Never has the world seen a standard that is so cross-platform. I can buy a scanner and plug it directly into a PC, a Mac, you name it. And although Serial was/is cool, you can only do so much with it due to speed limitations.
Well, I don't know about your experience with it, but from what I have seen USB is still poorly supported on nearly ALL os's. Sure the latest MS OS will run it, but that is about it.
For example, we got a USB burner at work, and we tried to hook it up to a Mac running the latest MacOS. Guess what, to be able to use it, you have to reboot with all extensions turned off, EVERY TIME YOU WANT TO USE IT. I don't know if this is just the specific drivers for this burner being crappy, or what, but this is simply not acceptable, and nothing should ever be released to market with such shitty support.
Yes, this post is kinda redundant, I don't care if you moderate it down, just read it first.
From the above linked TMF article from TMFOak
"A system based on charging people for copies they can easily make for themselves for free is not a stable situation. It just doesn't make any sense. More restrictive laws can't substitute for the consent of the governed. King George tried that when the American colonies started grumbling. In the 1920s our own government tried it with prohibition. Restricting copying is no longer a viable model. The only way to deal with industries that refuse to change, and bet their existence on sustaining an obsolete status quo, is to hasten their destruction. Call it a mercy killing."
This is the key. Democracy is rule by the consent of the governed. There are about 20 million registered users. Of course some of these aren't real, and some are not of voting age, but I would be willing to bet that there are at least 3 or 4 times this amount of people who understand that IP cannot be the same post-internet. We don't need another Drug War, another prohibition fought against the the majority will. -----------------------------
Bad comparison. Slashdot has one thing that makes them Slashdot and which cannot be copied: their URL.
The URL would be meaningless unless there were content to make the URL worth something. The value is in the content, the content attracted the user base. The reason/. imitators aren't popular isn't because they don't have the URL, it is because they don't have the content that attracted the userbase. Now that/. is extablished as a "good site", it would be harder for a rip-off to get popular, since most would recognize it as such.
That is a sort of inherent IP protection. If you are good enough, people will recognize you as the original, and not some rip off.
(see pokemon, digimon, and all the other pocket monster type rip-offs) -----------------------------
Just because the final product can be copied, perfectly and infinitely, does it make it right? I spent hours on the graphics on this page... what claim to control them do you have?
I think that expectations have to change with regard to IP. Since you know that your web page can be ripped off so easily, I don't think it is reasonable for you to have the expectation that it will not be. You shouldn't base your decisions on the assumption that you will be able to make money from the exclusive rights of your work, as long as the work is so easily copied. Sure, there is a high likelyhood that you can make money off of it, but I think it is incorrect to assume that you can make money off of a product that has no marginal cost to provide it to infinite users.
Slashdot is a good example. They make money (well at least a little), and yet their site can be set up on anyone's server that wants it. The value is not in the easily copied parts of the site, the value is in the content, and the ongoing work of the editors.
Does this mean the end of IP? I say probably not. I think the paradigm will just be much different from what we are used to. The economic theories that state "When there are no barriers to entry, profitability will fall to zero" will rule. All we had before was an artificial protected market, through technological supression (DAT) and legislation. -----------------------------
National Rifle Association (NRA):
3 million members.
U.S. Farmers: 5 million farmers.
American Association of Retired Persons (AARP):
22 million subscribers.
Napster: 20 million users.
Here we go misusing stats again. Some points.
Napster has 20 million registered users.
There are probably at least some people with more than one account.
Point two: I would say that at least 30-60% of the users of Napster are under 18. I just pulled the number from nowhere, but it seems close enough. Remember, in this country, people under 18 really don't matter. (I know it's wrong, but thats the way it is)
This may look like a troll, but its not, honest.:)
-----------------------------
Hehehe, Terence McKenna is dead, long live Terence McKenna.
(Don't mod down just because you don't understand the reference) -----------------------------
I see this as the next huge conflict between our government and the people. Just as the War on Drugs has tried to stop something that millions of people do, the War of Copyright will be the next tool of control of the American people.
Whenever the Government "cracks down" on something that is illegal that a huge subculture practices, bad things result. What it gives them is the tool to control everything that almost everyone does. It will be a war that the Government doesn't want to win. By criminilizing the acts of large groups of people, it gives them the tools they need to supress the members of the group that speak out against the Government.
It isn't even about copyright anymore. It's more about the government and control of individual rights. Think about it. -----------------------------
I think that LCD is going to be the way that this happens. I can't see providing enough power/physical hardware to support more than a few monitors in any meaningful configuration.
Also, you mentioned the big plastic borders... well there is a reason for that. Tube type CRTs distort like crazy around the edge. That is why there is a skirt on the tube, and also why when you buy a monitor you generally have to adjust the screen and make it bigger to fill out the whole usable area. The only place where the beam is truely in focus is near the center.
You can see this on your own monitor if you look closely. Make an image that is a bunch of parallel lines about 2 pixels apart. Move it to the edge of the screen and watch how blurry it gets.
I think when LCD becomes standard equipment, these multimonitor setups will be much more common. -----------------------------
As far as NTSC-PAL goes, I think no one wants to change any standard, after all it makes them more money.
It is like a built in country coding like you find on PSX games and DVDs, but for VHS tapes and VCRs. Works out well for the manufacturer. -----------------------------
Maybe if the government spent the money that it spent on NASA on incentives to get private business into the space game, we would see a lot more development in the area.
I think this recent space ship with the Pizza Hut logo on it is a step in the right direction. Why should the american people pay for it, when some corporation (the ones that will ultimately benefit from space exploration) could do it just as well?
I can see it now:
VISA, its everywhere you want to be.
Reach out and touch a martian.
You deserve a break this cycle.
Microsoft: Where in the solar system do you want to go today?
The thing is, US Trademark only applies when there is some chance for confusion, or benefit, by the infringer.
Since the open source project isn't gaining anything by using the name SAMBA, and there is little chance for confusion, in the US at least, this case would be thrown out.
Anyone know the german law? -----------------------------
That is the classic security through obscurity argument.
Anyone with half a brain and some basic electronic knowledge can build a wiretap. With a little more knowledge, they can add a radio transmitter to it, making it what is commonly known as a bug.
Those lacking the requsite half a brain/knowledge, can just buy off the shelf stuff that can be misused as a wiretap. Ever seen those wireless microphones that people use when talking on stage in front of others... would be too hard to just stick that on a phone line.
The point is, you can't try to destroy "bad information"; knowledge can never be destroyed, unless you kill or subdue all the people that have it.
The other point is that Carnivore isn't high tech. It is probably a very simple program for the most part. What is causing the controversy is that they want to be able to connect into ISPs subnets and watch for email traffic, (or who knows what other traffic). -----------------------------
Is there anything fairly small, but very cheap? I keep seeing talk of 1U rack mount cases, but those are pretty pricey, themselves.
Yep, heres what you do. Get on eBay and look for laptops that have broken LCD screens, 486 and pentium class. It doesn't matter if the battery is crap either, since you won't be using it. Hook up an external monitor for installation of the OS.
You can stack 4 laptops in about the space one desktop style case would take up, and it is a lot cheaper than buying one of these embedded computers, even once you add in the cost of the PCMCIA ethernet cards.
A 4 port KVM switch completes the package, so you only need one KB, monitor and mouse to access all 5, without taking a bunch of plugs out each time.
The 4 port KVM switch is about 200, each laptop maybe 100, another 150-200 for ethernet cards. Depending on what you have laying around, it might be another 100 or so for power supplies.
I did make it through to the page, but its kind of ironic, for a page that it kinda devoted to making people's pages more compatible, their code doesn't work in Opera, and they use javascript. (Opera does support it, they must have a slightly incompatible method of using it.)
Why does the web have to be anything more than HTML? This reminds me of the days when the web was about information, not presentation, and you didn't need broadband to not have to wait 5 minutes for a page to load over a modem. (if you were cool and had a fast 9600 or 14.4). -----------------------------
This is really a non-item, since we all have a pretty good idea of how Carnivore works. It is probably very simple, just scanning for certain headers that will trigger it and then turn on the collection mechnism to collect that email and file it away.
If it does anything more than that, I really doubt they would admit it. Do you really think they are going to say,
"Yeah, we set it up to scan for words like Bomb and President, and then we take names, put them in a secret database, and monitor everything that person does." ?
While this is slightly relevant, it isn't a big thing. Maybe a story covering their response to the FOIA request would be better, but like I said above, don't expect much. -----------------------------
There is a new version of Opera out, it just got out of Beta. Its a lot better than previous versions. Still $19 for students, at least when I bought it two weeks ago. -----------------------------
There is a difference, there really is. Not all Libertarians are so idealistic. Some would have everything made private, but some are more moderate than that. A lot of the things you read online from the Libertarian party is more of the extreme idealistic Libertarian, but most of the real world Libertarians I have met, myself included, advocate a limited Libertarianism. We want the governement out of our business, and we want as much as is reasonably possible privatized. Other things may work better as public property, such as roads and public trash cans and such. Pure Libertarianism seems to ignore basic economic principles regarding services. Government intervention should be considered for a service if: 1. The marginal cost of providing the service to more people is near zero. 2. It is not something that people would be willing to pay for. An example of (2) is the public trash can. If one were to charge a fee for the use of a trash can on the public street, people would just throw their garbage on the ground. This is not something that could work well in a pure Libertarian environment. That is why lots of Libertarians who are economically educated are not as extreme as to say that everything should be privatized. Of course, a pure Libertarian would argue that there should be no such thing as a public street, and then the owner of that particular part of the street would be responsible for cleaning it up (or not cleaning it). I think that is possible, but not necessary. (and possibly fraught with litigation) I think we should use Libertarianism as a tool to answer the questions and address the problems that confront us, not to radically change the way that everything is done. Apply Libertarian solutions the the problems that crop up, and you slowly but surely head toward a more free society. -----------------------------
I have tried all the browsers out there, and by far the best is Opera 4.0. The 4.0 version just came out, and it features none of the BS that other browsers have, just the good features.
It's only 19 dollars for an educational license. Sure, it isn't free, but it is worth the extra money to have a browser that isn't huge bloatware.
Opera is less than 2 megs, and features pretty much everything important that Mozilla and IE feature.
www.opera.com
And no, I don't work for Opera, I just really like the browser. -----------------------------
Maybe I am nitpicking, but there is no such thing as SMTP packets.:) I get your point though. You are correct. This is just like the beginning of the War on Drugs. There is a product that LOTS of people want, and lots of people are getting. Government steps in and says, "OK son, you need to stop doing that, and I am going to spend billions to make sure that you don't do it, after all the (music industry|pharmaceutical industry) pays my salary, not you." So here we go again. Prohibition of something that people want, and something that people are going to get no matter how many laws are passed. Hopefully this will turn out better than our War on Drugs has. -----------------------------
I don't know all the details, since the site is slashdotted and not available, but this seems much worse than Napster. Instead of giving away copyrighted material, now people are going to be selling it, and the company that facilitates this illegal transaction is going to get a cut of it?? Please tell me that I have misunderstood the concept of this story. -----------------------------
You need a license and to pass a test before you can drive a car - you should also need a license before you can connect to the net. Those who commit offences should have their license revoked. Man, this is about the worst thing I have ever heard anybody suggest. Everything we are fighting for would be invalidated if we had to ask the government for permission to use the Internet. It would become much like Amateur radio, with strict restrictions on content, expecially political content meant for the general public. Of course the big commercial stations can do whatever they want. I am not knocking Amature Radio, I think its great. I just really hate the government (chew on that carnivore), and I sure don't want them telling me when and how I can use the Internet, so long as I am not causing a problem or committing electronic trespass. -----------------------------
That PbC is pretty cool, but kind of obvious. I have done what he did in the past, that is, run hard drives while they were open. All you read says that the tiniest speck of anything will kill a hard drive, but I have run them open for a while with no problems. It is interesting to see the difference between how a voice coil vs. stepper motor drive works.
It would be cool if someone were to make a totally transparent computer, all the way down to the cases on all the drives. Kind of like an iMac on steriods. At least you might be able to see what is happening when your hard drive starts making that grinding noise.:)
Bet that would be hell to get FCC approval on with zero RF shielding. -----------------------------
Actually, his post made a lot of sense. I can see why you would stop arguing, since he pointed out a lot of fallacies in your reasoning. Don't want to be called a troll under your real name RealityMaster? It's only karma man.:) You guys act like it is life blood or something. -----------------------------
Slashdot Mirror
Never has the world seen a standard that is so cross-platform. I can buy a scanner and plug it directly into a PC, a Mac, you name it. And although Serial was/is cool, you can only do so much with it due to speed limitations.
Well, I don't know about your experience with it, but from what I have seen USB is still poorly supported on nearly ALL os's. Sure the latest MS OS will run it, but that is about it.
For example, we got a USB burner at work, and we tried to hook it up to a Mac running the latest MacOS. Guess what, to be able to use it, you have to reboot with all extensions turned off, EVERY TIME YOU WANT TO USE IT. I don't know if this is just the specific drivers for this burner being crappy, or what, but this is simply not acceptable, and nothing should ever be released to market with such shitty support.
sigh.
-----------------------------
Yes, this post is kinda redundant, I don't care if you moderate it down, just read it first.
From the above linked TMF article from TMFOak
"A system based on charging people for copies they can easily make for themselves for free is not a stable situation. It just doesn't make any sense. More restrictive laws can't substitute for the consent of the governed. King George tried that when the American colonies started grumbling. In the 1920s our own government tried it with prohibition. Restricting copying is no longer a viable model. The only way to deal with industries that refuse to change, and bet their existence on sustaining an obsolete status quo, is to hasten their destruction. Call it a mercy killing."
This is the key. Democracy is rule by the consent of the governed. There are about 20 million registered users. Of course some of these aren't real, and some are not of voting age, but I would be willing to bet that there are at least 3 or 4 times this amount of people who understand that IP cannot be the same post-internet. We don't need another Drug War, another prohibition fought against the the majority will.
-----------------------------
Just use PayPal.
-----------------------------
Bad comparison. Slashdot has one thing that makes them Slashdot and which cannot be copied: their URL.
/. imitators aren't popular isn't because they don't have the URL, it is because they don't have the content that attracted the userbase. Now that /. is extablished as a "good site", it would be harder for a rip-off to get popular, since most would recognize it as such.
The URL would be meaningless unless there were content to make the URL worth something. The value is in the content, the content attracted the user base. The reason
That is a sort of inherent IP protection. If you are good enough, people will recognize you as the original, and not some rip off.
(see pokemon, digimon, and all the other pocket monster type rip-offs)
-----------------------------
Just because the final product can be copied, perfectly and infinitely, does it make it right? I spent hours on the graphics on this page... what claim to control them do you have? I think that expectations have to change with regard to IP. Since you know that your web page can be ripped off so easily, I don't think it is reasonable for you to have the expectation that it will not be. You shouldn't base your decisions on the assumption that you will be able to make money from the exclusive rights of your work, as long as the work is so easily copied. Sure, there is a high likelyhood that you can make money off of it, but I think it is incorrect to assume that you can make money off of a product that has no marginal cost to provide it to infinite users.
Slashdot is a good example. They make money (well at least a little), and yet their site can be set up on anyone's server that wants it. The value is not in the easily copied parts of the site, the value is in the content, and the ongoing work of the editors.
Does this mean the end of IP? I say probably not. I think the paradigm will just be much different from what we are used to. The economic theories that state "When there are no barriers to entry, profitability will fall to zero" will rule. All we had before was an artificial protected market, through technological supression (DAT) and legislation.
-----------------------------
National Rifle Association (NRA): 3 million members.
:)
U.S. Farmers: 5 million farmers.
American Association of Retired Persons (AARP): 22 million subscribers.
Napster: 20 million users.
Here we go misusing stats again. Some points.
Napster has 20 million registered users. There are probably at least some people with more than one account.
Point two: I would say that at least 30-60% of the users of Napster are under 18. I just pulled the number from nowhere, but it seems close enough. Remember, in this country, people under 18 really don't matter. (I know it's wrong, but thats the way it is)
This may look like a troll, but its not, honest.
-----------------------------
Hehehe, Terence McKenna is dead, long live Terence McKenna. (Don't mod down just because you don't understand the reference)
-----------------------------
I see this as the next huge conflict between our government and the people. Just as the War on Drugs has tried to stop something that millions of people do, the War of Copyright will be the next tool of control of the American people.
Whenever the Government "cracks down" on something that is illegal that a huge subculture practices, bad things result. What it gives them is the tool to control everything that almost everyone does. It will be a war that the Government doesn't want to win. By criminilizing the acts of large groups of people, it gives them the tools they need to supress the members of the group that speak out against the Government.
It isn't even about copyright anymore. It's more about the government and control of individual rights. Think about it.
-----------------------------
I think that LCD is going to be the way that this happens. I can't see providing enough power/physical hardware to support more than a few monitors in any meaningful configuration.
Also, you mentioned the big plastic borders... well there is a reason for that. Tube type CRTs distort like crazy around the edge. That is why there is a skirt on the tube, and also why when you buy a monitor you generally have to adjust the screen and make it bigger to fill out the whole usable area. The only place where the beam is truely in focus is near the center.
You can see this on your own monitor if you look closely. Make an image that is a bunch of parallel lines about 2 pixels apart. Move it to the edge of the screen and watch how blurry it gets.
I think when LCD becomes standard equipment, these multimonitor setups will be much more common.
-----------------------------
As far as NTSC-PAL goes, I think no one wants to change any standard, after all it makes them more money.
It is like a built in country coding like you find on PSX games and DVDs, but for VHS tapes and VCRs. Works out well for the manufacturer.
-----------------------------
Maybe if the government spent the money that it spent on NASA on incentives to get private business into the space game, we would see a lot more development in the area.
I think this recent space ship with the Pizza Hut logo on it is a step in the right direction. Why should the american people pay for it, when some corporation (the ones that will ultimately benefit from space exploration) could do it just as well?
I can see it now:
VISA, its everywhere you want to be.
Reach out and touch a martian.
You deserve a break this cycle.
Microsoft: Where in the solar system do you want to go today?
-----------------------------
The thing is, US Trademark only applies when there is some chance for confusion, or benefit, by the infringer.
Since the open source project isn't gaining anything by using the name SAMBA, and there is little chance for confusion, in the US at least, this case would be thrown out.
Anyone know the german law?
-----------------------------
That is the classic security through obscurity argument.
Anyone with half a brain and some basic electronic knowledge can build a wiretap. With a little more knowledge, they can add a radio transmitter to it, making it what is commonly known as a bug.
Those lacking the requsite half a brain/knowledge, can just buy off the shelf stuff that can be misused as a wiretap. Ever seen those wireless microphones that people use when talking on stage in front of others... would be too hard to just stick that on a phone line.
The point is, you can't try to destroy "bad information"; knowledge can never be destroyed, unless you kill or subdue all the people that have it.
The other point is that Carnivore isn't high tech. It is probably a very simple program for the most part. What is causing the controversy is that they want to be able to connect into ISPs subnets and watch for email traffic, (or who knows what other traffic).
-----------------------------
Is there anything fairly small, but very cheap? I keep seeing talk of 1U rack mount cases, but those are pretty pricey, themselves.
Yep, heres what you do. Get on eBay and look for laptops that have broken LCD screens, 486 and pentium class. It doesn't matter if the battery is crap either, since you won't be using it. Hook up an external monitor for installation of the OS.
You can stack 4 laptops in about the space one desktop style case would take up, and it is a lot cheaper than buying one of these embedded computers, even once you add in the cost of the PCMCIA ethernet cards.
A 4 port KVM switch completes the package, so you only need one KB, monitor and mouse to access all 5, without taking a bunch of plugs out each time.
The 4 port KVM switch is about 200, each laptop maybe 100, another 150-200 for ethernet cards. Depending on what you have laying around, it might be another 100 or so for power supplies.
-----------------------------
There are still plenty of embedded systems computers that use 8088, 286, 386, 486, and Pentium Processors.
BTW, I think this is damn cool. I just wish things like this were cheaper.
-----------------------------
I did make it through to the page, but its kind of ironic, for a page that it kinda devoted to making people's pages more compatible, their code doesn't work in Opera, and they use javascript. (Opera does support it, they must have a slightly incompatible method of using it.) Why does the web have to be anything more than HTML? This reminds me of the days when the web was about information, not presentation, and you didn't need broadband to not have to wait 5 minutes for a page to load over a modem. (if you were cool and had a fast 9600 or 14.4).
-----------------------------
This is really a non-item, since we all have a pretty good idea of how Carnivore works. It is probably very simple, just scanning for certain headers that will trigger it and then turn on the collection mechnism to collect that email and file it away.
If it does anything more than that, I really doubt they would admit it. Do you really think they are going to say,
"Yeah, we set it up to scan for words like Bomb and President, and then we take names, put them in a secret database, and monitor everything that person does." ?
While this is slightly relevant, it isn't a big thing. Maybe a story covering their response to the FOIA request would be better, but like I said above, don't expect much.
-----------------------------
There is a new version of Opera out, it just got out of Beta. Its a lot better than previous versions. Still $19 for students, at least when I bought it two weeks ago.
-----------------------------
There is a difference, there really is. Not all Libertarians are so idealistic. Some would have everything made private, but some are more moderate than that. A lot of the things you read online from the Libertarian party is more of the extreme idealistic Libertarian, but most of the real world Libertarians I have met, myself included, advocate a limited Libertarianism. We want the governement out of our business, and we want as much as is reasonably possible privatized. Other things may work better as public property, such as roads and public trash cans and such. Pure Libertarianism seems to ignore basic economic principles regarding services. Government intervention should be considered for a service if: 1. The marginal cost of providing the service to more people is near zero. 2. It is not something that people would be willing to pay for. An example of (2) is the public trash can. If one were to charge a fee for the use of a trash can on the public street, people would just throw their garbage on the ground. This is not something that could work well in a pure Libertarian environment. That is why lots of Libertarians who are economically educated are not as extreme as to say that everything should be privatized. Of course, a pure Libertarian would argue that there should be no such thing as a public street, and then the owner of that particular part of the street would be responsible for cleaning it up (or not cleaning it). I think that is possible, but not necessary. (and possibly fraught with litigation) I think we should use Libertarianism as a tool to answer the questions and address the problems that confront us, not to radically change the way that everything is done. Apply Libertarian solutions the the problems that crop up, and you slowly but surely head toward a more free society.
-----------------------------
I have tried all the browsers out there, and by far the best is Opera 4.0. The 4.0 version just came out, and it features none of the BS that other browsers have, just the good features.
It's only 19 dollars for an educational license. Sure, it isn't free, but it is worth the extra money to have a browser that isn't huge bloatware.
Opera is less than 2 megs, and features pretty much everything important that Mozilla and IE feature.
www.opera.com
And no, I don't work for Opera, I just really like the browser.
-----------------------------
Maybe I am nitpicking, but there is no such thing as SMTP packets. :) I get your point though. You are correct. This is just like the beginning of the War on Drugs. There is a product that LOTS of people want, and lots of people are getting. Government steps in and says, "OK son, you need to stop doing that, and I am going to spend billions to make sure that you don't do it, after all the (music industry|pharmaceutical industry) pays my salary, not you." So here we go again. Prohibition of something that people want, and something that people are going to get no matter how many laws are passed. Hopefully this will turn out better than our War on Drugs has.
-----------------------------
I don't know all the details, since the site is slashdotted and not available, but this seems much worse than Napster. Instead of giving away copyrighted material, now people are going to be selling it, and the company that facilitates this illegal transaction is going to get a cut of it?? Please tell me that I have misunderstood the concept of this story.
-----------------------------
You need a license and to pass a test before you can drive a car - you should also need a license before you can connect to the net. Those who commit offences should have their license revoked. Man, this is about the worst thing I have ever heard anybody suggest. Everything we are fighting for would be invalidated if we had to ask the government for permission to use the Internet. It would become much like Amateur radio, with strict restrictions on content, expecially political content meant for the general public. Of course the big commercial stations can do whatever they want. I am not knocking Amature Radio, I think its great. I just really hate the government (chew on that carnivore), and I sure don't want them telling me when and how I can use the Internet, so long as I am not causing a problem or committing electronic trespass.
-----------------------------
That PbC is pretty cool, but kind of obvious. I have done what he did in the past, that is, run hard drives while they were open. All you read says that the tiniest speck of anything will kill a hard drive, but I have run them open for a while with no problems. It is interesting to see the difference between how a voice coil vs. stepper motor drive works.
:)
It would be cool if someone were to make a totally transparent computer, all the way down to the cases on all the drives. Kind of like an iMac on steriods. At least you might be able to see what is happening when your hard drive starts making that grinding noise.
Bet that would be hell to get FCC approval on with zero RF shielding.
-----------------------------
Actually, his post made a lot of sense. I can see why you would stop arguing, since he pointed out a lot of fallacies in your reasoning. Don't want to be called a troll under your real name RealityMaster? It's only karma man. :) You guys act like it is life blood or something.
-----------------------------