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Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Negative Ads Attack Voters -- With the Facts Negative Ads Attack Voters -- With the Facts

Andrew Ferguson has an interesting article: Negative Ads Attack Voters -- With the Facts that points out that negative ads are often more effective than positive ones, and the reason is that they invariably have to contain verifiable facts in order to be effective.

There have been a lot of cases of this in this election cycle. One of note was Steele's sister's response to the Michael J. Fox commercial about stem cell research. The response was a lot more devistating than the original ad because it used facts to rebut a fairly fact free ad.

It is too bad that John Kerry isn't running this time, because he has, again, opened himself up to negative advertising by inartfully suggesting that only the least educated are fighting now for us in Iraq. It doesn't help his cause that this was very similar to his famous Congressional testimony about alleged atrocities during the Vietnam War - and is one of the reasons he lost in 2004.

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John Kerry at it, again John Kerry at it, again

“You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”
You almost have to feel sorry for the guy. He claims to have been trying to make a joke about President Bush, and screwed it up. But then, instead of apologizing, he defends himself, and digs himself in even deeper. Great fun tonight reading all the great Kerry jokes.

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Sunday, October 29, 2006

Ski Season (#4.2) - Vail Ski Swap Ski Season (#4.2) - Vail Ski Swap

Every year on the last real weekend of October is the Vail ski swap, put on by the junior racing program there. A somewhat worthy case - one of my brothers raced for that team in high school. Nevertheless, it is a tradition, and it is really the last landmark on the yearly buildup to ski season.

Last time I went, I got there about 6:45 and talked them into letting me in at the 7 p.m. reduced price level. This year, I went early, and was in line about 4:45 for a 5 p.m. opening. I met some great people from over on the Dillon side of the (Vail) pass while waiting in line.

And then I did the unthinkable. I bought two pair of skiis, two pair of poles, two pair of socks, and a pair of books for my offspring. This brings me up to four new used pair of skiis this season (for well under what any of these would cost new).

The reason for more poles is that poles break. I go through a couple a year. So, I found two identical pair at the same low price, with the idea that having four would allow me to make up a pair even after breaking two of them.

My brother is already skiing at the areas, and should be starting his race training no later than this coming weekend. I will probably wait another week or so, given the hassle of getting a season pass for just those days, only to get a refund in a week or so. I can wait.

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Ski Season (#4.1) Ski Season (#4.1)

Ski season is upon us. Several areas are already open, and the others seem poised to open early this year. This is the top of Frenchman at Keystone:
Peak 8 at Breckenridge:

Horseshoe Bowl at Breckenridge - note that the snow is still sparse where it is so open.

You can see what is going on here - a lot of snowmaking, even during the say right now, as the areas rush to open early.

Here is the other side, the two golf courses at Keystone. First the River course:

And the Ranch course:

Note how bleak they are now.

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Blogger errors Blogger errors

My last post today never seems to have been published. I got an error when posting it, and then when I tried to republish my blog. Ann Althouse has pointed out the same Blogger problem, and it is a lot worse for her, because she actually has readership.

Hopefully, Blogger will ultimately get its act together today. I know that this post will be saved as published, even if it isn't actually published, and so ultimately will be.

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Computer stuff Computer stuff

Some times computers can be even more frustrating than women. I have been planning to reformat this computer's (#D) hard drive and reinstall the OS's. So, one of the steps in the process is to make sure that everything is backed up on another computer (#H). Good practice in any case, and something that I had not completely done for quite awhile. Indeed, when I lost my other desktop system (#F) maybe four months ago (motherboard or processor), and my older server (#H) a couple of months ago (hard drive), I found that I had not backed up everything.

Some how in the haze of making sure that everything was backed up, I was deleting some of the extraneous stuff that doesn't ever need to be backed up, and decided to delete ntldr and ntdetect.com from the back up. These are system files that Windows NT systems (including 2K, XP, 2003, etc.) use for booting, and they reinstall them whenever the OS is installed or reinstalled in the root directory of the lowest order drive (typically your C: drive).

The problem is that you can't boot w/o them. At all. So, all of a sudden, this sytem (#D) was unbootable. I didn't have a CD that I could boot with, in order to copy those files back into C:\. So, I tried a floppy boot. I went through the whole thing, loading four diskettes, just to run into this error
Disk I/O error: Status=00008001
Failed to arcread the boot partition to check for a disk signature
when Windows Installer was trying to run in order to fix that problem. So, I looked up the error on the MSFT Knowledge Base, and it is a Win2K problem with having Zip drives on the same IDE channel as the boot disk. The suggestion was to disconnect the Zip drive until installation was complete. (Actually, I think the error shows up more often than that - it is just that Win2K normally just notes it early in the boot process and then ignores it).

But while I was in the Knowledge Base, I figured I might as well try to figure out why my 1gb SDRAM wouldn't work in that computer (#D) (it won't work in the Dell server (#H) because Dell has its motherboards rigged not to take anyone else's memories, which is why Dell memory costs so much, and why I won't buy another Dell). The suggestion was that many BIOSes don't handle two different memory speeds, and my 1gb SDRAM is DDR3200, whereas my other SDRAMs are somewhat slower. So, I figured that I might as well check out just running the 1gb memory, without any other SDRAMs installed.

Whoops, all of a sudden, I couldn't find anything to boot from whatsoever. Not only was the hard drive not finding ntldr, but the floppy and CD drivers weren't finding bootable media installed in them. I started unplugging things, to little avail, until I finally found out that any time you do a major hardware change, my BIOS requires that it be reset to the new hardware configuration. I have the BIOS set to not autodetect my IDE drives, since that is a waste of time when you are booting from the same hardware configuration month in and month out. And that configuration is lost whenever you add or subtract an IDE drive, or add or subtract memory. So, in order to have static IDE definitions in the BIOS, I have to redetect the disk drive info. And I ended up doing this some half dozen times in the last 12 hours. And while I was at it, I found that the Dell (#H) BIOS is even worse than usual about handling two disk drives jumpered as Masters on a single IDE channel.

So, right now, the server (#H) is now upright with only one side missing. This system (#D) is running on its side with the hard drive not screwed in, and the Zip drive unplugged and unattached to the IDE cable. I am back to 5/8 gb of RAM and Win2K Help errors. With it open and lying down, I plan to replace the CD-Rom with a DVD-RW drive that I bought a couple of weeks ago. Currently it has both a CD-ROM and a CD-RW drive. The CD-RW drive is much slower, but the CD-ROM drive is much flakier, and hence its imminent replacement. Besides, it keeps me from hybernating or suspending the system.

One positive side effect of this whole thing though is that I finally have a bootable CD that I can use for this sort of recoveries. The Dell system (#H) came with a CD-RW/DVD-R drive and Nero software, which actually manages to make bootable CD's with minimal work. MSFT suggested a way to do it involving copying a hard drive smaller than the CD/DVD being built or a floppy drive. It noted that this didn't mean a disk partition of the proper size, but a hard drive. When was the last time anyone saw a 700 mb (CD) or 4.7 gb (DVD) or smaller hard drives? And it is silly taking up an entire CD or DVD with 1.44 mb from a floppy - might as well use the floppy instead.

Finally, I should note the reasons for reformatting the hard drive and reinstalling the OS. Currently, the hard drive is formatted as:
C: FAT
D: FAT32
E: FAT32
F: NTFS
This is mostly historical, so that I could access data from both Win 98 and Win NT. As should be obvious from its name, NTFS is unreadable by 3.x descended Windows OSes (including Win 95, 98, ME). And I always want to have mutliple OSes installed and operational on any system. Currently, this system has: Windows 3.11, 98, NT 4.0, 2000 Professional, and 2000 Server (the 1gb SDRAM only runs under NT 4.0). A more logical configuration is Windows 2000 Professional for work, and 2003 Server as a back up (in both senses of the word - so that this system can also run as a server, if the Dell system is down). And that can probably be best done with a single NTFS partition.

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Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Baghdad Vigilantes and the Dark Side of Civil Society Baghdad Vigilantes and the Dark Side of Civil Society

Frederick Turner at TCS Daily in an article titled: Baghdad Vigilantes and the Dark Side of Civil Society that suggests that the MSM is missing what is going on right now in Iraq, and both the Administration and the Iraqis are trying to ignore it. Turner suggests that the killings by the Sunni Arabs are little different than those practiced by them since our invastion - indiscirminate killing of mostly innocents for its in terrorem effect. But that contrasts sharply with many of the killings of the Sunni Arabs is the just opposite, highly targetted and done primarily for revenge. Most of those being killed are either Saddam henchmen, connected somehow to terror bombings, or are a family member of one of those groups.

Turner suggests that this dynamic played out over the last couple of decades in Latin America, and in earlier times in England, France, and the U.S. When civil society is attempting to organize itself along quasi-democratic lines and to provide law and order, sometimes there are those who refuse to join, and, rather, attempt through violence to disrupt it. And that is when the author suggests that men leave their families, take up their guns, join a vigilante group, and go off into the night to do what the state should do, but can't for moral reasons. And, when they are done, and the terrorists have fled or died, it is over.

There is a lot of evidence that this is happening. The killing of the Arab Sunnis does seem to be far, far, more targetted than the killing that they are doing, which seems very indiscriminate. And, so far, about 1/4 of that community has fled the country, and another 1/12 has moved into safer neighborhoods.

The inclusion of the families in the hit lists is probably more a result of the Arab/Moslem culture than anything else. Someone is probably going to think a couple times before going out and killing a bunch of innocent women and children through as a suicide bomber, if he has reason to believe that the vigilantes will retaliate by taking his family out and kill them execution style. He now doesn't have a clear shot at Paradise, but rather has the guilt of their deaths on his hands too. It is brutal, but effective:
In a sense, the great new weapon, the suicide bomber—which had seemed to all the world to be irresistible—has, like all weapons, shown its fatal flaw. That flaw was first revealed in the Jordan bombing of the hotel wedding party, which radicalized Jordanians against al Qaeda. Now it has turned to bite the radicals in Baghdad. If civil society finds itself threatened by utter chaos, it may resort to free-enterprise war against its enemy. By definition what it does then cannot be law-abiding or approved by its own government; it is in Hobbes' state of nature; but it can be a kind of savage rationality that might precede law.

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Internet Scams - Domain Tasting Internet Scams - Domain Tasting

The register has an article titled: ICANN votes on domain tasting solution that points out another Internet scam. Apparently companies are trying out web sites addresses in bulk, and if anyone tries to access the sites within the five day grace period, the company keeps the domain name. Otherwise, they return this batch, and try another one. This seems fairly inocuous, except that they are doing this at 100k or more at a time. ICANN is proposing that they be charged five cents per returned name. Needless to say, the companies involved in this are screaming.

My somewhat related story is that I had the copatlaw.com domain name for at least five years. Then, I let it lapse, and tried to get it back. No way. Some company has grabbed it up, isn't using it, but is trying to sell it back to me for a profit. And this has been going on now for four or five years now.

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Internet Scams - Stock Fraud#2 Internet Scams - Stock Fraud#2

Yesterday, I commented on Internet stock fraud, and I have a couple of other ideas, one of which is that many of the perps don't appear to be American. My gut feeling is East Asian, probably Chinese or Korean, based on the mistakes in English being made. For example, the title of one email was: "Very important letter. You require to read". Another for the same stock (EQTD) has a decent subject line, but starts out with:
The only thing to do on Wednesday October 25 is to get in on EQTD. It will SOAR up next days. There will be over 100% from the very beginning, so do it without delay. After the yesterday's promotion the share price raised on 116% and was 0.013. Those lucky devils who bought stocks at the price of 0.006 yesterday have already earned 100% of their investment. And they will make more. Did you think of it yesterday? If not, think of it now. Now the price is still rising.

More over, with oil markets retreating, big traders are turning to gold, bringing it to levels never before seen. EQTD has made an notice of staggering proportions related to a recent survey on one of their gold properties. The internal scoop is great and we will be looking at a quadrupling of market rate once the public takes notice:
I have underlined a number of places where the spammer's English gives him away. My guess on East Asian is based on the type of mistakes made: missing and misused verbs, noun/object mismatch, and the use of "lucky devils", etc.

What that means is that this sort of stock fraud scam is going to be very hard to police. Many of the likely victims are here in the U.S., while the perps are well beyond the reach of our authorities.

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Tuesday, October 24, 2006

The Leadership Myth The Leadership Myth

Arnold Kling in a TCS article: The Leadership Myth suggests that mediocre representatives are good. They are unlikely to screw things up by trying to be too smart.
Democracy does not lead to particularly good choices. Most successful institutions in society are not democratic.

For me, the value of democracy is that it provides a check on government officials. The fact that leaders can be tossed out by popular vote helps to limit their abuse of power. Democracy gives the people the power to toss out the bums.

We have to expect mediocrity from political leaders. They are selected by a very unreliable process. In general, I try to avoid contact with narcissists who spend their time pleading for money. Those are hardly the intellectual and emotional characteristics that make someone admirable, yet they are the traits of people who go into politics.

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Internet Scams: Stock fraud Internet Scams: Stock fraud

I must get a dozen chances a day to invest in sure thing penny stocks supposedly on the way up. My spam filter picks up almost all of them, but still, it is getting out of hand. I probably get more of these any more than for Viagra. Here is one I got today:

Note that they don't bother to explain why the three and four week targets are even remote plausible. Besides, what are they the targets of? How high the stock manipulators think they can drive the stock up in the next couple of weeks before it crashes?

I commented on a Freakonomics article on this subject a couple of months ago. The problem is that these are intentionally very thinly traded penny stocks. I have no doubt that there is far more money right now invested on both sides of this stock, than the stock is worth on its own. It is a big game, with stock promoters trying to drive up the value of the stock and then cash out before it crashes back where it belongs (actually, they often appear to crash below that). But, of course, everyone is trying to do the same thing. It is very similar to a pyramid scheme, where everyone knows that the last ones in lose, but hope that they are in early enough to profit on the misery of those coming later. But, of course, most are in the losing category.

I think that the only realistic way to play these is short. Invariably, they will crash back to where they started, or even lower. The problem is determining the optimal place to short the stock, and that take sresearch, comparing the runs of a number of these very thinly traded penny stocks being promoted over the Internet.

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Internet Scams: 'Click Fraud' Internet Scams: 'Click Fraud'

WaPo article: 'Click Fraud' Threatens Foundation of Web Ads points out another web scam. Apparently, there are people sitting around their homes clicking like crazy on pay-per-click ads, driving up costs to those advertising that way. Hopefully, there aren't a lot of them searching on Google or Yahoo looking for Software Patents.

But then the WaPo loses focus by ending with a discussion of a site called "Mutualhits.com" that helps people network and click on each other's web sites in order to drive up the hit counts there. Yes, there could be some minor amount of hit count fraud here, but mostly, it appears to be bragging rights, and not money, that is at issue here.

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Frustration (#2) Frustration (#2)

Last night, a friend of mine called up after watching something on TV. He was absolutely convinced that there had to be (space) aliens because the DoD apparently has contingency plans for meeting them, and has had such for probably my entire life time. After all, if they didn't exist, why should the DoD waste its time on making up such plans?

But of course, the DoD has contingency plans for almost anything imaginable, whether it be nuking North Korea, or meeting space aliens. After all, when the sh** hits the fan, and the President wants his options, he doesn't want to hear that the military will be back to him in a month with them.

This friend then went on to point out that the President apparently knew about the possibility of al Qaeda using airplanes as weapons, as was done shortly thereafter on 9/11.

Yes, there was a vague mention of the possibility in a PDB* sometime in, I believe, August of 2001. But this guy misses a couple of important points here:
  • PDBs are routine. That is why they are called PDBs, instead of PWBs, PMBs, or PYBs. If the Administration followed up every threat mentioned in one, they would be tied up well into the next administration chasing their tails.

  • The PDB was vague. It was actionable. What was the government supposed to do about this vague threat?

  • And what would the American people have put up with before 9/11? Would they have accepted:
    • The type of security we now see at the airports?
    • Not being able to stand in line for the bathrooms on planes?
    • Fighter jets using full military power over populated areas whenever there is a possible threat (like when that small plane crashed in NYC a week or two ago)?
*"PDB" = Presidential Daily Briefing.

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When Lady Luck Plays Moneyball When Lady Luck Plays Moneyball

TCS Daily: When Lady Luck Plays Moneyball points out what we all should know, that most of what we think of as streaks in professional sports is really just random chance.
Using probability theory and Monte Carlo simulations, we've proved that the probability of a team that wins 60 percent of its 162 games having at least one losing streak of five or more games is 80 percent. Such a team will have, on average, 1.2 such losing streaks a season. In other words, it's almost a certainty that a playoff team will have had at least one substantial losing streak during the regular season. So it shouldn't have been shocking -- and was hardly informative about their future -- that the Detroit Tigers ended the season on a five-game losing streak. The worst teams, in comparison, generally win only 40 percent of their games... Using probability theory and Monte Carlo techniques, we've shown that the probability of such a team having at least one winning streak of three or more games is virtually 100 percent. Such a team will have, on average, 6.4 such winning streaks a season. In other words, even the worst teams can expect to have winning streaks. That's why it shouldn't have been so shocking that the Detroit Tigers, with the third-best American League regular-season record, ended the season by losing all their games against the Kansas City Royals, the second-weakest AL team.
But we, as rational thinking humans, continue to look for the patterns in these fairly random events.

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Blogger problems Blogger problems

Yesterday, into early this morning, Blogger was mostly down. I first detected this when I couldn't post at Althouse. But found it also applied here. They gave some sort of excuse that the engineers had been called. That may fly as an excuse when you are talking about web sites like mine, but Blogger is owned by Google, who probably runs more servers than anyone else now on the Internet.

In any case, it was a bit frustrating. After a week or so of not posting, I was ready to post up a storm yesterday, and bamm, Blogger was down.

Oh well - you get here what you paid for.

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Monday, October 23, 2006

Frustration Frustration

I am frustrated with the American public right now as we go into an election where I suspect the Republicans are going to lose to the Main Stream Media. Somehow vaguely suggestive emails to a former Representative are significantly more worisome concerning the Republican leadership of the House, than the financial scandals that seem to be appearing a couple times a week now about the man who will become Senate Majority Leader if the Democrats retake the Senate. We have significant evidence before us that the Senate Minority (and maybe soon Majority) leader is corrupt, making money for himself and his four boys under the table, selling off his power to, for example, push federal departments to swap public land for undevelopable land belonging to his friends. But somehow the possible lack of supervision over one of over two hundred Republicans in Congress is more worrisome. The Reid scandals are not about some disgraced former back-bencher, but the most powerful Senator on the Democrat side of the isle, and the question should be whether the American people should be giving him even more power, now whether the warnings given former Representative Foley were stern enough.

Last night, someone tried to defend this by pointing out that the page in question was 16 at the time. The time of what? Well, maybe the not very suggestive emails from Foley, but it turns out that he was 18 by the time he got those much more suggestive IMs. But of course, the MSM skips over this distinction, that the really suggestive messages were after the guy in question was no longer a page, and no longer a minor. Somehow this is worse than having a male lover run a prostitution ring out of a congressional office, the last time the Democrats had control of Congress. Now which is the greater lack of supervision: a Congressman sending suggestive IMs to an adult, or a prostitution ring being run under the noses of Congressional management? Oh, and Gerry Studds actually had actual sex with an actual male page who was actually under 18 at the time. Foley only made vague suggestions before his accuser was both no longer a minor and no longer a page, and even then, he didn't engage in sex.

Then, we get into Iraq. The conventional wisdom is that we have failed there. But the conventional wisdom has been that since long before the latest explosion of violence. I get frustrated because when I question that, I am treated like a simpleton. When I hear about the current Civil War, I ask about casualty levels, and who is killing whom.

Last night I was told that the Jihadists are winning there. Huh? They are the one faction who have decidedly lost in Irq. In the last month or so, 3/4 of the tribes in Anbar province have signed on with the government and have pledged to help with security in that province. It has become quite dangerous for foreign born jihadists to try to sneak through there into Baghdad. Al Qaeda in Mesopatemia (i.e. Iraq) has essentially fallen apart because of a lack of new recruits and in particular becuase of the information gleaned after the death of their leader, Zarqawi.

The conventional wisdom is that Iraq is in the midst of a civil war. But how can it be a civil war when one side has 85% of the population, most of the guns, and almost all of the police and military on its side? The reality is that what is going on right now is desperation indiscriminate killing of innocents by Iraqi Sunni Arabs, and mostly revenge killings by the Shiites, most likely being pushed by Iran in response to our pressure on them in regards to their nuclear program. And as a result, over 1/3 of the Sunni Arabs in Iraq have moved since we went into Iraq, including probably 1/4 who have left the country entirely.

I am frustrated here, because while there is real danger that we might lose, and Iraq truly slide into a bloodbath, where the Sunni Arab minority are slaughtered for their kinship with Saddam Hussein, that hasn't happened yet, and there are more encouraging signs than discouraging ones right now. Yet, the American people believe the fight is lost.

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Thursday, October 19, 2006

Yoo: Congress to courts: Get out of the war on terror Yoo: Congress to courts: Get out of the war on terror

John Yoo, probably the most hated (now former) Bush Administration attorney, suggests today in a WSJ article that:Congress to courts: Get out of the war on terror. Yoo is, of course, one of the prime movers behind the Administration taking a strong stand on its Executive powers. Nevertheless, he does make a good point here, that the Judiciary ignored a lot of its own precedent to significantly change the Rules of War, as they apply to the U.S., in, particlar, the recent Hamden case, and that Congress and the President have moved to rein that branch in with the just enacted detainee bill.

But he also brings up something that is not taught in civics classes. There, you are taught that the power that the other branches have over the Judiciary is through appointment and impeachment. But this is another: justisdiction stripping. The Judiciary, with a couple of notable exceptions, has just as much power as it is given by the other two branches through how much jurisdiction it is granted. In other words, they mostly control what cases the Judiciary can hear through what jurisdiction they grant it. And in this case of Judicial overreaching, they stripped that branch of some of it, thus reducing its power.

One other facet that this illuminates in Separation of Powers is that this looks like an attempt at power grabbing on the part of the Judiciary. The other two branches (partly thanks to Yoo's advocacy when a member of the Administration) were fighting over their respective positions and power, and the Judiciary, appearing to mediate there, attempted to grab more for itself. But the other two, until now squabbling, branches viewed this as an overreach, ganged up on the Judiciary, and pushed back.

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Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Windows Server #3 - NetBEUI Windows Server #3 - NetBEUI

I mentioned in a previous post that I had loaded the NetBEUI drivers from XP into Server 2003. One of the features that is somewhat nice about XP and Server 2003 is that they do a somewhat better job at supporting Network Places. But without NetBEUI, saving off network places is problematic. Half the time, Windows can't find them, until you click on them. Then, after a suitable delay, it finds them.

This all went away with NetBEUI. Plus, response time between local computers is significantly faster.

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Windows Server #2 - arp Windows Server #2 - arp

Another interesting find that I stumbled into was the "arp" DOS command. It displays and modifies the IP to physical address translation tables.

Looking at low level network traces (using Ethereal), I was constantly amazed that every time one of my computers wanted to talk to another one, it would ask who had that computer's IP address. And the second computer would respond with its adaptor id. Then, the two would communicate. But then, a couple of minutes later, it would do the same thing. DNS searches were brutal - regardless of which DNS was being searched (Windows had to get the adaptor ID for the gateway for external DNS searches).

I couldn't help but think that since adaptors don't move around, and static IP addresses don't move that much more often, that Windows should be caching that information. And, it does. It just doesn't hold onto it very long.

And that is where the arp command comes in. With the -a switch, it displays the current ARP cache. But more imporantly, if you use the -s switch, you can set static mappings. It was a simple matter then to ping each of the permanently attached IP addresses, then, while all that info was in the ARP cache, dump the cache to a file (using arp -a redirected to the file), edit the resulting file to add arp -s to each line, and I now had a static arp mapping DOS batch file that could be run at boottime.

And, voila, no more of those "who has xx.xx.xx.xx"? query/ responses that were driving me crazy. Well, not exactly none - since the router still does them, but I have some ideas on that. But 90% are gone now.

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Windows Server Windows Server

I am running Windows Server 2003 (SE) on my server (#H), and I constantly screw up my systems because of that. Some time yesterday, I turned on routing. It seemed harmless enough, and I could presumably use it for VPN, instead of this system (#D). But shortly thereafter, I couldn't get to the server (H) from this system (D), though it could go the other way. Ping didn't work, nor did DNS.

I assummed that it was because I had been screwing around trying to get it to print to a print service. Or maybe, because when I tried to get the print servers stuff running, I installed NetBEUI drivers (from XP). I know, NetBEUI is obsolete - it was not supported in XP, and isn't even provided in Server 2003. But it does make running a small network easier - remote computers, etc. appear much more quickly using it.

In any case, after disabling NetBEUI, all the print drivers for print servers, and a bunch of other stuff, the problem still persisted. I tracked down most of the errors and warnings at boot time in my event logs, and fixed them. One or two of them required going into the MSFT knowledgebase.

And that was how I solved the problem - when I set the product to Server 2003 and typed in ping, the first of 19 or so responses was right on - the routing software was throwing away anything on local adaptors. Apparently, you can set filtering to allow pinging, and, presumably DNS, WINS, etc. But it was simpler to just turn the service off. And, voila, everything now works.

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Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Religious conservatives are ready for Mitt Romney Religious conservatives are ready for Mitt Romney

Slate Magazine in: Religious conservatives are ready for Mitt Romney acts surprised. After all,
And Mormons? Well, the last thing you'd expect evangelicals to do is support a candidate whose religion many of them consider to be a polygamous cult with practices and beliefs that derive from Freemasonry, not the New Testament.
Never mind that the LDS church considered polygamists to be apostate. But this is the first time I have heard the Freemasonry part. Indeed, to some extent, it may be easier for Evangelicals to get along with Mormons than Catholics, as the Mormon faith is descended from Protestantism (though adding a whole new Book of Mormon to the scriptures is a bit troublesome for Protestants, and, I think esp., Catholics).

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America the Beautiful America the Beautiful

This last weekend, I found myself, as I have about once a year about this time for the last 25 years, watching a football game, under perfect blue skies, with Pikes Peak in the background. 90% of the time, Homecoming weekend is gorgeous at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. Indeed, we joked with one friend in from Portland that this would likely be the last sun he saw for the next six months.

Which brings me to America The Beautiful. Growing up, I always felt that the song had some sort of mythical ties to Colorado, with the Purple Mountain Majesties towering over the Fruited Plains. It was only on the 100th anniversary of its composition, that I realized that Colorado really was at the center of it.

One hundred thirteen years ago, Katharine Lee Bates spent the summer teaching at Colorado College. She and a group of others took a wagon to the top of Pikes Peak for the 4th of July that year, and after returning to her room at CC, she wrote the original lyrics to the song.

So, no surprise that the song always felt like Colorado, and in particular Colorado Springs - that is where it was composed.

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Life Imitates 'Team America' Life Imitates 'Team America'

In Taranto's Best of the Web Today: Life Imitates 'Team America':
Hans Blix: "I'm sorry, but the U.N. must be firm with you. Let me see your whole palace, or else." Kim Jong Il: "Or else what?" Blix: "Or else we will be very, very angry with you, and we will write you a letter, telling you how angry we are."--dialogue from "Team America: World Police" (2004)

"The world lined up against North Korea on Monday for staging a nuclear test denounced even by key allies. . . . There was no talk of military action. But the Security Council quickly condemned North Korea's decision to flout a U.N. appeal to cancel the test after the reclusive regime announced it had set off an underground atomic explosion."--Associated Press, Oct. 9, 2006

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McCain: Time for Decisive Action on North Korea McCain: Time for Decisive Action on North Korea

Sen. McCain at Captain's Quarters: Time for Decisive Action on North Korea takes a hard line with North Korea, backing the President, and questioning the strategy of talking to talk under former President Clinton. One poster at Justoneminute pointed out that talking is a tactic, not a strategy, and the Clinton Administration never understood that diplomacy for its own sake is a waste of time and hot air (and JP-4).

One thing that I found interesting in Sen. McCain's post was his point that China is attempting to position itself as a superpower, and to succeed there, it has to be able to show that it can control the behavior of its allies or client states. So, no surprise that they appear to be livid about the claimed nuclear tests by North Korea.

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Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Perfect timing Perfect timing


Former Sec. of State Albright under Clinton toasting North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung within a day or two of North Korea's first (apparently unsuccessful) nuclear test.

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Monday, October 09, 2006

Defense Tech: NORK Nuclear Test: It's A Dud Defense Tech: NORK Nuclear Test: It's A Dud

Defense Tech thinks that: NORK Nuclear Test: It's A Dud based on a translation from the seismic output of the NORK test to known yields and their seismic output. Their estimate is somewhere between a couple hundred tons and one kiloton, and that is most likely a dud, given that the Nagasaki device was about 20 kilotons.

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North Korean Nukes North Korean Nukes

Instapundit.com today opined that:
North Korea usually does something attention-getting when Iran needs a distraction. So keep an eye on the mullahs, too.
If Reynolds is really right about this, I wonder if what they are trying to distract us from is the unrest right now due to the recent arrest of Mohammed Kazemeini Boroujerdi, an Iranian cleric. His supporters apparently clashed violently with police outside his house in Tehran.

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Sunday, October 08, 2006

Lockeed-Martin shaking up the space community Lockeed-Martin shaking up the space community

Transterrestrial Musings in: The Dinosaur Empire Strikes Back? takes a look at the effect that Lockheed-Martin's recent big wins combined with its intent to get its Atlas V rockets "human rated" is having on NASA, Boeing, and space travel in general.

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America at 300 Million America at 300 Million

Brookings Institute fellow Gregg Easterbrook inAmerica at 300 Million answers the obvious question with the subtitle: With the rising population about to pass that milestone, the future looks good for the United States.

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Steyn: Page scandal makes America look silly Steyn: Page scandal makes America look silly

Mark Steyn: : Page scandal makes America look silly is a very humorous look at the U.S., as only a Britt could do. It is hard to pick out my favorite quote, since so much was so good. But one of them is:
In London, sex scandals come along every other week. You name it, British parliamentarians do it: three-in-a-bed, auto-erotic asphyxiation, gay teen flagellation, getting your toes sucked while wearing the soccer kit of Chelsea Football Club. But at least at Westminster, sex scandals require actual sex. That the governing party of the world's only superpower could be felled by one creepy pervert's masturbatory e-mails and IMs is an event historians will marvel at. Granted that the Roman Empire in its death throes got hung up on gay sex, the American hyperpower seems set to be the first to collapse over gay non-sex.

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7-Eleven and Citgo 7-Eleven and Citgo

J.C. WATTS in: 7-Eleven and Citgo
The lead paragraphs in The Associated Press story out of Dallas were simple enough:

"7-Eleven dropped Venezuela-owned Citgo as its gasoline supplier after more than 20 years as part of a previously announced plan by the convenience store operator to launch its own brand of fuel.

"7-Eleven officials said that the decision was partly motivated by politics."
Hurrah for 7-11. Good politics and good business as a result. Gas is fungible, and they should be able to replace Citgo with another company that provides gas just as cheaply.

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Sex Scandals and Double Standards Sex Scandals and Double Standards

Charles Krauthammer in Sex Scandals and Double Standards points out that:
In 1983, Representative Gerry Studds, Democrat of Massachusetts, admitted to having sex with a 17-year-old male page. He was censured by the House of Representatives. During the vote, which he was compelled by House rules to be present for, Studds turned his back on the House to show his contempt for his colleagues' reprimand. He was not expelled from the Democratic Caucus. In fact, he was his party's nominee in the next election in his district--and the next five after that--winning reelection each time. He remained in the bosom of the Democratic Caucus in the House for the next 13 years.

In 2006, Republican congressman Mark Foley was found to have been engaged in lurid sexual Internet correspondence with a 16-year-old House page. There is no evidence yet of his ever laying a hand on anyone, let alone having sex with a page. When discovered, he immediately resigned. Had he not, says Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert, "I would have demanded his expulsion." Not only is Foley gone, but half the Republican House leadership has been tarred. Hastert himself came within an inch of political extinction.

Am I missing something? There seems to be an odd difference in the disposition of the two cases. By any measure, what Studds did was worse. By any measure, his treatment was infinitely more lenient.
I would only add that the "lurid sexual Internet correspondence" was apparently with a boy who was by then 18, and no longer a page. So, the difference is between actual sex with an actual page who was a minor at the time, as opposed to sexual email with a former page who was by then an adult.

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Friday, October 06, 2006

Bill Clinton and fighting terror Bill Clinton and fighting terror

Bill Clinton went on Fox a week ago to fight the perception that he had done nothing about fighting terror or catching OBL while in office. He made a big thing about the fact that they had a plan and the Bush Administration had not in their first eight months in office before 9/11.

But Mr. Clinton misses the point that it wasn't his intentions that were questioned, but rather what he accomplished. And in the end, his administration fostered an environment where Moslem terrorism was helped and encouraged, and not fought. Of course, one of the biggest achievement of his administration was the imposition of the Goerlich "wall" built by the DoJ, and Jamie Goerlich in particular (yes, the same one on the 9/11 Commission) between the criminal side of the FBI and everyone else. And, of course, we also shouldn't forget all those lost opportunities to kill or capture OBL.

Clinton counters with his plan. He and Richard Clarke had a plan. And it was in writing. And it looked very persuasive in writing.

But that isn't management, and that isn't governing. That is only the first step, and Clinton never took the second step of really implementing much of anything while in office. Mostly, he just didn't know how. I remember at the time marveling that he thought that he could just make plans and give orders, and they would somehow magically be carried out.

But of course, the government doesn't operate that way. Maybe at one time, 200 years ago it did. But now it has millions of entrenched bureacrats who cumulatively have far more experience doing whatever they want to do than Clinton ever had getting them to do what he wanted them to do.

Clinton may have given orders to the military, CIA, etc. for them to capture or kill OBL. But it never got very far down in the hierarchy. They would then report back on all the reasons that they were unable to do what he wanted done. And then he would be stymied. They were risk adverse, and had staffs who could think up excuses for not doing something far faster than Clinton and his aides could overcome them. So, no one went out on a limb and made the decision to take out the target when presented. Rather, they dithered, and missed the opportunity, and that was part of why they dithered - it was the low risk strategy.

Contrast this with how Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld runs the DoD now. He gives orders, and expects them to be carried out. He doesn't want excuses for failure to do so, but rather in that case, reasons not to fire those in charge of failing to do so. But he also tracks these things closely, and expects to be made aware early of anything that might interfere. It is a bigger sin with him to fail to keep him appraised when things interfere, than to actually try and fail, while keeping him in the loop.

The other part of Clinton's mismanagement was in his appointments. With a few exceptions (notably Treasury), most of those he picked for high office were picked for political reasons. He populated his cabinet by the numbers. For example, the AG was going to be a woman. Period. Never mind that he picked an incompetent prosecutor from Florida with little experience running a large department.

Just as bad as the incompetent politicos he put in his cabinet, the next rung down was populated by liberal activists like Jamie Goerlich. That case was symbolic of Clinton's problems. A very effective liberal activist is put (most likely by Hillary) below the weak department head appointed for political reasons, and she and the other liberal activists run that and the other departments. Clinton might give his cabinet orders, but they were incapable of carrying them out, being totally outclassed by the layer of management right below them who had their own agendae. And the career bureaucrats under them had their own agendae too, which were often even more at odds with the directions from the top.

So, I say to Bill Clinton and his plans to combat terrorism: BFD. That and a couple of dollars will buy you coffee at Starbucks. He fails to this day to realize that the "plan" is only one step in the process. Just as importantly is installing competent managers below him and holding them accountable for failing to follow his orders. He did neither.

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The Economic Debate: Fear vs. Corruption The Economic Debate: Fear vs. Corruption

Robert Borsage, co-director of the Campaign for America's Future and board member of the Progressive Majority in The Economic Debate: Fear vs. Corruption manages to combine a large amount of liberal perceived wisdom and canards in a very short space. My favorite line was:
Bush can't govern worth spit, but he does know how to run campaigns. Polls suggest that his late-summer fear offensive helped rally disgruntled Republicans. His tax offensive is designed for broader appeal to families already struggling to make ends meet.
Borsage doesn't bother to list the Democratic presidents who have governed better. Indeed, he is silent about Clinton's gross ineptitude while in the office, somehow conflating feeling strongly about issues and actually getting anything done. And Carter?

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Platte Canyon and South Park Platte Canyon and South Park

I wonder how many have figured out that Platte Canyon HS is in Park County, and the county seat is in Fairplay, in South Park. Yes, the same South Park in the TV series. Every time I drive through Fairplay, I note the three schools sitting on the east side of the street right together, K-12 on a campus significantly smaller than that of most suburban high schools. This is the real South Park school that the miscreants in the series would be attending.

When you are driving up U.S. 285, you have two choices in Fairplay, either take CO 9 over Hoosier Pass into Breckenridge, and hence up to Frisco, Silverthorne, and, importantly to me, Dillon. Or, keep on 285 over Kenosha Pass, then down by Bailey to Denver. I rarely do the later any more, since the 285 corrider has turned into a zoo over the last couple of decades as it has turned into rural bedroom community for Denver and environs (Fairplay on the other hand is a bedroom community for Breckenridge, etc.) It now has thousands of moderate to very expensive houses on a acre or more off in the thick Ponderosa pines. Kenosha Pass should be quite gorgeous still, since it is fairly low and has a lot of Aspens on the top.

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Foley Flap Highlights Dems' Hypocrisy Foley Flap Highlights Dems' Hypocrisy

Jonah Goldberg at RCP: Foley Flap Highlights Dems' Hypocrisy points out that in the end, the Foley situation is going to backfire for the Democrats. Gerry Studds served for another 13 years as a Democrat in the House after having had actual sex with male pages under 18, as opposed to vaguely suggesting it over the Internet with an 18 year old male page, as Foley apparently did. Just like the zero tolerance shown Clarence Thomas and John Towers turned into compliance when Clinton was caught doing much, much, worse, the same is likely to happen with the Democrats this time.

In the end, the difference is not that both sides don't have sinners in their midst, but rather that the Democrats tolerate them, while the Republicans don't, quickly turning on and ousting them. Not surprisingly, Tom DeLay resigned from the House in the face of a highly questionable political indictment in the People's Republic of Austin, while Wm. Jefferson is still holding his seat, after being caught with almost $100k of bribes in his freezer.

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Wednesday, October 04, 2006

Mothering in the UK Mothering in the UK

Two recent articles on mothering from the UK. First, we find that maybe breast feeding doesn't help with IQ, but rather that smarter mothers breast feed, and also have smarter kids, i.e., correlation and not causation.

But then, on the same day, the European Court of Justice determined that companies could discriminate against mothers who take off work to have kids on the basis of pay for length of service.

I guess this means less breast feeding since it doesn't necessarily result in a higher IQ for the kids, while the mothers now have more of a financial incentive to go back to work earlier. As if this were needed in the UK:
The UK has one of the lowest breastfeeding rates in Europe - almost a third of women in England and Wales never try to breastfeed, compared with just 2% in Sweden.
Of course,
The World Health Organization recommends that babies should be breastfed for at least the first two years.
Ignoring that this is impractical for most women in First World countries from a financial point of view.

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Monday, October 02, 2006

Look and Feel of blog (#4b) Look and Feel of blog (#4b)

Not really a change in look and feel, just a small programming change. I figured that I was searching the post DIVs for ID a bit, and optimized that, in preparation for publishing how to perform navigation.

In my previous version, I had an array of post DIVs (PostDivs) indexed from zero(0) to the number of DIVs -1. I used that for navigation. Thus, if I were in post#4, next would be #5, previous would be #3, first would be #0, and last would be PostDivs.length-1.

But how do you get to the post# within the PostDivs array? As noted earlier, I use ONMOUSEOVER attached to the Post DIVs to save off the DIV ID for later use. Then, when I need to find next, previous, etc., I look that ID up.

In a previous implementation, I used the getElementById builtin function to do this. It worked just fine. But it was a simple matter to set up a reverse array, indexed by ID instead of post#. I used tabIndex attribute in the DIV element to store the index, and the ID was already stored in the id attribute of each post DIV element. Thus, it was simple to go back and forth between the two modes of accessing the post DIV elements. The two arrays are:
PostDivs[index] - post DIVs by index
PostDivIDs[pid] - post DIVs by ID
Thus, the global variables are:
var PostClassNone = "Post-None";
var PostClassFoot = "Post-Foot";
var PostClassChop = "Post-Chop";
var PostClassFull = "Post-Full";
var PostGlobalDiv = "Post-Div";
var PostDivs = null;
var PostDivIDs = null;
var PostDivID = "";
The central code is:
function SetGlobalDivs()
{
if(!PostDivs)
  {
  PostDivIDs = new Array(0);
  PostDivs = document.getElementsByName(PostGlobalDiv);
  if(!PostDivs.length)
    {//IE Kludge
    PostDivs = new Array(0);
    var divs = document.getElementsByTagName("DIV");
    for (var i=0; i<divs.length; i++)
      if (divs[i].name == PostGlobalDiv)
        PostDivs.push(divs[i]);
    }
  for (var i=0; i<PostDivs.length; i++)
    {
    var div = PostDivs[i];
    PostDivIDs[div.id] = div;
    div.tabIndex = i;
    }
  }
return(PostDivs);
}
function FindDivIndex(divid)
{
var div;
if (div = FindDiv(divid))
    return(div.tabIndex);
else return(-1);
}
function FindDiv(divid)
{
SetGlobalDivs();
return(PostDivIDs[divid]);
}
The navigation functions are:
function GoNext()
{
var index = FindDivIndex(PostDivID);
if (index < 0)
  GoToDiv(0);
else if (index<PostDivs.length-1)
  GoToDiv(index+1);
}
function GoPrev()
{
var index = FindDivIndex(PostDivID);
if (index<0)
  GoToDiv(index-1);
}
function GoCopyright()
{
var div = document.getElementById("footer");
if ((div) && (div.offsetTop>0))
  self.scrollTo(0,div.offsetTop);
else self.scrollTo(0,document.offsetHeight+document.offsetTop);
}
function GoUp(){};
function GoTop() {GoToDiv(-1)};
function GoFirst(){GoToDiv(0)};
function GoLast() {GoToDiv(99999)};
function GoToDiv(index)
{
SetGlobalDivs();
if (index < 0)
  {
  self.scrollTo(0,0);
  PostDivID = "";
  }
else {
  var length = PostDivs.length;
  if (index >= length)
    index = length-1;
  var post = PostDivs[index];
  PostDivID = post.id;
  if (post.offsetTop>0)
    self.scrollTo(0,post.offsetTop);
  }
}
function SetDiv(divid)
{
PostDivID = divid;
}
The local display mode functions are:
function PostFull(postid){SetPostType(postid,PostClassFull)};
function PostChop(postid){SetPostType(postid,PostClassChop)};
function PostFoot(postid){SetPostType(postid,PostClassFoot)};
function PostNone(postid){SetPostType(postid,PostClassNone)};
function SetPostType(postid,postclass)
{
var post = FindDiv(postid);
if (post)
  {
  post.className = postclass;
  if (post.offsetTop>0)
    self.scrollTo(0,post.offsetTop);
  }
}
The global display mode functions are:
function GlobalPostFull(){SetGlobalType(PostClassFull)};
function GlobalPostChop(){SetGlobalType(PostClassChop)};
function GlobalPostFoot(){SetGlobalType(PostClassFoot)};
function GlobalPostNone(){SetGlobalType(PostClassNone)};
function SetGlobalType(postclass)
{
SetGlobalDivs();
for (var i=0; i<PostDivs.length; i++)
  {
  PostDivs[i].className = postclass;
  }
}

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Sunday, October 01, 2006

Jack Kelly: Slanted intelligence Jack Kelly: Slanted intelligence

Jack Kelly: Slanted intelligence: Democrats and leakers tell only half of the story about Iraq and jihadists points out that even in the case of the testimony of the two generals and colonel that were trumpeted as proof positive that the Administration was failing in Iraq, the MSM, notably the usual perps: the NYT, WaPo, and LAT, ignored the damming half of their testimony that a pullout now from Iraq would plunge the country into chaos. And the author also points out that these newspapers also grossly misled with their characterization of the previously leaked and now declassified NIE.

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Criminalizing Politics Criminalizing Politics

Fred Barns looks at the Criminalizing Politics where "The persecution of Karl Rove, Ken Tomlinson, and Scott Bloch continues a sorry Washington tradition". He points out that:
Over the years, a pattern has developed in the criminalization process. It has seven stages that lead, at best, to a sullied reputation, at worst, to jail time and financial ruin. Once the process gets started, it gains momentum. It's almost impossible to stop. That's especially true if a criminal investigation, rather than an inquiry into civil charges, has begun. Investigators, especially inspector generals in government agencies, are eager to find some wrongdoing. Otherwise, they may fail to satisfy those who asked for the investigation in the first place, often members of Congress.
The stages are:
  1. Commission of a conservative act (or, in the case of Rove, just being effective).

  2. The Accusation.

  3. The Investigation.

  4. Silence - typically mandated by the attorneys, which gives the opponents a clear field.

  5. Isolation - few defenders step forward, being concerned that they will be drawin in.

  6. Finding of fault - no matter how small, taken as vindication of the charges.

  7. The Taint - even if acquited, it remains.
Barns looks at each of these steps as it has affected those three men.

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