Actually, I don't. In one of my previous posts, I theorized that the forger of the now infamous Rathergate memos used a lower case "L" instead of the numeral "1" to trick Microsoft Word into not automatically superscripting number/letter combinations. I even included a screen shot in an yet earlier post of both so people could see for themselves.
Now, from Captain's Quarter's Blog comes a quote (orginally fromRatherBiased) from Dan Rather:
Rather: Richard katz, a software designer found other indications in the documents. He noticed the lower case l is used in documents instead of the actual numeral one. That would be difficult to reproduce on the computer today. If you were doing this a week ago or a month ago on a normal laser jet printer, it wouldn't work. The font wouldn't be available to you.I hate to gloat (no I don't), but what the heck was Dan Rather talking about? "That would be difficult to reproduce on a computer today."
Sure, Dan, all one would have to do is to open Microsoft Word, using the default font of Times New Roman, press "1" and the keyboard and then press "L". Prestidigito! - two different characters that look virtually the same. Of course, I suppose one could mess up with the Caps Lock or something. That might make it slightly harder.
Rather has descended into somewhat of a joke on this.
I, on the other hand, am feeling pretty good. I think I am going to start calling myself a "Forensic Wordologist". Any objections?
Update: I'll admit it. I am rather amused by the computer "expert" that was on CBS News tonight. You can read the transcript here. I did learn something. I never know that a computer generally, or MS Word specifically, had a "'th' setting". I'll look for it in Word help later.
But what was interesting was this (emphasis mine):
RATHER: There has also been criticism of the new documents obtained by CBS. But CBS used several techniques to make sure these papers should be taken seriously. Talking to handwriting and document analysts and other experts who strongly insist that the documents could have be created in the 70s.Not, "were created in the 70s". Interesting.
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