Nigerian Company Sues OLPC 277
d0ida writes on the continuing troubles at the OLPC Association. Adding to the recent difficulties — the BBC has picked up the litany — a US-based, Nigerian-owned company has now filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against OLPC. Lagos Analysis Corp. claims that OLPC "made unauthorized use of LANCOR's multilingual keyboard technology invention in XO laptops." The suit was filed in Lagos.
The scams are getting more ridiculous every day. (Score:3, Funny)
419 (Score:5, Funny)
I am Stella McBride, aged 21years old the daughter of Late Darl Makoba a politician
As a result of the on-going problem in our country, we must relocate US$500 million of intellectual property to an overseas account...
I guess the OLPC folks .... (Score:4, Insightful)
Better yet, just don't send them (Score:5, Insightful)
As pointed out in a later post, the OLPC project in Nigeria is basically charity.
If they continue having problems like this, simply don't send any to them. Let LANCOR explain to the Nigerian government and people how their greed and abuse of patent law is screwing up the education of Nigeria's children and putting them at a serious disadvantage to the country's neighbors.
Re:Better yet, just don't send them (Score:4, Informative)
In a related article [zdnet.co.uk], Gerald Ilukwe, the general manager of Microsoft Nigeria, said that the cost of software is not important, even though he admitted that the average annual salary in the West African country is only $160...
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CC.
Re:Better yet, just don't send them (Score:5, Informative)
IIRC the MIT Lisp machines had keyboards with "hyper", "super", "meta" and "greek" shift keys. That should be considered enough prior art (although I don't know if Nigerian law agrees with that).
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Referring to dead keys, and presumably additional silk screening as an advanced multi language keyboard, is a little like referring to congress as an advanced noise machine. Sure the keyboards do have additional features, and congress does make noise, but in neither case is it particularly unique.
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Anyway, you always have to think what a person/company stands to gain from an action like this. The XO is not a direct competitor of none of their products. They make keyboards and software that goes with them, while the XO is a computer governments buy for students.
Unless government purchases for schools is a significant market niche for them (I assume they sell to OEMs that, in turn, sell computers to the government - a business that would remain untouch
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screwing up the education of Nigeria's children and putting them at a serious disadvantage to the country's neighbors.
Seriously, Can anybody explain why laptops are so essential for education? Forget laptops, we were not supposed to use even calculators for those lengthy calculations in chemistry in out Undergrad entrance exam. Why then, are laptops so crucial for a child future? Figure this out: I am trying to solve a 1st order differential equation, I would like a pencil and a paper to work this out. NOT a laptop. I cannot how a 10 year old is going to lear
Re:Better yet, just don't send them (Score:4, Insightful)
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Unfortunately, most third world kids don't speak the main language of the net, and won't have much use for what's currently on it. Actually, that's probably a good thing...
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The whole point of being a student is to not have much use for the status quo, and to have a desire to expand upon it.
Henry Ford (I think) said that if you'd asked American consumers in the 1900's what they'd wanted, they'd have answered, "A faster horse." For whatever faults they had, he and his contemporaries were dissatisfied with the
Re:Better yet, just don't send them (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Better yet, just don't send them (Score:4, Interesting)
Obviously, you sprang as a fully-formed, English-speaking adult out of Zeus's forehead or something. Or not. No, instead you're just a dumbass who doesn't realize that children can learn, and moreover that the entire point of the OLPC project is learning, and that contrary to what you might think the children are most likely capable of learning English along with everything else!
Tell you what, read this: India: Hole-in-the-Wall [greenstar.org]. Then try telling me language is a real barrier!
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1. That's all the more reason to have better sources to information, to attempt to fill gaps in knowledge and ability.
2. As soon as you enter education into a society, then intelligence becomes a major factor in who becomes successful or not, so cultural and biological evolution should not-too-slowly follow (and then, of course, promotion of higher IQs etc).
3. IQ test results won't necessa
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IQ is also woefully inaccurate in cases like this, because of the cultural bias of the tests.
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> I am trying to solve a 1st order differential equation, I would like a pencil and a paper to work this out.
The equation is: dx/dt = x + cos(x * t)*sin(x + t)
Good luck. The reality is that the vast majority of 1st order differential equations cannot be solved with pencil and paper, and using numerical algorithms on computers is the best and most general way to solve them.
But even without this, you're totally missing the point. The student's computer wouldn't be solving the equation for him; it w
Please tell me you put your foot in your mouth... (Score:2)
Re:Please tell me you put your foot in your mouth. (Score:2)
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I have actually had a couple of the
Re:Better yet, just don't send them (Score:4, Insightful)
Even as you unthinkingly type your post, you would willingly deny people who can not afford to do the same the opportunity of sharing knowledge, beliefs and understanding from around the world. By the way, the laptop can also be used in the first and second world. It is not a third world computer, it is a computer targeted as an educational tool for children from around the world and the more sold the cheaper it becomes.
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Where are they going to get all these books from? I haven't been able to find very many up-to-date and legally obtainable textbooks on the internet, so you can strike that off.
Well, you're not looking very hard...
Fiction Books
http://www.baen.com/library/ [baen.com]
http://www.anothersky.org/ [anothersky.org]
http://www.gutenberg.org/ [gutenberg.org]
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/ [upenn.edu]
http://manybooks.net// [manybooks.net]
http://www.archive.org/ [archive.org]
Audiobooks
http://www.librivox.org/ [librivox.org]
Textbooks
http://motionmountain.dse.nl/ [motionmountain.dse.nl]
http://textbookrevolution.org/ [textbookrevolution.org]
http://www.theassayer.org/ [theassayer.org]
http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html [mit.edu]
http://www.phys.uu.nl/~thooft/theorist.html#languages [phys.uu.nl]
http://www.hewlett.org/Programs/Education/Technolog [hewlett.org]
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Re:Better yet, just don't send them (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Better yet, just don't send them (Score:4, Informative)
Is that a patent troll? Doesn't sound like it.
I'm not sure about their choice of targets or especially their heavyhanded response to a charity organization though. I can only see this gaining them significant negative publicity and potentially torpedoing a good project.
Product Link [konyin.com]
Re:Better yet, just don't send them (Score:4, Insightful)
Patents were invented to protect break through designs which took a lot of time and money from being copied. Two people having the same idea isn't copying.
The Television was developed by three different people, if Baird had patented it we may have been using mechanical TV for decades.
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Try coming up with something TRUELY original that stands by itself.
I have the illustrious honour of being 'credited' with 'inventing' the live streaming webcam, but in reality there isn't much to that 'invention', it's just a bunch of code wr
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The XO's layouts appear to have the same generic accenting facility, though their layout is totally different.
Overall the feature is not all that different from the modal use of formatting such as sub
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I use this on my Thinkpad in Ubuntu. Pressing for example ^ while holding down the right Alt, enters the "put a ^ on the next character" mode. Right Alt + " + o gives ö. I think it's called "Compose" or something.
Pretty much necessary since I'm Swedish but I want a US keyboard since the retards that decided where to relocate all the keys necessary for programming placed them so you had to break your fingers to access the [ ] { } / \ | when you use a Swedish layout...
Custom Keyboard Layouts (Score:2)
Looks like one presses ctrl+shift (or equivalent) then some key indicating which accent you want, which induces a modal change. The next character typed acquires the selected accent. Actually it would be nice to have this on standard US keyboards also; it would make it easier to type the occasional email in French or whatever.
You already do. Check out the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator [microsoft.com] (for Windows 2000, XP/2003 and Vista).
In fact, if you're running Windows then you've already got several keyboard m
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It's not the modality of the input -- thats a very old idea to anybody who remembers the non-gui interfaces.
For example, in Emacs the sequence control-x, 8 means the next character is interpreted in "Compose Character Mode" -- a mode that seems to be a superset of the mechanism in question. In ISO Accents mode the various modifiers work more or less as described in the invention.
So it can't be using the keyboard modally to insert characters t
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The descriptions of their keyboard, including this larger image [konyin.com], aren't too convincing. What they seem to have "invented" is the idea of adding a fifth "Ng" shift key to the conventional four (Shift, Ctrl, logo, Alt). They gave it somewhat unusual placement, stealing space from the usual Shift keys (and making them smal
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Naive Citizen of the World... You have NO awareness of geopolitics!
If they haven't bribed them, then LANCOR might well be a part of the government.
Nigeria's government will reward LANCOR for keeping their people enslaved to warlords as prostitutes and child "soldiers".
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As pointed out in a later post, the Linux project in USA is basically charity.
If they continue having problems like this, simply don't send any to them. Let SCO explain to the US government and people how their greed and abuse of patent law is screwing up the education of US children and putting them at a serious disadvantage to the country's neighbors.
What's my point ? Nigeria is not one big boat with every people concerned about youth education. It is full of nor
So tempted (Score:5, Funny)
This is good news (Score:3, Insightful)
OLPC team -- don't get discouraged. As they say, if you're receiving flak, you must be over the target.
Re:This is good news (Score:4, Insightful)
They might actually have a point. It's not like they've sat on this for years - the public release of OLPC laptops is so recent that it's entirely conceivable that it's taken this long to examine them, document any violations, and file suit. And who knows what behind-the-scene negotiations, which may have delayed filing, have taken place between them and OLPC?
Is it just that the OLPC, being "free" and "open" and using Linux and all, are considered by
Sorry, not picking on you specifically - you're just the first in thread to mention the words "patent troll".
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Or are people suggesting that all patent owners are patent trolls? (A position with which I would largely agree, BTW.)
Not all patent owners are patent trolls. Only those that use their patents to sue people and get in the way of progress and innovation.
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RTFA and change Nigerian to Swedish or Japanese and see how you fee
Re:This is good news (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is good news (Score:5, Interesting)
The only way that could be true is if Nigeria has a seriously defective legal system (quite possible), but even then the "truth value" of that statement would only exist within Nigeria.
Like someone who illegally wears a t-shirt that says "Vote".
The phrase "illegally reverse engineered" only weighs in favor of a case of this company being a "patent troll", it is not an argument to refute that label.
A further note is that all uses of the word "invention" appear to false. According to the article this is a design patent. At least in US law, design patents are not for new useful inventions, design patents are not for functional aspects, design patents are for aesthetic and ornamental aspects. Design patents are about "our product looks cool and distinctive". Design patents are trivial to work around, you just change the shape or arrangement of your product to any of a zillion other equally reasonable equally functional looks.
...ok a little Googling and yes Nigerian RD#### patent are "Registered Design" patents. This is not an invention patent, this is an ornamental design patent. It also turns out that there is no official website to look up Nigerian patents, not only is there no website for it but the Nigerian Patent Office official contact point is a Yahoo email address.
This company is suing a charitable high-tech project to aid 3rd world children, and doing it based on an ornamental patent registered with a government operating from a Yahoo email address. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
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Re:This is good news (Score:5, Insightful)
They might in principle, but in practice, they don't. The OLPC keyboard differs from theirs, and there are decades of prior art in using multiple shift keys to reach multiple languages on one keyboard. Their keyboard is basically the "US International Keyboard" for Windows with the keys rearranged.
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Re:This is good news (Score:5, Insightful)
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That term doesn't make sense. In any other field besides patents, the so-called trolls would be called "dealers" or "brokers". I'm curious--do you call your real estate agent a "land troll"? Do you think commercial Linux companies are "free software trolls"?
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If you are talking about the sort of "dealers" and "brokers" that
lurk around like vultures waiting for bad things to happen to people.
Those people certainly do get derision heaped upon them.
Crass asses are called out as such all over.
You are also confusing real estate agents with real estate speculators.
"Free Software Trolls" are not out there jacking up the cost of doing
business, making business impossible to do at any price or jacking up
the cost of living.
Maybe (Score:2)
They hold the patent for first use (Score:3, Funny)
A _little_ more info on this. (Score:5, Funny)
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But they'll settle.... (Score:2, Funny)
Boy, did they pick the wrong mark (Score:5, Interesting)
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You mean the company? Or the Nigerian patent office?
The latter would probably be easier, I doubt the former are run from Yahoo email. [wipo.int]
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OR hit them with open source patents (Score:2)
Unless this is a company that stands to make more from "certain investors" than from continuing in their normal line of business, in which case we need to make an example by invali
Re:Boy, did they pick the wrong mark (Score:5, Informative)
If LANCOR wins. . . (Score:5, Funny)
Wow.... (Score:3)
I feel this 1st class douchebaggery.
DEAR SIR (Score:5, Funny)
ATTENTION: THE PRESIDENT/CEO
DEAR SIR,
CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS PROPOSAL
HAVING CONSULTED WITH MY COLLEAGUES AND BASED ON THE INFORMATION GATHERED FROM THE NIGERIAN CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY, I HAVE THE PRIVILEGE TO REQUEST FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE TO TRANSFER THE SUM OF $47,500,000.00 (FORTY SEVEN MILLION, FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND UNITED STATES DOLLARS) INTO OUR ACCOUNTS. THE ABOVE SUM RESULTED FROM A PATENT INFRINGEMENT LAWSUIT, EXECUTED COMMISSIONED AND PAID FOR ABOUT FIVE YEARS (5) AGO BY A FOREIGN CONTRACTOR. THIS ACTION WAS HOWEVER INTENTIONAL AND SINCE THEN THE FUND HAS BEEN IN A SUSPENSE ACCOUNT AT THE CENTRAL BANK OF NIGERIA APEX BANK.
WE ARE NOW READY TO RECEIVE THE FUND OVERSEAS. IT IS IMPORTANT TO INFORM YOU THAT AS CIVIL SERVANTS, WE ARE FORBIDDEN TO OPERATE A FOREIGN ACCOUNT; THAT IS WHY WE REQUIRE YOUR ASSISTANCE. THE TOTAL SUM WILL BE SHARED AS FOLLOWS: 70% FOR US, 25% FOR OUR LAWYERS AND 5% FOR LOCAL AND INTERNATIONAL EXPENSES INCIDENT TO THE TRANSFER.
THE TRANSFER IS RISK FREE ON BOTH SIDES. I AM AN ACCOUNTANT WITH THE NIGERIAN NATIONAL PETROLEUM CORPORATION (NNPC). IF YOU FIND THIS PROPOSAL ACCEPTABLE, WE SHALL REQUIRE THE FOLLOWING DOCUMENTS:
(A) YOUR BANKER'S NAME, TELEPHONE, ACCOUNT AND FAX NUMBERS.
(B) YOUR PRIVATE TELEPHONE AND FAX NUMBERS -- FOR CONFIDENTIALITY AND EASY COMMUNICATION.
(C) YOUR LETTER-HEADED PAPER STAMPED AND SIGNED.
ALTERNATIVELY WE WILL FURNISH YOU WITH THE TEXT OF WHAT TO TYPE INTO YOUR LETTER-HEADED PAPER, ALONG WITH A BREAKDOWN EXPLAINING, COMPREHENSIVELY WHAT WE REQUIRE OF YOU. THE BUSINESS WILL TAKE US THIRTY (30) WORKING DAYS TO ACCOMPLISH.
PLEASE REPLY URGENTLY.
BEST REGARDS
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He's in Natick, only 19.2 miles from OLPC! (Score:5, Informative)
phone 339-987-9249, fax 508-647-4702
Put that into Google maps and have a look.
It's a house on a 100 foot square lot.
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*ring, ring*
Home Owner: Hello?
You: Dent? Arthur Dent?
HO: Yes, that's me.
You: Arther Phillip Dent?
HO: Yes?
You: You're an arse hole!
*hang up*
If this helps (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~crb002/ie574final.pdf [iastate.edu]
I bet it kicks their designs all the way to Timbuktu, which isn't too far from Nigeria
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From your research paper:
Forsooth! I have sampled of thy research and verily did I find thy conclusions most useful to my plight. 'Tis now true that I can express my pose with heretofore unimagineable prolificity.
Hast though more learning that though mayst enlighten vs* further? I should, sir, be forever indebted to th
If we want to win some hearts and minds in the (Score:2)
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what this is (Score:5, Informative)
It's about using two extra shift keys for the non-ASCII characters. On his keyboard, he calls them "Shift2" and "Ng". This is a nice way to do languages that use the latin alphabet with a few abnormal extra characters.
It's not like the mode switch key used for Arabic. There, you press the key once to switch modes. (more like a caps lock)
It's not like the dead keys often used for European accents. There, you press an accent key followed by a letter key. The accent key does nothing until you press the letter.
It's not like the combining accent keys used in Microsoft Word. There, you press the accent key after the letter key. (so the software must display your "A" before knowing if it needs an accent)
It's not like the fancy stuff used for Chinese, etc.
He's claiming that two keyboard layouts are in violation. The first one is Nigerian, now used for all of western Africa. The second one is "US International", which is QWERTY plus stuff like the Euro and various odds and ends.
Re:what this is (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not like
It's not like
It's not like...
It's not like
But it *is* like CTRL and ALT, except that they're just for generating characters rather than calling arbitrary functions.
(Btw, anyone who refers to a new interface for accessing more characters from the same keys as "technology" is an idiot.)
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I guess you can get around that patent by providing a regular
cardboard keyboard template and some glue. Or maybe a self-adhesive
template.
Re:what this is (Score:4, Informative)
It is like the use of the right Alt key on European keyboards to get extra accented characters. The key is called "Alt Gr" on many European keyboards. On a German keyboard, you press Alt Gr + some other key to get things like the Euro sign, the backslash, the pipe character, the tilde character, curly braces, or the @ sign.
I've written a couple of keyboard macros back in the WordPerfect days that used Alt Gr plus other keys to get extra accented characters for transcription of Arabic (and, ironically, for Yoruba, which is one of the major languages of Nigeria), which I'm ready to submit as prior art if it should have to come to that.
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Exactly. And it is similar to the "US intl" layout in X11. Where you can access different international characters with the right ALT key (like the umlauts etc). And I think that has b
reverse engineering under US law (Score:2)
See here [chillingeffects.org] for a very nice review of US law regarding reverse engineering.
I wonder what "illegal reverse engineering" means under Nigerian law, seeing as how it is generally permitted in the US.
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Quick buck? (Score:2)
Could be legit (Score:5, Insightful)
This also means....... (Score:2)
They will probably come to some bilateral arrangement if they are hit by a couple of hundred infringements and a cease and desist order themselves.
Patent Troll Hater for 2008 (Score:2, Informative)
Not only do I think this patent shouldn't be valid but these guys are suing whats basically a charity organization? Please!
As far as "not listening to nigerian law" it should be noted that they have an american office and they are suing in american courts using manipulating the flawed american patent system
I think some of your presedential hopefuls should make patent trolls an
I guess the old proverb is still true... (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation error (Score:4, Funny)
Dan East
Hmmm... Lagos (Score:2)
the layouts are quite different (Score:5, Informative)
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_Keyboard_layouts [laptop.org]
Here is the Konyin layout for the US (you have to click on VIEW LAYOUT under UNITED STATES):
http://www.konyin.com/?page=home&menuitem=1 [konyin.com]
Maybe Konyin thinks that they invented making additional languages/scripts/special characters available via additional shift characters, but that's ridiculous; here is the Windows US International keyboard layout:
http://www.usna.edu/LangStudy/US-InternationalLayout.html [usna.edu]
See, lots of special characters via AltGr.
Prior art? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Go Figures... (Score:2)
Dear Mr. Slashdotter (Score:2, Funny)
Bob Cummings Esquire
Nigerian Law Council Partnership Program
1 Important Legal Way
Sokoto Nigeria
What a strange coincidence (Score:4, Interesting)
Putting my tinfoil hat on for a moment, it's not possible that this company is a stooge for Intel or Microsoft, is it?
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Good for the American economy and bad for them. Plus, it's not like you really expect Nigerian open source programmers contributing. Look at China. You see any open source programmers from China?
Who cares? OLPC was ab
Crazy (Score:2)
Screw patents, patent holders should be forced to prove that the alleged infringer has seen their product and then copied it.
lagos? (Score:2)
Can't someone just move some of those colorful little bricks around to change the suit?
A quick 'Dig' of Lancor (Score:2, Interesting)
konyin.com - hosted by ipowerweb.com Admin contact, oluwole@lancorltd.com
For an IT company to not actually have their own web server
Thoughts? How big is this company (they don't have a link on their web site to their Nigerian counterpart. They do have a link to Konyin.com, no drivers available for download there. Anyone got them?
I wonder how much email traffic has
I wonder if... (Score:2)
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Based on my limited, non-lawerly knowledge, at least in the U.S. the basis for civil suits over patents is that the unlicensed use of the patented invention is causing harm. If you choose to let the infringement continue because it's of greater benefit to you than shutting it down, then you aren't giving a very strong impression that it's harming you. That's why you pretty much have to react when you find out a
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Yes. And yes.
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