Managed Desktop

My special interest is computers. Let's talk geek here.
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yogi
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Re: Managed Desktop

Post by yogi »

I'm pretty sure Yahoo was the only company offering SMS. Several years into the game Trillian also offered it, but they were simply hosting the Yahoo server without the Yahoo front end. Truth be told I started using Trillian because I didn't have to install the Yahoo software then; but it was still Yahoo under the hood.

Facebook is overstepping it's bounds in many ways. They had to split up the main application when they went mobile. The messaging service is now a separate app, for example. This is a great idea for Facebook because now they could claim twice as many accounts and collect data about you more than once. If the government ever goes after Facebook seriously, they will be forced to break down their giant sized operation into many small pieces similar to what AT&T had to do.

Microsoft (Windows), Google (Android), and Apple (iOS) have some basic apps that cannot be deleted from their devices. One is mail, one is messaging, one is photo storage, all in addition to their own personal cloud services. You are more or less forced into using their mail app, although there are ways around it. The problem I have with that is each mail app is unique to the operating system. If you happen to have mobile devices from all three companies, you have three separate mail accounts that do not talk to each other. And, if you also have a laptop, heaven help you. :cry:
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Kellemora
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Re: Managed Desktop

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I'm glad Thunderbird can use both web-mail and e-mail. Most folks these days use web-mail and just call it e-mail.
And web-mail can be sent through pop-servers as if it were e-mail.

I remember way back when using Eudora. I didn't like upgrading until I had to. The old Eudora could not read web-mail which forced me to upgrade to a newer version. Ironically, I really liked how they had changed, only for them to give up the ghost a few years later.
Thunderbird claimed to be like Eudora which was a joke, it was nothing like Eudora, except for how the screen looked. Under the hood it was an entirely different type of mail program. But I got used to it.

I'm a little miffed and Thunderbird's new releases, so many things do not work like they used to.
Like my older Thunderbird programs, when you archived your old mail, it always sorted the mail into the same folders they were in originally. Now, it just shoves everything into only one folder for the year. I guess now you have to create your own folders and sort everything manually after archiving. Seems like a backwards jump in technology to me.

I get a lot of e-mails that the header says "sent from my iphone", or "sent from android mobile", etc.
I was surprised when I got one from a Cemetery in response to an e-mail I sent them that said it was sent from their iphone.
I guess the director was out and about and felt she needed to respond right away, hi hi.
But this also tells me, she much be checking the companies inbound e-mails on her cell phone.
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yogi
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Re: Managed Desktop

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I use both web mail and a desktop client, Thunderbird. I also fell in love with Eudora and was sad to see them go. They were bought out by some other company who charged for the e-mail software they took over. In my case I got a "free" license from them; something about a grandfather clause. The new version wasn't like the old and I went looking for something else. That's when I discovered how difficult it was to find a desktop client. Even back in the days of Windows 98 there was a lot of web mail going on. I never felt comfortable letting somebody else curate my e-mail and was very happy to see Thunderbird when Mozilla first introduced it. Those early versions of Thunderbird were insanely difficult to set up. My problems were complicated by the fact that I tried to use POP3 from three or four different accounts. SMTP didn't like that for some reason. It wanted only one outgoing server, but I had four. I worked it all out eventually plus they made it easier to configure over the years. Today I only use Thunderbird for this site's e-mail and Hotmail. I really don't like the front end on Hotmail/Outlook so that Thunderbird is a blessing in that regard. The rest of my e-mail accounts are all web mail and disposable as far as I'm concerned.


Those "Sent from my iPhone" messages are actually the signature and can be modified or eliminated. Most people don't know that I would guess. It's just a form of advertising that they sneak into their software and is easy enough to modify. Some of the 'smarts' in those smartphones is about synchronization. It's possible to link all your computer devices together so that they all get the same e-mail. This only works with the native e-mail application and involves using the cloud in the background. I am sure that any incoming e-mail rings a bell on all that director's mobile devices.
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Kellemora
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Re: Managed Desktop

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Thunderbird has lots of features now, and one I started to use but stopped, because my frau uses web-mail on-line.
Tbird will let you have local (on your own LAN) e-mail accounts. However, it also requires static IP addresses, so I didn't bother with using it.

A few years back, I had a program on my computer, and the frau had one on hers, where we could send messages back and forth. I'm sure the program is in Linux, but not in Windows now, or perhaps there are several for all I know.
When I sent a message to the frau, it would appear as a pop-up box and make a sound, but immediately fade just in case she was doing something and couldn't answer it right away. On my computer, the notice stayed in the panel with a red dot so I knew there was a message, it would beep every 30 seconds too.
We only used it a few times, because she's not at her computer 12 hours a day like I am. And the telephone system we had back then she could use the com-line. My old phone still has the button, but it doesn't work with the system we have now. Using landline phone system Ooma over cable connection. We have two phone numbers, but they are the same line, so one can't call the other, hi hi.
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yogi
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Re: Managed Desktop

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Back about the time I was doing the Yahoo SMS thing, Microsoft invented Messenger. It was their version of what Yahoo was doing sans the SMS. Since Motorola had a sweetheart deal with them, Microsoft gave us software to do exactly what you and your wife do. We could send messages to other people via peer to peer connections. It was sold as a way to increase communications among employees and thus become more productive. That was a great idea in fact, but it only lasted a short while. Turns out that a lot of executives didn't want to be instantly messaged by their peons. No, we didn't have access to senior management, but we did with just about everyone else.

By the way, you can assign static IP addresses via your router. It would be in your 192.168.x.x LAN domain but more than likely still valid for Thunderbird's purposes. I was unaware of that feature, and it sounds interesting. I don't have a use for it, but it's good to know about.
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Kellemora
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Re: Managed Desktop

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If you use Thunderbird, you'll see the very bottom e-mail type has a field called LOCAL.

In my case, my top e-mail account is my personal e-mail, and has subfolders.
Under that is my business account, and it too has folders.
Then under that, automatically added by Thunderbird is one marked LOCAL.

Now I've not checked it in years, but where you would normally place your outbound server name, is where you have a place to redirect to the local address book, not the e-mail address book. Inside the local address book, you put the static IP address of the computer you want to send the message to. It has to be on the same Workgroup, and if I recall, either Thunderbird or an always on program must be running to have the ability to accept the e-mail.
At least that's the way I think it used to be set up. I could be wrong, a lot of years passed since I used the Local e-mail part of Thunderbird.
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Re: Managed Desktop

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I jumped back in because I found a short note in my file from the old WinXP days.
To send a message to another Win XP computer, all I had to do was hit START, RUN, type CMD and hit Enter.
A box would pop-up where I typed Net Send. Then it would request to which computer, and a box for the message.

Later I installed another program on Linux that was supposed to do the same thing, I could send messages to the WinXP machines, but they couldn't send back to me, so I deleted the program.

I was WRONG about using Thunderbird for this purpose. Except for the short time I had a local mail server running I could use. It went haywire on me and I didn't know how to fix it. But back then, I could use Thunderbird and the local mail server for in-house e-mails over our LAN. A waste of time since I could do it easier using the normal e-mail way of doing things.
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yogi
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Re: Managed Desktop

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Image

Here is a picture of my Thunderbird setup. As you can see, I use the "local" folders to sort out the junk I get in the regular email accounts. Some have filters to do the sorting, but I manually move things around most of the time. All of those accounts displayed in Thunderbird are resident on my local computer, the descendant of the Silver Yogi. :mrgreen: I have a program wherein I can read any one of those inboxes without using the Thunderbird front end. The main purpose of the program is to put the readable files into an archive that I can store off my computer. I don't know how to receive mail directly into the Local Folder's Inbox, but I do send stuff there from the other accounts via filters. It serves my purposes beautifully.

The mail in Thunderbird is a copy of what comes into the web e-mail servers. I have to flip a switch to download the mail from the server if that is what I want to do. Or, I can just keep the copy and let the mail servers do what they want with my mail. That's actually not a good idea. Once their inbox gets full, I stop getting mail. I've not had that happen lately but it did happen with my previous ISP. That is the beauty of webmail. It seems that the Inboxes have infinite storage space. They don't, of course, but they can keep a lot of mail for a very long time.
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Re: Managed Desktop

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I have several accounts in mine also, but I have nothing under Local except the two fields they place.

The main thing I like about TBird is the ability to use a different outgoing server for each account.

What I have not done yet is set up my e-mails on my host provider so I can use my domain name for e-mail addresses.

I was able to place my old Eudora e-mail into thunderbird archive. I deleted most that was no longer important first.
But every e-mail I've ever received that I didn't mark as junk, I still have, all the way back to when I started with Thunderbird, which was IceDove for awhile, betwixt and between Thunderbird, IceDove, back to Thunderbird again.
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Re: Managed Desktop

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On a different note. The Win10 computer my wife was using. I wanted to copy all of her files over to her older but better computer she got from her son.
It won't let me in. We've tried the two passwords she used with it to no avail.
She had them written down in her book, the first one, and then scratched that out and wrote down the second one.
I tried several different ways of typing it, just in case she made a mistake.

Although I didn't get it open, when I plugged it back into the LAN, my whole network came tumbling down.
I've rebooted the router and each computer and still no go.
I can Ping the machines, and even get into them using their IP addresses, but her darn machine still wants the password.
Trying to make shared folders on Win7 took forever, and still I cannot see them even going directly to the machine. Strange, very strange. Not even the other Windows computers can see them. Grrr.
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yogi
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Re: Managed Desktop

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My first impression is that the Windows machine is infected with malware. It is particularly suspicious that it takes down your network. A simply case of a corrupt user account will not do that. It's a bit of a shotgun technique, but try this live CD approach to check for viruses: http://antiviruslivecd.4mlinux.com/ If nothing else, using the CD will assure that the computer is not infected. BTW, if you use this CD, be sure to disconnect your PC from the network and all removable drives. It will scan everything if you don't, even your Linux partitions.

I've also tried using a few of the password crackers readily available on line, but to no avail. Once the admin user account is disabled, the party is over. Only a clean install will get it going again.

Then too, the problem may not be the user account. It might be an MBR (master boot record) issue. If you have the original install disk, you can run the boot repair from there. Instead of selecting to install a new version of the OS, choose to troubleshoot and repair.

If you don't have the original install disk, then there are Boot Repair Disks: https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/detail ... 4_bit.html
This one saved my OS more times than I care to remember.

If you were able to log in as admin, then the solution would be to create a brand new administrator account with a brand new password. Log in using the new account and delete the corrupt one. But, from what I read you can't get that far.

And, last but not least, maybe this general discussion of how to fix things will be of value to you: https://www.auslogics.com/en/articles/h ... tion-disk/
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Re: Managed Desktop

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Thanks for all the Links Yogi. I'm saving them for future reference.
Windows LOVES to steal control of everything. Basically, when I plugged in the WIN10 machine, it STOLE control of the LAN, which knocked all the Linux computers off-line.
Took me awhile to learn how to take control of my LAN back from Win10, and this was only after we figured out the password to get into my frau's previous machine.
There is a setting in Win10 to tell it to get local DNS info from a specific server. In this case, my Router is the DNS server now. For a long time it was the Frau's Windows XP machine, until it broke.

Some good always seems to come from having a downtime and rebooting all the computers, although annoying as all get out when you are busy with other things, and can't afford the downtime.
While setting are fresh on my mind, I went and changed the files on all the computers.
I'll tell you one thing, trying to make a shared folder on a Win7 machine is like a nightmare gone bad.
So many steps to go through to make a simple shared folder. And they don't give you some of the options I would have liked.

The important thing is, I was able to get the Frau's files transferred from the Win10 machine over to her Win7 machine.
Next I have to pull the HD from her old XP machine who's video section went south, and see if I have a computer with pre-SATA connectors. To show you how my mind is forgetting things, I can't remember the name of the old HD connections.
I can look it up, hi hi.

I noticed some of the new computers only have HDMI connectors, no VGA or DMI, hmmm.
All of them now use USB for the keyboard and mouse, so the older KVM switches I have laying around here that use PS2 sockets is obsolete. I can buy PS2 to USB connectors, but in the end it would cost more than replacing the KVM switch.
Then I have the problem of, one computer has ONLY a DMI connector, and the other only a VGA connector. The monitor will take either. I've not seen a KVM switch that uses both computer connections.
No room on the frau's desk for two monitors, although since she uses wireless keyboard and mouse, she could do it that way without a KVM.

I'm not going to try it, but I wonder what would happen if you plugged both the DMI and VGA connector into the monitor?
And turned on both computers. In my mind I'm thinking the monitor will go POOF and burn out, hi hi.

Now if I was rich, I could just buy all new matching computers eh!
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yogi
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Re: Managed Desktop

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DHCP and DNS have always been configurable. Windows does have it's own default settings, but they can be changed to suit your needs at any time. I'd not consider that capturing control of your LAN. When I went to beta testing Windows 10 there was no change in the way my network operated. Same was true when we upgraded my wife's laptop to Windows 10. I suppose it's possible that I had no problems because Linux is not the default OS on all my computers, but the NAS is Linux and it too was unaffected by the switch. It created Windows shares without any intervention from me, other than giving the shares a name.

I understand why you have the configuration that you do. Money is indeed part of the problem. Things will work swimmingly when they are all compatible and on the same level of technology. I read all the time about how people have difficulty creating shared folders on WIndows. There is one setting to turn on sharing and for some odd reason that seems to have been working ever since my first Vista install. What is a pain in the ass is Linux shares. I spent quite a few hours trying to share a folder between my Windows 7 host and my Ubuntu Linux virtual machine. I never did understand "mounting" well enough to be problem free. Perhaps that is due to the fact I do not need to be concerned about it in the Windows environment. It's all done automatically.

I don't want to even think about video. All those connectors do have adapters, but I think it is cheaper to upgrade the monitors/video cards. Well, maybe not cheaper, but certainly a lot less trouble in the long run.
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Re: Managed Desktop

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Samba usually works flawlessly with Windows. But when it don't, it can be a nightmare to fix.
Most of the latest Linux Distro's have assumed the network will be speaking to Windows machines, so it set's the computer up that way. But in Linux you do have to assign permissions for security reasons. If you know how, it's easy, if not, it can be a nightmare to figure out also. Most of the time, a reboot will fix things.

I could dual-boot the wife's computer so she has Linux for her online game, and Windows for her other internal Windows only games. The problem with that is, there are programs that require set-up to make the game play easier and faster. These get closed when you reboot and are a pain to load and set-up each time. That's why I wanted her to have a KVM switch so she can bounce between the two.
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Re: Managed Desktop

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I don't know what kind of game would require a second computer to do a set up, but anything is possible. I'm thinking the way to solve the problem is with a DOS batch file. You do remember DOS, don't you? :lol:
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Re: Managed Desktop

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Our electric was just out, and it took almost 20 minutes to set up the controls I use with the game after the computer was up and running. I leave them open in my workspaces in the lower panel.
If I dual booted, I would lose this set-up each time.

I program my auto-clicker to perform different functions. I could load and unload the programs, but I would then have to do this like 200 or more times a day. For this reason I keep each programmed feature loaded in a different workspace and linked to the F-keys. One F-key is set to run the autoclicker as an autoclicker, the next F-key is set to use a pre-programmed routine to chop or harvest trees, another is programmed to fish lakes and streams.
I usually hit about 66 farms of anywhere from 5 to 36 sub-farms on each. In other words, one heck of a lot of farms to visit each day. All in game days work, hi hi. I have to play a game to break up my normal work schedule or go nuts.
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Re: Managed Desktop

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I must admit that it was something from Zinga, Farm Town or Farmsville, that got me interested in Farcebook in the first place. Gamification of the social media was a pure genius move on Zuckerberg's part. When I figured out how to become a millionaire in just a few days, the game became less interesting. Then I discovered the real purpose behind those games. At that point I released all the animals. took down all the fences, left the farm and never looked back.

I like the farm game because it had hints of an honest to the gods simulation. To satisfy my need to play and not be bored to death by the simplicity of it all, I moved over to Sim City. It kept my interest for many years but I moved on to explore other things after that. I came back to Sim City about a year ago. It's actually an extension of the real game (a DLC) but has all the features of the original. I've been fascinated by that but was reminded again that there is no way to win a simulation. It's just that: a simulation. I'm now playing with Cities Skylines which is a knock off of Sim City with an interesting caveat. It's run off the Steam servers where people offer items they have build from scratch in the game's editor. The downside is that once your simulation is constructed, it's even more boring to maintain than Sim City. At least the Electronic Arts game injects random disasters from which you need to recover. Nothing like that in Cities Skylines. Then again, you can't build the custom pieces in Sim City as you can in Cities Skylines.
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Re: Managed Desktop

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Back between 2009 and 2012 I tried almost every game available through Farcebook.
This was during the time after the heart attack where I couldn't raise my hands over my shoulder height for fear it would blow the back of my heart out.
All of Zynga's games ran on the same super faulty engine, and every time I reached a certain level on any of them, major problems with the game reared their ugly head. It got so bad I finally deleted all games which Zynga had anything to do with.
Farm Town on the other hand, always kept abreast of problems and fixed them almost right away. They also have an excellent engine driving the game. They were slow at early implementations, and now I think they are too fast at adding things. They keep making it easier and easier for new people to pass up the old timers who have been playing since the beginning. But as far as functionality, it is the very best game available through Farcebook. You can play all day every day and never run out of things to do. Sometimes the game just takes up way too much time away from your daily activities. It's also addictive. With so many timed things, like crops that will die, you have to force yourself to keep to a schedule that works for you, instead of what you can be roped into by the game.
Farm Town players come and go, but most of us who have been playing the game since the beginning, and stuck it out through the early growing pains, are still there today.
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Re: Managed Desktop

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You will see me on Facebook if you look hard enough and fast enough. I go there only to answer messages (or pokes) from friends. As mentioned elsewhere I will look at my news timeline too, but hardly beyond the first page. It's seldom relevant or up to date, but I have seen a few interesting comments from people I know. My first few years on Facebook were dedicated to playing Zynga games. But, as you point out, they are so flawed and simplistic that I lost interest quickly enough. I never bought anything or invited friends into the game, which is counter to what Facebook and Zinga would like their players to do. Thus my options for playing were limited, I now play, when I play, games on the popular game servers, e.g., Steam. They have freebies but I have also purchased a game or two. I got a free copy of Witcher III when I bought my current video card. The card I sent to you would not be able to handle all the features in the game. That's my pleasure these days. I note that Intel and AMD now have off the shelf processors with 16 cores - intel has one with 32 but I'm not sure it's for sale. The current Intel monster is $1500 while AMD's version is only $850. Matching a video card with all that power would not be easy given that not a lot are that capable yet. I'd like to play a game that maxes out the processor and the video card de jour. I have no idea what kind of game that would be, but I want to play it. :mrgreen: :grin: :lol:
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Re: Managed Desktop

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I would never need to play something that intense. Heck, Farm Town takes up too much of my time, which steals it away from my writing time. I sorta quit for a couple of years to get some books done and out the door, but kept the game just barely alive so to speak. It's an addiction that keeps taking over my time slots, hi hi.

I'm at the point right now where I have a lot of things on hold, trying to figure out how to pass things on to our heirs, getting the Wills redone, and figuring out whether to sell some of my collectibles or pass them on.
Dealing with my life insurance company has been a royal nightmare. I send them a change of beneficiaries, and they send back a rejection saying the signature don't match. I talked to them for two hours to find out what they meant, and resent a name change for each of the five small policies, using the names they said was shown on policy.
What it boils down to is they made a BIG Mistake themselves. I sent the original name changes in all on the same form. And somehow, when they changed the names for the policies, they typed my name differently on four of them.
To them, even though everything else matched, like address and social security number, they say they don't match in their system.
Although it isn't much, I think their goal is to keep the money rather than pay it out to someone when I croak.
They have also changed my policy numbers three times as one company bought out an other company, and then got bought out again. I'm just trying to get everything put in order and all together so when I die, my heirs know how to file the claims and the exact way I had their names placed on them as the beneficiary.
Ironically, I had more information about my insurance policies than the current insurer had in their files. Right down to the Agents own record books, dates, and page numbers in which record book for each policy.

I really don't know what is going to happen with my stuff. My son now lives back in St. Louis, and my wife's son lives in Nashville. Both have said the don't want the house and property, after all I went through 15 years ago to make sure it stayed in my wife's family. I'm thinking of putting everything in a trust and appointing a local agency to handle the trust.
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