The Actual Sequence of Events with Documentation

At the right is an image of the hard copy released along with the PhotoShop hackery.  This image suffers from none of the nonsensical image editing problems seen on the web site.

I posted recently about the online forms of this document.

Why anyone would go through the bother of making and releasing a PhotoShop mess out of an image like this is really hard to understand.  Its also hard to understand why finding this image took a bit of effort.  Apparently this was a handout supplied during the press conference.

I don't see the value added with the funky green and white "safety paper" background, I don't see the value of any enhancement of the image, splitting it into layers, etc.

The image here is quite clear and easy enough to read without such enhancements.

Now this document was acquired through the following sequence of events (documented here).  You can see from this news article that the same bogus background and I suppose crappy PhotoShop job was done in association with it.

This document was acquired through this series of events:

Followed by this:

And finally:

And it was originally noted publicly here:

This all makes reasonable sense and it seems incredible that this would not have been all put together in one place online in the first place.

For those in doubt that the image at the top is realistic you can see this form the same era:

These documents, which have the impression of an official state seal, demonstrate the same layout and structure as the original PhotoShoped versions.  The markings at the bottom, and the seal, are no longer used.  These documents are known as "raised seal" documents and were required for things like drivers licenses before the computerization of records began in earnest to prevent identity theft.

Which is confirmed publicly with this:

These documents have no corresponding PhotoShop nonsense.

As to any confusion or issues such as validity beyond the actual PhotoShop files I cannot comment.

I would hope someone would track down the source of the PhotoShop nonsense.

As far as I know this is the only compilation of all of this in one place.

Layers of Deception

The original White House document is here as a PDF.

The PDF is made up of 9 layers (a 9-layer dip I suppose).  Each layer is an RGB image (red, green, blue color space). The PDFs below were constructed by turning "off" all but one PDF image resource in turn and saving the resulting file as a numbered PDF.

Layer 1 (topmost) as PDF.  Main background with white ghosting for some text.  Other text present on this layer.  Text is mostly an RGB grey.

Layer 2 as PDF.  Main text/signature layer.  Mostly RGB grey in color.


Layer 3 as PDF.  Hawaii registrars stamp.

Layer 4 as PDF.  "April 25, 2011" - registrar date.

Layer 5 as PDF. "Aug 8..." (green)

Layer 6 as PDF. "Aug 8 19.." (green)

Layer 7 as PDF. "Non"

Layer 8 as PDF. (Appears to be blank.)

Layer 9 (bottom most) as PDF. (Also appears blank.)

No one believes that this is a real document of any sort.  Its just an amateurish mish-mash of some sort of pieces and parts.

Layer #2 looks like an image of a real page - you can see that there is a curve to the text at the top as if it were photographed from a book of some sort.  This is most likely the basis for the original material.

My guess is that this (#2) layer was grabbed somehow in a graphics program from an actual image. The remaining layers were manufactured to provide a background and to "fix up" whatever the grab for layer #2 did not pick up.

Layer #1 looks like a partially flattened mash up of the white ghosting from layer #2 and some of the original content.  Most likely this was pasted onto some kind of "safety paper" background or pulled apart from the background in PhotoShop.

Why anyone would go through this much PhotoShop hackery to create a PDF like this is really beyond me.  Particularly when an original photographic image or scan would do.

This document was clearly created to cause controversy, not to eliminate it.

What I would expect to see is something like this instead (picture at top of blog) or this (a single image in the PDF).

States and governments had reasonable means to capture documents in 1961 - clearly the document at the top was accurately captured in 1946.

Really - why is this necessary?












 

More on the fake...

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=185094

Dear Donald: This is the worst fake ever...

So I found this image of a supposed birth certificate today here.  I thought I would let you know some issues I see with it.

It was captured from the linked site as follows:  Zoom to the full page size (on a Mac).  Captured to the clipboard by Command-Control-Shift-3 and pasted into PhotoShop.  This image is saved without change other than flattening as a PNG file (a file type which has some quality loss).

Now the very first problem I have with this being any sort of "original historical document" is the fact that the green cross-hatched check background runs off the area of the birth certificate and onto the larger background (to see the details clearly please inspect the full sized original - the snippets here were pulled from PhotoShop and saved as .PNG files compatible with Blogspot):

You can see this right along  the supposedly curved page edge where it says "State of Hawaii".  You will see that the vertical and horizontal background marks transition from one area to another.

In the 1960's this "safety printing" as it was called, was common on checks to ensure that someone didn't forge them.  Now if the "birth certificate" portion were an actual document there would have to be some sort of border or boundary between the document and the background.

This is none.

Another issue is the file on the web site  and its Flash format.  An odd format for this type of proof.  One would expect to find a hi-res TIFF file instead.  TIFF allows the image to be stored 'without loss'.  Image formats such as JPEG compress the file be removing some information.  TIFF can be saved as "loss-less" which means that all the original pixels remain in the output.

The next problem is that you will see a white boarder around all the black printing.  In the 1960's a document like this supposed state records ledger would have been printed on some sort of printing press.  Typically the "safety paper" would be produced separately and then the black printing for the legal portions of the document (the portions not filled in until the birth) would be printed in a second pass over the the top (supposing some sort of offset printing or letter press).  I think this is very unlikely to have been printed as a full color printing job at that time and for this purpose.

So there could be no white boundary around each and every letter in the document.  If there was it would imply that the "safety paper" area around each letter was removed or printed with white.  Well beyond any technology available at that time for a document like this.

Further you will notice that round the signatures the same white boundary appears:

To me this indicates that the same process, whatever it was, was used to place the supposedly black pre-printed document background text as the signatures.

The next problem you will notice is that the resolution of much of the black background text appears to be a far different resolution than the "safety printing".

For any legitimate photograph or scan of a document you would expect all the pixels to have the same resolution.

Since they do not appear to its is to me very likely that the black text and safety background were scanned at two different resolutions.

The next problem is the white backgrounds surrounding each letter.

Typically copying black text in a program like PhotoShop involves collecting only those pixels which match a specific color or range of colors - in this case blacks and gray.  The white ghosting is typically the result of using too broad a color selection to pick the black text from its original (supposedly white) background.

(Look under the 'h' in Witchita - its completely white under the hump of the 'h'.)

A document of this era would most likely have been typewritten on a mechanical typewriter.

(Among other things they only marked the paper black - not black and white.  Even a self correcting typewriter would not produce this sort of output.)

Using a machine of this age you would expect that there would be certain characteristic elements in the type.  For example, the letters on the mechanical arm that struck the paper through an ink-soaked black ribbon should all have the same appearance, e.g., an 'O' would have characteristic flaws that would create a signature for that typewriter (just like bullets and gun barrels are used to forensically match guns to crimes or boot or tire prints to match clothing and cars to crime scenes).

Normally the same letter, in this case 'O' would appear the same everywhere.

Looking at 7b. the word "Oahu' demonstrates that the 'O' is not on the same imaginary "base line" as the remaining letters.  You will see that for much of the document capital letters used preceding lower case letters appear to be slightly above this imaginary line ('K' in Kansas, 'W' in Wichita, etc.)

However, in 5b. this is not the case with P.M. where the 'M' appears different  than everything else and yet still typewritten as opposed to manually written.

One would expect other documents filled in the same state office around the same time to exhibit these same characteristics.

I wonder if they do.

Then there is the issue of the date stamps and numerical order stamp used under 'Department of Health'.

A quick inspection of this:

Shows that the last digit '1' in '61 10641' is not nearly as dark as the other letters.  It is also at a different resolution (the pixels are much smaller for this last '1' than the other two).

If this were a simple document scan you would not expect to see anything like this.

Donald - I have spent a large portion of my life working on commercial printing and marketing documents.  I have made numerous corrections to such documents and I am experienced with the results of PhotoShop and other applications.

At first glance I do not believe that if this document were a direct mail piece for an ad circular, for example, it not would pass quality or branding.  Its too badly done.

Secondly I do not believe what you are being shown was ever "printed", i.e., existed on physical paper, for the reasons I site above.

Certainly I am no expert - just a professional doing his job.  But I believe that this raises far more questions that it answers.  I think that if you have your own experts inspect this document it will raise questions for you as well.

I hope that you, with your resources, find objective, third party experts to examine this online document (and also the original if possible) to resolve all of these issues I mention.

Personally if I were required to produce my original certificate of birth I would merely take a quality photograph (or have a professional do that for me in front of a notary).  That way I could provide the complete camera-output as proof (digital cameras stamp the images with camera model, date, time and so forth).  I would make the camera, notarized document and image files available for inspection.

I am sure you would do the same as I know others, such as John McCain, have done in the past.

That way the matter will be laid fully to rest.

Sincerely,

The Lone Wolf

First Fukushima, Now The Play Station Network

The Sony Playstation Network for PS/3 has been down for several days - hacked by unknown individuals.

No doubt this is revenge in some way for the attack on George Hotz - the hacker I wrote about here over the last few months.

Apparently this started about six days ago.  A friend of mind made note of it to me but I did not think anything of it at the time - perhaps just some upgrade or routine maintenance.

But no, this was a full fledged hack.

Apparently up to 75 million or so credit card and user records are in jeopardy.  Potentially the largest hack in world history.

Now one thing is for sure - access to that mount of data, as in downloading, requires a lot of time and network performance.  This would mean the hacker or hackers had a lot of time to access the system unknown to Sony.  (For example downloading the latest Apple iPhone SDK, which is 4.5 Gb takes hours on a fast connection.)

This is a big black eye for Sony.

Over the weekend my son was visiting me and we were discussing web site development for an upcoming project.  As usual the discussion turned to the advantages of Microsoft versus Apache for a commercial server.

My son, a Microsoft Certified Gold code slinger, laughed at the idea of a Linux and Apache being secure for our project.  Apparently he has worked on a number of successful payment-related systems which have influenced his thinking.  He also pointed out how the Apache folks diligently publish flaws in their code on bug lists - he thought that anyone planning on hacking an Apache site would surely look there for ideas.

Sony's PS/3 is a linux box and I would imagine that so is its network - which would save them million of USD in Microsoft software purchase.

Personally I have always wondered about the concept of free software - how good would it really be compared to something commercially written by experts.  Personally I have never been impressed with "free" software - I have always found commercial software to work better and more reliably.

Its not that I don't use free software.  The company web site for Lexigraph (www.lexigraph.com) is now Apache based.  The old Windows 2003 servers were continually hacked - the linux versions are not.

As to why this is I do not know.  I suspect that the world of hackers likes Microsoft because products like 2003 Server are rife with well known flaws and there is a long and well documented knowledge base of hacker attack models available (there are even sites which off pre-built virus packages to install your payload on any Windows system).

If all that attention was turned to Apache/Linux I would bet it would be just a vulnerable.

Chernobyl to Fukushima - It All Lies

Natalia Manzurova: 1988 in the Chernobyl "dead zone"

The last twenty five years of biological study around the site of Chernobyl reveals as much about science as it does about radioactive disasters.

About the biological effects there are a few certainties: The radioactive fallout from the Chernobyl fire (containing plutonium, cesium and other radioactive isotopes) have spread their damage over a wide area.  For example, winter wheat seeds taken from this area (see this Wired article) produce endless strains of unstable genetic mutations and pine trees suffer far more than birch trees from radiation.

Beyond a these few items there is little scientific agreement about the consequences of the disaster at a biological level - even twenty five years later.

A small number of researchers have studied these areas and published papers.  Unfortunately a number of the papers and authors have been called into question for a variety of reasons:


Anders Møller - Sweden - did a number of studies on barn swallows in the area beginning in 1991.  These studies showed significant damage to this population by the radiation.  However, Møller was censored by the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty in 2001 for unrelated discrepancies in papers about asymmetry in oak leaves.  However, subsequent investigation revealed no intentional manipulation of data.



Timothy Mousseau - USA - a collaborator of Møller - wrote a subsequent paper on declining bird brain sizes from the contaminated area which drew the attention of the Ukrainian government.


Other scientists, such as Ron Chesser and Robert Baker, both biology professors at Texas Tech University, and Sergey Gaschak, deputy director for science of the Chernobyl Center’s International Radioecological Laboratory, come to completely different conclusions.  In particular, that animal life is "thriving" in the area.


 Gaschak, Møller, and Mousseau have also collaborated on research in the area over the years.


One cannot know the truth about these animal claims one way or the other for a variety of reasons:


First, these studies are not based on a systematic analysis of the populations over time.  Immediately after the accident the area was off limits to research.  After a few years researchers began studying the area but there was little comparative population data about wildlife to compare post accident findings too.  (For example, observing a lot of elk today does not mean elk are thriving today unless you know how many elk were present before the accident.)


Second, there isn't enough scientific interest in the subject of the accident.  This means that funding for research is limited.  And while there certainly are measurable effects of the accident they are not dramatic (no large herds of three headed elk have been observed, for example).  This means that there is little motivation for followup research.


Third, according to Wired the Ukrainian government is not fond of scientists publishing negative scientific findings about the area.  This translates into government travel restrictions for researchers that further hamper study.

Fourth, the human survivors paint a far, far uglier picture (see this article about Natalia Manzurova pictured above) of the damage that radiation can cause and its effects on human life.   Many involved in the cleanup of Chernobyl are now dead.  The few remaining survivors have not fared well health-wise.



I see also that all of this is very uninteresting to the new, "green" environmentalists that would like to see nuclear power replace CO2 emission.  Certainly these results, whatever the truth is, paint an unflattering picture of commercial nuclear energy.


The truth is that governments - whether Russian, United States, or Japanese - lie to their populations about radiation.  The do this for a variety of reasons: ass covering, liability, financial.   The lying has gone on systematically since the early days of atomic testing.

Clean safe nuclear energy...


Companies and governments take great care to ensure that there is no financial liability for the companies that design, build, install and operate nuclear power plants - and for good reason as Chernobyl has demonstrated - because the cost of any significant disaster would be far beyond what any insurance plan could cover.

Smartphones: A Faustian Bargain?

Looks like the Devil is holding a smartphone...

Chicken little continues to run screaming around the room shouting the security sky is falling - all because smartphones are collecting location data.  Sadly this really makes very little sense because smartphones are by definition a Faustian security bargain with the devil no matter how you look at it.

One of the big benefits of smartphones are "location services" which by there very definition have to know where you are.  Gumstir and Facebook now have features that you can use to let your "friends" know where you are in order to join some social activity (the new Facebook "check in" feature). 

All I need do is fool you into thinking I am your "Facebook friend" and I have complete access to your life and you tell me where you are right now.  Fooling you into accepting me as a friend is no hard considering how little people really check things like Facebook friends:  All I need to do is copy the photo of a friend off your page, make a new Facebook account and friend you claiming my previous Facebook account was stolen or hacked.  No one would give that a second thought.

Now I would think that from a stalkers perspective surely there is no better model for acquiring prey than something like this - the prey literally flaunts where they are and what they are doing - far more than could be expected even five years ago before all this was invented.

From what I can see there is little danger in some creep stealing your iPhone and decoding the connections.db file I talked about last post.  First they'd have to steal your phone (which would require proximity to you) and then track down your movements by decoding the database.  But, you say, what if I left my phone in a bar or restaurant?  Then what?

To my mind this seems even more ridiculous and remote.  More than likely the "finder" will be one of the waitstaff - and if they were really able to debug and hack their way into the iPhone security settings its unlikely they'd be working as waitstaff.  Then they would have to develop a keen interest in you from you smartphone - as opposed to becoming obsessed with you from your general appearance only.

And waitstaff can always ask for "id" - it happens to me when I present a credit card with a smudgy signature.  And what, pray tell is on my ID (drivers license, passport, etc.)? 

Why my home address and a picture confirm that it is in fact my home address.

The very things you want kept secret must be disclosed to the lowest echelons of society in order to purchase a meal in a restaurant.

What sense does than make?

The real problems here are stupidity and ignorance. 

Ignorance in the sense that most people really have no clue what sort of bread crumbs they are leaving behind in their lives using these devices.

Stupidity in that the notion of vanity ("oh look what I am doing") overwhelms common sense about personal security.

Its perfectly legal for a jealous spouse to hire a private detective to track someone down - discovering where they are, where they go, who they see.  No one gives this a second thought.  And stalking laws only apply if you know you are being stalked - someone who remains unseen in the background is not a stalker until they actually expose themselves or strike.

Most all online social networking is essentially "public" in the sense that there is a low cost of entry to engage someone as a "social friend" in this context.  If it was easy to lie before the advent of Facebook Facebook has made lying about who and what you are even easier.

In the olden days of phone numbers and physically meeting no one was your friend unless you saw to it that they were - by giving them a phone number, address or other personal information.  In order to give the personal information you physically had to engage with the person - on a date, at some get-together, etc.  You did not run out in public shouting about who and what you were hoping to find "friends".  If you did you were a looney.

You might go to a party and meet someone interesting - given them a phone number as safe because there was little reason to expect them to reverse that phone number into a location.  The owner of the phone number could control how and where any meetings took place - making sure they were in public until the motives of the potential friend were fully vetted.

No long.

If you want security you actually have to behave as if its important and keep information away from public sites.  If you carry around devices that help you to automatically find "friends" expect these devices to know about you - not just in secret files but in text messages, phone numbers, and the like - all of which are easily and more readily accessible.

The Faustian bargain here is that the phones (and Facebook and all the rest) appeal to the "15 minutes of fame" aspect of peoples lives - and people, for the most part, like to feel famous and socially visible.  The makers of the devices could not ask for a better reason for people to buy these devices than this type of vanity.

If you willfully purchase a smartphone and load it up with "social networking" then you should expect problems with personal security. 

Anything else would be foolish.

Stupid Wireless Security

I am always interested in articles like "Why and How Apple is Collecting Your iPhone Location Data" (Wired).

They make a huge and ugly deal out of the totally obvious - and that's the problem.

You can frighten fools with obvious information and I don't think that is doing anyone's privacy a good turn.

The big "scare" of the article is that inside your iPhone there are files and other information about the geophysical locations your phone has been: longitude and latitude from GPS, cell tower information as in what cell towers are near by and what the signal strengths are, things like that.

Now Apple in its wisdom clearly spells out in all of those agreements you quickly click through and ignore what they do and how, to some degree, they do it.  They go to great pains to try and keep your personal name and identification out of the data mix using specially crafted "Randomized Id's".

Back at Apple this information goes into (one presumes) huge database that lists all WiFi access points, cell towers, etc. as well as (I'm guessing) something like the USPS address database, Google Map-type data and other things.  When you ask your phone to tell you where "the nearest pizza" is the phone hits this database with its current location.  The database coughs up the most likely nearby "pizza" locations.

The problem here is that in order to collect the information about things you, the iPhone user are A) asking about and B) agreeing to give your location data up about, Apple has to collect and store the information.  By its very nature the fact that you are, under agreement, telling someone where you are and to some extent what you are doing (looking for pizza) means that the information is not "private".

Now imagine a time when there were no iPhones.  If I was standing on the street in NYC and I wanted pizza what were my options:  A) look around and go the the one of the pizza shops I can see, B) find a phone book, look up pizza shops, and munge around until I find one with an address near me, C) ask passers by.

Now if I choose #C then the knowledge of me looking for pizza is no longer private.  I am telling others what I am interested in.  If I ask someone then, regardless of what they tell me, they could follow me around and see where I go, where I live, and so on.  I am revealing my personal information (my physical self and my desire) as part of a social transaction to find pizza.

If you read the explanation from Apple linked above you will see that they go to great pains to spell all this out - using your phone and its location services makes information about you to some extent non-private.

In addition, the iPhone itself has software requirements to accomplish this.  It must collect and store data in files about what's going on so it can tell where you are.

The wire article makes a big deal about a file on the iPhone called "connections.db" that contains a list of recent locations.  Someone might be able to steal your phone, dump out the geodata from "connections.db" and find out where you live.

Well "D'oh!"...

Someone could look at my text message and see where I lived, someone could look at my browser history and see things about me, look in my notes file, any number of things if they physically take over my phone.

If I lose my wallet should the DMV issue only licenses without addresses?

How is the phone supposed to work all this magic if it doesn't collect this information?  Clearly it has to store it somewhere in order for the entire process to work.

Maybe the phone should work like all the banking and teller machines, bank statements, and so forth and obliterate your account number from everything making the correspondence totally useless (no doubt some genius will figure out that deposit slips are a security problem and remove your account number from those as well).

The problem here isn't one of software security, or programming, or lawyering about "agreements" or anything else.

Its about law and order.

Identity theft is sort of the ugly step child of crime - police have little time to deal with it unless its on a vast, federal scale.  Walking off with someone's iPhone by definition is identity theft because the device contains personal information - so is taking someone's wallet.

But these are also simply crimes of theft.

Modern law layers multiple crimes on top of a single problem activity: stealing.

So rather than punishing the criminals we give them a node and wink and say we'll make the devices secure so that when they are stolen (because of course they will be) it will be harder for the criminal to further steal my personal information.

Further steal?  What the hell is that...

You stole my iPhone. Period.

As to someone "hacking into my iPhone" well, things like notes files, browser history, text data, they are all there to steal as well.

So the bottom line is that something like an iPhone, which is really a complex computer with storage, files, and all the rest, is going to be breached and any criminal interested in the information will find a way to decode the data that's there.

So my suggestion is that we stop treating this kind of "identity theft" with a wink and a nod.

In the USA any merchant will take any credit card - they don't care who it belongs to as long as the sale completes...

D'oh! again.

In Europe merchants check.  In the USA if little Jr. takes mommies credit card and goes and buys an XBox no one at Walmart gives a hoot.  Yet that kind of identity theft is tolerated because it would be too much of a burden on the merchant to have to check ID with credit card sales.

No.  The real problem is that all of this technology is too much of a burden for law enforcement.  They are not tech savy, phones and things are small and easily replaced by insurance programs when stolen, so they along with everybody else simply don't care to follow up on such crimes.

And that creates this silly "security burden" on everyone and everything else.

If your iPhone is your life then you need to get a new life...

Don't carry around on your person something you are not able to live without - because it might get stolen or you might just forget it some where.

Figure the phone is going to remember what you are doing - just like the stupid kiddy porn criminals that store their pictures on their computers...  do you really thing law enforcement won't look there first?  So if you are doing things you are not supposed to figure the data will be somewhere.

Taking videos of yourself having an affair with your co-worker on your iPhone?  Expect problems.

Texting your buddies that you just deposited the $100K USD settlement check in your checking account from your iPhone that saves your ATM and bank account numbers in the notes app?  Expect problems.

Realize that the iPhone is flawed - like everything else including you.  Mistakes will be made - like losing it or having it stolen.

Realize that no one in law enforcement cares about your lost phone or data.

So think twice about running your life from something small enough to fall out of your pocket and into the seat cushions in a restaurant, car or movie theater.

The Obama Administration and Your Privacy

Yasir Afifi found an FBI tracking device on his car...

The US Government, lead by the Obama administration, is actively pursuing the ability to, without a warrant and on your private property, attach a wireless GPS-based tracking device to you vehicle. There have been several cases recently at the appeals court level - a number of which have been decided in favor the the government.

The Obama administration in particular does not seem to like the idea of constitutional limits on what the government might to to invade your privacy.
Pre-Obama technology has lead to all sorts of interesting interpretations of the law in recent years.

For example, in 2001 in Kyllo vs. The United States the Supreme Court found that using a thermal imaging device from a public vantage point to determine whether or not excessive heat was being produced was an unreasonable "search" under the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution.  Kyllo had marijuana growing under indoor lighting in his garage that gave off excessive heat.  The government determined, using thermal imaging form a public location, that the garage was emitting more heat than the rest of the house. Using this information they were able to obtain a search warrant for Kyllo's house.

The Supreme Court decision found this use of technology to be a "search" even though the technology did not "enter" the home.

Recently the Obama administration urged Congress not to adopt privacy safeguards on e-mail stored in cloud servers.  Communications laws (the Electronic Communications Privacy Act or ECPA) established in the 1980's allowed law enforcement access to "abandon email" (over 6 months old) without a warrant.  These days, with email stored on cloud servers, this limit is no longer practical.

The Obama administration thinks that strengthening this law to make it harder to access email without a warrant represents an "undo hardship" on law enforcement.  James A. Baker, deputy Attorney General, testified that "Congress should recognize the collateral consequences to criminal law enforcement and the national security of the United States if ECPA were to provide only one means — a probable cause warrant — for compelling disclosure of all stored content..." (full quote here).

Oh that pesky Fourth Amendment - if only that weren't in the way of law enforcement.

Which leads us to the GPS issue.

Again, the Obama administration desires (see this PDF brief by the Justice Department) no warrant be required to affix a GPS tracking device to your vehicle - even if its sitting in your driveway.  Basically they think you should have no expectation of privacy with regard to you movements.

At issue was the recent overturning of the conviction of a drug dealer whose vehicle had been tracked by such a device.  Such a GPS devices was used to establish a pattern of movements which tipped off law enforcement as to where to search.

The conviction was overturned because the tracking occurred without a warrant.

Good thing because the FBI went onto the private property of the defendant and attached the tracking device - no need for them to follow the law I suppose...

Yasir Afifi above, a 20 year old half Egyptian student, took his car to the oil change place.  The mechanic asked him what the device was clamped on the frame under the back of the car.  Yasir didn't know so the mechanic took it off and showed him.  Yasir took it home and eventually posted pictures on the internet of the device - which prompted the FBI to show up at his house and demand it back...  (Full story here.)


The George Bush Obama administration has a long history (since 2009) of promoting "no warrant" searching of technological devices like computers (see this) and using technology to breach your non-line privacy (like home, car, etc.).

Oh well...

Personally I think that the administration is wacko on privacy - they claim its important for "internet usage" (see this) and want you to have a "Bill of Rights" for internet privacy while at the same time working hard to eliminate privacy from you life in all other ways.

Sounds to me like a lot of BS...  Talking out of one side of their mouth about internet privacy while working hard behind the scenes to take away all of your privacy and protection for government searches and seizures.

You be the judge...

Gaining Weight by "Looking at Cookies"

According to this article and others (here and here) James Levine of the Mayo Clinic knows why you gain weight just by "looking at cookies".

It turns out that obesity as it relates to physical activity is not really related what you do but much more to what you don't do.

Let me explain.

Levin has discovered that, all things being equal, people who tend to gain weight tend to sit inactively for much longer each day than those who do not (about two hours more).

He performed a fairly simple study: he created a closed environment where people were given a fixed amount of food based on their metabolism and not allowed to exercise.  The thought being that all the people would either gain weight at the same rate or there would be some metabolic or physiological difference in their bodies that could be measured.

Sort of like the old saying that "Joe just has a high metabolism and never gains weight."

But that's not quite what he discovered.

Levine discovered that those who do not gain weight subconsciously move around significantly more than those who do gain weight - moving around (or perhaps "fidgeting") up to two hours or more each and every day.

So while in other obesity studies these two groups of people might both claim to have been "watching TV" for three hours those that moved around more would have in fact been doing all sorts of other activity without realizing it.

He discovered "unreported movement" by creating some special underwear with accelerometers and computers stitched into the fabric that objectively recorded the wearer's movements.  (Apparently most or all studies of obesity involve "self reporting" of what people are doing - and since people fidget unconsciously this was missed.)

The bad effects of "sitting" or remaining inactive for several hours are dramatic and go so far as to create physiological effects within 24 hours.

Interestingly exercising for one period per each day was not as good as moving around continuously - thus that morning jog, while offering some benefits, does not overcome the negative effects of too much sitting.

So things like movies, video games, working at your desk - basically anything that involves long periods of inactivity - are in fact very bad for your metabolism.

Interesting stuff...

The Education "Bubble" - About to Burst?

The next "bubble" that's close to bursting and sending some shock waves through the economy is the "education bubble".

The education bubble is what you get as the competition by universities for students takes on the same other-worldly perspective as the housing market did in the early 2000's.

Remember all the "flip this house" shows?  Buy a junk house for $150,000 USD, put $50,000 USD in for improvements, etc., sell it for $275,000 USD - all in two months.  Of course, all that went bust a few years ago with the recession - now there are too many cheap houses and there is no market for a "starter" house in the $275,000 USD range.

Universities have been under the same pressure except that instead of selling the house at the end they want to turn out alumni that will A) contribute back to the school financially and B) get a premium  for the education the impart.

This problem has a long history.

In the 1970's when I was in a large, state university system the idea was to get a diploma.  The school existed to provide that opportunity.  The cost was cheap, about $30 a credit in those days.  No one forced you to go, no one cared if you went, and there were certainly a lot of jobs and success for those who did not finish.

Lot's of billionaires are high school dropouts from those days, Richard Branson and Bill Gates and Paul Allen of Microsoft among them.

High school ended upon graduation in those days as well.  After that you either went to Vietnam, got a job, or went to school.  A number of people in my graduating high school class got married.  You were an adult and expected to act like onw.

Certainly in the science, mathematics and technology areas you only went into higher education if you were really "into the technology", i.e., had the "passion" or needed the "fix" of tech or knowledge you could not get on your own.  If you were into auto body finishing there was no need - you found a job working at your dad's buddies body shop and learned the trade.

After university graduation the idea was to get "hired" by a prestigious company where you would work until you retired.  Again, in those days it was an aerospace company, IBM, or something like that.  Once there, you were just like the auto body kid out of high school and you learned the trade from your elders on the job.

But since then things have changed dramatically.

Schools have discovered that a "higher education" is just like a "big house" or a "fancy car".  They have discovered that the more costly and expensive the better clientele they can attract (and this means parents with money as opposed to a specific kid with a specific talent).

What became important was selling the parents on the idea that the school would make little Johnny or Suzy into a superstar.  This meant a potential instant job at a high tech company paying big bucks.

Of course, for such a glorious privilege the parents would have to cough up a bit more dough than the average school might cost... But since the little kiddies lives would be all set the parent ponied up.  Or, if the cash wasn't on hand, take out a loan, or get the kid to take out a loan, all to fulfill the parents desire for the kid to succeed.

(How many of you out there are still doing what you were doing ten, twenty or thirty years later than what you were doing at age 22?)

The problem is that the kiddies had no passion for the skills they were learning - the passion was all about the well healed parents wanting the kid to have a "bright future". 

If first saw this in the late 1980's with graduates from the local universities. 

During interviews I would ask why were they in this field - most thought (or were told) they could make a good living.

How much spare time did they spend on this particular avocation away from school I would ask - none was often the reply.

The point was that the kid could have cared less about the job he was getting - he or she figured that they were entitled to a good job because they had successfully run the educational gauntlet.

I, on the other hand, who owned the high tech company looking to hire someone did not want someone like that as an employee.  I would much rather have the passion to learn and to love the technology.  The specific skills needed were relatively easy to teach given someone like that.  Plus they wanted to learn.

But the schools kept churning out losers with a passion only for entitlement.

Now eventually, the schools realized that they were all teaching (or due to educational mandates from the government had to teach) the same thing.  Virgil is Virgil, calculus is calculus, and psychology 101 are all basically the exact same thing no matter where you go to school...

So the schools figured out that branding themselves was the way to go.  And branding didn't mean pricing themselves as the bottom of the bin.  Nope.

The way to go was to charge more than everybody else and to claim that the results were going to be worth it.

And so, just like the housing market, the cost of education skyrocketed - well ahead of the cost of living over the same period.

And the schools built huge, powerful brands: Standford, Harvard, and so on.  All with similarly astronomical price tags.  Local state schools, who did not want to be left out of this tuition bonanza followed suit by raising prices as well.  In addition, the scoop that pulled in suckers prospective students had to be widened because if your brand was too exclusive there wouldn't be a sustainable market.   To sustain this tuition increased across the board and the notion that life began at 18 was erased.

Instead the notion that college was just an "extension" of high school was created.  That way, with more and more high education institutions a steady source of students could be found.  The educational standards where also lowered to make sure that those new recruits would be able to "make it".

(Of course "make it" simply means that mom and daddy (government) will keep paying the bills - no one cares if you actually learn anything.)

So today we have college educations costing $50K USD for which little Johnny or Suzy get a "government loan" or mommy and daddy mortgage their house.  The expectation is, of course, that little Suzy or Johnny will get a $100K a year job out of the box, pay off the loans, and be on their way.

Except that's not how it works anymore.

The loans, even higher if you continue on into a profession like Architecture or go on to graduate school, become crippling.  The idea of pinning all your hopes on your education is like putting all your eggs in one basket.  What if the industry changes?  What if technology changes and your industry is no longer important?  (Like the Rochester Institute of Technology Printing School sending me an email Christmas card...!!!)

You literally spend decades paying these loans off - regardless of whether your a CEO of a high tech money maker or a hamburger flipper at McDonalds.

All the while your earning power is  being eaten away by taxes to give grants so that yet more kiddies can go to college for free, get degrees, and take your job away from you because they are younger, more attractive, and have learned all the "latest things".

No, its a racket.

And now the education bubble is about to burst.  (Look at the above chart - the "tuition bubble" - the gap between the expected linear increase following housing and cost of living and the nearly exponential increase of tuition shows just how bad it is.)

People cannot afford this nonsense any longer - not in today's economy - not ever.

They cannot afford the cost of decades of loan repayment (sort of like kicking the dead whale along the beach for a lifetime).

Its really like a modern debtors prison when you thing about it.

And meanwhile, "Frankie dropout" is building his body shop business from rented garage down the road to a full time business with twenty employees.  If he's clever he has no debt, gets paid in cash as much as he can, and happily fixes the cars for the "well healed" clientele that are sending the kiddies off to higher edumucation.

(For another similar but different perspective see this.)

Epic Debt Fail

I am fascinated by the concept that our government is going in the hole for $4 billion USD each day (see "Lady Liberty - Debt Whore").  This is what I would call an "epic fail" that, like the image at the right demonstrates, is the result of those in charge failing to do their jobs properly.

Now each day there are 86,400 seconds.

So that means our government is spending $46,296.00 USD or so each and every second.

And borrowing $19,444.00 USD each second.

Or borrowing about one US Dollar each 50 microseconds (a millisecond = 1/1,000th of a second, a microsecond = 1/1,000,000 of a second).

Now the average US income is around $50,000 USD - very close to the $46,296.00 being spent by the government each second.

Now it just so happens that the US debit (recorded as opposed to unfunded obligations like social security) is equal to taking the average US salary away from each and every citizen for one year or

   $50,000 USD x 310,000,000 people = $15 trillion USD.

SO each and every one of us is in debt for about $50,000 USD.

And that's only as of April 18th, 2011.

By the end of the year we will have spent an additional $4 billion x 8 months x 30 days or one trillion or so additional dollars - another 6.5%.

That $38 billion dollar savings just negotiated by our leaders amounts to a whopping 3.8% savings.

Our leaders have turned Lady Liberty into a debt whore.

Like the old jokes about a $2 whore Lady Liberty gets the job done in 100 microseconds for $2.

I am quite certain that no one in charge would admit to creating or sustaining this situation... yet here it is.

Our present debt is about 20% of the entire world GDP for one year.

(Our unfunded debt, i.e., future social security and other obligations is equal to the entire GDP of the world for one year or about $74 trillion USD.)

And like any addict there are only excuses and we just keep borrowing.

"No, no, there isn't time to fix the problem...  I promise we'll do it later...  in the mean time could you up my credit limit temporarily?" - Love, The US Government.

Epic fail.

Why are we doing this?

Why is this acceptable?

I discuss this with my mother who is in her eighties.

She says "but Sally down the hall won't have her meals on wheels if there are cut backs..."

I try to explain that we should be helping Sally and not spending money on things like these (for example, the US Government buying $100,000,000 of travel tickets over six years and not using them and not getting refunds).  But unfortunately we can't and should not be helping Sally right now because we are flat busted broke.

Is it a good thing to promise some you are going to help them and simply not have the means to follow through?

Gosh!  I thought that was called lying!

Epic fail.

Our leaders must be accountable for what they have done to people like Sally.

Promising to do one thing and in fact acting recklessly and endangering the people they promised to help instead.

And simply confiscating all income about $100,000 or so from every taxpayer in a given year will still not be enough to cover the shortfall...

So don't talk about raising taxes!

Lady Liberty - Debt Whore?

Lady Liberty has become a debt whore at the hands of the US Congress and Executive branch.

(We all know what a crack whore is and does to get money for drugs...)

The problem with debt, like crack, gambling and heroin, is that its highly addictive.  Addictive to the point where the user will say and do anything in order to get funding for their next fix.  The US Congress, like the inexperienced parent who continually believes that the errant, drug addicted child, enables the child's addiction by continuing to fund that addiction - directly or indirectly - with more cash and credit.

Now over the years I have seen all sorts of problems with addiction - people addicted to gambling, to drugs, and all the rest.  And as any experienced counselor will tell you there is only one way that an addiction comes to an end.

And that's by the exercise of free will.

Not by the parent or spouse.

Not by friends and family.

But by the addictee.

Typically the addictee must end up "hitting bottom" - after robbing their friends and family of every penny they can get, after stealing from creditors, stores, and so on, after turning to whoring to fill the daily need for cash, after waking up in jail or worse - the addictee makes the free will choice to get help.

I've seen parents, who really do love their children, believe the same lies over and over again "Oh, yes, I've quit - my friend Johnny is quitting too and needs $50 to help is mom out."  Oh, little Sally is out of jail so I'll give her another car so she can go downtown to score some crack work.

I know of old people, hooked on dope (oxycontin, vicodin, etc.) by Medicaid "pain specialists", who end up in the rehab on methadone.

So today we have little Timmy Geithner out explaining how daddy congress is going to give poor Lady Liberty another $5,000 USD on her credit card.

But don't worry - he says - it won't be a problem because Lady Liberty promised she was done with her debt addiction - "of course" she will cut down on all those debts and stop borrowing 42% of her income each month. 

Of course, says the Congress and little Timmy, she can't get off the dope by the time the credit card hits it limit...  No, she's trying to hard for that...  She'll need a "parallel track" to address that addiction problem.  And, of course, that might run on a bit after we have to jack up the borrowing limit on the credit card.

Right.

Like the comedian Sam Kinison used to scream:

"Wake the F*** UP!!!!"  "ARE YOU STUPID!!!!!"

Lady Liberty is mainlining Chinese, Saudi and Japanese junk cash at the rate of $2 million or more per minute - that's about $3 billion a day (maybe our bonds really are junk bonds)...?

That's like a $300/day drug habit... where your salary is only about $150 a day and you borrow the other $150. 

Nice.

Of course that's only borrowing - at least as long as the credit cards hold up...  after that grandma's jewelry case is next...

Eventually the road runs out.

What I do not see anywhere is someone who suggests that cutting expenses back is the way to go.

Imagine - when your credit cards run out you just stop spending and cut your other expenses until you can borrow more.

In fact, both the White House and Congress do not even suggest stopping spending as a cure for defaulting on the debt.  (You see, this is like a heroin addict cutting off their use of heroin until next week when they get paid - ain't gonna happen).

SO how is this leadership of any kind on any front?

No, they are happy to see Lady Liberty out whoring for more cash.

(Burning cash at a few billion a day quickly turns anyone and anything into a $2 whore.)

Why?

Because they themselves are part of the addiction.

And we all know addicts are not going to straighten out until they hit bottom.

Mugs and the Vet

About four years ago I received Mugs from my daughter. 

She had gotten Mugs as a puppy from a local breeder of Boston Terriers.  While she was away at school for a few years Mugs had been her companion.  But after school she got married and had a baby and there were some concerns that the baby and Mugs would not get along.  (Mugs had a habit of taking food from small, low hanging hands without giving care and consideration to their owners.)

Mugs had always had some health problems.  Specifically he would always "scratch up" his ears to the point of bleeding and swelling.  This would happen at random and for no particular reason that anyone could see.

Of course my daughter figured that the vet would surely be able to resolve this problem...

And so the story begins.

Mugs went to the vet frequently for his itching and scratching  - all to no avail.  Since the scratching always seemed to be ear related the vets provided an array of ear drops (Momentamax among them).  Of course these did not work for long if they worked at all.

So when one stopped working he went back to the vet and started treatment with the next one.

Eventually that all ran out of road and it was time for the heavy artillery: steroids and antibiotics.

Now the reasoning here seems unclear to me but I guess the idea is that the steroids make things appear "better" for a period of time by jacking up what appears to your body as adrenalin.  If you have something like a really bad case of poison ivy this may be the only way to get rid of it.  But sadly these are used in humans and animals for all sorts of trivial ailments and are even present in over-the-counter drugs.

However, even a single dose of steroids can cause your body harm.  There are a lot of animal and human related discussions of this on the internet (see this) - most all run along the same threads.

Use of steroids can cause the pituitary gland to shut down (stopping the production of ACTH which regulates the adrenal gland) and flood the body with cortisone.  The cortisone flood mimics the bodies response to "fight or flight" by elevating the heart rate.  And, most importantly in the case of Mugs, it suppresses the immune response.

Suppressing the immune response stops the itching.

Note that it does not address the cause of the itching.  It doesn't even help identify the cause.  It does nothing but make Mugs appear to feel better.

However, since the immune system is being suppressed antibiotics are prescribed to prevent infection and supposedly to kill any bacteria associated with existing problems. 

Thus one imagines that if Mugs had an ear full of bacteria causing itching the antibiotics would kill them.  The only problem with this is that antibiotics do not work as you might imagine - honing in on the bad bacteria and killing them.  No, they, like the steroids, can and do much more harm than good (I wrote about this extensively here in "Antibiotics: A Scourge on Humanity").

While there are several problems with antibiotics in general, in the case of Mugs they did two very bad things - killed all the good bacteria in his gut and gave him fungal and yeast problems.

Now your gut is where a large percentage of your immune system resides and bacteria play a role in that system.  Antibiotics effectively kill them off to a large degree and leave you open to other problems like a screwed up digestive system.

So over the course of several years and several thousand dollars Mugs was turning into a complete disaster: bad digestion characterized by truly horrific gas, constant diarrhea and vomiting caused by the antibiotics and their disruption of his gut flora.  Despite a variety of tests no base cause for the itching and scratching was every found.

The only real result, if you want to call it that, was that the symptoms would go away when he was given steroids.

He still tore up his ears regularly and now, with the wonder of modern medicine, had a bad digestive system and yeast/fungal infection as well.

Once Mugs was mine I was left to clean up the mess. 

First it seemed pretty clear that the vets had no idea how to fix the cause of the problem and were only addressing symptoms with their treatments.

The second step was to figure out what was actually wrong.  My initial list was:

1. Screwed up digestive system - 100% of the time - bowel misery and vomiting.

2. Ear fungal/yeast infection from antibiotics.

3. Itching and scratching (the original problem).

So to address #1 we gave Mugs a good diet (Blue Buffalo Dog Food) and probiotics to "reboot" his digestive system with the right bacteria.  This process took many months but fortunately it was easy to see the results: no more diarrhea or vomiting, no more horrific gas.

The second problem (#2) was addressed with homeopathic supplements that kill fungi (we use CandidStat for this).  However, due to the long term antibiotic usage it took a long time (probably at least a year).  It also required that we keep after Mugs to not scratch his ears (which required Mugs to wear a cone from time-to-time).

After about two and a half years we got Mugs back into relatively good shape - happy and healthy - and more or less where he started before going to the vets in the first place.  His really "bad ear" which had always "hung over to one side" was now standing up straight like the other one.

All that was left was the original problem: itching and scratching.

To me it seems to be somewhat related to A) food and/or B) external allergies (his stomach gets red if he runs around in the field though not when going out to the bathroom in the yard).  Mugs does not have parasites (he was just checked) or fleas or mites and we think we have eliminated or supressed all of the yeast infections.

Now other than itching and scratching Mugs leads a wonderful life these days.  We have other dogs - he plays, he runs, he fights over toys and chews.  These days he sleeps all night (during the initial period when we got him he had to go out 3-4 times a night because of the digestive problems).  All and all I think he is happy.  The few days a year when he scratches up an ear or other body part are now limited to about 10 days a year - or in simple terms 97% of the time he is a happy normal dog.

Compare that to when I got him - he had bowel and digestive problems every day plus the itching and scratching - basically we was miserable 100% of the time - thanks to modern medical science.

Sadly, however, the his current vet things he is suffering and wants me to take him back through the relentless panels of test, antibiotics and steroids.  She recently recommended I take him to a doggy dermatologist and seemed shocked that I was okay with his current life.

(FYI - my wife bred and showed dogs for a decade, had champions and one of the top dogs in her breed in the country.  We have always had dogs and we know them and their problems well.)

They new doggy dermatologist sent me a long questionnaire and a warning my wallet would be lightened by up to $450 USD just for the initial visit.

I now have a serious choice to make which I think boils down to the following

#1) Continue to manage Mugs on my own giving him a 97% happy life with 3% misery.

#2) Go down the doctor road again hoping they might A) find the actual problem, B) not make him miserable again, and C) not  run me into the poor house. 

The doctor road, according to the current vet, might mean giving him a treatment which would shorten his life like cyclosporine (an immuno-supresion drug) or some steriod.

(Now I personally know people with serious problems like Crone's disease that treat themselves and end up getting along quite well.  I really don't see why medical science has to impose itself on you if you don't want it.)

I particularly resent the vet telling me I had better do something about Mugs and his itching. 

From my perspective its the vets that created years of misery for Mugs - not his condition. 

Sure he has some skin problems but they would appear to be no worse than anything anyone or anything else might have and from experience they are not as bad as the cure.

Lexigraph Universal "Tag" Markup Process

Lexigraph's pdfExpress Pro series of products allows you to use PDF files a templates for highly efficient data merge functions.

This post describes the use of Acrobat "Tags" to facilitate that process.

Background

Full Acrobat versions starting with 5.0 support a feature called "Tags".  This feature is defined by version 1.4 and later of the PDF standard.

Starting with version 4.0.3 and later of pdfExpress Pro Acrobat tags can be used as an alternate to the plug-in markup process for Lexigraph's pdfExpress line of products.  While Acrobat Tags offer many general capabilities for PDF files, Lexigraph uses only a few specific elements of native Acrobat Tagged PDF as an alternate to the Lexigraph markup plug-in.

In general tags allow an Acrobat user to add specific types of meta data to PDF content in a way that is surprisingly similar to Lexigraph's markup process (which has been in use since 1998 and Acrobat version 3.0)

Acrobat Tags operate by defining a region of marking operators within a PDF page using the BDC command.  Each BDC command is numbered and brackets a range of PDF operators of any type.  Since there is no requirement in PDF for a string, e.g., "This is a test.", to be marked with a single PDF command most text appears as multiple BDC sections.

Both InDesign and Acrobat are able to add tags to a document.

Tags are accessible via Acrobat and InDesign via specific product features: Navigation/Tabs in Acrobat and Window/Tags in InDesign.

The Markup Process

All strictures requiring distillation by an older Acrobat Distiller to maintain proper font embedding, etc. are now relaxed.  PDF files created directly by Adobe applications can be marked up within those applications so long as the file is a legal PDF file relative to the particular version of Acrobat being used.

Creating markup using InDesign CS2:

1. Launch InDesign

2. Add your text and image elements to the page as desired.

3. First you must make each markup its own separate "Style".  Do this by selecting the story block and clicking the small create style icon at the bottom of the Object Styles palette.

Note that the story block must be "selected" with setting the Object Style as indicated by the small squares at the corner.  Here the Object Style has been renamed to match the markup - but this is not necessary - the default Style names will work just as well.

4. Open "Tags" palette under file menu Window>Tags.

5. For each Story highlight the text you wish to mark up.

Then click the small arrow at the upper right of the Tags palette and create a name for the markup using the "New Tag…" option.  (Note that the blue highlight around "markup1" indicates that the text is actually tagged.

Name the tag a legal pdfExpress markup name.

6. Select each line, block or image separately on the page and click on the corresponding tag name you assigned previously in the Tag palette to set the tag.

7. Cycle through each selection on template and verify Tags palette shows the tag set correctly.

8. Go to File>Export to save PDF file. Use standard pdfExpress output settings and make sure you click on "Create Tagged PDF" under the Options section as shown below in order to retain Tags set in InDesign.

9. To verify the tags have been correctly created open up Acrobat and go to View>Navigation Tabs>Tags.  A "Tags" palette will appear.

Next to the small red box by "Tags" click the triangle to open up the Tag tree.  Open the successive triangles as shown in the example above.

A correctly marked up PDF from InDesign will have the "Tags//

/markup names" structure as shown above.  Note that each markup name must appear as a separate entry directly under the

tag.  Any other format from InDesign will not work inside pdfExpress.

Using Acrobat for Markup

The steps below describe how to use Acrobat to add tags to an existing PDF file.  The following steps assume that no tags currently exist in the PDF file.  However these steps will work to change existing markup or replace existing markup in any PDF.

Basic One-Element Markup Steps

1. Open the file with a full version of Acrobat (Acrobat Reader will not work) and select the desired page for markup.

2. Locate and select the "Tags" menu.  Depending on your version of Acrobat this may be located under the "Windows" or "View>Navigation Tabs>" menu.  A small floating dialog will appear with a "Tags" tab and "Tags" drop-down menu.  Assuming no prior tags have been added to the document (and not just the particular page) there will be a small text message saying "No Tags available".

3. Select the drop-down choice "Create Tags Root".  The "No Tags available" text should change to "Tags Root" or "Tags".

4. On the Acrobat toolbar select the "TouchUp Object Tool", "Text Select Tool" or "TouchUp Object Tool". Depending on the version of Acrobat what the these tools do or do not do varies and some "experimenting" may be required to find the correct tool for selecting a specific set of characters or an image. For this example, using CS2 and Acrobat 7.0 the "TouchUp Text Tool" was used:


5. Using the selected tool select the text or image that requires markup.  Note that  Certain types of tools tend to select larger groups of text than others - depending on the context of the selection.

A full selection using "TouchUp Text Tool" should look like this (note the gaps where kerning was done by using different PDF placement operators):

This same tool will select multiple lines (as indicated by the blue outline) along with text you are specifically interested in:

The black markup in this case is what will drive pdfExpress.

6. Once the item to markup has been selected, move the cursor into the Tag dialog window.  Select the "Tags" root item.  Then control click (Ctrl-Click) this item (there may also be other ways to do this within the palette).  A pop-up menu will appear with the choice "Create Tag From Selection".  Choose this item and a small "New Tag" dialog will appear:

Make sure that "Article" is selected and name the tag.  Press OK when finished.  A new entry should appear under the main "Tags" root:

The entry must begin with "" and be followed by the name of the tag.

To reference the element in a .LIS file the "Title:" value provided in step #6 above is used as follows:

/Art_XXX_Line (some replacement text)

where XXX is the "Title:" value.

7. Feel free to select the "Tags" root and press Delete to remove all markup at any time.  You may also select individual tags and delete them in the same way.

Multiple Line Markup

Multi-line text blocks may be marked up with a tag.  pdfExpress Pro automatically determines the block structure from the marked up text block.

pdfExpress determines the size of the block being created by using the smallest rectangle able to enclose all of the marked up elements.  Note that sometimes selections may include text outside the desired area - usually due to the nature of the underlying PDF commands themselves.  Other than altering the PDF file there is no way to separate text elements in such a markup region.

The following pdfExpress .LIS replacements are created for each block:

/block.Art_XXX_Top [ (block step 1) (block step 11) (block step 111) ]
/block.Art_XXX_Bottom [ (block step 1) (block step 11) (block step 111) ]
The block.Art_XXX_Top substitution dictionary name starts with the "top" line of the multi-line markup and steps downward.  The block.Art_XXX_Bottom  name starts with the "bottom" line of the block and works upward.

Command Line

By default pdfExpress Pro does not interpret tags within a PDF as pdfExpress markup.  This condition can be overridden on a file-by-file basis using the carousel creation option  "/InterpretTagsAsMarkup true".  For example

[ /createCarousel (test3) (smith_base_2.pdf) << /InterpretTagsAsMarkup true >> ] merge
will cause the tags in "smith_base-2.pdf" to be interpreted as markup.

If you intend to use only tag markup or to have all files with tags processed as markup, you can use the command line option

pdfc-Pro ... -tagsasmarkup true ...

This ensures that all tags used in every PDF file encountered by pdfc-Pro will be converted to markup.

AOL & Slavery: What Goes Around Comes Around...

An older AOL logo...

A little over a decade ago AOL found itself in some trouble.  My wife, among many thousands or perhaps tens of thousands, of volunteers known as "Community Leaders" monitored chatrooms.   There were also sorts of chatrooms that covered virtually every topic.  The chatrooms ran 24 x 7 and all were all monitored by a human beings.

In the chat rooms there was no swearing, no personal attacks, no this, and no that.

A violation of this protocol, or "Terms of Services", was grounds to have your AOL account censored or shut off.  AOL was a lucrative pay for profit service that was, prior to its purchase by Time Warner, an independent company.

At the time I marveled at the amount of work my wife put into this Community Leadership thing.

Just like a job you had a boss, you had hours of work, you had to log what you did, e.g., removing offensive posts or members, and so on.  It was a lot of work and time.

As it turned out I was not the only one marveling at this process.  So was the US Justice Department.

In 1999 a class action suit (documented here under "Community Leaders") ultimately resulted in 7,000 "Community Leaders" receiving a portion of $15 million USD as compensation for the work they did.  My wife never received any of this compensation for her time and effort and never sought to be part of the class action.

However, I do believe that her good intentions were exploited by AOL in this regard.

Fast forward to 2011 - a mere year after this settlement is reached.

AOL has just purchased the Huffington Post - a liberal blogger aggregation site posting thousands of stories on all matters of liberal, media and general interests.  This is a large, well run site with lots of content from all sorts of sources: writes, doctors, journalists, and so on. 

The price?  $150 million USD.  Paid to Arianna Huffington.

I myself as author of this blog marveled at the site and its content stream: lots of diverse authors, lots of content, all kinds of stuff to link to stories, etc.  I always wondered how Arianna managed to put such a site together and to garner such a large and diverse collection authors and content.

Well I need wonder no more.

According to this lawsuit, author Jonathan Tasini, and other news reports the Huffington Post did it the old fashioned way:

Slavery.

Yes, apparently the Huffington Post never paid any of the authors of the tens of thousands of blog articles posted there.  No, they told the authors they were doing work for the Huffington Post for free for their own personal exposure and advancement.

And that apparently worked right up until Arianna Huffington sold the Post to AOL for $150 million USD.

Now certainly it seems that AOL should have known better considering their wallets were just lightened by the $15 million USD settlement I mentioned above.  (Smells like a share holder lawsuit to me...)

One also imagines that someone along the way at the AOL legal department might have thought to ask old Arianna what the business relationship was between her and her writers.  But no, given its history as a slave master, AOL probably figured they could go right on cracking the whip over the writers backs and duck out years later with a tiny settlement.

After all, you can get a lot done with an unlimited supply of slaves.

Just look at the Pyramids or a southern US Plantation.

What's most troubling to me is that the Huffington Post brands itself as a liberal "go to" place for stories on all things liberal.

Foolish me always imagined that the liberal political position on slavery was that it was a bad thing.

But I guess in the case of AOL and the Huffington Post business and financial expediency trumps morality.

Experience tells me that this lawsuit will be only the first.  Any emails from the HuffPost asking anyone to do anything will quickly be converted by lawyers into "contracts" and "compensation claims".

My take:

At the end of the day Arrianna and AOL will have to pay the writers and there will still be money left over for Arianna...

That is until the lawyers like Kurzon Strauss LLP take their cut.

Oh well, it must have been fun while it lasted...