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Re: GiB? MiB? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over?
by Sebastian Kügler on Friday 02/Nov/2007, @04:23
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I do agree on the "it's a bit confusing for average users", I don't think that this is the right place to complain, though. Makes it looks like an armchair developer (with tongue in place, still).
It's perfectly suited for the kde-usability list.
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Re: GiB? MiB? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over?
by Oscar on Friday 02/Nov/2007, @06:06
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Do you actually say gigabytes or megabytes? Don't you abbriviate it? I think most people do. So gigabytes becomes gigs and megabytes is megs. Right?
Why couln't you do that to gibibytes and mibibytes? Gibis? Mibis? Kibis?
Or why not Gibs, Mibs and Kibs? Pick something you fancy. I prefer Gibis, but that's a language thing I think.
Hooray for the KDE-team that does what should have been done a long time ago. Hopefully we can drag the US of A into the 21:st century (or atleast the 20:th) and make them use metric units as well soon.
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Re: GiB? MiB? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over?
by Boyle M. Owl on Friday 02/Nov/2007, @09:04
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"Hooray for the KDE-team that does what should have been done a long time ago. Hopefully we can drag the US of A into the 21:st century (or atleast the 20:th) and make them use metric units as well soon"
Do you use metric seconds, hours, days?
Computers are "naturally" base 2. Not base 10. A file size in RAM should be the same as in magnetic media. How else do you map it? Eh?
And as what I say about disk sizes, it's been "Salesman Gigabytes" or megabytes, especially when I explain it to someone who isn't a geek like me. I say that because if I say "gibibytes", I sound like a total tool and I confuse whoever I'm talking to, make their eyes glaze over and they stop listening.
This is all because some time in the early/mid 90's disk manufacturers moved from a base 2 unit to base 10, because it made drives "look bigger".
Seagate just lost a settlement recognizing that they deceived customers by stating their disk sizes as base 10 units instead of base 2, which cheated customers out of appx 7 percent of space. These days all the manufacturers do it because it's not in their interest to truthfully say how big their disks are in true gigabytes, because they _all_ lie.
This "gibibytes" and "mibibytes" (ugh) shenanigans is all about "fixing" the "salesman gigabytes" problem. It should be the other way 'round, don't you think? It's not about usability at all, because if it was about usability, units between RAM, and magnetic media would be consistent, wouldn't it?
People are not dumb. They certainly understood base 2 units before the marketroids changed disk measurement to base 10 and that kilobytes and megabytes in RAM were the same as on the disk or tape.
You can say gibibytes and mibibytes and sound like a total tool if you want, but you won't catch me saying it, or anyone else I know. The only people pushing this have never mapped bytes on the disk into RAM and edited it in hex (or any other programmer worth his salt).
Excuse me while I go and build something out of 74LSxx logic gates.
Get off my lawn, you kids.
Oh yeah, and as for metric units, they aren't all that special and are just as arbitrary as "english" measurement. It's not my fault you can't count in base 12 (or two, or 8, or 16)
--
BMO
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Re: GiB? MiB? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over?
by ac on Friday 02/Nov/2007, @17:02
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>Do you use metric seconds, hours, days?
Bzzt, wrong. The problem isn't that memory uses base 2 but that they hijacked the SI prefixes that were in use for well over a century. Embrace and Extend of another standard with your incompatible extensions, hmm who does this remind me of...
Or in short: If you are against MiB, you are a Microsoft-lover =)
>Computers are "naturally" base 2. Not base 10.
You mean like your CPU clockrate? Or your Ethernet connection? Or your DVD size? Or even your harddisk's latency?
How about the 1.44MB Floppy that is an unspeakable hybrid between KiB and MB.
>A file size in RAM should be the same as in magnetic media. How else do you map it? Eh?
Oh yes, the main use of the disk space value in the file manager status bar.
Not once have I used it to check the free space of my harddisk (where it might be of some minor use seeing how harddisks and most usb drives and stuff are measured in SI), but I use it constantly to map files to RAM address space in my mind.
>And as what I say about disk sizes, it's been "Salesman Gigabytes" or megabytes, especially when I explain it to someone who isn't a geek like me. I say that because if I say "gibibytes", I sound like a total tool and I confuse whoever I'm talking to, make their eyes glaze over and they stop listening
Then stop using gibibytes and start using GB. Non-geeks certainly don't give a fsck about addressing RAM.
>Seagate just lost a settlement recognizing that they deceived customers by stating their disk sizes as base 10 units instead of base 2, which cheated customers out of appx 7 percent of space. These days all the manufacturers do it because it's not in their interest to truthfully say how big their disks are in true gigabytes, because they _all_ lie.
Yeah the American court system is broken. Tell me something new. And they don't lie, they use a different definition that's prevalent and consistent for just about anything but RAM and some other memory chips.
>This "gibibytes" and "mibibytes" (ugh) shenanigans is all about "fixing" the "salesman gigabytes" problem. It should be the other way 'round, don't you think? It's not about usability at all, because if it was about usability, units between RAM, and magnetic media would be consistent, wouldn't it?
Why not make RAM consistent with magnetic and optical media?
>People are not dumb. They certainly understood base 2 units before the marketroids changed disk measurement to base 10 and that kilobytes and megabytes in RAM were the same as on the disk or tape.
If people weren't, the other harddisk manufacturers wouldn't have been forced to follow suit after Maxtor(?) came up with the base 10 idea.
>You can say gibibytes and mibibytes and sound like a total tool if you want, but you won't catch me saying it, or anyone else I know. The only people pushing this have never mapped bytes on the disk into RAM and edited it in hex (or any other programmer worth his salt).
Which would be about...well just about all of them.
>Oh yeah, and as for metric units, they aren't all that special and are just as arbitrary as "english" measurement. It's not my fault you can't count in base 12 (or two, or 8, or 16)
the problem isn't that it's either one of those but that english measurements use just about *all* of them, plus 10 and 20.
5280 feet to the mile, base, well it's because the furlong is 660 feet
12 inch to the feet, base 12
32 fl oz to the quart, 4 quarts to the gallon, base 2
16 oz to the pound, 2000lb to the ton, base "we love you all"
the english measurements aren't arbitrary, they're fubared.
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Re: GiB? MiB? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over?
by Arnomane on Sunday 04/Nov/2007, @05:32
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Sorry but the time second *is* a SI base unit. Even the meter itself is defined via time (lightspeed)! So seconds *are* metric. The second is therefore the most metric unit you can think of.
And minutes hours and days aren't exactly base 2. It is a (today) somewhat confusing system introduced by the Babylonians. Ever heard of base 60 and 360 and why it was choosen by the old Babylonians? They did choose base 360 because they had _no_ computer power. Base 360 allows for a lot of divisions without remainder.
So you claim metric units aren't special. Aha. So it must be a total coincidence that it fits so perfectly into daily life: Originally a Kilogramm was defined via a litre of water and a litre is a dm³. Ah and degree Farenheit has such a logical definition (qicksilver and blood) in contrast to degree Celsius/Kelvin (just water). And I hope you know that in the US there are different area units around that are not just a factor of 2, 10 or something else but are a horrible floating point factor...
Ah and by the way SI is being used in the scientific world only (beside Atom Units and Electron Volt) and US scientists from the NIST and other institutions play a *big* role in the anticipated new more precise definition of the Kilogramm...
So SI is the world standard, cause it simply makes sense to every rational brain and cause it is so damn easy to caculate with as thousands of scientists from all over the world have invested heir whole lifetime into the SI project.
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Re: GiB? MiB? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over?
by Diederik van der Boor on Friday 02/Nov/2007, @09:12
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Nope, the point is apps like Dolphin tend to display GiB instead of GB.
Personally I find this a bit overdone. Can't it just be GB like the rest of the world? ..which indeeds screws SI over, but try explaining Gigabytes (GB) instead of Gigibytes (GiB) :-P
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Re: GiB? MiB? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over?
by german on Friday 02/Nov/2007, @09:24
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In German "..GiB Frei" >> Give free.... why not GB????
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Re: GiB? MiB? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over?
by David Johnson on Friday 02/Nov/2007, @10:24
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Gawd I hope this is configurable. I would hate to think that Dolphin is going to look like a GiBbering idiot.
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Re: GiB? MiB? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over?
by Leo S on Friday 02/Nov/2007, @10:35
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No kidding. The time to be pedantic about GB/GiB is over. Everyone is using GB these days, how about we just conform to that instead of being different over a little thing. I guarantee there are gonna be a lot of "GB is spelled wrong in the taskbar" comments.
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Re: GiB? MiB? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over?
by Capit. Igloo on Friday 02/Nov/2007, @13:03
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1 MW = 1 000 000 W
1 km = 1 000 m
1 THz = 10^12 Hz
1 k€ = 1 000 €
so 1 kB = 1 000 B for a lot of people (ask to your barber or your baker)
HD manufacturers uses SI prefix correctly, french (but probably in a lot of other countries) network and telecommunication specialist uses SI prefix correctly. Why do you want "k" means 1000 for all of us but "1024" for some people of the computers world?
Think about that: we write our numbers in the decimal numeral system, and SI prefix are made for the decimal numeral system. The binary prefix are good for numbers written in the binary numeral system, but very bad for the decimal numeral system. We write and think in the base ten, not two.
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Re: GiB? MiB? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over?
by Paul Eggleton on Friday 02/Nov/2007, @13:20
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Except 1000 bytes isn't as useful as 1024 bytes in computer terms. Besides which, a kilobyte has been 1024 bytes and a megabyte 1,048,576 bytes for a very long time. It's going to be next to impossible to convince people that the SI way is worth changing over to, particularly as "mebibyte", "kibibyte" and "gibibyte" just sound silly, and ordinary computer users simply won't care enough to make the distinction.
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Re: GiB? MiB? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over?
by Capit. Igloo on Saturday 03/Nov/2007, @03:31
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> "Except 1000 bytes isn't as useful as 1024 bytes in computer terms."
Right, but why you want to destroy the SI standard just for one case? And no, "mebibyte", "kibibyte" and "gibibyte" don't sound silly and they are useful disambigious terms.
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Re: GiB? MiB? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over?
by Paul Eggleton on Friday 02/Nov/2007, @13:26
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I forgot to mention - hard drive manufacturers don't use the "SI" measurement necessarily because it is correct. They use it mostly because it allows them to confuse some people into thinking a drive has a bit more capacity than it actually does. According to a recent article[1], Seagate recently settled a lawsuit over this and is offering refunds or other compensation because of this capacity difference.
[1]
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=storage&articleId=9045141
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Re: GiB? MiB? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over?
by Capit. Igloo on Saturday 03/Nov/2007, @03:41
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> "They use it mostly because it allows them to confuse some people"
Ok, but don't forget that those "some people" are all people of the computers world. For ordinary people, k=1OOO, and they understand correctly the size of USB keys or hard drives.
Then, it's difficult to compare 578 MiB and 591872 KiB without a calculator, but it's very very easy to compare 578 MB and 578 000 KB...
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Re: GiB? MiB? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over?
by Vide on Sunday 04/Nov/2007, @11:12
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And...? Programs, music, photos etc occupy MBytes and GBytes as well, everything depends on how your filemanager shows you the bytes used. So, this is a non.problem IMO, just be coherent though the whole system... and I'm all for MB/GB, not MiB/GiB, cause you, the user, have 10 fingers and are used since forever to use base 10.
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Re: GiB? MiB? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over?
by Andre on Saturday 03/Nov/2007, @04:15
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I like that they are using it; I'm all for not messing up the SI units. If people prefer to use SI units, fine (maybe I do myself), but let 1 GB then really mean 1*10^9 bytes. Making 1 giga byte mean 2^30 bytes is just silly.
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Re: GiB? MiB? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over?
by Tim on Monday 05/Nov/2007, @01:44
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I concur, your excellency.
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Re: GiB? MiB? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over?
by renoX on Monday 05/Nov/2007, @08:24
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>In 3.5.x, the SI units are thoroughly ignored in favor of GB, MB and KB *AS GOD INTENDED*
I'm an atheist and prefer coherency over historical mistakes.
In French, kibi and gibi (sounds like kebe and gebe for us) doesn't sound bad at all (just unusual).
My vote is for SI units.
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Re: GiB? MiB? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over?
by Capit. Igloo on Tuesday 06/Nov/2007, @03:17
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> >In 3.5.x, the SI units are thoroughly ignored in favor of GB, MB and KB *AS GOD INTENDED*
>
> I'm an atheist and prefer coherency over historical mistakes.
Perhaps Boyle M. Owl's god is the same god who say Pi=3 ;)
http://gospelofreason.wordpress.com/2007/06/13/god-said-pi-3-stand-by-your-beliefs-dammit/
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Re: GiB? MiB? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over?
by Dave on Saturday 05/Apr/2008, @10:33
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SI should take a back seat when it comes to data storage, data transfer, and basically anything with computers. "kilo", "mega", "giga" all have different meanings to geeks; I have yet to hear "kibi", "mibi" ("mebi"?) or "gibi" said out loud.
Obviously as it has been noted, hard drive manufacturers and telecom started this baloney and no credit should be given to metric purists for this change.
SI terms correlate with each other (1 liter water weighs 1 kilogram), as was their intended purpose. Data doesn't correlate with other metric units, but is applicable versus seconds (time is always the "other" metric unit). If bits-per-meter makes sense, or bits-per-liter, then in those cases SI units can fly. Otherwise, the term kilobyte (for example) means 1024 bytes and was never intended to rip off SI units. If I know what a byte is, I could know that kilobyte means 1024. If computer-illiterate people are trying to understand what a "megabyte" is and they're being told that means one million bytes, how does that help them, since they don't even know what a byte is? One of my friends has been studying C++ at college for a year, and I asked him what a byte was... he didn't know. That's pathetic, but it illustrates... what would it matter if he knew the difference of mega and mibi, if he thinks 4 gigs of RAM is 4 billion bytes?
At least the terms that are imposed on the world shouldn't sound so stupid. Or perhaps they should sound stupider. "Kibblebytes", "Metalbytes", "Gigglebytes", and "Turtlebytes", there we go.
I'm sorry, but it will be a LONG time before we hear "mibs" of RAM. A LONG time. My computer has 4 gigs of RAM, period.
Why didn't they accept this possibility:
MB = 1048576 bytes
mB = 1000000 bytes
Mb = 1048576 bits
mb = 1000000 bits
etc.? I mean, to everyone using KB ... now you're saying Kelvin Bytes. And, what the hell is a decibit or decibyte?
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Re: GiB? MiB? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over?
by Tayfun on Saturday 14/Jun/2008, @19:37
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Bytes are NOT counted by 10 fingers. Bytes are counted in digital by those who think like a "machine" not like a human, while they're creating these technical HW or SW. Non-technical humans that are sellers or consumers of HDD's might want to count bytes by 10 fingers. Programmers, HW designers, technical people count bytes in base2.
Gibi etc is non-scientific, arbitrary chosen spelling by some human brain who don't see through of the entire reality. SI is perfect for humans from humans. But don't try to assimilate our machine base2 GB/MB/KB's to fit human base10 GB/MB/KB's. Yes, they're different, but it should not be in this stupid sounding way, degrading the "machine" version.
For those, same as the guy who invented "Gibi", who live in the process but don't see through, let me write down my thoughts. It's about humans thinking that they're the ultimate, on top of all, the best and ultimate creation that was possible. That's wrong.
It's humans(*) v.s. "machines" (by machine, i mean hi-tech stuff in mechanical form (like airplanes, cars, etc), electrical (like IC's, PCB's), etc etc...
In this particular "machine" we talk of PC's, CPU's and their number system's base.
PC's, digital "brains",memories use base2, due digital ON/OFF design
Human brains use base10 numbers, due 10 fingers.
Human English brains use base26 language, due 26 characters in alphabet.
Human (mammal) body use base4, due DNA's 4 nucleic acids
Visible matter in universe uses base118+, due molecular elements in periodic table
Universe gives birth to stars which produced the heavy elements, which made up the material for our earth and thus mammals and especially human body and it's brain; humans are in process of giving birth to next generation life form, the "machines". All of these have their own body and life, their baseXX number system and give birth to next better level life form. Humans are now in process of producing / generating the machines, all happens inevitable. Mathematics in general is the language of the universe.
So, stop making the "machines" to look dumb, being a toy created by humans. They will take over some day. Who don't see through, didn't understand who him/herself is. Why should "machines" use the dumber version GiB and humans get the "better" GB ? Because a human said so, ok. Keep your humanly base10 for your human life needs, ok, if it's when you want to buy a HDD as a human. The inner workings of a PC or HDD will always use base2 anyways. You're dealing with a new life form, this is not the seeds in a pumpkin that you're counting with your 10 fingers. You're counting bytes here!
Atomic reaction is a process that will never happen on earth naturally. It happens naturally in a star like the sun. Humans (oh, it was ONLY ONE human, Herr Einstein !) understood the language of universe and we dumb humans/governments are using the magic powers of it to destroy us. Electric, transistor, base 2 numbering was created in similar ways. I mean all is about science being the reference where correct human brain output meets together to built the next life form. 99.99% will not understand what i wrote here, never mind. :-)
All this is a draft and quick typing. Have a nice day. ;-)
Tayfun
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Re: GiB? MiB? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Over?
by Tayfun on Sunday 15/Jun/2008, @01:31
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Bytes are NOT counted by 10 fingers. Bytes are counted in digital by those who think like a "machine" not like a human, while they're creating these technical HW or SW. Non-technical humans that are sellers or consumers of HDD's might want to count bytes by 10 fingers. Programmers, HW designers, technical people count bytes in base2.
Gibi etc is non-scientific, arbitrary chosen spelling by some human brain who don't see through of the entire reality. SI is perfect for humans from humans. But don't try to assimilate our machine base2 GB/MB/KB's to fit human base10 GB/MB/KB's. Yes, they're different, but it should not be in this stupid sounding way, degrading the "machine" version.
For those, same as the guy who invented "Gibi", who live in the process but don't see through, let me write down my thoughts. It's about humans thinking that they're the ultimate, on top of all, the best and ultimate creation that was possible. That's wrong.
It's humans(*) v.s. "machines" (by machine, i mean hi-tech stuff in mechanical form (like airplanes, cars, etc), electrical (like IC's, PCB's), etc etc...
In this particular "machine" we talk of PC's, CPU's and their number system's base.
PC's, digital "brains",memories use base2, due digital ON/OFF design
Human brains use base10 numbers, due 10 fingers.
Human English brains use base26 language, due 26 characters in alphabet.
Human (mammal) body use base4, due DNA's 4 nucleic acids
Visible matter in universe uses base118+, due molecular elements in periodic table
Universe gives birth to stars which produced the heavy elements, which made up the material for our earth and thus mammals and especially human body and it's brain; humans are in process of giving birth to next generation life form, the "machines". All of these have their own body and life, their baseXX number system and give birth to next better level life form. Humans are now in process of producing / generating the machines, all happens inevitable. Mathematics in general is the language of the universe.
So, stop making the "machines" to look dumb, being a toy created by humans. They will take over some day. Who don't see through, didn't understand who him/herself is. Why should "machines" use the dumber version GiB and humans get the "better" GB ? Because a human said so, ok. Keep your humanly base10 for your human life needs, ok, if it's when you want to buy a HDD as a human. The inner workings of a PC or HDD will always use base2 anyways. You're dealing with a new life form, this is not the seeds in a pumpkin that you're counting with your 10 fingers. You're counting bytes here!
Atomic reaction is a process that will never happen on earth naturally. It happens naturally in a star like the sun. Humans (oh, it was ONLY ONE human, Herr Einstein !) understood the language of universe and we dumb humans/governments are using the magic powers of it to destroy us. Electric, transistor, base 2 numbering was created in similar ways. I mean all is about science being the reference where correct human brain output meets together to built the next life form. 99.99% will not understand what i wrote here, never mind. :-)
All this is a draft and quick typing. Have a nice day. ;-)
Tayfun
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