Tories To Waste Billons On New Fighter Jets

Omicron

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Jul 28, 2010
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How much do you think a flag-plucking expedition would cost?
The guys are supposed to be out there on patrol *anyway*, so it's not going to cost one dime more than is already being spent.

And I don't know how many flags they've dropped, but at the very least it wouldn't hurt to be ready in case they *do* start pushing their way around the arctic with stunts like that.

Russians take it as a political-geographical fact that the arctic-ocean is de-facto theirs, and when the ice-cap finishes melting - not too far off at the current rate - and people start looking to do deep-sea drilling etc., it's going to get busy up there, and F-35s aren't the way to go.
 

lone wolf

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Nov 25, 2006
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The guys are supposed to be out there on patrol *anyway*, so it's not going to cost one dime more than is already being spent.

And I don't know how many flags they've dropped, but at the very least it wouldn't hurt to be ready in case they *do* start pushing their way around the arctic with stunts like that.

Russians take it as a political-geographical fact that the arctic-ocean is de-facto theirs, and when the ice-cap finishes melting - not too far off at the current rate - and people start looking to do deep-sea drilling etc., it's going to get busy up there, and F-35s aren't the way to go.


Just out of curiosity, what business is it you're in?
 

EagleSmack

Hall of Fame Member
Feb 16, 2005
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As a matter of fact ... I can

Dang.... tooooooo cold for me!


I can't believe I watched the whole thing...

And I can't believe I am actually looking forwards to the "Next Exciting Episode"... "The Fur Pirates". :)

They can plant as many flags at the bottom of the ocean as they want to but when Ivan throttles into our airspace and sees a couple maple leafs on his ass then he knows we arent fuc*ing around.
They try it all the time,see how far they can go.

Well your new fleet of blimps are gonna scare the vodka out of Ivan if some CanCon folks get their way.
 

Kakato

Time Out
Jun 10, 2009
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The guys are supposed to be out there on patrol *anyway*, so it's not going to cost one dime more than is already being spent.

And I don't know how many flags they've dropped, but at the very least it wouldn't hurt to be ready in case they *do* start pushing their way around the arctic with stunts like that.

Russians take it as a political-geographical fact that the arctic-ocean is de-facto theirs, and when the ice-cap finishes melting - not too far off at the current rate - and people start looking to do deep-sea drilling etc., it's going to get busy up there, and F-35s aren't the way to go.

I think they have more important things to do on patrol then picking up flags which would cost some big dollars above what a regular patrol costs(think logistics)dude.

Dont worry about the ice caps melting either,thats a long way off,not in your lifetime and there isnt a thing anyone can do about it,it's called nature.

The fact is we will have another ice age,then it will be tropical,then there will be another ice age,just like has been happening for millions of years now.
 

Omicron

Privy Council
Jul 28, 2010
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I think they have more important things to do on patrol then picking up flags which would cost some big dollars above what a regular patrol costs(think logistics)dude.
The cost of operating one sub for a mission like that would be about the same as the cost of operating that one sub as part of a war-game exercise, so it's nothing extremely out of the ordinary compared to other things we'll spend money on (like $16 billion for some fighter-bombers that we don't really need), and if you could know how silly the game of diplomacy can get, doing something like follow around a ship that's dropping flags into the water to sink to the ocean floor and picking them up is *exactly* the kind of inane-ness that can happen in the world of diplomacy...

... And I am *not* trying to deflate you. I'm just trying to look at things on a geopolitical level that's more realistic than who-ever's thinking it was to figure it was a great idea to spend so many billions on fighter-bombers we don't need.

That's *so* the kind of thinking I used to see *some* of the the social ladder-climbing type of MBAs do at some of the financial institutions I've dealt with.

Ever notice how right-wing governments will be the ones to squawk about "financial responsibility", yet they tend to pork it up more than anyone. For example, when the Republicans took over congress in 1994, there were 1,300 projects earmarked for member's districts. By 2005 that had jumped to 14,000. With Republics in charge of the house, they would appropriate *more* money than the president asked for.

And now we're going to spend $16 billion on fighter-bombers that we don't need when I know school-districts that are cutting their kids' athletics programs because they can't afford the uniforms nor the buses to move them around to compete against other schools... programs that could be saved for a few tens of thousands of dollars... a microscopic speck of compared to the cost of those bombers. That is just so wrong.

I have American cousins who think it's boiling down to a plutocratic class war between the majority who want taxes spent on governing to make the life of everyone better versus the plutocrats who think life is about a competition between themselves over who gets to take over the world, such that taxes are to them just one of the tools they use to pay for their competitiveness. Take it or leave it... it's just curious to hear words like that coming out of the mouths of red-state cousins.
Dont worry about the ice caps melting either,thats a long way off,not in your lifetime and there isnt a thing anyone can do about it,it's called nature.
Hmm... well... twenty years ago the early alerters about global warming were saying that the ice-cap might disappear by 2130. Now they're saying that it might be as soon as 2030... just 20 years off... it's sped up that much.

It has to do with how water is dark and absorbs sunlight to hold it as heat, while the white ice reflects sunlight back into space. Turns out there's a positive feedback cycle that happens when there's enough dark water around the white ice for the water to hold the heat from sunlight, thus melting more ice, and around and around it goes.

Then the really freaky part can start to happen...the tundra could start melting.

Tundra is just glorified frozen marshland, loaded with methane, aka swamp-gas, which would come bubbling out if the tundra melts, and methane is 14 times more retentive of infra-red than is CO2. At that point, all the controls in the world of industrial CO2 isn't going to matter one whit.

Now, *please* understand that I'm not attacking whatever your opinion is on whether or not it was started by human industry versus a result of natural cycles. It's not the first time the climate has changed, by whatever cause; good, bad or ugly.

My question is this. If as a patrol ranger you suddenly found yourself faced with vast areas of marshland, what would you see to be the best machinery to help you do your patrols?

I'm thinking those rubber airbag-skirted landers the US marines played with.

Am I off base? What would you have?
 
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petros

The Central Scrutinizer
Nov 21, 2008
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Note the three people in the lower left-hand corner.
Do you know what would be really cool? A drive in IMAX would work in there. :canada:
 

Omicron

Privy Council
Jul 28, 2010
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I bet that looks really impressive on a resume - especially to captains of industry
Ugh, well... some of my clients *are* "captains of industry", and believe it or not, putting it the way I did is *exactly* the way some of them like to hear it in a presentation. Yes I have to figure out ahead of time if that's the way to present the ability to deliver what they need, versus other methods of presentation. No I am not going to tell you if I use intelligence around the prospect before the presentation. Ever. If the world was made of my kind of people I wouldn't have to play this way.

Removed Blatant Trolling.....QUIT IT!!!

The thing you have to understand about remoras is that, like Richard Straus caught between composing music for Nazi Germany on one side followed by composing music for Soviet East Germany on the other, the only time they get quiet is when they think they have to sit back and figure out who's going to be in charge in order to milk next.

If you ever peg them, their only defense is to wave their arms and legs in the air and scream.
 
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ironsides

Executive Branch Member
Feb 13, 2009
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Thank yu very much. But I doubt Canada would have any enemies at all if it wasn't for supporting the US in some of its causes.

The Isle of Granada thought they were safe also (we were not supporting them at all.), till that old bad guy Mr., Castro had other ides or it. Prim Minister asked for help and we did what we do best and that is help.
 

Bar Sinister

Executive Branch Member
Jan 17, 2010
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, there isn't. I proved that.

The Russians don't have a force to back this up? I think you are mistaken.

I never said they did.

But you can claim land with blimps?

There aren't yet. However they have been visiting unannounced. Any reason why they would do that?



No, it is modernizing the CAF. It is not a new concept.




This...

Although the term dirigible is most frequently associated with large rigid airships, a dirigible is any powered, steerable, lighter-than-air vehicle.

And I'll add this...

PWNED

As usual you missed the point either deliberately or because most of what I said went over your head. Let's deal with the matter of Russia's claim to the arctic. As I said it is a negotiating ploy. The technique is to always claim more than what you think you deserve in the hope that you might luck out. Any dispute between Canada and Russia over the arctic that cannot be negotiated will probably go to an international tribunal provided both sides agree to it. This is a common method of resolving international disputes when neither side can agree.

Any claim Canada has to the arctic must be backed up by some sort of presence. This can be established in two ways.
1. By actually settling people in the area, something that Canada has already done to a limited extent.
2. By establishing a presence over any part of the arctic, something that can only be carried out by vehicles that are capable of reaching all parts of the arctic. Icebreakers can do this to a certain extent and dirigibles can do it universally. Currently Canada cannot do this and expensive fighter planes will not be much of a contribution in this area.

I realize that as an American you would be happy to see Canada buy more useless equipment from the USA. However, events of the last four or five decades have shown that fighter aircraft are the least useful part of the Canadian military.

Let's also look at the military realities of the high arctic. Even if Russia wanted to establish a military presence there it would be hard pressed to do so. Currently it is having a hard time hanging on to territories contiguous to Russia like Chechnya. The high arctic in an incredibly hostile environment and would require an enormous commitment on the part of the Russians if they wanted to establish a military presence in what would amount to the backyard of the USA. That is simply not going to happen.

Here is a bit on the usefulness of blimps. Please note that both the US and Russia are building them, the US for military reasons.
Dirigibles get the call: Uncle Sam wants you
RUSSIAN DIRIGIBLE-BUILDING MARKET GETTING SECOND WIND : Voice of Russia

Finally, let's deal with the little matter of blimps vs dirigibles. The term dirigible is used exclusively to describe rigid airships. When was the last time you heard the Goodyear Blimp called a dirigible? This definition is from Wikipedia. Please note that it is the modern definition of the word.

"In modern common usage, the terms Zeppelin, dirigible and airship are used interchangeably for any type of rigid airship, with the term blimp alone used to describe non-rigid airships. Although the blimp also qualifies as a "dirigible", the term is seldom used with blimps. In modern technical usage, airship is the term used for all aircraft of this type, with Zeppelin referring only to aircraft of that manufacture, and blimp referring only to non-rigid airships."

BTW I have no idea what PWNED means so that last comment was wasted.
 

Omicron

Privy Council
Jul 28, 2010
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Do you know what would be really cool? A drive in IMAX would work in there. :canada:
True, except it would require some up-sizing.

A certain number of years ago some MBAs got control of IMAX and did their MBA thing of dumbing everything down (to their level?) such that it was being suggested that a new form of the IMAX screen would be presented which was smaller and towards which people sat closer.

Typical @#$%ing MBA thinking. We have to make a deal with their church elders to improve the thinking if the hateful forces of Lucifer insist upon destroying education.

The weird thing about those hate-fulls is, if you ever snooker them up into a position where the expectation is that they think rationally, they go berserk. They act like Lucifer is punishing them for thinking rationally. The more rational you try to pin them into, the crazier they get.

Maybe it's just bad upbringing and poor parenthood.

Anyway, you wanna talk about social cost? What about the social cost when I gave one of those rats a job? Yeah yeah yeah I know how I was supposed to be tyrannically smarter in the American way. I apologize for my dumness. Is there a United Church around here to drop into?

I got an idea! F-35s are useless unless they are engineered with the stuff that made that Avro Arrow the hottest craft.

If you combine Avro Arrow tech with the F-35s that Harper is being required to masturbate over, it means the first fighter-bomber capable of shooting out of the atmosphere since a fighter-bomber was built.
 

petros

The Central Scrutinizer
Nov 21, 2008
118,311
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a dirigible is any powered, steerable, lighter-than-air vehicle.
That'll go down like a lead balloon because no vehicle can be lighter than air...


True, except it would require some up-sizing.

A certain number of years ago some MBAs got control of IMAX and did their MBA thing of dumbing everything down (to their level?) such that it was being suggested that a new form of the IMAX screen would be presented which was smaller and towards which people sat closer.

Typical @#$%ing MBA thinking. We have to make a deal with their church elders to improve the thinking if the hateful forces of Lucifer insist upon destroying education.

The weird thing about those hate-fulls is, if you ever snooker them up into a position where the expectation is that they think rationally, they go berserk. They act like Lucifer is punishing them for thinking rationally. The more rational you try to pin them into, the crazier they get.

Maybe it's just bad upbringing and poor parenthood.

Anyway, you wanna talk about social cost? What about the social cost when I gave one of those rats a job? Yeah yeah yeah I know how I was supposed to be tyrannically smarter in the American way. I apologize for my dumness. Is there a United Church around here to drop into?
You knew Lucifer is female right?
 

Kakato

Time Out
Jun 10, 2009
4,929
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The cost of operating one sub for a mission like that would be about the same as the cost of operating that one sub as part of a war-game exercise, so it's nothing extremely out of the ordinary compared to other things we'll spend money on (like $16 billion for some fighter-bombers that we don't really need), and if you could know how silly the game of diplomacy can get, doing something like follow around a ship that's dropping flags into the water to sink to the ocean floor and picking them up is *exactly* the kind of inane-ness that can happen in the world of diplomacy...

... And I am *not* trying to deflate you. I'm just trying to look at things on a geopolitical level that's more realistic than who-ever's thinking it was to figure it was a great idea to spend so many billions on fighter-bombers we don't need.

That's *so* the kind of thinking I used to see *some* of the the social ladder-climbing type of MBAs do at some of the financial institutions I've dealt with.

Ever notice how right-wing governments will be the ones to squawk about "financial responsibility", yet they tend to pork it up more than anyone. For example, when the Republicans took over congress in 1994, there were 1,300 projects earmarked for member's districts. By 2005 that had jumped to 14,000. With Republics in charge of the house, they would appropriate *more* money than the president asked for.

And now we're going to spend $16 billion on fighter-bombers that we don't need when I know school-districts that are cutting their kids' athletics programs because they can't afford the uniforms nor the buses to move them around to compete against other schools... programs that could be saved for a few tens of thousands of dollars... a microscopic speck of compared to the cost of those bombers. That is just so wrong.

I have American cousins who think it's boiling down to a plutocratic class war between the majority who want taxes spent on governing to make the life of everyone better versus the plutocrats who think life is about a competition between themselves over who gets to take over the world, such that taxes are to them just one of the tools they use to pay for their competitiveness. Take it or leave it... it's just curious to hear words like that coming out of the mouths of red-state cousins.
Hmm... well... twenty years ago the early alerters about global warming were saying that the ice-cap might disappear by 2130. Now they're saying that it might be as soon as 2030... just 20 years off... it's sped up that much.

It has to do with how water is dark and absorbs sunlight to hold it as heat, while the white ice reflects sunlight back into space. Turns out there's a positive feedback cycle that happens when there's enough dark water around the white ice for the water to hold the heat from sunlight, thus melting more ice, and around and around it goes.

Then the really freaky part can start to happen...the tundra could start melting.

Tundra is just glorified frozen marshland, loaded with methane, aka swamp-gas, which would come bubbling out if the tundra melts, and methane is 14 times more retentive of infra-red than is CO2. At that point, all the controls in the world of industrial CO2 isn't going to matter one whit.

Now, *please* understand that I'm not attacking whatever your opinion is on whether or not it was started by human industry versus a result of natural cycles. It's not the first time the climate has changed, by whatever cause; good, bad or ugly.

My question is this. If as a patrol ranger you suddenly found yourself faced with vast areas of marshland, what would you see to be the best machinery to help you do your patrols?

I'm thinking those rubber airbag-skirted landers the US marines played with.

Am I off base? What would you have?

They patrol on the tundra every year,when the snow melts in late june....the grass keeps the perma frost frozen,thats the insulator allthough sometimes the top meter gets soft,depending upon the color of the grass.
You can keep any permafrost frozen,for an example when we built Nunavuts longest road it only needed one meter of rock over the tundra,frozen or not,the ground underneath will never that out again under that fill....ever.

also if you look at any geological records anywhere in the world you will see that the climate changes all the time,you cant stop it,the coal seams in BC and Alberta are a good example of this,every coal seam was laid down during tropical times,as there are many seams in both provinces and they are the same seams it shows the climatic history like tree rings,the rock inbetween seams is indicative of colder climes and ice ages. stringers of rock in the coal seams show interuptions in the tropical part of that climate at the time as do volcanic eruptions,meteoric impacts and other anomalys.

So the climate change crap that gets bandied around has nothing to do with buying new fighter jets or patrolling our north,at least not in our lifetimes.
 

CDNBear

Custom Troll
Sep 24, 2006
43,839
207
63
Ontario
Ugh, well... some of my clients *are* "captains of industry", and believe it or not, putting it the way I did is *exactly* the way some of them like to hear it in a presentation. Yes I have to figure out ahead of time if that's the way to present the ability to deliver what they need, versus other methods of presentation. No I am not going to tell you if I use intelligence around the prospect before the presentation. Ever. If the world was made of my kind of people I wouldn't have to play this way.

Removed Blatant Trolling.....QUIT IT!!!

The thing you have to understand about remoras is that, like Richard Straus caught between composing music for Nazi Germany on one side followed by composing music for Soviet East Germany on the other, the only time they get quiet is when they think they have to sit back and figure out who's going to be in charge in order to milk next.

If you ever peg them, their only defense is to wave their arms and legs in the air and scream.

True, except it would require some up-sizing.

A certain number of years ago some MBAs got control of IMAX and did their MBA thing of dumbing everything down (to their level?) such that it was being suggested that a new form of the IMAX screen would be presented which was smaller and towards which people sat closer.

Typical @#$%ing MBA thinking. We have to make a deal with their church elders to improve the thinking if the hateful forces of Lucifer insist upon destroying education.

The weird thing about those hate-fulls is, if you ever snooker them up into a position where the expectation is that they think rationally, they go berserk. They act like Lucifer is punishing them for thinking rationally. The more rational you try to pin them into, the crazier they get.

Maybe it's just bad upbringing and poor parenthood.

Anyway, you wanna talk about social cost? What about the social cost when I gave one of those rats a job? Yeah yeah yeah I know how I was supposed to be tyrannically smarter in the American way. I apologize for my dumness. Is there a United Church around here to drop into?
Someone sounds as if they have a problem working under the thumb of someone with an MBA.

I got an idea! F-35s are useless unless they are engineered with the stuff that made that Avro Arrow the hottest craft.

If you combine Avro Arrow tech with the F-35s that Harper is being required to masturbate over, it means the first fighter-bomber capable of shooting out of the atmosphere since a fighter-bomber was built.
You really should stop getting you Canadian history lessons from CBC docudrama's and Canada Post vignettes.
 
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Omicron

Privy Council
Jul 28, 2010
1,694
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Vancouver
They patrol on the tundra every year,when the snow melts in late june...
What do? Hovercraft?
the grass keeps the perma frost frozen,thats the insulator allthough sometimes the top meter gets soft,depending upon the color of the grass.
You can keep any permafrost frozen,for an example when we built Nunavuts longest road it only needed one meter of rock over the tundra,frozen or not,the ground underneath will never that out again under that fill....ever.
Yeah, I know all that, but if the ice-cap melts, then next is the tundra, and it turns into a marsh.

How are you going to patrol it then?
also if you look at any geological records anywhere in the world you will see that the climate changes all the time,you cant stop it,the coal seams in BC and Alberta are a good example of this,every coal seam was laid down during tropical times,as there are many seams in both provinces and they are the same seams it shows the climatic history like tree rings,the rock inbetween seams is indicative of colder climes and ice ages. stringers of rock in the coal seams show interuptions in the tropical part of that climate at the time as do volcanic eruptions,meteoric impacts and other anomalys.
I *have* looked at the geological records. Most interesting are some rings from the Greenland ice-cap correlated with some mud deposts at the bottom of a Swiss lake.

Turns out that when the climate changes, it happens *fast*, which might explain some of the extinctions we see in the fossil record.
So the climate change crap that gets bandied around has nothing to do with buying new fighter jets or patrolling our north,at least not in our lifetimes.
It's not crap, and it will have everything to do with patrolling the north, and yes, if you're less than 40 years old, it could happen in your lifetime, and it's stupid to be spending money on F-35s when there are better devices for the main job, which is patrolling.

Which means... maybe you answered this question and I just didn't get it. Supposed you had to patrol the high north and all the tundra had melted into marshland. What would you want to use? Hovercraft?

As usual you missed the point either deliberately or because most of what I said went over your head. Let's deal with the matter of Russia's claim to the arctic. As I said it is a negotiating ploy. The technique is to always claim more than what you think you deserve in the hope that you might luck out. Any dispute between Canada and Russia over the arctic that cannot be negotiated will probably go to an international tribunal provided both sides agree to it. This is a common method of resolving international disputes when neither side can agree.
True.
Any claim Canada has to the arctic must be backed up by some sort of presence. This can be established in two ways.
1. By actually settling people in the area, something that Canada has already done to a limited extent.
True. I even suggested partly as a lark that Canada should tell those Tamil Tigers that they can stay if they settle in the arctic, and CDNBear hated the idea so much that I started thinking it might be a valid notion (CDNBear is one of those people where the more he hates you, the more you know you're on the right track).
2. By establishing a presence over any part of the arctic, something that can only be carried out by vehicles that are capable of reaching all parts of the arctic. Icebreakers can do this to a certain extent and dirigibles can do it universally. Currently Canada cannot do this and expensive fighter planes will not be much of a contribution in this area.
True. And not just fighter planes, but big giant fat bloated F-35 fighter-bombers.
I realize that as an American you would be happy to see Canada buy more useless equipment from the USA. However, events of the last four or five decades have shown that fighter aircraft are the least useful part of the Canadian military.
Except for the embarrassing parts like when we got into Yugoslavia. We should not have been there. The only thing fighter-bombers are useful for is if we're to participate in GloboCop action with the US.
Let's also look at the military realities of the high arctic. Even if Russia wanted to establish a military presence there it would be hard pressed to do so. Currently it is having a hard time hanging on to territories contiguous to Russia like Chechnya.
True. It's interesting how you know that. A lot of people don't.
The high arctic in an incredibly hostile environment and would require an enormous commitment on the part of the Russians if they wanted to establish a military presence in what would amount to the backyard of the USA. That is simply not going to happen.
Also true, and interesting again that you know that. You wouldn't believe how many people don't know that's why the US refuses to recognize Canada's claim over the northern archipelago.
Here is a bit on the usefulness of blimps. Please note that both the US and Russia are building them, the US for military reasons.
Dirigibles get the call: Uncle Sam wants you
RUSSIAN DIRIGIBLE-BUILDING MARKET GETTING SECOND WIND : Voice of Russia

Finally, let's deal with the little matter of blimps vs dirigibles. The term dirigible is used exclusively to describe rigid airships. When was the last time you heard the Goodyear Blimp called a dirigible? This definition is from Wikipedia. Please note that it is the modern definition of the word.

"In modern common usage, the terms Zeppelin, dirigible and airship are used interchangeably for any type of rigid airship, with the term blimp alone used to describe non-rigid airships. Although the blimp also qualifies as a "dirigible", the term is seldom used with blimps. In modern technical usage, airship is the term used for all aircraft of this type, with Zeppelin referring only to aircraft of that manufacture, and blimp referring only to non-rigid airships."

BTW I have no idea what PWNED means so that last comment was wasted.
We *so* should be using dirigibles up there. When they're not patrolling they can be lifting and moving and rescuing things.
 
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