This thread is for stupid questions that don't deserve their own individual threads

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Halycon said:
Is there a term for how people behave differently depending on their situations. Like say, their behavior at work versus their behavior at home versus their behavior online? It seems like one of those concepts that would have an easy identifier. It's hard to look for papers discussing this exact topic.
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You might be interested in this article from NY Times. I'll quote it here:

October 20, 2009
Op-Ed Columnist
Where the Wild Things Are
By DAVID BROOKS

In Homer’s poetry, every hero has a trait. Achilles is angry. Odysseus is cunning. And so was born one picture of character and conduct.

In this view, what you might call the philosopher’s view, each of us has certain ingrained character traits. An honest person will be honest most of the time. A compassionate person will be compassionate.

These traits, as they say, go all the way down. They shape who we are, what we choose to do and whom we befriend. Our job is to find out what traits of character we need to become virtuous.

But, as Kwame Anthony Appiah, a Princeton philosopher, notes in his book “Experiments in Ethics,” this philosopher’s view of morality is now being challenged by a psychologist’s view. According to the psychologist’s view, individuals don’t have one thing called character.

The psychologists say this because a century’s worth of experiments suggests that people’s actual behavior is not driven by permanent traits that apply from one context to another. Students who are routinely dishonest at home are not routinely dishonest at school. People who are courageous at work can be cowardly at church. People who behave kindly on a sunny day may behave callously the next day when it is cloudy and they are feeling glum. Behavior does not exhibit what the psychologists call “cross-situational stability.”

The psychologists thus tend to gravitate toward a different view of conduct. In this view, people don’t have one permanent thing called character. We each have a multiplicity of tendencies inside, which are activated by this or that context. As Paul Bloom of Yale put it in an essay for The Atlantic last year, we are a community of competing selves. These different selves “are continually popping in and out of existence. They have different desires, and they fight for control — bargaining with, deceiving, and plotting against one another.”

The philosopher’s view is shaped like a funnel. At the bottom, there is a narrow thing called character. And at the top, the wide ways it expresses itself. The psychologist’s view is shaped like an upside-down funnel. At the bottom, there is a wide variety of unconscious tendencies that get aroused by different situations. At the top, there is the narrow story we tell about ourselves to give coherence to life.

The difference is easy to recognize on the movie screen. Most movies embrace the character version. The hero is good and conquers evil. Spike Jonze’s new movie adaptation of “Where the Wild Things Are” illuminates the psychological version.

At the beginning of the movie, young Max is torn by warring impulses he cannot control or understand. Part of him loves and depends upon his mother. But part of him rages against her.

In the midst of turmoil, Max falls into a primitive, mythical realm with a community of Wild Things. The Wild Things contain and re-enact different pieces of his inner frenzy. One of them feels unimportant. One throws a tantrum because his love has been betrayed. They embody his different tendencies.

Many critics have noted that, in the movie version, the Wild Things are needlessly morose and whiney. But in one important way, the movie is better than the book. In the book, Max effortlessly controls the Wild Things by taming them with “the magic trick of staring into all their yellow eyes without blinking once.”

In the movie, Max wants to control the Wild Things. The Wild Things in turn want to be controlled. They want him to build a utopia for them where they won’t feel pain. But in the movie, Max fails as king. He lacks the power to control his Wild Things. The Wild Things come to recognize that he isn’t really a king, and maybe there are no such things as kings.

In the philosopher’s picture, the good life is won through direct assault. Heroes use reason to separate virtue from vice. Then they use willpower to conquer weakness, fear, selfishness and the dark passions lurking inside. Once they achieve virtue they do virtuous things.

In the psychologist’s version, the good life is won indirectly. People have only vague intuitions about the instincts and impulses that have been implanted in them by evolution, culture and upbringing. There is no easy way to command all the wild things jostling inside.

But it is possible to achieve momentary harmony through creative work. Max has all his Wild Things at peace when he is immersed in building a fort or when he is giving another his complete attention. This isn’t the good life through heroic self-analysis but through mundane, self-forgetting effort, and through everyday routines.

Appiah believes these two views of conduct are in conversation, not conflict. But it does seem we’re in one of those periods when words like character fall into dispute and change their meaning.
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23kvnn5.jpg


Is David Haye as fucking doomed as I hope he is ?
 
parrotbeak said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role
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idahoblue said:
See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona
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Thank you, this is more or less what I was thinking of.
You might be interested in this article from NY Times. I'll quote it here:
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YES! This is exactly what I wanted, thank you very much.
_________________________________________________

Another question, more or less unrelated, I know of a quote that goes something like this:
I don't cite people because I couldn't care less that they arrived at the same thoughts as I did.
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The way it was written was very verbose and gave the impression that the writer wasn't from any recent decade. If anyone knows the exact quote or who said it, please let me know!
 
Halycon said:
Another question, more or less unrelated, I know of a quote that goes something like this:

The way it was written was very verbose and gave the impression that the writer wasn't from any recent decade. If anyone knows the exact quote or who said it, please let me know!
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Wittgenstein strongly felt, and I believe he said, something really rather close to that, but he would not have been verbose in expressing it. The opposite, most likely.
 
Salazar said:
Wittgenstein strongly felt, and I believe he said, something really rather close to that, but he would not have been verbose in expressing it. The opposite, most likely.
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Yes, I remember the first name was Ludwig. I think he's the one. Although, yes, the quote was quite terse.

Thank you. I think I can find the exact quote on my own.

GAF knows all!
 
It's funny that he was, initially at least, under the tutelage and care of Russell—someone so voluminously concerned with the history of philosophy—and he remained so radically indifferent to it. Maybe profitably indifferent to it.

Moral of story: Wittgenstein was badass.
 
Salazar said:
It's funny that he was, initially at least, under the tutelage and care of Russell—someone so voluminously concerned with the history of philosophy—and he remained so radically indifferent to it. Maybe profitably indifferent to it.

Moral of story: Wittgenstein was badass.
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Just about at the time of the Armistice his father had died, and Wittgenstein inherited the bulk of his fortune. He came to the conclusion, however, that money is a nuisance to a philosopher, so he gave every penny of it to is brother and sisters. Consequently he was unable to pay the fare from Vienna to the Hague, and was far too proud to accept it from me. ... He must have suffered during this time hunger and considerable privation, though it was very seldom that he could be induced to say anything about it, as he had the pride of Lucifer. At last his sister decided to build a house, and employed him as an architect. This gave him enough to eat for several years, at the end of which he returned to Cambridge as a don...
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Wow this guy is amazing :lol
 
Read Ray Monk's biography. It is astonishing. Harrowing, yes, because he spent great stretches of his life in moods of profound anxiousness, pain, and self-doubt, but it is a wonderful story.
 
Salazar said:
Read Ray Monk's biography. It is astonishing. Harrowing, yes, because he spent great stretches of his life in moods of profound anxiousness, pain, and self-doubt, but it is a wonderful story.
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I'll pick it up the next time I'm at B&N.

Also, I'm having trouble finding the exact quote, do you have any idea where exactly it might be? Probably in an interview or something?
 
Im buying my girl friend a new PC and I need some help.

1) Is Windows 7 any good for gaming? mostly for steam games like TF2. Or should I get Vista?

2) How do I know if I need a 32 or a 64 bit operating system?
 
Halycon said:
I'll pick it up the next time I'm at B&N.

Also, I'm having trouble finding the exact quote, do you have any idea where exactly it might be? Probably in an interview or something?
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I'll have a think and a rummage and get back to you. An instance that reflects the attitude is the rejection of his BA thesis by the examiners at Cambridge because, being a characteristically spare assertion of his propositions, it lacked the scholarly attributions: the acknowledgments that this idea had come from there, and that such a thought had been passed from so-and-so to so-and-so. Wittgenstein raged about it, calling the decision stupid and beastly.
 
Salazar said:
I'll have a think and a rummage and get back to you. An instance that reflects the attitude is the rejection of his BA thesis by the examiners at Cambridge because, being a characteristically spare assertion of his propositions, it lacked the scholarly attributions: the acknowledgments that this idea had come from there, and that such a thought had been passed from so-and-so to so-and-so. Wittgenstein raged about it, calling the decision stupid and beastly.
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I'll look into that. thanks.

Im buying my girl friend a new PC and I need some help.

1) Is Windows 7 any good for gaming? mostly for steam games like TF2. Or should I get Vista?

2) How do I know if I need a 32 or a 64 bit operating system?
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1) I've used Windows 7 RC for a few months now with no problems. Games I played include Dragon Age, WoW, War/Starcraft, EVE Online, TF2, Heroes of Newerth, GGPO, SFIV, League of Legends, Dragonica and Guild Wars.

2) The gist of the debate is, a 64-bit OS is required to take advantage of anything more than 4GB of RAM, but not all applications have 64-bit architecture. If you have no intention of going beyond that limit or upgrading in the future, then 32-bit is fine since most applications support it whereas there are a few (though rare nowadays except for very old software) that does not support 64-bit. But practically speaking, there is no longer any reason to stay with 32-bit unless you're very dependent on those old programs.
 
fifasnipe2224 said:
Im buying my girl friend a new PC and I need some help.

1) Is Windows 7 any good for gaming? mostly for steam games like TF2. Or should I get Vista?

2) How do I know if I need a 32 or a 64 bit operating system?
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1) There isn't going to be a huge (or even) noticeable difference to be honest. However, Windows 7 is a much better usage experience so get it anyways.

2) Generally, if you're going to have 4 gb or more ram anything more than 3.5 gigs, get for 64 bit. My advice though? there's really no reason to go 32 bit now.
 
tenritsu said:
1) There isn't going to be a huge (or even) noticeable difference to be honest. However, Windows 7 is a much better usage experience so get it anyways.

2) Generally, if you're going to have 4 gb or more ram anything more than 3.5 gigs, get for 64 bit. My advice though? there's really no reason to go 32 bit now.
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here is what im thinking of getting

CPU intel core 2 duo E8400 3Ghz 64bit
Hard Drive 1TB
MOTHERBOARD Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2H Intel G41 Chipset with PCIe slot DDR2 SATA/IDE MB w/ Built-in X4500 Graphic Core 4
MEMORY 4GB 2GBx2 PC6400 DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory Corsair or Major Brand
VIDEO NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT 1GB 16X PCI Express -23 Major Brand Powered by NVIDIA

Any advice?
 
faridmon said:
how can i make Chinese or Japanese characters spear? it only appears in boxes and numbers
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Depends what program you're trying to do this in. In Firefox you can go to View -> Character Encoding and force it to use another set.
 
Hopefully someone can help me with this. How are you supposed to pronounce caramel? Like care-uh-mel? care-mel? car-mul?

I've heard it so many different ways. Are they accepted variants, or is there one way for it to be pronounced?
 
faridmon said:
how can i make Chinese or Japanese characters spear? it only appears in boxes and numbers
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In Windows, you need to install the IME for all languages you want to appear. For XP and below, that requires the install disc.
 
At the end of Drunken Master II, what is Jackie Chan drinking in the factory that spews fire? Does it contain alcohol, I feel dumb for not knowing what it is.
 
Why do attractive girls do porn? I mean, I understand the ones that look like corpses doing it.
But girls like these........

toriblacknathtu7.jpg


I mean, what's stopping them from blowing a producer of tv shows and getting a sitcom or something. It's not like doing a sitcom needs immense talent does it? Wouldn't having sex to get a job be better than having sex as a job?
 
Is there a way to get Amazon to sort search results by the new item price? Using the options at the left I can tell it I want new items, and items that qualify for Free Super Saver Shipping, but if some diphole is selling a poor condition item for 1 cent it will still come up first when choosing to order things by "Price: Low to High".
saiftk said:
Why do attractive girls do porn? I mean, I understand the ones that look like corpses doing it.
But girls like these........

I mean, what's stopping them from blowing a producer of tv shows and getting a sitcom or something. It's not like doing a sitcom needs immense talent does it? Wouldn't having sex to get a job be better than having sex as a job?
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Supply of attractive girls is higher than the number of horny sitcom producers.
sazabirules said:
At the end of Drunken Master II, what is Jackie Chan drinking in the factory that spews fire? Does it contain alcohol, I feel dumb for not knowing what it is.
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Wikipedia says it's "industrial alcohol".
cosmicblizzard said:
Why do certain poster's avatars disappear sometimes and all it says is "_____'s Avatar"? Is that a problem with the page loading?
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Yeah, probably the browser trying to load too many images at once and giving up on some that don't come quick enough. So it shows the alt text instead.
 
fifasnipe2224 said:
here is what im thinking of getting

CPU intel core 2 duo E8400 3Ghz 64bit
Hard Drive 1TB
MOTHERBOARD Gigabyte GA-G41M-ES2H Intel G41 Chipset with PCIe slot DDR2 SATA/IDE MB w/ Built-in X4500 Graphic Core 4
MEMORY 4GB 2GBx2 PC6400 DDR2/800 Dual Channel Memory Corsair or Major Brand
VIDEO NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT 1GB 16X PCI Express -23 Major Brand Powered by NVIDIA

Any advice?
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Thats basically the PC I built myself back in February, and have been using Windows 7 on since (First the beta, now the RC)

I went w/ the 64bit, because newegg.com had a sale on RAM, and I was able to get 8GBs for almost nothing..

First thing I did to test my PC, was play the most GRAPHIC INTENSIVE game available at the time (Still is), CRYSIS, w/ all the graphic settings pushed to the MAX, it ran like butter (thats a good thing!)

The E8400 is a sweet CPU, and GIGABYTE makes a great (and colorful) Motherboard..

Enjoy ! (and go pick up CRYSIS somewhere for cheap, and impress your girlfriend the first 5 mins powering up her new PC !)
 
I need some TV/DVD set up help, I'll try to be as clear as possible.

My mom has a Sony KDL-52xbr4 TV and a Samsung DVD/VCR combo, V9650


I am trying to hook the DVD player up to her TV via HDMI.


Here is what I am doing:

I have it set up via HDMI as well as Composite. I go to video 1 on the tv, use the dvd remote to set the tv to "Alt Output" HDMI.

This makes the tv screen go blank, presumably searching for an HDMI signal?? So I then change the input on the TV to HDMI 3, the input that the cord is inserted in. I get no signal. The manual says to press the HD button on the front of the DVD player until I see a signal. Nothing happens. I go back to video 1 and there is still no signal from the composite source. To get the signal to go back to composite I power down the DVD player and it boots back up in Composite mode.

I have tried this multiple times with multiple HDMI cables and HDMI inputs 1-3.

The only thing I can think of is that the DVD player is set to 480i in the DVD menu under the HDMI output setting. Now I have tried all I can to change this setting but the option is greyed out and I can not adjust. The manual is no help in this regard. If I could change the HDMI output setting I should be able to get a signal through HDMI correct? Any body have any idea how to do this on this model DVD player? I've googled and googled to no avail.

If I left anything out or anybody needs any more info to help answer this problem then I'll try and be here to answer. Thanks for any help.

EDIT: I still can't get a signal through HDMI but for some reason the dvd player now lists 720p under HDMI though I don't know why.

Also could it be because the DVD/VCR combo is from 2006 and the HDMI cables are new-ish ones bought from Monoprice? 3 bought within the last year? I remember reading (maybe on neogaf) about newer HDMI cables being 1.3 or 1.4 or something like that and being incompatible with older HDMI outs?
 
Can someone recommend me a decent digital voice recorder? I need to record an upcoming press conference so I want something that has a fairly sensitive mic. I can't imagine my old tape recorder will do the trick.
 
can i hook 2 120watt speaker togther with 2 150watt speakers (both 16ohm) in my guitarbox???

or what does the 120watt rever to? maximum watt they take? or watt they produce under some standart circumstances?
 
ckohler said:
In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, why does Kirk call Kirstie Alley's character "Mr. Saavik", when she is female?
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My guess is it was meant to be another future equality thing. If women are wearing pants on the ship, they can be Mr., too. Just something they didn't really stick with.

Searching Google, though, people at Yahoo Answers seem to think it's a rank thing, like how "Sir" can be used regardless of gender.
 
This isn't a question, but anyway...

I was random-paging wikipedia and got Jesus the Christ followed by Bethlehem. I'm a bit scared now.
 
I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the problem but I'll include this as extra information. Ok, the house I live in has the wireless router access set-up so that you're MAC address has to be registered on the router to connect to it and thus the internet.

The problem is whenever anyone in the house views a page with lots of pictures (i.e. high traffic) the internet stops working and the modem and router have to be restarted.

Is this is a problem with the router or modem or with my ISP (Virgin Broadband)?

It's such a pain, but fortunately you can disable images showing in GAF or I would face constant disconnects.

Thanks.
 
OgTheClever said:
I don't think this is a stupid question but it's probably not worth making a thread over.

Basically, why do Japanese games use some English text? The best example of this is that the RPGs usually seem to use HP and MP, even though the rest of it is in the original language. Also I was just watching a video of Demon's Souls (Jap Version) and it came up with 'You Died' in English.
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You know how books, movies and other stuff sometimes use French, Latin and various other foreign languages to look "neat" or "exotic"? Well, in Japan, they use English words like that.
 
Hmm, one of my friends thinks that I like her. She hasn't said it but I'm pretty sure that's what's going on with her because she's been acting weird around me lately. She's my female best friend. I know it's odd to make that distinction but I have two people I consider my best friends and she's one of them. I thought we could just talk about it but as I mentioned, she's acting weird around me. She'll blow up my phone all day trying to get a hold of me but when we finally get an opportunity to be alone together she backs out of it and flakes - I know her well enough to know when she's lying to me. I don't like her in that way but I don't know how to approach this because it's just... awkward. I'm not attracted to her in that way for so many reasons and I don't know how to say that without sounding like a dick. For starters, I don't know where she got the idea that I liked her because we've been friends for a while now and it's never been an issue before and we've even talked about our "relationship" in the past.

What should I do?

My other best friend is a guy who tried to sleep with me a week or so ago - it's a very strange time for me indeed; I can't trust my best friends and thus have no one who I can talk to about this.
 
Has anyone hear ever purchased a music video from iTunes, and converted it to just audio? If so, how's the audio quality.

I realize this sounds ridiculous, but I'm after the "single" version of a certain song and iTunes only has the (much lamer) album version - but they have the video, which is of the single version. I'd be willing to pay the extra 50 cents if it worked.

Make any sense?
 
B!TCH said:
My other best friend is a guy who tried to sleep with me a week or so ago - it's a very strange time for me indeed; I can't trust my best friends and thus have no one who I can talk to about this.
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@_@


:lol
 
bjork said:
Invite them both over, initiate a 3-way, then slip quietly out of the bed and let them find one another?
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Huh?? Real advice please :\

megashock5 said:
Has anyone hear ever purchased a music video from iTunes, and converted it to just audio? If so, how's the audio quality.

I realize this sounds ridiculous, but I'm after the "single" version of a certain song and iTunes only has the (much lamer) album version - but they have the video, which is of the single version. I'd be willing to pay the extra 50 cents if it worked.

Make any sense?
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You could rip the audio with a program like audacity. The quality won't be the best but it's better than nothing. You could save money by recording the audio from a site like YouTube.
 
B!TCH said:
You could rip the audio with a program like audacity. The quality won't be the best but it's better than nothing. You could save money by recording the audio from a site like YouTube.
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Thought of that, but I'm looking for better quality.

Regional restrictions on music are beyond stupid. I could download it from a number of places if I lived in the UK, but since I live in the US I'm not allowed.

B.S.
 
I like an energy drink called Java Monster (Mean bean).

Since it's an enery drink, it has to be bad for me. But I can't figure out exactly why.

Does anybody here know?
 
bjork said:
Take out the 3-way part and set them up with each other?
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Why are you doing this to me? :(

Protip: my male friend is gay. He isn't into girls and even if he was he wouldn't want to date my female friend.
 
B!TCH said:
Why are you doing this to me? :(

Protip: my male friend is gay. He isn't into girls and even if he was he wouldn't want to date my female friend.
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Maybe he's bi and just doesn't know it yet. This question probably deserved its own thread, sir.
 
B!TCH said:
Why are you doing this to me? :(

Protip: my male friend is gay. He isn't into girls and even if he was he wouldn't want to date my female friend.
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He wouldn't want to date her, and you wouldn't want to date her.

Poor girl is an ugly one, isn't she. :(

BTW, are you bi? Because otherwise him trying to sleep with you has to be one of the most awkward (or traumatizing?) experiences in your life. Did he just jump you? :lol
 
bjork said:
Maybe he's bi and just doesn't know it yet. This question probably deserved its own thread, sir.
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:lol

I know he has dated girls but he doesn't like my female friend in that way. In fact he always asks me if I like her and if I'm "okay" with other guys hitting on her. I know how this sounds but trust me.

Chrono said:
He wouldn't want to date her, and you wouldn't want to date her.

Poor girl is an ugly one, isn't she. :(
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She's not ugly! She has an abrasive, "alpha female" personality though and that's very off-putting to a lot of people apparently.

BTW, are you bi? Because otherwise him trying to sleep with you has to be one of the most awkward (or traumatizing?) experiences in your life. Did he just jump you? :lol
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Ya, well I'll put it this way, I found out for sure that I wasn't even a little bit bi when he tried to jump me. It was awkward but I wasn't mad or upset about it. I would like to talk about it but it's not something you can just casually bring up in conversation.
 
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