Is it really the Encyclopedia Britannica as we might of thought?
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Travis Walter said:
Well users were asking for a long time for sample pages etc. It seems like Logos clearly had no idea what they were getting and just sold everyone on "marketing" and shiny objects -- and they had no idea what they were selling.
Correct - we did ask repeatedly for samples and did not see anything until a few days before it was released. And what was provided was just a table of contents and a screenshot of part of one article. The issue is that the marketing hype was in overdrive about this product and it doesn't even come close to meeting the hype. It is hard to understand the disconnect. We'll have to wait for FL to give an explanation. Maybe Bob is pulling his book off the shelf...
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Way back when this resource was first posted I thought (I don't know why) that it was going to be the old historic edition of EB. I think I'll back out of this. I must say that this is the first time I have been THOROUGHLY DISAPPOINTED by Logos.
george
gfsomselיְמֵי־שְׁנוֹתֵינוּ בָהֶם שִׁבְעִים שָׁנָה וְאִם בִּגְבוּרֹת שְׁמוֹנִים שָׁנָה וְרָהְבָּם עָמָל וָאָוֶן
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Regards, SteveF
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There's also a historic edition planned:
https://www.logos.com/product/33266/encyclopedia-britannica
(Very clear communication what's gonna be included. I like that.)
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Jan Krohn said:
There's also a historic edition planned:
https://www.logos.com/product/33266/encyclopedia-britannica
(Very clear communication what's gonna be included. I like that.)
I think so. What's the situation with this? Has it shipped? Is it nearing shipping? Never mind, it's still in CP. I would suggest that all those who got the kiddie edition and aren't pleased get a refund and bit $100 on this one.
george
gfsomselיְמֵי־שְׁנוֹתֵינוּ בָהֶם שִׁבְעִים שָׁנָה וְאִם בִּגְבוּרֹת שְׁמוֹנִים שָׁנָה וְרָהְבָּם עָמָל וָאָוֶן
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I preordered at the $99 price. I cancelled Monday night after I saw the one screenshot. It was not even close to what I expected. I thought this was to be a flagship product for Noet. I simply cannot believe they let this one through.
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I didnt know I was preordering kids encyclopedia for $ 199.00
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Jan Krohn said:
By the way, can anyone confirm the other marketing promises?
They've clearly shipped the wrong product.
This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
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On the question of word count, I counted 156,593 words up to and including the article on Airline. That's 272 articles, or an average of 576 words per article. If there were 19,000 articles, and the average was maintained, that would be more than 10 million words.
This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
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Wow, detective Mark, they definitely aren't pulling any fast ones on you :-) Great work. This has got to be the mix up of the year
Logos 10 | Dell Inspiron 7373 | Windows 11 Pro 64, i7, 16GB, SSD | iPhone 13 Pro Max
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Mark Barnes said:
If there were 19,000 articles
Is there a way to search to find the number of articles included?
Logos 10 | Dell Inspiron 7373 | Windows 11 Pro 64, i7, 16GB, SSD | iPhone 13 Pro Max
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Lets not forget that the product information says:
"In Logos, this resource is more powerful than ever. Link directly to primary sources or other literature already in your Logos library. Look up “John Calvin” in EBNE, find a reference to The Institutes, and with a click you’re taken straight to its full text."
Only it doesn't, for Logos to not get around to tagging there books seems quite remarkable to me as this is what they say is at the heart of there much vaunted added value. It is not even as if there is that much to tag in such a limited resource as this cut down kiddies version.
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Sounds like Britannica sent the wrong file, or Logos was working on two Encyclopedias and the wrong one was developed and shipped.
Mission: To serve God as He desires.
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Lynden Williams said:
Sounds like Britannica sent the wrong file, or Logos was working on two Encyclopedias and the wrong one was developed and shipped.
Whichever way you look at this Logos does not come out of this looking well, and the quality control is non existent. This is just not professional.
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Mark Barnes said:
I counted 156,593 words up to and including the article on Airline. That's 272 articles, or an average of 576 words per article. If there were 19,000 articles, and the average was maintained, that would be more than 10 million words.
Or...19,000 kids articles that are only 8 words long [:P]
Logos 10 | Dell Inspiron 7373 | Windows 11 Pro 64, i7, 16GB, SSD | iPhone 13 Pro Max
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We can only speculate at this point, but there is nothing accidental about book publishing. These things are planned months, if not years, in advance, and put down in contracts. Both Faithlife and EB should have known very well what they were going to sell, and how they were going to sell it.
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Lynden Williams said:
Sounds like Britannica sent the wrong file, or Logos was working on two Encyclopedias and the wrong one was developed and shipped.
I'm with you, Lynden. I believe the wrong file was delivered and worked on. I can see how the tagging team just concentrated on the tagging without judging the content.
This will all get worked out. We have thirty days.
Logos 7 Collectors Edition
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Super.Tramp said:
This will all get worked out. We have thirty days
Don't rush to return. Logos has a reputation of going beyond the call of duty in making things right.
Mission: To serve God as He desires.
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agreedLynden Williams said:Don't rush to return. Logos has a reputation of going beyond the call of duty in making things right.
Logos 10 | Dell Inspiron 7373 | Windows 11 Pro 64, i7, 16GB, SSD | iPhone 13 Pro Max
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Mike Pettit said:
Whichever way you look at this Logos does not come out of this looking well, and the quality control is non existent. This is just not professional.
Nope. I have to agree with you. It looks bad.
Logos 7 Collectors Edition
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Mike Pettit said:Lynden Williams said:
Sounds like Britannica sent the wrong file, or Logos was working on two Encyclopedias and the wrong one was developed and shipped.
Whichever way you look at this Logos does not come out of this looking well, and the quality control is non existent. This is just not professional.
If Faithlife wanted to find a way to ruin it's credibility with Noet users this was it. Offering a children's encyclopedia at a ridiculous price when they were promised:
- "Features trusted and comprehensive scholarship from world-renowned experts"
I see they wisely removed it from being able to order it.
-Dan
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I'm starting to be in the camp that this was deliberate. Clearly the source material had to be in hand weeks ago and they clearly knew what it was and wasn't. This product should have been pulled and delayed. This really lies with the product manager of this resource. The ball was clearly dropped.
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Do you think Logos has got too big, too fast and quality control has suffered.
The focus needs to shift from mass production, back to quality product.
P A
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P A said:
Do you think Logos has got too big, too fast and quality control has suffered.
The focus needs to shift from mass production, back to quality product.
P A
I want to say AMEN. But Faithlife, it it want's to be relevant in world of academics needs to offer things like this...
I was expecting http://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Britannica-Ultimate-Edition-2015/dp/1625132964
and received something more like http://www.amazon.co.uk/Encyclopaedia-Britannica-2006-Childrens-Encyclopedia/dp/1593392575
I was willing to pay double the price to get this scholarly work in Logos. People can get access to full Britiannica on their iPAD/iPhone for $14.99 a year. I am half guessing that if FL decided to offer us the full encyclopedia it would be for several hundred dollars. Students and Christians should both be prudent with their limited resources and if Faithlife is not able to do what other companies can, maybe they should stay out of the market place.
-Dan
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The silence from Faith life regarding this issue is starting to get frustrating.
Somebody please tell us something.
Bob are you out there?
What happened? and what if, anything are you planning on doing about this?
Tell us something. The silence comes across as implying that you don't care, which I believe is not the case.
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Jesse Blevins said:
The silence from Faith life regarding this issue is starting to get frustrating.
Somebody please tell us something.
Bob are you out there?
What happened? and what if, anything are you planning on doing about this?
Tell us something. The silence comes across as implying that you don't care, which I believe is not the case.
Earlier in the thread, Phil Gons said it was being looked into. A response will be coming. I understand they may need some time to evaluate the situation.
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Average Joe said:
Earlier in the thread, Phil Gons said it was being looked into
Here's the link.
I will be patient. I don't intend to keep the current product as it has no value to me. If it is discovered they got the wrong files from Britannica and they will produce the encyclopedia they told us to expect and will honor the pricing we took advantage of, that will, of course, be satisfactory. We shall see.
Pastor, North Park Baptist Church
Bridgeport, CT USA
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Wow what a mess! I'm really glad I didn't buy into this one
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David Carter said:
Wow what a mess! I'm really glad I didn't buy into this one
At least no one needs to be out any money. FL will honor a return.
Somewhere along the way they will need to notify all who purchased this resource of the possible misunderstanding so those who are scratching their heads but not jumping onto the Forum will know they aren't alone and that they have the return option. I'm sure they will do this. Of course, the sooner the situation gets resolved the better.
Pastor, North Park Baptist Church
Bridgeport, CT USA
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Jesse Blevins said:
The silence from Faith life regarding this issue is starting to get frustrating.
Somebody please tell us something.
Bob are you out there?
What happened? and what if, anything are you planning on doing about this?
Tell us something. The silence comes across as implying that you don't care, which I believe is not the case.
As has been pointed out, Phil responded and they will follow up.
Consider that this is a huge mistake. That means the response has to be appropriate to the level of mistake.
I know everyone is edgy but give them time to hash this out internally. A "from the hip" response isn't always the right one.
Give them time to build the right response.
Sarcasm is my love language. Obviously I love you. 0 -
Mark Barnes said:abondservant said:
If I had to guess this is the result of internal miscommunications both at Logos and E.B..
This certainly does seem to be the case. What's worrying, however, is why that wasn't picked up prior to release.
Indeed. They will make it right to those that purchased though, they always do. Maybe let you keep the current kiddie edition, and offering "as ready" updates on the academic version.
L2 lvl4 (...) WORDsearch, all the way through L10,
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Someone please explain to me why Britannica is needed if you have the internet to look up stuff. I grew up on Britannica and it was absolutely essential. Now with the internet, I wonder.
This product as already said so many times, just was not what was expected at all. But beyond that, anyone have thoughts on my question?
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Mark said:
Someone please explain to me why Britannica is needed if you have the internet to look up stuff.
Why do you need Logos? "The Internet" isn't a source. ONE of the places you can utilize on the internet with a subscription is Encyclopedia Britannica.
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Mark said:
Someone please explain to me why Britannica is needed if you have the internet to look up stuff. I grew up on Britannica and it was absolutely essential. Now with the internet, I wonder.
This product as already said so many times, just was not what was expected at all. But beyond that, anyone have thoughts on my question?
A week ago I was without internet for ½ a day. A couple of months ago the gas company was laying a new line and the underground wasn't marked properly resulting in a cut connection and 1-2 days outage. Some are routinely without internet for longer periods of time for various reasons. Having an encyclopedia handy is convenient under those circumstances. Also, don't believe everything you find on the internet.
george
gfsomselיְמֵי־שְׁנוֹתֵינוּ בָהֶם שִׁבְעִים שָׁנָה וְאִם בִּגְבוּרֹת שְׁמוֹנִים שָׁנָה וְרָהְבָּם עָמָל וָאָוֶן
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One time ago, someone accidentally put the wrong price (heavily discounted) on some resources. A number of people bought them at the cheap price.
Logos could have refunded their money and invoked the lisences, but they allowed them to keep the resources.
Logos will try to please its customers even at their own hurt.
Mission: To serve God as He desires.
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Mark said:
Someone please explain to me why Britannica is needed if you have the internet to look up stuff. I grew up on Britannica and it was absolutely essential. Now with the internet, I wonder.
The two advantages I can see are interaction with your other Logos resources or tools, and the visual resources that can be searched and included with the Passage Guide, and so on.
I'm not led to believe from all we've been told that the interaction with other resources will be great. I assume results would show up in the Passage Guide, Topical Guide, and in Factbook. We've been told it will interact with Timeline.
For the initial offering price I thought it worth the above.
Pastor, North Park Baptist Church
Bridgeport, CT USA
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Mark said:
Someone please explain to me why Britannica is needed if you have the internet to look up stuff. I grew up on Britannica and it was absolutely essential. Now with the internet, I wonder.
This product as already said so many times, just was not what was expected at all. But beyond that, anyone have thoughts on my question?
When you say "internet", what you mean is Wikipedia, right? Wikipedia is crowd-sourced, and no one has responsibility for the reliability and truthfulness of its content. Because of that, you can't cite it as a valid source in papers. It's also variable in detail you get, and articles can often can be vandalized.
A published encyclopedia, on the other hand, has the reputation of the publisher behind it, so their editors are motivated to hire competent article authors and fact-check the content.
MacBook Pro (2019), ThinkPad E540
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Lynden Williams said:
One time ago, someone accidentally put the wrong price (heavily discounted) on some resources. A number of people bought them at the cheap price.
Logos could have refunded their money and invoked the lisences, but they allowed them to keep the resources.
Logos will try to please its customers even at their own hurt.
Read about the incident here.
Mission: To serve God as He desires.
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They do! I've seen that again and again . That's one of the many reasons I love Logos.
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George Somsel said:
Some are routinely without internet for longer periods of time for various reasons. Having an encyclopedia handy is convenient under those circumstances. Also, don't believe everything you find on the internet.
Many of us purchased it for these reasons. Right now anyone can go and change wikipedia to say anything... it usually gets corrected and all in all good. But having articles that are " trusted and comprehensive scholarship from world-renowned experts" seemed an ideal thing to have access too. It just extremely disappointing such a shoddy product was allowed to be released.
-Dan
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Lynden Williams said:
One time ago, someone accidentally put the wrong price (heavily discounted) on some resources. A number of people bought them at the cheap price.
Logos could have refunded their money and invoked the lisences, but they allowed them to keep the resources.
Logos will try to please its customers even at their own hurt.
[Y]
Dell, studio XPS 7100, Ram 8GB, 64 - bit Operating System, AMD Phenom(mt) IIX6 1055T Processor 2.80 GHZ
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This is my personal Faithlife account. On 1 March 2022, I started working for Faithlife, and have a new 'official' user account. Posts on this account shouldn't be taken as official Faithlife views!
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Mark Smith said:
The two advantages I can see are interaction with your other Logos resources or tools, and the visual resources that can be searched and included with the Passage Guide, and so on.
YEs, well this was my thought as well. Without this, it is useless in Logos.
Some others have commented. I am well aware of the issues they wrote about on the internet, wikipedia and power outages. But Wikipedia was not on my mind when I asked the question.
For the price, I thought I was getting something useful. I guess if I actually saw what Britannica was capable of doing today, I would not have needed to ask this question. But what I am seeing in this resource, I would be fine about using internet sources.
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I have an answer. It'll take a few minutes to type it up, but I didn't want you to think we'd forgotten about you! Check back soon for the official word on what happened and what we're going to do to fix it.
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Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:
I have an answer. It'll take a few minutes to type it up, but I didn't want you to think we'd forgotten about you! Check back soon for the official word on what happened and what we're going to do to fix it.
Thanks for taking time to let us know that one is coming. As always I'm confident that Faithlife will solve this.
Using adventure and community to challenge young people to continually say "yes" to God
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The Noet-Britannica article on Zwingli is 242 words, but Wikipedia is 10,172.
The Noet-Britannica article on Mark Zuckerberg is 375 with Wiki at 8,500.
Someone criticized Wiki, but the reason kids can't quote it is because they want kids to use the library. So the question is value, not really reliability. For most of what we do, wiki is very good.
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We've discussed this internally and with the Encyclopaedia Britannica team, and we figured out what happened and have a good plan in place for how to make it right.
What Happened
Encyclopaedia Britannica (the company) has three different encyclopedia databases:
- Encyclopedia Britannica: contains ~80,000 articles and has over 40,000,000 words; aimed at the scholarly market
- Compton's Encyclopedia: contains ~19,000 articles and has over 8,000,000 words; aimed at the family market
- Encyclopedia Britannica, Student Edition: contains ~5,000 articles and has ~2,000,000 words; aimed at the student market
What we received from Encyclopaedia Britannica and delivered to you was #2.
All three of these are considered part of the Encyclopaedia Britannica family of encyclopedias. Compton's has been updated and expanded by the Encyclopaedia Britannica team beyond the edition that used to be in print, so there was a desire on the part of some to distance our product from the Compton's most people are familiar with. Ours is bigger, better, and more up to date.
(There's also a concise edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, 24,973 short articles and ~2,800,000 words, which they no longer sell.)
Encyclopaedia Britannica (the company) has several different encyclopedia products, which contain one or more of their three databases:
- Britannica.com: includes a subset of the main Encyclopedia Britannica database. They rotate which articles appear online from time to time.
- Britannica Kids: includes the full database of both Compton's and the Student Edition.
- Britannica School: has the full database for all three products.
- Britannica Academic: has the full Encyclopedia Britannica database.
They also license their various databases to third parties; these databases show up in products of various names. So its normal for these databases to be delivered under different names.
There was some confusion between our teams regarding what exactly we were getting. Some thought we were simply getting a portion of the full Encyclopedia Britannica rather than a completely distinct set of content. We're really sorry for this confusion and miscommunication. This should have been named and advertised as Compton's Encyclopedia, or at the very least described as an updated version of what used to be called Compton's Encyclopedia.
What We're Going to Do
Here's what we plan to do.
Encyclopaedia Britannica (the company) has kindly agreed to give us access to a large portion (exact amount TBD) of their full Encyclopedia Britannica database, with the corresponding media. We plan to build that out as a completely separate resource and bundle it in a collection along with the full Compton's Encyclopedia, which you already received. So you'll get both, for the price you already paid. (We're going to rename the current resource Compton's Encyclopedia. The new resource will be named Encyclopedia Britannica.) Consider Compton's a bonus, "we're sorry" gift. We're also going to deliver substantially more content that we originally described. We already delivered the full Compton's with its ~19,000 articles. We're going to deliver on top of that a substantial portion of the full Encyclopedia Britannica database of articles and corresponding media—at no additional charge to you.
We'll be putting the product back on Pre-Pub to give everyone who missed out the first time a second chance to take advantage of what's now an even better deal. We'll ship it as soon as we've built Encyclopedia Britannica. We're going to give it top priority and push it through the system as quickly as we can. It's a large amount of content, so it's going to take several weeks at minimum. Those of you who got in on the first pre-order (and don't request a refund) can simply ignore the new Pre-Pub.
What You Can Do
Since the product is changing and expanding and you've already been billed, we want to make sure you're 100% happy.
Here are your options:
- Keep Compton's and wait for Encyclopedia Britannica. If you're happy to have access to Compton's now and wait for Encyclopedia Britannica to be delivered later this year or early next year, you don't need to do anything. Enjoy access to Compton's now and wait patiently as we build Encyclopedia Britannica. You're paid in full and won't be charged for anything else.
- Return Compton's and pre-order the new Pre-Pub. If you'd like to wait to pay until the full product is finished, you can return the product and place a pre-order for the new one. You'll get both encyclopedias when they're finished and won't be charged until then. We'll honor the Pre-Pub price you had when you pre-ordered the original product. To take advantage of this, just call us at 800-875-6467 or send an email to cs@logos.com.
- Request a refund. If you'd like a refund, we'd be happy take care of that for you. The 30-day return window won't start until we've delivered the full product, so feel free to take the full time to evaluate whether the product is right for you.
On behalf of the team, please accept our sincerest apologies. We're really sorry for this mix-up and confusion, and we're eager to make it right.
Edit: I updated the projected ship time frame to reflect reality.
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Phil Gons (Faithlife) said:
Here's what we plan to do.
Encyclopaedia Britannica (the company) has kindly agreed to give us access to a large portion (exact amount TBD) of their full EB database, with the corresponding media. We plan to build that out as a completely separate resource and bundle that in a collection along with the full Compton's Encyclopedia, which you already received. So you'll get both. (We're going to rename the current resource Compton's Encyclopedia. The new resource will be named Encyclopedia Britannica.) Consider Compton's a bonus, "we're sorry" gift. We're also going to deliver substantially more content that we originally described. We already delivered the full Compton's with its ~19,000 articles. We're going to deliver on top of that a substantial portion of the full Encyclopedia Britannica database of articles and corresponding media—at no additional charge to you.
I knew Faithlife would make this right!
Thanks for helping us understand what happened and giving clear and excellent options from which to choose!
Using adventure and community to challenge young people to continually say "yes" to God
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