Moderated Obama birth certificate CT / SSN CT / Birther discussion

[Robert Prey]

We asked you to show us. Not to wave your hands at yet another Birther pseudo expert. Clearly you don't know anything about this.

 

[Robert Prey]

You mean the video where opens the original file and the file is a flat single layer file with grouped objects? LOL

"Groups" each on a separate layer. Obviously.

 

[Robert Prey]

Have you ever considered becoming an attorney? You have the ability to muster uniquely persuasive arguments. I bet the biggest firms would be pounding on your door.

Attorneys have to lie a lot. That would disqualify me.

 

[Straw Man]

Attorneys have to lie a lot well. That would disqualify me.

ftfy

 

[JayUtah]

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=808&pictureid=6604[/qimg]

Mockery is inappropriate. Every time we ask you to demonstrate some knowledge of the problem, you simply wave it off and refer to another person. You have no inherent knowledge -- that much is clear. So all you demonstrate is your willingness to be led around by the nose by these people.

Now I repeat my challenge: You -- Robert Prey -- show me the layers.

 

[000063]

It just hit me how singularly farcical the whole business with the allegedly edited birth certificate is.
Why would anyone painstakingly retouch single letters when it's much faster and clearer to edit the whole area and add in the new text with some kind of uniformity?

Or to just fake it, print it, and then scan it? I've done exactly that before, for an April Fools joke.

Because every participant of every evil conspiracy EVER is a complete and utter idiot.

They have to be, because their super-secret conspiracies are transparent enough for a bunch of dopes on the internet to easily figure it all out.

Yet most of the public can't. Odd.

Robert and the other Birthers now just nonchalantly accuse the Hawaii officials of lying. You know, no big deal.

It's liars all the way down. They needed to tell lies to support their other lies!

hey Jay, get a load of the programs that this "expert" uses to examine the PDF file with.

http://www.science.co.il/Obama-Birth-Certificate.htm

Well, how bad can it b-

Analysis of the document using Foxit Reader



I like how they don't actually use Acrobat or even Reader. Well done.

 

[Dcdrac]

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.

It has been shown that when experts, as in real experts and not the fake ones you point to, do look at the document in question they cannot find any evidence of fakery.

It has been shown that the birth certificate is real and has been attested to being real by the authorities in Hawaii.

It has been Shown that that Sheriff Joe and his team are bunch of incompetents at best at worst they have faked documents.

It has been shown that case after case bought by birthers has failed in court

It has been shown your postion is full of more holes than the average colander.

 

[000063]

Because I don't engage in childish word games. That's the favorite toy of others who call them selves "experts" on this board.

Wow. You can't even respond to Jay anymore. You have to non-specifically imply things about him in responses to other people entirely.

Yes one layer till you open it up. And it does say "group". But each group is on a separate layer. Obviously.

No, that's a series of objects that are all on one layer. Which is why they are submenus of "Layer 1". I'm not an Illustrator expert, but even I know enough about the program to tell you this. It is entirely possible to put multiple objects on the same layer.

Odd how you only stick to one version of the PDF, and only opened in Illustrator, and even then you have to misinterpret Adobe to "support" you.

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=808&pictureid=6604[/qimg]

Asking you to explain your argument in your own words is "sour grapes", especially when you can't respond to any of Jay's technical posts in any detail whatsoever?

"Groups" each on a separate layer. Obviously.

Prey, I will open up Illustrator right now and put multiple groups on a single layer, if you want me to. I'm betting several other members could do it as well.

 

[Border Reiver]

Bob, since BazBear has shown very clearly that opening up the LFBC in Illustrator shows 1 layer and multiple groups, and Jay and abbadon have demonstrate that the rest of this layers nonsense is just that, why don't you address the actual issue:

The State of Hawaii has verified that the image is correct. The State of Hawaii has verified that the information is accurate. The rest of the birther position is therefore without merit.

The only ones sucking on sour grapes at this point would be the birthers.

Come into the light Bob, instead of bad fruit we have coffee, tea and cookies. And beer if you are of age.

 

[JayUtah]

"Groups" each on a separate layer. Obviously.

Obviously and explicitly the opposite. Both he and you misread the Layers dialogue. You think that every entry in there is a layer. It is not, as the Illustrator instructions will tell you. When you expand a layer in the Layer dialogue tree control, Illustrator shows you a list of Illustrator objects that layer contains. Because of your unfamiliarity with PDFs and your inexpertise at Illustrator, you wrongly believe those are all separate layers. None of them manages to glance down at the bottom of the Layers dialogue to see where it clearly says "1 Layer."

Illustrator behaves differently than Photoshop. Yes, each entry in the Layers dialogue in Photoshop is a layer. But that is not how Illustrator's Layers dialogue works.

Create a new Illustrator document. Ensure it contains only one layer, and that it is expanded in the Layer dialogue tree control. Now create an object in that layer -- any object. You'll see it appear as an entry in that Layer's expansion. Create another object. It too appears as a separate entry.

But they are not separate layers. They are simply objects in the layer. Your pseudo-experts have demonstrated nothing beyond their inability to use Adobe products and interpret Adobe page-description languages. They've probably never used Illustrator before. Believing that it's the proper tool for inspecting PDF files is the first clue of their ineptitude.

Oh, by the way, I just scanned the cover of a Photoshop User back issue laying around my studio and asked Acrobat to optimize it. What did I get? 4 objects. (Acrobat replaced segments of black on the cover with smaller bitmasks portraying the equivalent black.) Four objects, not just a single scanned pixel map.

And when I import the PDF into Illustrator, I get one layer and those same four pixel/bit map objects listed under "Layer 1" in the Layers dialogue, exactly what I see when I open the optimized Obama PDF.

There is no part of your PDF argument that has not been refuted.

 

[JayUtah]

Because I don't engage in childish word games.

That's all you do.

You've been invited to prove that my analysis is technobabble, as you claim, rather than an expert analysis that simply goes over your head. You cannot address a single point I make. Not one single point. I'd say it has gone over your head. It hasn't, however, gone over the heads of everyone else. That's the difference between technobabble and real technical analysis: technobabble makes sense to no one. Technical analysis befuddles only the incompetent and lazy, but is understood by the properly educated.

You've further been challenged to demonstrate that the concepts at play are really as simplistic as you say. You've been asked to point to the layer directives in the PDF. You cannot do it. You've been asked to produce a PDF document that illustrates the properties you claim about the format. You cannot do it.

In fact, you cannot perform even the slightest illustrative task pertaining to your argument. You don't know what you're talking about.

That's the favorite toy of others who call them selves "experts" on this board.

As opposed to those who call themselves experts on Fox News and then promptly get laughed out of court for their ineptitude?

The learned discussion has occurred right in front of your face. The expertise is being demonstrated. Others grasp it. The fact that you cannot says something about you, not about me or Abbadon.

Yes one layer till you open it up. And it does say "group". But each group is on a separate layer. Obviously.

No, obviously explicitly the contrary. It says "group" because it's a group, not a layer. It's a group because that's how Illustrator has imported it. You're not looking at the data structures of a PDF file; you're looking at the data structures of an Illustrator document that was created by importing and converting the PDF objects into Illustrator's native format.

And because you don't know how to read the Layers dialogue, you think that every entry in it is a separate layer. No, in Illustrator's UI idiom, entries are members of the layer and object hierarchy. Some are objects, some are layers. You "open it up" by expanding the Layer display to show the objects it contains.

Thank you for confirming that you are a non-expert user (if any user at all) of Adobe Illustrator. Now please explain to the group why you think Illustrator is the appropriate tool for inspecting PDF data structures.

 

[Tomtomkent]

If each group is on different layers as Robert suggests, why does the bottom corner of the layers/group tab say "1". You know like in that post a while back with the red arrows pointing at it on the other PDF.

Or is my computer also in on the conspiracy, along with whomever wrote the adobe illustrator instruction booklet, the for dummies guide, the teachers who explain this to pupils, and almost everybody else....

 

[Straw Man]

Or is my computer also in on the conspiracy, along with whomever wrote the adobe illustrator instruction booklet, the for dummies guide, the teachers who explain this to pupils, and almost everybody else....

It's true. Obama has spent billions on keeping the secret safe.

At least in BirtherWorld.

 

[JayUtah]

I'm not an Illustrator expert, but even I know enough about the program to tell you this. It is entirely possible to put multiple objects on the same layer.

It is expected. If you don't explicitly add more layers to your document, all the objects you create go into Layer 1.

Prey, I will open up Illustrator right now and put multiple groups on a single layer, if you want me to. I'm betting several other members could do it as well.

Done so many times, including this morning.

Adobe Illustrator's data model presumes only a single page. That's why Adobe introduced InDesign for laying out documents having multiple pages, but using toolsets similar to Illustrator. A page in Illustrator is a list of one or more layers. Each layer contains zero or more objects. There is a special aggregator object, the Group, that may contain displayable objects and other groups. Hence the document structure in Illustrator (and InDesign) is infinitely hierarchical, and the Layers dialogue represents this deep hierarchy as a tree control. The top level of the tree are layers. All the rest are either objects or object groups. Each entry in the Layers dialogue is a member of the hierarchy, not a top-level hierarchical parent. The color-coded bands between the object visibility control and the object type/name field is an indicator of the layer to which the object belongs. Birthers seem to be mistaking that indicator as a designation of the object's rank in the document hierarchy.

Adobe Photoshop's data model is that of an image with global color space and image depth properties, made up of a list of one or more layers. Beginning with Photoshop CS4, a layer group could be added so that layer blending properties could be applied to more than one layer simultaneously. While the Photoshop document model is now thus infinitely hierarchical, in practice Photoshop documents exhibit shallower document hierarchies. This is because the only displayable data element in Photoshop's data model is the layer, as opposed to Illustrator which offers many displayable object types.

An entry in the Photoshop Layers dialogue is either a Layer or a Layer Group. There is no common entry subordinate to the Layer. Layers may be either explicit pixel maps or Adjustment Layers, which apply a parameterized algorithmic transformation to the cumulative display image according to the layer blending mode and image mask.

Hence Mara Zebest, familiar only with Adobe Photoshop where each entry in the Layer dialogue is most likely a Layer, commited a common layman's mistake while interpreting the Layers dialogue in Illustrator, a program with which she is not familiar. Rather than understanding that she was seeing a document hierarchy of a depth typical for Illustrator but atypical for Photoshop, she naively interpreted each entry in the Illustrator Layers dialogue as a Layer, much as an experienced Photoshop user might. This is, however, an incorrect and inexpert interpretation of the Illustrator data structure, as a number of subsequent subject-matter experts have pointed out.

Adobe PDF's data model is similar to InDesign's in that it composes a Document as a Catalog of displayable Pages and non-displayable support objects like fonts and filters. But it is dissimilar in that a PDF Page is a list of zero or more Objects or XObjects; there is no intervening Layer aggregate. It is inappropriate to say that a PDF has, by default, one layer analogous to the default Layer 1 in Illustrator; PDF simply has no concept of layering as we define it in Illustrator.

In later versions of the PDF language standard, a first-class mechanism was provided to optionally group objects for various purposes such as for interactive display or to remember the content-grouping of content-authoring tools. But as previously discussed, this mechanism is not equivalent to first-class layering and grouping in Illustrator, Photoshop, or InDesign. Illustrator does not import content so grouped as different groups or layers -- Illustrator always imports PDFs into one layer. It is in any case irrelevant to Obama's PDF, which is version 1.3 and supports no inherent grouping whatsoever.

 

[Cl1mh4224rd]

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.

How many families are in this illustration, Robert Prey?

If I were to organize the family like so:

• Families
  • Family 1
    • Mom
    • Dad
    • Daughter
    • Son

...would you insist on there being 1 family, 4 families, or 5 families?

 

[Mudcat]

How many families are in this illustration, Robert Prey?

If I were to organize the family like so:

• Families
  • Family 1
    • Mom
    • Dad
    • Daughter
    • Son

...would you insist on there being 1 family, 4 families, or 5 families?

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?

 

[Dcdrac]

PDF does not work the same way as Photoshop or GIMP

 

[Mudcat]

PDF does not work the same way as Photoshop or GIMP

"Similarly" does not equal "the same". All I know about PDF is that you can make digital manuals with it. Sorry that I don't know much more about it.

 

[jadebox]

I think this is a problem with a lot of conspiracy theorists. Experts, to them, are an entire layer of society completely disconnected from the masses.

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

 

[jadebox]

PDF does not work the same way as Photoshop or GIMP

PDF is a specification defining a file format for exchanging information. GIMP and Photoshop are applications.

But, I think your point is that PDF files aren't intended as a basic way to store imagery the way most files used by GIMP and Photoshop are. They are, as I explained earlier, primarily designed to capture and reproduce information from printed sources while retaining the original appearance of the document.

That's why scanning to a PDF results in a file with multiple types of information in it - something that seems to have confused RP's "experts."

-- Roger