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Daily links for 09/02/2010

  • “The latest release of Ubuntu 10.04, code-named Lucid Lynx, has a somewhat revamped user interface. One of the most significant changes is the Software Center, which provides a simple, user-friendly way to find and install your choice of thousands of free, open source apps. While there are many ways to install apps in Ubuntu 10.04, the easiest way is to click Applications from the top-left panel and select Ubuntu Software Center.”

    tags: ubuntu

  • “Author Neal Stephenson has been credited for inspiring today’s virtual world startups with his novel Snow Crash. Now he’s launching a startup himself: Subutai, where he is co-founder and chairman.

    The company, based in Seattle and San Francisco, has developed what it calls the PULP platform for creating digital novels. The core of the experience is still a text novel, but authors can add additional material like background articles, images, music, and video. There are also social features that allow readers to create their own profiles, earn badges for activity on the site or in the application, and interact with other readers.”

    tags: stephenson book

  • “While the iPad’s aesthetics are exemplary, its built-in protection is a bit spare, especially when it comes to its 9.5-inch screen. Transporting the iPad can sometimes resemble a trip home from the grocery store with a dozen really expensive eggs.

    But fear not, iPad owners: thousands of armed-guard-like cases are available to protect your frangible computing device. ”

    tags: ipad

  • “During Apple’s music event, Steve Jobs gave a brief preview of iOS 4.2, the iOS update that will finally bring the iPad up to speed. In November, the update will finally bring the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad up to the same iOS version, and it will also bring Game Center to the iPad.”

    tags: ipad

  • “Teachers are looking for alternatives as Linden Lab prepares to close down the Teen Grid–a region of the immersive virtual world Second Life designed just for teenagers and their education institutions. Where will all those teen avatars wind up? And is there an upside for those who’ve spent years developing educational resources on the proprietary platform?”

    tags: second-life teen virtual-world

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Daily links for 08/31/2010

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Daily links for 08/30/2010

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Daily links for 08/25/2010

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Daily links for 08/21/2010

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Daily links for 08/16/2010

  • “It raises very serious questions about the company’s stewardship of other open source technology that it obtained during the acquisition of Sun. The resulting uncertainty will likely not be conducive to retaining the customers and mindshare that Sun had built around certain open source products. It will also likely have a serious chilling affect on community involvement and third-party contributions.”

    tags: java oracle google

  • “The MeeGo project was launched earlier this year when Intel and Nokia brought together their respective mobile Linux platforms in a combined effort to reduce fragmentation and offer device vendors a standardized platform. The MeeGo platform is endorsed by the Linux Foundation, which has taken on a stewardship role with the aim of facilitating collaboration around the software. Although the underlying software components on which MeeGo is based are relatively mature and functional, the convergence process is still ongoing.”

    tags: meego nokia intel android linux mobile

  • “The move shows how dramatically Sun’s products are being reshaped under the new ownership. Oracle is a large company accustomed to playing hardball and attuned to the profit priorities of a publicly traded company. Solaris, Sparc, and Java are becoming mere business assets to be sold rather than the mechanisms by which Sun tried to revolutionize the computing industry.”

    tags: oracle opensolaris open-source

  • “In development for over a decade, COPASI (Complex Pathway Simulator) involves an international collaboration between VBI Professor Pedro Mendes’ research groups at Virginia Tech and the University of Manchester and Professor Ursula Kummer’s group at the University of Heidelberg. Allowing users with limited experience in mathematics to develop models and simulations of biochemical networks, COPASI supports the Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML) standard for systems biology software and provides researchers the computational tools needed to investigate how a system is working through the construction of biochemical models.”

    tags: biology software open-source

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Daily links for 08/11/2010

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Daily links for 08/10/2010

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Daily links for 08/04/2010

  • “Demand for Linux programming skills has exceeded that for Unix programming skills for the first time ever, according to Richard Nott, director of recruitment site CWJobs.co.uk.

    Possible reasons for this include the fact that more mobile platforms are supported by Linux, as are HD boxes, Nott said. In addition, the increasingly popular open source operating system Ubuntu also runs on Linux.”

    tags: linux skills

  • “Either way, however, when it comes to security, there’s no doubt that Linux users have a lot less to worry about.”

    tags: linux security

  • “The purpose of this article is to identify some of our favourite free Linux games which have these addictive qualities. They may not offer breathtaking graphics, innovative ideas, or the highest presentation. However, what they do provide is great gameplay coupled with the urge of always having just one more play.”

    tags: linux games

  • “OpenLogic, Inc., a provider of enterprise open source software support and governance solutions encompassing hundreds of open source packages, today announced that OpenLogic continues to see impressive growth.

    “As our scanning business has taken hold, our revenues continue to increase at an even faster rate,” said Steve Grandchamp, CEO of OpenLogic. “Companies are realizing that combining the accuracy and efficiencies of OpenLogic’s OSS Deep Discovery with a comprehensive governance and support strategy ensures successful, safe and cost effective open source adoption.” ”

    tags: openlogic open-source

  • “Scott McNealy, former CEO of Sun Microsystems, has been a long-time advocate of free, open source textbooks and educational materials. Now that Sun is no more, he and Vinod Khosla (co-founder of Sun) are more actively pursuing their efforts to radically change the way educational materials make it into kids’ hands and, hopefully, taking us closer to a point where our reliance on expensive, dead-tree textbooks goes the way of their former company.

    McNealy and his social learning/textbook site, Curriki, were profiled by the New York Times yesterday and he called out something that most of us already know: the cost of textbooks is unacceptable and open source models can completely disrupt the multibillion dollar industry to the benefit of worldwide education.”

    tags: sun education textbooks

  • “Your current feed reader is full of unread items. You’re hesitant to subscribe to any more feeds because you can’t keep up with your existing subs. Maybe you’ve even abandoned feeds altogether.

    Fever takes the temperature of your slice of the web and shows you what’s hot.”

    tags: feedreader reader software

  • “This iPhone secret is notoriously difficult to discover, but explains how everyone gets those gorgeous quality images of the iPhone to post in blogs or screenshots illustrating applications in the iTunes App Store. Why it’s so difficult to find is anyone’s guess. But here is the simple 1,2,3 on how to do it yourself.”

    tags: iphone screenshot

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Daily links for 08/03/2010

  • “When you are evaluating an open source development tool, how important is the kind of license it uses to you? Let us know by answering this poll question.”

    tags: linux open-source poll

  • “Between ext3, ext4, reiserfs and others, Ubuntu has no shortage of file systems to choose from when installing a new system. And those options are set to become yet more numerous in Ubuntu 10.10, which will introduce support for btrfs. Wondering what this new file system is all about and why it might matter to you? Read on for an introduction.

    Introduced last year, btrfs is a new file system intended to address the shortcomings in ext4, which is currently the default choice for Ubuntu and most other Linux distributions. While ext4 is pretty robust and efficient, it lacks some advanced features, such as support for snapshots and advanced scalability, that are particularly important in the enterprise environment.”

    tags: linux ubuntu btrfs ext4

  • “Linux users might make up a small part of your user base, but they’re technologically savvy, engaged, and often quite vocal. You’ll win some well-earned appreciation and support by serving your Linux users’ needs in allowing them to see your site in “their” fonts. Besides, it’s the right thing to do.”

    tags: linux fonts typography

  • “We should start every discussion in free software with a mutual reminder of the fact that we have far more in common than we have differences, that individual successes enrich all of us far more in our open commons-based economy than they would in a traditional proprietary one, that it’s better for us to find a way to encourage others to continue to participate even if they aren’t necessarily chasing exactly the same bugs that we are, than to chastise them for thinking differently.”

    tags: shuttleworth ubuntu linux open-source

  • “Bing can keep pumping out new features, and Google can keep copying them. This deprives Bing of claiming it offers something Google doesn’t.

    With Google matching Bing’s feature sets, there is no practical differentiator. That’s a huge competitive advantage for Google and a big reason why Bing will never beat the Google gorilla.

    Of course, Google won’t beat Facebook in the social arena. Maybe Facebook and Microsoft should just get together and become more cozy than a simple search integration.”

    tags: google bing microsoft

  • “Bottom line: “WinPads” are still about a year away, I’m predicting. Expect Microsoft execs to downplay the coming Windows Embedded Compact slates and start acknowledging that this year’s Windows 7 slates are business-centric devices. Instead of risking another Kin debaucle (launching then pulling a misguided product at great cost), Microsoft is rethinking its answer to the iPad. Better late than lame….”

    tags: microsoft apple ipad slate

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Daily links for 07/29/2010

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Daily links for 07/27/2010

  • “I’ve been using the latest version (10.04) of Ubuntu Linux since April and there’s a lot to like about it. I announced earlier this year that I was giving desktop Linux another look, and I went with Ubuntu because it is the Linux distribution most focused on a desktop OS. I have lots of observations about the Ubuntu experience and how it compares to Mac and Windows, but I’m going to save most of that feedback for another article.

    Today I want to talk about two significant advantages that Ubuntu has over Windows 7 and Mac OS X.”

    tags: ubuntu linux windows

  • Novell today released SUSE® Gallery™, a new online showcase for registered SUSE® Studio users to publish their appliances and cloud-based applications. With SUSE Gallery, end users can browse published appliances for the solution to their particular commercial or personal need, and then download the appliance free of charge. With an appliance, the end user avoids the typical installation and configuration headaches that come with many traditional software applications. For independent software vendors (ISVs) and other software developers, SUSE Gallery represents an opportunity to broaden the exposure of their application and reach an entirely new audience.”

    tags: suse novell linux

  • “In a world where you can buy rod holders in gold metal and dock lines in every color of the rainbow, it was perhaps inevitable. But it is nonetheless shocking. Duct Tape, considered among the most useful inventions since it was developed during World War II, has gone designer.”

    tags: boat diy

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Daily links for 07/23/2010

  • “The government is hoping to launch the first version of a “national operating system” for its computers as early as next year, a senior Communications and Press Ministry official said Thursday.

    The operating system, for use on the computer systems of government agencies and state-run companies, will be 90 percent based on the open-source Linux operating system, Deputy Communications and Press Minister Ilya Massukh said.”

    tags: linux government russia moscow

  • “So we asked ourselves: What’s the lowest point at which these two goals could intersect? If we needed a simple computer right away, and wanted to spend as little as possible, what could we build? We knew we wanted to aim low, almost ridiculously low—so we decided on what seemed like almost an unthinkable total: $200, which would include everything needed for the base computer itself (but not counting the monitor, keyboard, and mouse, or tax and shipping charges).”

    tags: computer linux build

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Daily links for 07/22/2010

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Daily links for 07/21/2010

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Daily links for 07/15/2010

Standards

Industry Criticism

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Installing (and reinstalling) Linux on your desktop

Yesterday I set up a laptop with a Linux distribution, including everything I needed for work. Today, I’m doing it again.

My reason for repeating the process had nothing to do with Linux. I decided to do something to the configuration that I suspected would be risky and possibly dangerous. Indeed, things got pretty messed up.

Linux penguinAt that point I had a few choices:

  • Try to debug and fix the situation.
  • Try to find someone to help me fix it.
  • Say the heck with it and reinstall from scratch, or the CD, as the case may be.

The first option was possible, but I would have a lingering feeling that something was still wrong and would come back to bite me when I least expected it.

As to the second, my local IT support staff is me, so this is really the same as the first option.

I went with the third choice, reinstalling. This is not that big a deal, though it is time consuming. For the most part, the installation and configuration is done while I’m doing other things, like writing this entry. Here’s the general outline of what I do.

  • Get the latest version of the Linux distribution you want to install and put it on some sort of media. Sometimes I’ll put it on a USB key, other times onto a CD or DVD, depending on how large it is. The USB key method is a little more involved and usually involves tinkering with the laptop BIOS to get the boot order correct. After the installation, I then have to go back into the BIOS and reset it so it boots from the CD drive and hard disk. Putting the distro on a CD or DVD is usually simpler though it does consume a piece of plastic. You do need to be careful that you are burning the installable image to the disk and not burning the file that contains the installable image (an .iso) to the disk.
  • Insert the USB key, CD, or DVD in your machine and reboot. If the USB key is not read, you’ve got the boot order wrong.
  • Answer the questions. Be honest. When you are asked for your password consider using a stronger one with letters in different cases and funny characters rather than the name of your first pet. We all know that one.
  • Let the installation continue, remove the media and reboot.
  • If the system did not automatically connect to your network, look around and help it find the network.
  • At this point you may think you have a sparkling new system and you do, sort of, but you need to check for and install updates. This is usually somewhere under “System Updates” under some menu, possible “Administration.”
  • Downloading and installing the updates may take several times longer than installing the system in the first place. Just let it do its thing while you do something else.
  • Now you do have a sparkly new operating system on your machine. The next thing you should do is configure your browser. This means firing it up and installing your favorite addons or extensions. I use XMarks to synchronize my bookmarks across machines, so I can have my usual browsing environment up and running in about 10 minutes.
  • If you wish, install proprietary drivers for things like graphics.
  • Turn off BlueTooth unless you know you’re going to need it.
  • Now make things pretty. I go to InterfaceLIFT and get a nice background that suits my mood. Note that they also have sizes for mobile devices and iPads. You can use the same background across all your machines and devices, if you wish.
  • Install your preferred software. My short list here is FileZilla, Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash, Adobe AIR, TweetDeck, and Komodo Edit. Thunderbird is another good possibility.
  • If you’ve this done before and there is software you know you want to uninstall, do that now.
  • Configure your editor. I use both gedit and Komodo Edit, so I go into preferences for each and set up the environment the way I like it. For gedit, make sure you check out the plugins.
  • If you have a DropBox account, install the software image suitable for your distro.
  • Now install your VPN if you need one for work. If you are doing this from a home office, you need to get a copy of the VPN installer on your machine. You can put it on a CD, a USB key, ftp it over using FileZilla, or grab it from your DropBox directory.
  • Check that the VPN is working by firing up the browser and looking at some web pages inside your firewall.
  • Install the software your company wants you to use.
  • Reboot, and get to work.
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Daily links for 07/10/2010

  • “The just-released first beta of Firefox 4 takes some smart design ideas from Chrome, mixes in a few of its own and throws in a few new features and snappier performance. Add these benefits to Firefox’s existing world-class library of add-ons, and Firefox just might leapfrog other browsers and become the best of the bunch — if the beta keeps progressing along its current positive path. “

    tags: firefox beta

  • “Among the dozens of staff-submitted ideas for the British government to save money are two that suggest dumping Microsoft and moving to Linux, OpenOffice and other open-source applications.

    To be sure, they are just two among the 60,000 ideas proffered by those who work in the public sector, but just 31 of those were listed on the website for the Chancellor of the Exchequer. ”

    tags: uk government open-source

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Daily links for 07/09/2010

  • “This is Crash Course’s first offering of a multi-week, online technical course; in this case, a series of 24 (or more) lessons to gently introduce one to the joys and intricacies of basic Linux kernel programming. The first few lessons are publicly readable by anyone (and are, in fact, available under a Creative Commons license) , while the remaining course lessons are available exclusively to subscribers for a course registration fee of only $39 (CAD) for the entire course.”

    tags: linux education

  • “TEX THE WORLD converts TeX formulas anywhere, on any website, into rendered images. All you have to do is put them between [; and ;] (for example: [;e^{\pi i} + 1 = 0;]) “

    tags: tex math firefox

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Daily links for 07/08/2010

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Daily links for 07/03/2010

  • “The big weakness in EPub is that it is so darn finicky. If you thought XHTML was fussy—make sure you close every door behind you, and don’t you dare butter your bread from the outside in!—you haven’t met its OCD cousin. Of course, I’m writing this having spent just about a full day trying to wrangle an uncomplicated book through its many hoops, including (and this to me is just too much) making sure that one of the various files is the first in the zip you ultimately produce. These are files with distinctive names and extensions that a compiler couldn’t miss. Aarggh!”

    tags: book epub

  • “Hancom, the developer of a word-processing program known to Koreans as Hangul and foreigners as HanWord, said this week it will open up the product’s source code so other people can modify it for smartphones, tablet computers and other new gadgets.”

    tags: word-processor korea

  • “The broad outline we’ll follow is the same at the one used for music: find and eliminate duplicates, centralize storage, standardize the file names, then apply or fix the metadata. Image files have some key differences, though, particularly at the metadata stage, that deserve special attention. On top of that, because our photos are used as “read/write” information, unlike most people’s music libraries, we’ll have to pay special attention to the complexities that image editors can introduce.”

    tags: linux photos

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Daily links for 06/28/2010

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Daily links for 06/25/2010

A Smarter Planet logo

  • “Editor’s Note: Following is an essay co-authored by Bob Sutor, vice president of open source and Linux for IBM, and Jean Staten Healy, director of cross-IBM Linux strategy for IBM. It describes the central place Linux plays in building a smarter planet, and builds on a presentation about the role of Linux in Smarter Systems, which the two IBM executives gave at the recent Red Hat Summit.”

    tags: linux, smarter-planet

  • “One of the better open source-focused posts I’ve seen recently was “Linux as a catalyst for a smarter planet,” which included Jean Staten Healy and Bob Sutor of IBM discussing social challenges going on around the globe, and how Linux is being applied to solve problems. Filled with interesting data about how social change will make a place for Linux in the future, it reminded me of some of the many posts on open source tools for humanitarian and social causes that we’ve done. Here, you can find many of these, and some thoughts on Sutor’s and Healy’s presentation.”

    tags: smarter-planet, linux, open-source

  • “If there ever was an overhyped product, it’s… well, actually, it’s the iPad, though the iPhone 4 is close on its heels. But even after all the hoopla — from the speculation and rumors to the “lost” iPhone 4 incident and police action — the arrival of the iPhone 4 is no letdown. The iPhone 4 really is all that was promised and more — except for a potential reception problem.”

    tags: iphone, apple, ipad

  • “Free defined the Microsoft Store opening. Free T-Shirts. Free skateboards. Free concert. Free celebrity meetups. Free money, as in donations to San Diego charities and the Girl Scouts. Several of the teen girls I spoke to admitted they came just for the freebees. But they also boasted about using Windows, and most of them Windows 7 at that.

    By comparison, Apple Store drew a very different kind of crowd: People anxious to give up money. They were desperate to hand Apple $200-$300 (before tax) to get an iPhone 4. One group got paid in freebees for showing up. The other group lined up — with the promise of hours waiting — for the privilege of giving up money. In response to my earlier tweet on the topic, Altimeter analyst Michael Gartenberg rightly asked: “Which is the better business model?”"

    tags: microsoft, apple

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Daily links for 06/24/2010

  • “Linden Lab®, creator of 3D virtual world Second Life®, announced today that company founder Philip Rosedale has been named interim CEO, and CFO Bob Komin has assumed the additional role of COO.  Linden Lab also announced that Mark Kingdon is stepping down as CEO.”

    tags: second-life

  • Red Hat, Inc. (RHT 30.91, -0.45, -1.44%) , the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the next step in the integration of its enterprise-grade server and desktop virtualization portfolio with the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 2.2. In addition to providing the first release of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops, the 2.2 update includes new scalability capabilities, migration tools and features to expand the performance and security of the solution.”

    tags: red-hat

  • Firefox logo“Mozilla is rolling out an update of its Firefox Web browser that adds support for plugin isolation. Version 3.6.4, which includes the new feature, was officially released on Tuesday and will be deployed soon through the browser’s automated update system.

    It is unusual for Mozilla to deploy a major new feature in a minor point update, but the plugin isolation capability is a worthy exception to the rule, since it will significantly improve the browser’s stability. In the new version of Firefox, plugin components like Flash and Silverlight will run in external processes. When these plugins crash, the browser itself will not be terminated.”

    tags: firefox, flash

  • “The Eclipse project has announced the Helios release train, a major update of the open source Eclipse integrated development environment (IDE) and many of its key components.

    Due to the modularity of the software and the diversity of its community, Eclipse is developed like a platform. There are a multitude of independently-developed components that supply specific kinds of functionality. The most widely-used components are collected into a set of standard Eclipse packages that are targeted towards specific kinds of development.”

    tags: eclipse, open-source

  • “The Fedex delivery man pulled up at 10:30 this morning with an iPhone 4 in his hand — there were 15 more on his truck. The packaging is elegant and simple to open. After syncing the iPhone 3GS and Stainless Shuffle to be sure iTunes was up to date, I connected the iPhone 4. The first screen to appear showed my mobile phone number and asked me to enter my zip code and last four of the social for authentication. After agreeing to the Apple and AT&T terms and conditions the phone was activated and the copying of apps plus thousands of songs and music began. I went out for an errand and when I got back the iPhone 4 was loaded with my data. The next step was to set up the Google accounts for over-the-air syncing of my 1,500 contacts plus all the calendar entries and gmail. Minutes later I was good to go. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.”

    tags: iphone

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What happens when I go to a conference

I’m spending a few days this week in Boston attending the Red Hat Summit in Boston, a large and very professionally done conference about their Linux, virtualization, and middleware offerings. Earlier today, IBM’s Jean Staten Healy and I gave a talk called “Linux as a catalyst for a smarter planet.” I also attended a talk about Fedora, which was unusual.

Fedora, of course, is not unusual, it was that I found the time to go to a talk at a conference. While I usually do manage to get to some of the keynotes, the individual sessions are sometimes hard to get to because I spend my days in meetings with folks. It could be the host of the conference, in this case Red Hat, or partners, or customers. Conferences provide a great way to get people together and, well, talk.

In some cases these are people to whom I speak on a regular on a regular basis, but in others it’s much more of a “hey, you should chat with these guys” and then you do. So between the scheduled meetings, the talks that I give, the impromptu meetings and the hallway discussions, there isn’t much time to attend the sessions.

That’s ok, because the intensity of the days together with my industry colleagues is really invigorating. It’s an opportunity to update each other on our strategies, make business plans, and find out what friends are up to.

I’m about to head down to the exhibit area and although it’s a happy hour, I don’t plan to drink. I have a business dinner later this evening. I may nosh a bit if I can find some suitably low carb and relatively healthy food, though conference food usually plays havoc with my diet (though it’s not the only culprit).

Speaking of exhibits, now that my children are older I make less of an effort collecting giveaways at the booths. Note that I am still a sucker for cool looking pens and squeezable penguins, but if I’m really not going to do business with you or use your software, I’ll let you save your logoed items for people who might. There are exceptions, of course, but I don’t want to waste your time or money.

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