1983 – My First Computer Job
Fresh out of College, I got my first job at a testing company. Anybody who has ever taken a test using a number 2 pencil and fill in the square or rectangle on your answer sheet knows exactly what I’m talking about. The answer sheets came in, we scanned them, then we graded them and produced reports about the test-taker. One of my jobs was coding the computer to recognize the scans and grade them accordingly. We didn’t have such things as graphics and image viewing, just a simple scanner. Here’s how the scanner worked. Every time it saw a notch along the side, it flashed a light at the paper and then measured via sensor how much light was reflected back. There was 80 sensors along the read head and each one saved its measurement. It knew when to start/stop the page by the number of notches along the side and I would start a new record by counting the lines per each page. When it jammed (and it did) you had to clear the file and rescan the whole group because it would lose the proper paging. Now, once they were scanned, that’s where the programmer’s job began. You see, the file that the scanner creates of the scan is nothing more than a series of numbers representing the intensity of the reflection of the light. On our particular scanner, a zero meant no light was reflected back (no mark) up to 5 being the most amount of light being reflected back. So, a single line of data might look like
00005000010000200004000000100040000020030000003050000002000
Now, knowing the location on the answer sheet of where answers were, I could tell which answers were marked and which ones were left blank. I would program it to only recognize darkness of 3 or greater so hopefully it would not recognize erased answers or something else that was on the answer sheet. I then created a file of what their answers were, 1=D, 2=B, 3=A, etc. Then we edited the file for missing/multiple answers (think erasure) and put in the correct answers manually. We then used the second file to create a personality profile of the test taker and then produce a report about the person according to their profile. Very basic, and all the equipment used is probably in a museum now.
2013 – Why is this important?
Dots per inch (DPI) is a measure of spatial printing or video dot density, in particular the number of individual dots that can be placed in a line within the span of 1 inch (2.54 cm).
The scanner I used was roughly 10 DPI, in other words I had 10 measurements per inch of each line to get their measurements. Today’s scanners have up to 600 measurements per inch taken giving much more information on each line of data (600 DPI), they also scan many, many more lines, and color scanners also have to measure the light’s color spectrum. Today’s programmers have to take each of those measurements into account when producing an image from the scan. That’s right, the image you see of the President’s LFBC is not a duplicate image, but a computer programmer’s guess of what the image would look like via a file of light reflection intensity readings created by the scanner. Ever wonder why you have to load certain scanners, printers and monitors onto your PC before you can use them? That’s so the raw data can be translated to properly read or write the data to create the printed copy or to display it. Again, written by programmers.
My Programs 10 DPI X 8 inches per line X 60 lines = 4800 dots per page
Modern Programs 600 DPI X 8 inches = 4800
600 DPI X 11 1/2 inches = 6900
4800 page width X 6900 page height = 33,120,000 dots per page
Not only do modern color scanners record the light intensity, they record the light’s color spectrum. However, they do not duplicate a scanned item. They translate it into digital numbers representing what the copier reflects. Then, a program translates those digital readings into a standard that can be used by a PDF reader, such as Adobe.
Let me stop here and mention something that the birthers seem not to know or understand. There are NO PICTURES ON THE WEB. There are only digital representations of images. Manipulations of those digital representations do NOT reflect what is ACTUALLY a part of the underlying document, only a program’s interpretation of what the digital image MIGHT look like if you could do the same with a document.
Let’s look at just a piece of the so-called analysis that Mr. Zullo’s team supposedly did and why I was falling out of my chair laughing my butt off. When you take an image on your computer screen and increase the size of it by zooming in, you are NOT looking at the image as if you had a piece of paper and were looking at it through a magnifying glass. Very important, a used copier salesman would not know this and as you can see in the report does not understand that. Let me show as simply as I can what I mean. If you had a single line opened up in a PDF file it might look like this:
__________
If you were to zoom in to double the size of the line, if there was no manipulation of the data, the line would look like:
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Why is that? Because that is all the data it actually has, zooming in just spreads the data dots out on your screen pixels.
But, because of SOFTWARE manipulation, you see: ____________________
You see, whenever you zoom into a digital image, what you actually see is NOT ALL A PART OF THE IMAGE, up to 50% or more could actually be software created and NEVER A PART OF THE IMAGE at all. Why is that important in this case? The white halos that Zullo claims show forgery? All they are is computer software generated guesses at what the image might look like if you could zoom in. That’s it. Zullo is blaming the President for computer software written by a group of programmers to create and edit PDF files.
What Mr. Zullo and his partners in crime did was not an analysis of the LFBC, it was an analysis of the software used to create the image seen on the screen. Software that has nothing to do with the underlying document that comes complete with eye-witnesses that he never interviewed. If Mr. Zullo thought being walked out on and heckled by a bunch of sheriffs was bad, I can promise you if he tried to present that garbage to a bunch of computer experts they would laugh him out of the building.
Another guest essay by Jim.
Interestingly,. my first computer job included working with an IBM 3881 Optical Mark Reader that the County Health Department used to input medical encounter information, immunizations and lab results.
My last computer job including supervision of the guys who wrote software to scan birth certificates.
Thanks for the insight.. To be honest, I’d never thought of it that way; Guess Zullo didn’t either.
Wow!! What a waste of time, analyzing the PDF..
Superb piece!
Nice job, Jim.
once again, jim, grazie mille
Jim : “If Mr. Zullo thought being walked out on and heckled by a bunch of sheriffs was bad, I can promise you if he tried to present that garbage to a bunch of computer experts they would laugh him out of the building.”
imagine a Frye or Daubert hearing with forensic experts on the opposing side – cross-examination would be SRO – i would pay big bucks for that
Very educational. Thanks Jim.
—
Which is why they will never release the report or litigate this. It is not meant for the courts, it is meant only for the birther scam.
While I appreciate Jim’s skill in debunking this Birther lie, the PDF issue will never get to the courts. If there was a court case where the President’s birth date and place was relevant, it would be proven by an original certificate from Hawaii. That is, as I understand it, prima facie proof, and the Birthers would then need to offer of birth somewhere else.
Which Helen doesn’t care about.
And which the Birthers don’t have.
Because the whole game is not about the truth but about delegitimizing the President.
It’s about the racism of Helen and her birther friends.
Correction to the calculation regarding scans of a typical page:
Modern Programs 600 DPI • 8 inches = 5100
600 DPI • 11 inches = 6600
5100 page width X 6600 page height = 33,660,000 dots per page
A valiant effort to attempt to explain a bit of reality to the nuts! Indeed, the magnifying glass on the screen is merely an icon. Der ain’ no glass in that scryin’ glass!
I will wait patiently for a birfer to object that modern scanners have resolution far in excess of 600dpi*, and thus Doc Conspiracy (it’s on his blog and therefore he must have written it 😛 ) is behind the times and completely ignorant and knows nothing about which he writes. It’ll happen in less than 24 hours, betcha.
________
“if he tried to present that garbage to a bunch of computer experts they would laugh him out of the building.”
.
That’s why I want their ebedance presented in court, I want to laugh!
Please, Please, present this in court, Pretty Please!
I am retired now, but my job required extensive use of a scanner. I programmed in C++ and built a huge database of technical parts with links to images. I personally scanned over 12,000 images in making my database, so like Jim, I would consider Zullu and his scanner crew to be complete idiots, so laughing at them is a pleasure. Thanks Jim, and thanks Doc for giving Jim this platform.
Dr.
“What Mr. Zullo and his partners in crime did was not an analysis of the LFBC, it was an analysis of the software used to create the image seen on the screen. Software that has nothing to do with the underlying document that comes complete with eye-witnesses that he never interviewed.”
I still can’t believe he didn’t interview eye-witnesses. That should have been number one on the list.
The only chance the birthers have of getting this into a court is if Judy Judy decides to put it on her docket.
I proposed a similar solution in 2009.
http://www.obamaconspiracy.org/2009/09/my-solution-to-the-standing-issue/
Great minds!!!
I was particularly drawn to Stanley Ann’s signature as being the most compelling element. I am not a handwriting expert, but I can tell there seems to something wrong with the signature. It looks too precise. In short, the signature looks “artificial”, like it was created somewhere else and imported into the document. The signature ink does not match with the contemporary age of the document and signature seems to jump out at you when your first look at the document. I can’t put my finger on it. Again, I am not handwriting expert but this is my personal opinion.
“I can promise you if he tried to present that garbage to a bunch of computer experts they would laugh him out of the building.”
—–
Jim,
In the ’80s, and thereafter before I went to law school, I was in data quality auditing, and data modeling for relational database design.
So, I can really relate to your statement–it’s how I feel every time Orly et al. claim that the online databases demonstrate irrefutable proof that Obama’s social security number once belonged to a guy born 123 years ago (and that the old man lived with Obama and may have been married to Michelle). And who is her “expert” on such databases? A bill collector…ha ha ha.
To dumb for words.
I can promise you if she tried to present that garbage to a bunch of Data Quality experts they would laugh her out of the building.
I guess that is why she is now asking USDC Judge Lamberth to take “judicial notice” of the database data–It’s so irrefutable, no other testimony is necessary……
“When you take an image on your computer screen and increase the size of it by zooming in, you are NOT looking at the image as if you had a piece of paper and were looking at it through a magnifying glass.”
I think, technically, I understood that, but I had never actually thought of it that way. Brilliant!
Excellent article.
I am reminded of those persistent conspiracy nuts who over-process digital imagery of photographs from Mars and the Moon in search of evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. They too fail to understand that images obtained on the internet are effectively algorithmic interpretations of digital information. Then they apply their own image processing software that has its own set of algorithms for converting digital information into pictures the eye can see on a display. Little wonder these pictures have all kinds of “anomalies” embedded in them.
Birthers doing image “analysis” of pdf’s of the President’s birth certificate are simply emulating these crackpots. What’s both amusing and disappointing is that this fallacy is so easy to point out, yet these so-called “experts” fail to recognize what they are actually doing is misinterpreting their own creations.
John, do you think you might be just a little biased?
What do you mean “too perfect?” Look at the “A” in “Ann” in the high-resolution news service copy:
(And no, you guys can’t embed images like this.)
It’s anything but perfect. The upper loop of the letter is hardly there. Scanning across, see clear differences in stroke thickness that I presume are coming from a fountain pen. Notice when you say that it’s perfect, you don’t explain why. When I say it’s not perfect, I explain.
And seriously, how much experience do you have examining signatures on old document photocopies? How do you know what old ink looks like, and how much variation there is in it?
You’re the typical birther document expert. They really don’t know enough to have an opinion, but they claim that they should be listened too nonetheless.
What he means is that it is on President Obama’s birth certificate so there has to be something wrong with it…..even if he has to make it up all by himself on a Sunday morning.
John, I hear that if your breath air, you’ll turn commie. Save yourself, and breath boron!
The whole point of the thread that you are posting on is to teach you that you have never seen Stanley Ann Dunham’s signature. You have seen a digital representation of her signature manipulated by software to look as viewable as possible on a computer screen.
If you want to inspect the signature, get a court order from a judge for inspection of the vault copy birth vital record that is in a safe in the Hawaii Department of Health.
Joey, you actually expect John to LEARN something???
Doc, have you ever seen the old “Flame Warriors” site? The Birthers remind me of one in particular, “Ferrous Cranus.”
“Ferrous Cranus is utterly impervious to reason, persuasion and new ideas, and when engaged in battle he will not yield an inch in his position regardless of its hopelessness. Though his thrusts are decisively repulsed, his arguments crushed in every detail and his defenses demolished beyond repair he will remount the same attack again and again with only the slightest variation in tactics. Sometimes out of pure frustration Philosopher will try to explain to him the failed logistics of his situation, or Therapist will attempt to penetrate the psychological origins of his obduracy, but, ever unfathomable, Ferrous Cranus cannot be moved.”
http://www.flamewarriorsguide.com/warriorshtm/ferouscranus.htm
That’s funny considering this is one of the first times you’ve ever mentioned this. If the signature was a compelling element then why do you spout all the other nonsense?
Let me help you: what buggin’ is the fact that the signature is there at all. Awfully inconvenient for a man of your particular obsession, eh, john?
Again, can you PUH-lease cease giving us ‘john’s a bad name?
Doc, is there a reason you keep John around? It can’t be because you expect to reach the guy. Is he here as a cautionary tale about what happens when people sniff airplane glue?
Hope springs eternal.
Like that birther guy (forgot who) who took every childhood photo of Obama/SAD he could find, false-colored them and then claimed they were created in Photoshop, either because “the hair was perfect black which is impossible” or “the hair has different shades in the dark parts which is impossible”. When in fact all he did was highlight JPG artifacts and imperfections of the scanner processing the original photos.
I have a whole different reason for writing the articles…not to convince the diehards and con artists, they don’t care they just want Obama out. I’m looking to educate the tea partiers and folks who donate to Zullo and Orly, try to cut into their funding. They are not tech savvy and when Zullo pulls out a lot of technical terms, even though to someone in the field may recognize that he’s speaking garbage, to people who do not have the background it sounds impressive. For example, NBC’s articles showing that the PDF was created by a Xerox workstation was brilliant and very technical, these folks are not going to understand it. So, they decide between taking the word of an anonymous blogger or a con man. However, if we take things down to their simple levels, that makes it easier for them to understand, maybe they decide not to give anymore. birtherism, for all practical purposes, is dead. They cannot achieve their goal of having the President removed. All that is left is the cons and the glory seekers. Debunking is no longer my goal, defunding is.
And if Zullo and his accomplices are ever found guilty of racketeering? Bonus.
John, you do realise that that part is on the background layer, right? That part has no white halo. And if the layers indicate parts of the document that were “forged”, that part was not forged.
Typical birther that cottons onto a part that does not have the “indications of forgery” that he has been clinging onto for 2 years now.
No, you were particularly drawn to any new unfounded accusation or conclusory allegation against Obama, as suddenly being the most compelling element. You are not a handwriting expert, but you can tell there seems to something wrong with a signature, if that’s what it takes to throw suspicion on Obama. It looks too precise. In short, the signature looks “artificial” to my untrained eyes, even if it was authentic and legitimately a part of the document.
To someone like me who knows nothing about document examination, the signature ink does not match with the contemporary age of the document closely enough to let the results of the two most recent Presidential elections stand. Because it’s real, that signature seemed to jump out at me when I first looked at the document, and I’ve had nightmares ever since. I can’t put my finger on it, or the tip of my nose.
Again, I am not a handwriting expert but this is my idiotic personal opinion, which I believe, instead of reality, should determine, the Article Two eligibility of Obama.
Is this 2011 all over again? I remember some folks on WND (dunno if Irey was one of them), or even a WND article, claiming that “all the n’s/m’s are on the same baseline / same height” or something – of course it only took one quick check in Photoshop to show that wasn’t true.
So once more we have a rehash of a long-debunked birther crapfoolery.
I still remember how birthers even based this claim on “putting a ruler on my screen” to “prove” the signature was on a baseline parallel to the lines on the BC. Yes, very “scientific”. Photoshop rulers clearly showed nothing was “on the same line” in that signature.
Of course birthers would rather believe their old eyes and resorted to name-calling or asked me to prove my claim with pictures and then refused to click on the links (“I will catch a virus!”).
But this brings me back to the Hayes report: wasn’t it another birther claim that the other signatures known from Stanley Ann look “too different” from the one on the BC? Maybe that is what Hayes locked on to.
just what are the specs on the various different resolutions ? why are there different specs at all. wasn’t it all high resolution from the beginning. did the resolutions ever change ??
I hope congress can subpoena to find out who had hands on it, and perhaps some records (sales maintenance) of the Xerox machines.
when did they make that model, when was it in the west wing.
why, he’s not from Chicago.
Neither is your President.
Have you ever thought about CONTRIBUTING information rather than being a leech?
I have decided to ban you completely.
Come now Doc you know that’s the birther way.
Bravo!
Ronald Reagan was born in Illinois obviously he was corrupted by the machine.
It’s funny how inconsistent the claims are… The signatures look too perfect and precise to be Ann Dunhams so it must be a fake…. The signatures look too different to be Ann Dunhams so it must be a fake.
“Birtherism is a story about birthers, not about Barack Obama.”
–Dr. Conspiracy
Scott just can’t help himself.
I suspect a long tracy fair like whine coming on over at politicalforum
Don’t forget testimony from the people who built that very machine and their birth certificates to ensure they’re not Kenyan sleeper agents, either.
Plus the full chain of custody for the machine from the assembly line to the installation in the White House and the access logs for everyone who ever entered that room, plus copies of every document every copied with it.
Yes, I can imagine this would keep Issa off the witch hunts for some time. 😉
But thanks for proving again how birthers will never be satisfied with any level of proof.
About bloody time, too…he does NOTHING to contribute to the discussion, he never answers questions, and his entire tone is that this is just a game.
I also dislike how he tries to derail discussions with utter irrelevancies about Bill Ayers and Chicago politics.
Perhaps I am in the wrong business 🙂
Hey I am enjoying the sleuthing work… Who cares if it helps others… I am a scientist darnit…
Don’t even get me started on how identical/different the letters are on the too many/not enough layers.
I know nothing about scanners (other than knowing how to use them), but it took me all of five minutes to learn that the owner’s manual for the Xerox WorkCentre 7655 was issued in 2009.
Your ban by Doc C. is welcome because you never answer questions and you never tire of asking for information which you could easily look up yourself.
No more scott e?
Cue the world’s most unconvincing “Oh no…please say it isn’t so.”
Good riddance. Maybe the same thing happened to john.