A little-known feature of the U.S.S.R. under Communism was that when someone purchased a typewriter, it was delivered to the local police office. The people there took a razor blade and nicked various characters, then registered the owner, the serial number of the typewriter, and a complete sample of the typewritten output. Since the characters exhibited consistent errors, if a samizdat appeared, all that was necessary would be to compare the characters in the document in question with known samples from the registered typewriters, and the offending typewriter could be identified. This analysis required that the expected behavior, that characters always exhibited consistent defects, would be true. The government could at any time come in and type a new sample, and it was a crime to in any way have modified the type so that the type did not correspond to the "standard sample" for that typewriter. Since the government was not overly concerned with niceties of law we take for granted, anyone associated with, or who might have had access to, that typewriter could find themselves winning an all-expense-paid trip to the nearest gulag.Remember this?:
sa·miz·dat n. Literally, "self publishing" 1. a. The secret publication and distribution of government-banned literature in the former Soviet Union. b. The literature produced by this system. 2. An underground press.
I can only repeat the painfully great Soviet dissident joke yet again: "The future is known, it's the past that keeps changing."Did I mention that I do have an MSCS and I can vouch that Dr. Newcomer has this one signed, sealed and delivered? Sorry folks, but SeeBS' smelly little conspiracy is likely to come under withering fire again unless the "investigators" deliver a whole lot more than the portents currently indicate...
UPDATE: Gun shy????
UPDATED AGAIN: At half-time during the Super Bowl? ;)
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