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10372 discussions

Re: [ALUG] Up for grabs...
by Montmorency 21 Jun '10

21 Jun '10

On Mon, 21 Jun 2010, at 12:00 pm, main-request(a)lists.alug.org.uk wrote: > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2010 17:27:45 +0100 > From: Wayne Stallwood <ALUGlist(a)digimatic.co.uk> > Subject: Re: [ALUG] Up for grabs... > To: main(a)lists.alug.org.uk > Message-ID: <4C1E4181.8040108(a)digimatic.co.uk> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed > > On 20/06/10 16:28, Bellphegore wrote: >> Flexible, roll-up, rubber, USB keyboard. >> >> Red (in case that matters). >> >> Say, and it's yours at the next pub-meet. >> > > (holds up hand) > > Me me me, I might even buy you a pint :) > OK.... katsmeat montmorency(a)ukfsn.org bellphegore(a)nerdshack.com

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Arduino Help
by James Bensley 21 Jun '10

21 Jun '10

Is my Arduino duffed or me? Started a new project today, hooked up a 16x2 LCD, and a potentiometer. To start with the screen is simply displaying the reading from the pot with analogRead("PotPinNumber") but its fluctuating like mad: Here is a video on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgEm7czlUVg YT has cut eh quality so it isn't very clear!), to start with I have turned the pot to max and you can see the fluctuation in the reading, then I unplug the pot from the analog input so it should be reading nothing but it drops to about 450 and fluctuates around there when surely it should drop to 0 (mystery voltage from somewhere perhaps?), then I plug the pot back in the analog input and you can see it go back up and fluctuate. This is the case irrelevant of which port the pot is plugged into and weather it is plugged in or not it still reads something? Is the Arduino dead or am I dead? -- Regards, James. http://www.jamesbensley.co.cc/ - There are only 10 kinds of people in the world, those who understand trinary, those who don't understand trinary and those who don't understand trinary.

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Locating duplicate images (fslint?)
by Mark Rogers 21 Jun '10

21 Jun '10

I have an "images" directory with several subdirectories (and sub-sub-directories), one of them called "products". Pretty much every image in the "products" directory is a duplicate of an image in the parent "images" directory or one of its other subdirectories, although with a different filename (binary contents will be the same, and there's a good chance that the timestamp will also be the same although this is not guaranteed). I want to locate the duplicates, and remove them - the ones I must keep are the ones in the "products" subdirectory. Ideally I'd like to move the duplicates into a temporary directory (retaining their sub-directory paths) rather than delete them in case I need to restore them, but deletion wouldn't be too bad (I can take backups first, although it's on a hosted server and the "images" directory is 1.1G, with free space on the server a little less than that, so just duplicating the directory won't be as easy as it might sound - the lack of free space is one of the main reasons I need to do this!). Oh, and there are some sub-directories I'd like to exclude. So: Which tools should I look at? fslint springs to mind but I've never really used it in anger and the documentation seems a bit vague. The GUI option is out because there's no X on the server. Are there other, better (more appropriate) tools? -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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Up for grabs...
by Bellphegore 20 Jun '10

20 Jun '10

Flexible, roll-up, rubber, USB keyboard. Red (in case that matters). Say, and it's yours at the next pub-meet. Bellphegore bellphegore(a)nerdshack.com montmorency(a)ukfsn.org

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Any git users here?
by Jenny Hopkins 20 Jun '10

20 Jun '10

Hullo, Does anyone use GIT? I want to know if one can use git-archive to retrieve a tarball snapshot of head revision at or before an instructed date. Google is not being my friend. Thanks, Jenny

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HOWTO: Getting started with OpenVPN
by Martin A. Brooks 20 Jun '10

20 Jun '10

I wanted an OpenVPN server, but didn't want to mess around with client certificates. It took me more googling than I liked to figure it out, so I wrote the procedure down: http://hinterlands.org/wiki/index.php/OpenVPNQuickstart

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DropBox Wont Install
by Simon Royal 18 Jun '10

18 Jun '10

Hi I use DropBox to backup my pictures. I have used it for years and think it is brilliant. I sync my pictures folder across different machines including my iBook G3 and my XP partition on my ThinkPad. I had it also installed under Xubuntu on my ThinkPad, however I cannot get it to work under Ubuntu. I installed the package from the Ubuntu Softwre Centre, that went fine. The first you run it it has to download the daemon and that is where it goes wrong. It is very slow downloading it and then it sits at 91% and doesnt move. Any ideas? I tried Googling the problem but I couldn't find any answers. Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad 600 running Ubuntu 10.04 & Apple iBook G3 running OSX 10.4. _________________________________________________________________ http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/195013117/direct/01/ We want to hear all your funny, exciting and crazy Hotmail stories. Tell us now

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Ubuntu Start Up Sound All Of A Sudden
by Simon Royal 18 Jun '10

18 Jun '10

Hi As you probably know I have finally gotten sound working on my ThinkPad. I got audio CDs working, MP3s working and web sounds like YouTube. I have had it working for about a week and it has been fine. However, this morning I turned on my machine, booted it, installed the updates Update Manager told me to and rebooted. On reboot, I heard for the first time ever on this machine the Ubuntu start up chime. I've not changed any of the settings apart from installing the updates, and my sound voulme has always been up full.Just curious to why it has suddenly started. Simon Royal --- Twitter: http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - LowEndMac: http://tinyurl.com/macspectrum - Skype: Simon-Royal. --- IBM ThinkPad 600 running Ubuntu 10.04 & Apple iBook G3 running OSX 10.4. _________________________________________________________________ http://clk.atdmt.com/UKM/go/195013117/direct/01/

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Signal to switch GNOME "workspaces"
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 18 Jun '10

18 Jun '10

Hi Folks, I run GNOME with 20 "workspaces", between which I normally switch using keys Ctrl+Alt+<arrow key>. I'm looking for a way to get an application (or script) to send a signal to the display manager such that the display would switch automatically switch from whatever "workspace" it is in to some other designated one (i.e. so that I don't have to use the keys -- it would be under program control). By the way: I'm not sure which "display manager" programme looks after switching between "desktops" -- is it gdm, metacity, or what? With thanks for any suggestions, Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 18-Jun-10 Time: 09:47:38 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Ubuntu Update Manager Oddness
by Simon Royal 18 Jun '10

18 Jun '10

Hi. Im running the latest Ubuntu. Update Manager popped up saying I had 80 updates. So I thought ok, ill update. I clicked the Install Updates button and it asked for my password. I typed it in and it did nothing. It just went back to the update screen. After a couple of days of trying I realised I was typing the wrong password in and once I typed the right one in it worked fine. My point is, it never told me I had typed the wrong password in, which I thought was very stupid. I use very old hardware and sometimes Ubuntu doesnt play right because I am using it on such under powered hardware and at first I thought that was the problem. Simon --- http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - http://www.tinyurl.com/macspectrum (sent using Sony Ericsson P990i)

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[ALUG Announce] 3rd Monday Monthly Ipswich Social Meeting : McGintys, Northgate Street
by samwise 17 Jun '10

17 Jun '10

ALUG Announce Please send announcements to Announce(a)lists.alug.org.uk Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce ----- The monthly "Third Monday" ALUG Ipswich Social Meeting is back, Monday 21st June, at 20:00: P J McGinty & Sons 15 Northgate Street Ipswich Suffolk IP1 3BY Tel: 01473 251 515 Map/Directions URI: http://maps.google.co.uk/?q=IP1+3BY WWW: http://www.pjmcgintys.co.uk/ McGintys pub is in the centre of Ipswich. It's directly opposite the town's central library and has a reputation for good Irish beer. We're usually to be found in the lowest section of the bar, near the library entrance to the pub. All are welcome, novices and experienced users. Feel free to ask for further information on the Main ALUG mailing list. Peter. ----- Send discussion replies to main(a)lists.alug.org.uk (Reply-To set) Unsub, change settings via http://lists.alug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/announce

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OT
by Anthony Anson 17 Jun '10

17 Jun '10

Should anyone be interested, the King's Head on Magdalen Street is a fussball-free zone... -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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Using the Alug mailing list - Attachments and html
by Adam Bower 15 Jun '10

15 Jun '10

Hi All, Can I please remind everyone that Alug is supposed to be a plain text mailing list only, I do approve the odd html post here and there to keep communication up but it's getting more and more frequent. Can people please check their mail client is set to only send plain text to this mailing list. Also, sending attachments to this list will result in them being rejected (mostly). If you do have a large file or log then consider putting it on some web hosting somewhere and providing a link or using a pastebin instead. Thanks Adam -- New signature required, suggestions on a post card please.

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Possible job opportunity
by Mark Rogers 15 Jun '10

15 Jun '10

(Please note the cross-post) My company, More Solutions Ltd, may shortly have a programming vacancy. I'm not sure how to describe what we would be looking for, other than "a programmer". Much of the software we work with is in proprietary languages so we'd be looking for someone who can turn their hand to languages they've not seen before, but we do also do a lot in PHP so some familiarity with PHP would likely be a necessity. However, I need to be clear that from our experience the majority of people who "do" PHP are not programmers, and we *are* looking for a programmer - someone who understands the merits of code re-use, error handling, etc. From an infrastructure point of view, all our internal and externally hosted servers run Linux (mostly Ubuntu Server), and we all make our own desktop choices (most run Windows but mine is Ubuntu). That said, some of the applications we work in are Windows-only, much to my frustration! Anyway, we don't currently have a job spec, and we may not take anyone on at all; it will very much depend on whether we find someone we like. (There will definitely be a vacancy in the next couple of weeks, but we won't fill it unless we find someone we're happy with.) Salary would depend on experience and skills. It's a small, interesting and varied company with interesting clients, and if a high salary is the main priority then unfortunately (spoken as the recipient of a salary here!) there are probably better places to go looking. But CV's or other enquiries welcomed. -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) @ 13 Clarke Rd, Milton Keynes, MK1 1LG

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Re: [ALUG] EeePC 701 with DebianEeePc - can't get WiFi working
by Anthony Anson 14 Jun '10

14 Jun '10

Chris Green wrote: > On Wed, Jun 09, 2010 at 05:44:00PM +0100, Anthony Anson wrote: >> Chris G wrote: >> >>> Any ideas or pointers to useful web pages would be much appreciated. >> Since Xandros (installed on earlier Eees) is derived from Debian, I >> would have expected it to have noticed the wireless. >> >> That's not a lot of help, I know, and without going through bundles >> of saved mail, I can't point you at a URL, but there's a forum on >> www.asus.com >> > Yes, I was a bit surprised that DebianEeePc didn't work. I had > previously installed (partially) xubuntu, it filled the 2Gb disk half > way through the installation but mostly worked. I was just trying to > sort out the 'half installation' mess. > > Another off-list E-Mail suggested eeebuntu, since I knew that ubuntu > detected the WiFi OK I installed Ubuntu Server base system and then > added just xfce4 to give me an X desktop and - eureka! - all is well. > > I now have a working eeePc with WiFi and the disk is only 60% full. Good. When I get the Acer fettled to my satisfaction I shall play with my Eee - but as it only has the 4 GB HDD, I shall be listening to advice... I have a sort-of hankering to load Tom's and have nearly all the HDD available... The Eee doesn't seem to have the capability of booting from USB - BICBW. -- Tony Anson www.girolle.co.uk/

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Ubuntu Sound Success
by Simon Royal 14 Jun '10

14 Jun '10

Hi I had Xubuntu 10.04 installed on my ThinkPad 600 and had audio problems. I finally got it working sort of and then decided to switch to Ubuntu. 10.04. Ubuntu runs a lot better by the way, but a fresh install meant fresh audio problems. After following some instructions for 7.10 I got it working. Now if I roll the mouse over an MP3 it plays fine and RhythmBox plays it but it is a bit jerky. Movie Player wont play it but it is more than I ever got out of Xubuntu. Considering Xubuntu is supposed to be aimed at lower hardware I was dissapointed by its performance and hardware support compared to Ubuntu. On the whole I am very pleased with Ubuntu 10.04 on my ancient 300mhz P2, better than Xubuntu. One thing I would like is some kind of frontend for mpg123 so I could play mp3 files with ease on low hardware, so it doesnt use too much processor/ram. Movie Player and RhythmBox are too heavy for my ThinkPad. Simon -- http://twitter.com/SimonRoyal - http://www.tinyurl.com/macspectrum (sent using Sony Ericsson P990i)

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Multi-Image formats, PDF and SimpleScan
by Steve Fosdick 14 Jun '10

14 Jun '10

Up until now scanning applications I have used have tended to work around the page or sheet as the fundamental concept to each page scanned gets written to its own file and, when a document has multiple pages, the link can be indicated by putting the page files into a directory or naming then in a consistent way. For the page files themselves I have always used PNG which I almost always use for single images that are not photographs. I've recently been trying a new Gnome application that came with Ubuntu 10.04 called SimpleScan. Unlike previous applications this is document based in so far as you can scan a number of pages (including the whole contents of the document feeder) and then save them together either as a single file or a set of related files (one per page). This has got me thinking again about files that can hold more than one image so the file then corresponds to a document and the application that views the file presents the various pages as needed. PDF is very fashionable for scanned documents and this is one of the options available for saving. I note from the Wikipedia article that PDF has now been standardised by ISO but is encumbered by patents which Adobe licenses royalty free. Any thoughts on how good a standard this is for long term storage and whether there are better alternatives?

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wireless card conundrum
by Jenny Hopkins 14 Jun '10

14 Jun '10

Hi all, I bought a wireless network card RT2561/RT61 rev B 802.11g last week for my amd64 debian squeeze machine. I plugged the card in, installed firmware-ralink (via wired connection), modprobed for rt61pci, and sat back watching the shiny new connection and gloating at the easiest install of hardware I have ever had. I duly moved the pc to a room with no wired capability, and network manager (running under gnome) detected and connected me to the wap netgear with a not bad signal. A few hours later, the connection suddenly went down. All efforts to ifupdown wlan0 or stop and start network manager failed to connect again, with dmesg reporting "wlan0: deauthenticating from <blah> by local choice (reason=3)". Only a reboot seemed to sort it, and then only for a short while. Oh yes - I also got some ridiculous ping times for the gateway, even though the signal was fairly strong, which reduced to a sensible amount when I succeeded finally in quashing the wired interface eth0. I've come back after a week away, however, and it won't connect at all. syslog reports "rt61pci firmware: requesting rt2561.bin" , modinfo rt61pci shows a bunch of useful stuff that assures me it is all loaded. It can't be a firmware issue, surely, as it worked at first? I just keep being told "ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready" Neither giving wlan0 a fixed IP in interfaces, or telling it to request an address from a dhcp server makes any difference. (The request for an address isn't even getting as far as the dhcp server). I'm stumped - any suggestions where to look for clues? I did read it could be a clash between udev and network manager, I also have no idea whether invoking iwconfig and iwlist scan makes any difference. I'm sure I've tried every combination possible by now. Thanks, sorry if this isn't very clear, I've been going in circles for so long I think I've forgotten where I began. Jenny

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Missing sound from FlashVideo copy
by Ted.Harding＠manchester.ac.uk 13 Jun '10

13 Jun '10

If I play the following in my broswer: http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=vOhf3OvRXKg (well worth watching, by the way -- sand-art telling a family's story before, while and after Ukraine is bombed by German planes in WWII), I get the video and the sound fine, with the browser (iceweasel on Debian) using the Flash plugin. The sound effects are an essential part. While this is going on, a file in /tmp builds up, with a name like /tmp/FlashyfCGik When it reaches the end, the movie pauses with option to replay. At this point the /tmp file is fully downloaded. Now I copy it down to main storage, and rename it to have ".flv": e.g. ~/Downloads/FlashyfCGik.flv NOW: If I play this with totem, I get the video but no sound. So let's try getting the browser to open it: File -> Open File -> ~/Downloads/FlashyfCGik.flv and it recognises it as Flash Video and offers to "open it with movie player (default)". There is no other option for opening it. "Movie player" is an alias for totem ... so again it plays the video without the sound! Presumably if the browser used the Flash plugin for the local file I would get the sound as when viewing from the Web. But I can't see how to get that to happen. Any suggestions? Thank, Ted. PS: Warning -- you can get hooked on sand-art! -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 13-Jun-10 Time: 01:48:26 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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Re: [ALUG] Linux speech recognition software recommendations?
by Sam Tuke 12 Jun '10

12 Jun '10

Suffering from RSI, I have tried a few systems. I don't know of any sufficient FOSS option at present, but keep a close eye on simon listens, which promises to provide full speech recognition functionality in future with a great interface. Currently it can only control applications (such as firefox), and cannot handle dictation. See here for preset simon 'scenarios' for controlling different applications: http://kde-files.org/index.php?xcontentmode=692&PHPSESSID=c5b8ecb5c140ab6d6…. Also bear in mind that you have to install the HTK back-end for simon to use separately thanks to our Great British university of Cambridge licensing it under uncooperative terms. Personally I use Nuance Naturally speaking 10.1 preferred under wine. It works on my Kubuntu 9.10 installation, but not on my Ubuntu 10.04 install (to my intense annoyance). It works pretty well on my Kubuntu install - I can dictate text fine for the most part. It doesn't interact with any other apps however. You'll probably need to use Wine Tricks to install an extra DLL or two but this is a simple task. If you find any other solutions, please let me know! Simon listens is the great hope, and they desperately need resources, so if you can spare time/money/promotion then please hand it to their team. Sam.

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Linux speech recognition software recommendations?
by Srdjan Todorovic 11 Jun '10

11 Jun '10

Hi all, Has anyone used any speech recognition software in Linux (FOSS/closed-source/freeware/commercial etc) that was of sufficient quality that it could be used to dictate a large document, or many small documents, with reasonable accuracy / least mistakes? If so, could you please let me know which software it is? This page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_recognition_in_Linux , lists some solutions. Is anyone able to offer their personal experiences and recommendations for any of those? Thanks, Srdjan

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EeePC 701 with DebianEeePc - can't get WiFi working
by Chris G 09 Jun '10

09 Jun '10

I avoid WiFi like the plage if I possibly can but since I want to carry this eeePc around and use other people's network connections I really need to get WiFo working. I have gone through the steps outlined at the following:- http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEeePC/HowTo/Wifi I.e. I have used the Debian backports to upgrade the kernel to 2.6.30 and have installed the other bits and pieces suggested plus wicd. However when I run wicd (the wicd-client that is) it just says "No wireless networks detected". There definitely is a wireless network running here as my 'phone can detect it. So how can I progress this at all? I've done a few rather fruitless Google searches and haven't found much pitched at my level of knowledge apart from the link above. The wireless on the eeePc used to work with the original Linux installation (why did I replace that you may ask - I'm wondering too, though it was getting a very tight fit in the limited memory). Any ideas or pointers to useful web pages would be much appreciated. -- Chris Green

2 3

PHP question, any PHP gurus here?
by Chris G 09 Jun '10

09 Jun '10

Well maybe not PHP gurus, just web/apache/php knowledge required. I want to pass a value from one web page to another, or to be exact from one piece of PHP (on web page A) to another piece of PHP (on web page B). Having said that I can sort of understand the problem, there's nothing necessarily tying the two pages together, they *could* be running on different hosts under different web servers for all the web servers know about it. So, I have a Wiki where page A has a link to page B and I want to be able to pass some data from page A to page B. They *are* displayed by the same web server (which is apache2) and they *are* on the same host. I can't use cookies because by the time I can execute some PHP code the headers are long gone. So how can page A 'send' a value to page 'B'? Am I reduced to the nasty (but perfectly possible) expedient of page A writing something to a file somewhere and page B reading it? -- Chris Green

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Kernel options for Intel 945GME graphics card?
by Dan 07 Jun '10

07 Jun '10

Dear All, Can anyone suggest what kernel options are best for driving the board that appears in lspci as 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03) please? (I think I've got the wrong ones, sice DPMS is flaky and I'm getting quite frequent kernel panics related to intelfb.) -- Regards Dan

3 6

Rescuing SVN repository
by Richard Lewis 07 Jun '10

07 Jun '10

Hi ALUG, I have a Subversion repository which is trapped on a server to which I no longer have (reliable, at least) shell access. (ATM, in fact, I don't even have access to the WebDAV interface as Apache is down.) I want to move this repository to a different server and would be happy to convert to a different SCM if possible (quite fond of darcs, keep meaning to learn more about git). I still have the most recent working copy checked out. Is it possible to use this working copy to start a new SVN repository, retaining all the history? Or can I only dump from the current *repository* (on the server) to make a new repository? Best, Richard -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Richard Lewis ISMS, Computing Goldsmiths, University of London Tel: +44 (0)20 7078 5134 Skype: richardjlewis JID: ironchicken(a)jabber.earth.li http://www.richardlewis.me.uk/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- +----------------------------------------------+ | Support open access to scholarship | | http://freeculture.org/ http://www.doaj.org/ | +----------------------------------------------+

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