the contrary, it is Jay who admitted he has zero "experts" he could cite for his claims, except of course, for himself. But I don't drink Jay's Kool Aid.
 
If it were me, making a bizarre claim on a subject that I have no knowledge on, and someone who is an expert in the field told me I'm talking bollocks, I'd stop. Seriously, detailed analysis after detailed analysis nets a single word or single sentence response? Either troll or so helplessly biased that no fact, however slight, will be acknowledged.
 
Robert Prey said:
Quite the contrary, it is Jay who admitted he has zero "experts" he could cite for his claims
Click to expand...

Putting words in my mouth. You simply can't deal with the facts as they are. As a matter of fact, I said my conclusion was not based on outside experts, but instead upon my own expertise. You are the one who brought up outside experts and somehow insisted that my conclusions were based on them. Further, I never suggested there were no experts who agreed with me. You are desperately trying to make this a "battle of the experts" so that you can pretend to win by hitting the straw-man people you name, but which have absolutely nothing to do with why I've formed the conclusions I have, and what I've presented here in the form of support for my conclusions. Straw-man evasion at its finest, from you Robert.

Now deal with the arguments I actually make, not the ones you desperately wish I had made.

But I don't drink Jay's Kool Aid.
Click to expand...

Yet for some reason you can't address a single point I make, although others seem to have no problem.

Give it up, Robert. You're in way over your head here. There are simply no layers in the Obama PDF, and your frantically repetitive posting of a single URL will not suddenly make them spring into existence there.
 
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