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Automatic Rant generator
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Date: Mon Jul 17, 1995 5:22 pm GMT
From: Timothy C. May
Subject: Automated Rant Generators and Letter Generators
At 7:35 AM 7/17/95, Martin Hamilton wrote:
>MONTY HARDER writes:
>
>| Anyone who has read MAD Magazine could put such together. As an added
>| bonus, use variable margin settings, and none of the letters would be
>| exactly the same. Appropriate Imail => FAX software on a puter in DC
>| (local call that way) with the phone number of the sender filled in on
>| the top line for ID (izzat legal?) so it doesn't look like a form letter
>| at all.
>
>Plus - choose the fonts & point sizes at random too ? :-)
Tim May > Cypherpunks could probably have an effect on
Tim May > hastening this "denial of service" attack on the
Tim May > efficacy of letter-writing by releasing an easy-to-
Tim May > use package that does all this letter writing at
Tim May > the click of a button....just type in some key
Tim May > words, for the topics, and it does the rest.
Tim May > An interesting project, actually.
Actually, your little project could cause some major problems
in a area you may not anticipate --- personnel selection.
Specifically, the use of Handwriting Analysis as a tool for
personnel profiling.
Date: Mon Jul 17, 1995 11:48 pm GMT
From: Harry Bartholomew
Subject: Re: Automated Rant Generators and Letter Generators
Harry > A final step might be to interface the output to old
Harry > pen plotters like my HP7470A with an ascii-to-
Harry > handwriting program. Akin to the White House
Harry > souvenir signature generator, but with a set of
Harry > parameters to mimic different "hands". Knuth's
Harry > Metafont tricks come to mind.
Making the little problem Tim presents, a major headache for
somebody else --- handwriting analysts.
Date: Tue Jul 18, 1995 1:18 am GMT
From: Timothy C. May
Subject: Re: Automated Rant Generators and Letter Generators
Tim May > Bart's comments about using Knuth's typographic
Tim May > work are interesting, to the extent that letters
Tim May > need to look handwritten. In the Mac market, it's
Tim May > possible to send in some handwriting samples and
Tim May > get back a font that emulates the handwriting!
Actually, True Type fonts of your handwriting are available,
for any platform that accepts that font type. I don't have
the URL for them, but there is a pointer to it at
HTTP://www.ntu.ac.sg/~tjlow/gclub.html
Tim May > I don't think the pen plotter is actually needed-
Tim May > - and few people would use it--as most fax can
Using it would play hell for handwriting analysts, though.
And if it was programmed to change the pen pressure as well
--- the possibilities are staggering. Can a pen plotter
change pressure?
Tim May > be emulated with laser printers (due of course to
Tim May > the limited dots per inch resolution). In fact,
Tim May > most fax modems can directly fax from any screen
Tim May > that can produce printed output. So, the
Tim May > combination of handwriting fonts, automated rant
Tim May > generators (of varying rabidities), and fax
Tim May > capabilities gives a pretty good start. Using lots
Tim May > of handwriting samples, various other fonts, and a
Tim May > mix of styles in the letters will help.
Tim May > Anyway, where this all gets interesting is the
Tim May > following: * Can a kind of Turing Test be tried
Tim May > here?
But of course.
Tim May > That is, in this limited domain of "letters to the
Tim May > editor/Congressmen," can a letter generator be
Tim May > implemented which generates letters effectively
Tim May > indistinguishable from letters and fax generated
Tim May > by actual human beings? ("Effectively
Tim May > indistinguishable" in the sense that a human reader
Tim May > could not sort a set of letters into human- and
Tim May > machine-generated subsets with statistically
Tim May > significant certainty better than guessing).
I don't remember the title, but at least one french novel was
rumored to have been entirely generated by computer.
Tim May > Of course this is also similar to the "style
Tim May > detectors" we so often talk about.
I don't remember the program name, but there is software
available now, that analyzes a document, and figures out who
wrote it --- based on the frequency count of the letters of
the alphabet. Secondary measures are frequency counts of
letter pairs. Words, phrases, sentences etc are totally
ignored. So what you'd need to do here, to pass your pseudo-
Turing Test is a program that generates different statistical
results, for allegedly different people.
Tim May > The crypto relevance has to do with detecting
Tim May > patterns in letters and rants, in emulating these
Tim May > patterns, and (perhaps) in speeding up lobbying.
Tim May > (Though I agree that widespread adoption of
Tim May > automated letter-writing, such as the direct mail
Tim May > folks are already doing, will eventually just kill
Tim May > off letter writing as a means of lobbying.)
Tim May > This may also hasten the adoption, someday, of
Tim May > digital signatures. Congressmen and their aides
Tim May > may check incoming letters against databases of
Tim May > their constituents who have "registered" with them
Tim May > (lots of issues here).
Or might just subject all mail to various automations, which
accept/reject mail, based on what it looks for. << If it
passes the congress person's Turing Test, it is read, as being
authentic --- although I doubt half the people in the capital
could actually pass a Turing Test to begin with. >>
Tim May > Merely counting the "yes" and "no" letters has long
Tim May > been problematic, as the Republicans have been
Tim May > leading in direct mail campaigns since at least the
Tim May > mid-70s (recall Richard Viguerie...). Increased
Tim May > automation will just make it even more obvious.
Date: Tue Jul 18, 1995 5:23 pm GMT
From: Timothy C. May
Subject: Re: Automated Rant Generators and Letter Generators
Tim May > David Conrad told me he meant for this to go to the
Tim May > whole list, but only sent it to me by mistake. So
Tim May > here is his post.
At 4:14 PM 7/18/95, David R. Conrad wrote:
>Tim May <[email protected]> writes:
>>Bart's comments about using Knuth's typographic work are interesting, to
>>the extent that letters need to look handwritten. In the Mac market, it's
>>possible to send in some handwriting samples and get back a font that
>>emulates the handwriting!
>
>I suppose the resulting font has only one form for each letter? (Although
>I understand that when you send them a sample, you send several instances
>of each letter; a friend was showing me an add for this.) The fact that
>each letter is the same every time would be a giveaway. We need something
>like Metafont, or at least choose from a number of different shapes.
>
>> ... So, the combination of
>>handwriting fonts, automated rant generators (of varying rabidities), and
>>fax capabilities gives a pretty good start. Using lots of handwriting
>>samples, various other fonts, and a mix of styles in the letters will help.
>
>Another factor that would make it appear more authentic would be spelling
>and grammar errors. The grammar errors could be built into the rant
>generators (an occasional dangling modifier, an incomplete sentence or two);
>spelling errors could be done by post-processing the output of the rantgens.
>It's important to take into account the different types of spellos that
>occur: commonly misspelled words (aquired, beleive); wrong homophone (their,
>they're, there; two, to, too); transposed letters (transpoesd); near-misses
>on qwerty keyboards (nesr-mosses); and words left out.
>
>--
>David R. Conrad, [email protected], http://web.grfn.org/~conrad/
>Finger [email protected] for PGP 2.6 public key; it's also on my home page
>Key fingerprint = 33 12 BC 77 48 81 99 A5 D8 9C 43 16 3C 37 0B 50
>No, his mind is not for rent to any god or government.
Actually, the usual give away, is in letter and letter pair
frequencies --- not spelling mistakes, grammatical errors,
etc.
However, there a technique called _Scientific Content
ANalysis_ that looks at how things are said, to judge their
"truthfulness." A good program will not show that the text
was randomly generated, nor show that the author is off-the-
wall, so to speak.
You may have bitten off a bit more than you can chew here.
OTOH, a group that tries to crack keys, knowing that the
possibility of success is slim to non-existent, can probably
pull this one off --- if only because the possibility of
success is pretty good.
Er, how did the cracking of the key go? Last I read 60+%,
and no hints of it being broken. << I almost want to
participate, but with a dx25, running NovellDos, I'm not sure
what that platform could do. << I''ll graduate to Linux,
after I buy some more memory, and a new hard drive for that
sytem. >> >>
xan
jonathon
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