Shocker: TechDude is Tech-DUD in botched birth certificate breakthrough

The Greater Evil ^ | 08/10/08 | Polarik

[Polarik]

Not since ol' Oedipus ripped his eyes out and rode his mother have we seen this kind of hubris and chutzpah displayed by the self-proclaimed King of the Kos COLBs himself, Mr TechDude.

Seems that the Almighty TechDude, never one to shy away from controversy or plagiarism, went out on a limb this week after barking up the wrong tree.

Tech-Dude was last seen waving about crayon-colored sketches of what he thinks was Maya Soetoro's COLB. To the sound of "Zz's" from an already bored crowd, TechDude proclaimed that he, and only he, discovered whose COLB was used to forge the so-called, Obama COLB.

FReepers will rightly remember that the COLB acronym was a Polarik original, and they know that it, along with other Polarik originals, are being used without attribution.

Tech-DUD (as he is now known) was so enamored by his own pomposity, that he announced to a waiting (but weary) world that not only did he find the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, Blackbeard's treasure, and Amelia Earhart, but that he also discovered the owner of the COLB used to make the forgery..

So smug was he, that he offered a reward of two tickets to Las Vegas to whomever could guess who was that person.

Well, "breaking news" like this sort of becomes a bit stale and stagnant after the real COLB owner was revealed like a month ago by a somewhat more humble personage who learned, early on, that you don't snake your colleagues or steal their work.

Yes, it was this tireless FReeper who broke the news about the true source of the Kos COLB, who showed how it was created, and who also refrained from patting his own back in the process.

For all intents and purposes, the Winner of Tech-DUD's contest is actually that same, modest FReeper who's writing this article.

Memo to the God of Graphics: you can keep your tickets and your ten minutes of fame, because FRReepers know the difference between brilliance and bullsh*t.

In short, while Tech-DUD is parading around with what he thinks was the "missing link," little does he or his gullible group of glad-handers know that he just drove up on Polarik's off-ramp.

Time for a flashback.

What I said in my first post, "Was Obama's Birth Certificate manufactured," made on June 13 and subsequently updated on June 19, was that the black and white pixels around the letters were evidence of graphic alterations on a previously created image.

It took awhile for me to convince people that I was not talking about a paper document being forged, but only the image of it.

Finding graphic alterations is one thing -- proving that they are not JPG artifacts is something totally different.

The naysayers would not let me rest upon my laurels for discovering a graphically-altered image. No, they wanted me to create a clone of it to show them exactly how it was created.

Only until I disproved all of their alternate theories -- that what I saw were actually "artifacts" from the printer, and/or a scanner, and/or the software used to crop the image and black out the Certificate Number -- could I be assured to have found the reason why the image looked the way it did.

So, I created a Kos clone. Not once, but twice.

How many Kos clones has Tech-DUD created to validate his findings?

ZERO.

You see, in creating a clone, I discovered what was needed to create those pixel patterns as well as what COLB was used as the template.

The original scanned image was originally an 8-bit 256-color bitmap that was modified by an image editor, and was saved as a JPG image after the editing was done.

That was a necessity. No amount of working with JPGs would reproduce it. The base image had to be a bitmap restricted to 256 colors, because Only when the available colors are that low will you ever get anything resembling the pixel patterns I found in and around the letters.

I should also add that these pixel patters occur only after a bitmap has been converted to JPG, and is also the reason why a JPG image could not be modified directly.

BUT, Tech-DUD, the graphics expert, never went there on his Magical Mystery COLB tour. Not only did he pick the wrong COLB to modify (he alleges that the COLB belongs to Obama's stepsister, Maya), he also posited that the previous text on the COLB was "filled in" with white to hide them, letter by letter, and then typed over.

Uh...no. This is just a tad absurd, seeing as how the pixels behind the letters contain green pixels, and about 255 other colors -- at least.

Just one of many inconvenient truths that Tech-DUD dismissed in so many words. Well, in too many words, actually.

Tech-DUD has a way with words when it comes to describing his work, and obfuscating other theories.

Unfortunately, for the masses who read his story, these words sailed right over their heads. They started clamopring for him to give them the instructions so that they could replicate his work, crying, "Be specific!"

Now, that did not sit well with Tech-DUD who rebuffed them with a "I'll tell you how in my upcoming report," and thinking aloud about how graphically incompetent they were.

Critics challenged him to provide the instructions. Ah, but you don't challenge the Master, little grasshopper. who unleashed a fury of epithets more colorful than the COLB he was trying to modify.

The blosphere picked up this picked-over storyline, quoting the blog that first "broke" the "breaking" news, that Tech-DUD has proved, beyond a "shadow of a doubt," that the Kos COLB is a "forgery," created from Maya's COLB.

But, when the luster wore off, it seems that Tech-DUD never explained to them, in terms they can replicate, the method he used to link Maya's COLB to the Kos.

He was babbling about "hidden letters" on the Kos image, and in a scene reminiscent of Easter Sunday, everyone was scrambling to find those "eggs" -- you know, the ones that came from the "chicken or egg" conundrum.

Meanwhile, I was sitting on the sidelines, watching this non-story unravel before my eyes.

FReepers know who was the first to find evidence for the forgery using the scientific method.

FReepers also know that the KOS image was made directly from a cOLB that had sat on a geneology website for the past two years.

This other COLB, whose name I will refer by her initials, PD, was used as the template to make the Kos.

To put it another way, the Kos COLB is a CLONE of the PD COLB. It is such a dead-ringer for it, that Tech-DUD's claim that the Kos was made directly from Maya Soetoro COLB was busted before it ever began.

Yet, the blogsphere is lapping up this lame discovery like a lactose-intolerant cat. In other words, some people are going to be sick to their stomachs when they get the bad news, that no way in Hades could the Kos have been made directly from Maya's COLB.

How did Tech-DUD explain away the fact that the positions of the text on the Kos COLB image match those on PD's COLB image?

Now, this is really a great response:

Either this match is a coincidence, or the forger knew about the PD COLB when he was creating the forgery"

"Coincidence?" Even when presented with the cold, hard visual facts, Tech-DUD insists that PD's COLB was not used to make the Kos COLB.

I say, let FReepers be the judge:

Here's an animated GIF that compares an overlay of PD's COLB on top of the Kos COLB:

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn227/Polarik/DE-KOS-TA.gif

Using Michele's COLB -- one that Tech-DUD insists is identical in format to Maya's COLB, here's an animated GIF that compares an overlay of what Maya's COLB would look like on top of the Kos COLB:

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn227/Polarik/DE-MICH.gif

How can anyone with any common sense say that the Kos image was made from Maya's COLB?

How can anyone with any common sense say that the Kos COLB is NOT a perfect match to the PD COLB, in terms of the size and position of its borders, and the placement of everything else inside its borders, like the Hawaiian masthead, the text, the Seal, the border labels, and the "Alterations" caveat?

Yet, the great forensics expert brushes all of these matches as a mere "coincidence."

In conclusion, I have to be thankful for choosing to not be a part of this charade, and in placing my name and reputation on the line for someone whose technical knowledge is easily surpassed by his arrogance and self-aggrandizement.

You be the judge.

[Polarik]

Trouble in River City?

Not really. Just venting.

[bvw]

Learn to vent a wee bit less lava-like.

[muawiyah]

He's telling you the KOS electronic image is neither a fraud nor a forgery. Rather, it's an electronic image of another electronic image, and that original electronic image was probably created one of two ways ~ by making a 256 color photocopy (using any one of a vast number of widely used cheap scanners ~ I have a couple of dozen in a big box in a closet), and then running the resultant electronic image into a data set that will yield *.jpg images for use on the net.

Pretty sure my first response to the issue of the Obamasama CLB images on the net.

First, take the document. Copy it with an old scanner. Use the resultant bit map (Paint?) as input to something like Frontpage. Worry around the picture to fit your website's preferred dimensions. Upload and go.

Again, older cheap scanner, Frontpage, website.

You can vary the process by using a newer, more expensive scanner, Cold Fusion, and a website. The results will be different at the level of the pixelation.

As I said, worry it enough and you could discover that it's all based on George Wallace's birth certificate.

[Cyber Liberty]

I have a suspicion that Obambi’s going to have a fresh COLB to wave about, now that he's in Hawaii.

[mouse1]

Who is tech dude?
Is polarik tech dude?
Is this being done to confuse us?
To distract from the lack of a real b.c.?

[2ndDivisionVet]

I’m always suspicious of someone who’s been here a month or two acting like a FReeper from 1998...

[jennyjenny]

At least he’s modest....just ask him.

[Polarik]

Correct. Half-sister Maya. Stepfather Lolo.

[Polarik]

earn to vent a wee bit less lava-like.

Good advice which I took to heart. There will be no further outbursts from this corner.