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How a Microsoft Font Brought Down Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (2017)

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Re: How a Microsoft Font Brought Down Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (2017)

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first public beta was released on June 6, 2006.

> It was first presented in a 2004 beta of Windows Vista, then codenamed Longhorn According to Wikipedia. Hence my question. Even tho it wasn’t yet part of office could it have been selected if it was installed on the OS?

chris_wot is saying that the first public beta was in 2006, so a beta in 2004 would have been internal to Microsoft (ignoring any leaked versions)

Re: How a Microsoft Font Brought Down Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (2017)

#32

Curious how/who noticed the font detail and knew enough that it could help date the document. However, couldn't the machine identification code from the printer reveal exactly when the document was printed?

It was identified by the JIT (join investigation team) established by the supreme court to look at the case. And Robert W. Radley of London-based The Radley Forensic Document Laboratory was the person who helped in identifying it.

Source: https://www.dawn.com/news/1344654

Re: How a Microsoft Font Brought Down Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (2017)

#34

If it was released in beta of longhorn in 2004 couldn’t they have still legitimately created the doc???

Even if it was, it would beg the question of probability of them (1) installing and using the beta and (2) somehow selecting an obscure font and (3) the font ends up becoming the default font years later.

Or someone else smuggled the font on their computer, so to set them up on this corruption case 12 years later ... also possible, but even less likely.

Re: How a Microsoft Font Brought Down Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (2017)

#35
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was first presented in a 2004 beta of Windows Vista, then codenamed Longhorn According to Wikipedia. Hence my question. Even tho it wasn’t yet part of office could it have been selected if it was installed on the OS?

chris_wot is saying that the first public beta was in 2006, so a beta in 2004 would have been internal to Microsoft (ignoring any leaked versions)

According to Wikipedia it shipped with longhorn beta in 2004, but was part of office 2007 beta in 2006.

So even tho you couldn’t get it on windows xp at the time. If you were using a beta version of longhorn with office 2003 you could in theory use the font...

That’s my thinking. I just donno if that would work.

Re: How a Microsoft Font Brought Down Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (2017)

#36
post #7

BTW, Avenfield reference case verdict has just been pronounced. Literally few minutes ago: Nawaz gets 10 years!

Good. Corruption needs jail time, not just fines.

Only if the same standard is held to everyone. I don't know any details about this case nor pakistans situation in general, but I know that in most corrupt states, corruption trials are usually used in a power struggle, where one corrupt side brings down the other side, and just has their own corpses better buried and/or is connected better to the investigators/secret intelligence.

Re: How a Microsoft Font Brought Down Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (2017)

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't really understand USA until I spent some time considering Pakistan.

This. Pakistan is a Republican wet dream, if Republicans were Muslim.

Like Venezuela is a Democrat wet dream? Please...

Re: How a Microsoft Font Brought Down Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (2017)

#38
post #7

BTW, Avenfield reference case verdict has just been pronounced. Literally few minutes ago: Nawaz gets 10 years!

Good. Corruption needs jail time, not just fines.

Nawaz 10 years jail.

His daughter, who faked the document, 7 years in jail.

Millions in fines.

Apartments in question to be returned to government.

Re: How a Microsoft Font Brought Down Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (2017)

#39

Pakistan is not a democracy, it is run by the military regardless of who is in power, the ISI it's it's real head of state, which have a pro-islamist agenda but with a slightly modern outlook for economic growth. Regardless if he did any wrongdoing, there have been far worse acts by politicians in Pakistan and they have got away with it.

That may have been true a few decades ago, but it's certainly becoming more democratic.. still not the best, though. Especially with the military curb circulations of a private national newspaper.

Attack on Dawn and Geo were first of a kind after 5 years lull.

In last 5 years, Pakistan saw, well, nothing less than an explosion in privately owned press and TV channels.

Re: How a Microsoft Font Brought Down Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif (2017)

#40

If it was released in beta of longhorn in 2004 couldn’t they have still legitimately created the doc???

https://www.dawn.com/news/1344685

> In a separate email, de Groot, the font designer himself, said that while in theory it would have been possible to create a document using Calibri in 2006, the font would have to be obtained from a beta operating system, "from the hands of computer nerds".

> "Why would anyone use a completely unknown font for an official document in 2006?" he went on to question.

> "If the person using Calibri was such a font lover that he or she had to use the new Calibri, then he or she should be able to prove that other documents were printed with Calibri in 2006, and these prints should be in the hands of other people as well," he wrote.

> De Groot said in his opinion the document signed by Maryam Nawaz was "produced much later, when Calibri was the default font in MS Word".

So apparently yes it would be possible but highly unlikely.

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