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Gary Edwards

Microsoft's Great Besmirching | Linux Journal - 0 views

  • Of course, all companies try to bend the rules in the their favour, and it would be unfair to pick on Microsoft for doing the same. But what has happened over the last year and a half goes so far beyond the accepted rough and tumble of the standards game that cumulatively it can only be considered as an all-out attack on the machinery of standards-making. Consider the evidence.
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    Glyn Moody provides a summary of the destruction of ISO
Gary Edwards

Microsoft's OOXML limps through ISO meeting - ZDNet UK - 0 views

  • Gary Edwards, former president of the Open Document Foundation, an industry group that promoted ODF but then rejected both approaches and closed itself down in November 2007, said: "Ecma and Oasis are vendor consortia where the rules governing standards specification work favour vendor innovation over the open and transparent interoperability consumers, governments and FLOSS efforts demand... Shutting that door on Ecma OOXML is proving very difficult exactly because the primary and fundamental rule of ISO interoperability requirements has been breached."
Gary Edwards

Denmark: OOXML vote won't affect public sector. ODF is too costly! | InfoWorld - 0 views

  • Lebech said Denmark considers OOXML an open standard, regardless whether it is approved by the ISO. "It would be impossible for us to use only ISO standards if we want to fulfill the goal of creating interoperability in the government sector," he said. The Danish Parliament also mandated that public agencies consider the cost of using open formats. One of the main reasons OOXML was included is because Denmark is heavily dependent on document management systems that are integrated with Microsoft's Office products, Lebech said. Denmark also found that requiring agencies to only use ODF would have been too expensive, mostly because of the cost of converting documents into ODF, Lebech said. "We wouldn't have been able to only support ODF," Lebech said. "It wouldn't have been cost neutral."
Gary Edwards

Microsoft Watch - Business Applications - Convergence=Integration - 0 views

  • Microsoft significantly increases cross-integration of features with the company's other software. Microsoft acquired most of the products making up its Dynamics product line, and what a motley crew. New products and versions bring the Dynamics line more into the Microsoft family, in part by convergence—or increased integration with the company's other software.
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    Thanks for the insightful commentary Joe. I see things a bit differently. Maybe my tin foil hat is wearing a bit tight these days, but i see MSOffice XML (MOOXML and the MOOXML binary InfoSet) as a very important aspect of how Microsoft integrates and leverages their desktop office monopoly power into server side and device systems. It is the combination of MOOXML and .NET that creates the integration mesh between desktop, server systems, and devices. Imagine every application or service participating in either a loosely coupled or carefully crafted information processing chain, being fluent in MOOXML, and able to process internal data structures and processing instructions unique to .NET. Enterprise systems and services from ORACLE, IBM and SAP will not have this same integration fluency. The design of ISO MOOXML is such that it would be impossible for <b>non Microsoft server and device systems</b> to match the quality and depth of integration with the 500 million desktops running MSOffice bound business processes. Given that MOOXML will probably succeed at getting ISO/IEC approval, removing the last "legal" barrier for this MOOXML Stack, were looking at a massive migration of MSOffice bound workgroup - workflow business processes to a new lockin point; The Exchange/SharePoint Hub. With the real estate industry, this migration to to E/S hosted applications only took six months to completely replace years of desktop productivity shrinkware dominance. The leap in productivity was spectacular. The downside of this migration is that the real estate industry is now tied into Microsoft at the critically important business process level. A binding that will perhaps last through the next fifteen years.
Gary Edwards

War rages on over Microsoft's OOXML plans: Insight - Software - ZDNet Australia - 0 views

  • "We feel that the best standards are open standards," technology industry commentator Colin Jackson, a member of the Technical Advisory committee convened by StandardsNZ to consider OOXML, said at the event. "In that respect Microsoft is to be applauded, as previously this was a secret binary format." Microsoft's opponents suggest, among a host of other concerns, that making Open XML an ISO standard would lock the world's document future to Microsoft. They argue that a standard should only be necessary when there is a "market requirement" for it. IBM spokesperson Paul Robinson thus describes OOXML as a "redundant replacement for other standards". Quoting from the ISO guide, Robinson said that a standard "is a document by a recognised body established by consensus which is aimed at achieving an optimum degree of order and aimed at the promotion of optimum community benefits". It can be argued that rather than provide community benefit, supporting multiple standards actually comes at an economic cost to the user community. "We do not believe OOXML meets these objectives of an international standard," Robinson said.
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    "aimed at achieving an optimum degree of order .... and .... aimed at the promotion of optimum community benefits:. Uh, excuse me Mr. Robinson, tha tsecond part of your statement, the one concerning optimum community benefits - that would also disqualify ODF!! ODF was not designed to be compatible with the 550 million MSOffice desktops and their billions of binary docuemnts. Menaing, these 550 million users will suffer considerable loss of information if they try to convert their existing documents to ODF. It is also next to impossible for MSOffice applications to implement ODF as a fiel format due to this incompatbility. ODF was designed for OpenOffice, and directly reflects the way OpenOffice implements specific document structures. The problem areas involve large differences between how OpenOffice implments these structures and how MSOffice implements these same structures. The structures in question are lists, fields, tables, sections and page dynamics. It seems to me that "optimum community benefits" would include the conversion and exchange of docuemnts with some 550 million users!!!! And ODF was clearly not designed for that purpose!
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    I don't agree with this statement from Microsoft's Oliver Bell. As someone who served on the OASIS ODF Technical Committee from it's inception in November of 2002 through the next five years, i have to disagree. It's not that Microsoft wasn't welcome. They were. It's that the "welcome" came with some serious strings. Fo rMicrosoft to join OASIS would have meant strolling into the camp of their most erstwhile and determined competitors, and having to ammend an existing standard to accomodate the implementation needs of MSOffice. There is simply no way for the layout differences between OpenOffice and MSOffice to be negotiated short of putting both methodologies into the spec. Meaning, the spec would provide two ways of implementing lists, tables, fields, sections and page dynamics. A true welcome would have been for ODF to have been written to accomodate these diferences. Rather than writing ODF to meet the implementation model used by OepnOffice, it would have been infinitely better to wrtite ODF as a totally application independent file format using generic docuemnt structures tha tcould be adapted by any application. It turns out that this is exactly the way the W3C goes about the business of writing their fiel format specifications (HTML, XHTML, CSS, XFORMS, and CDF). The results are highly interoperable formats that any applciation can implement.
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    You can harmonize an application specific format with a generic, applicaiton independent format. But you can't harmonize two application specific formats!!!!
    The easy way to solve the document exchange problem is to leave the legacy applications alone, and work on the conversion of OOXML and ODF docuemnts to a single, application independent generic format. The best candidate for this role is that of the W3C's CDF.
    CDF is a desription of how to combine existing W3C format standards into a single container. It is meant to succeed HTML on the Web, but has been designed as a universal file format.
    The most exciting combination is that of XHTML 2.0 and CSS in that it is capable of handling the complete range of desktop productivity office suite documents. Even though it's slightly outside the W3C reach, the most popular CDF compound is that of XHTML, CSS and JavaScript. A combination otherwise known as "AJAX".
Gary Edwards

The End of ODF & OpenXML - Hello ODEF! - 0 views

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    Short slide deck of Barbara Held's February 28th, 2007 EU IDABC presentation. She introduces ODEF, the "Open Document Exchange Format" which is designed to replace both ODF and OpenOfficeXML. ComputerWorld recently ran a story about the end of ODF, as they covered the failure of six "legislative" initiatives designed to mandate ODF as the official file format. While the political treachery surrounding these initiatives is a story in and of itself, the larger story, the one that has world wide reverberations, wasn't mentioned. The larger ODF story is that ODF vendors are losing the political battles because they are unable to provide government CIO's with real world solutions. Here are three quotes from the California discussion that really say it all: "Interoperability isn't just a feature. It's the basic requirement for getting your XML file format and applications considered"..... "The challenge is that of migrating our existing documents and business processes to XML. The question is which XML? OpenDocument or OpenXML?" ....... "Under those conditions, is it even possible to implement OpenDocument?" ....... Bill Welty, CIO California Air Resource Board wondering if there was a way to support California legislative proposal AB-1668. This is hardly the first time the compatibility-interoperability issue has challenged ODf. Massachusetts spent a full year on a pilot study testing the top tier of ODF solutions: OpenOffice, StarOffice, Novell Office and IBM's WorkPlace (prototype). The results were a disaster for ODF. So much so that the 300 page pilot study report and accompanying comments wiki have never seen the light of day. In response to the disastrous pilot study, Massachusetts issued their now infamous RFi; a "request for information" about whether it's possible or not to write an ODF plugin for MSOffice applications. The OpenDocument Foundation responded to the RFi with our da Vinci plugin. The quick descriptio
Gary Edwards

Q&amp;A: Calif. CIO Steers Clear of Ideology on File Formats - 0 views

  • We’re trying to view it as a straight business decision. What are the costs associated with one approach over another? Does it serve all of our business needs? If it doesn’t serve a business need, how do we satisfy that business need? We’re trying to view this just as a plain-vanilla, nonpartisan, nonideological issue.
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    A mus tread.  Carol Sliwa of ComputerWorld intervies Clark Kelso, California CIO.  ODF is the main issue, with clark casting all his answers in the context of business decisions.  Carol o fcourse is asking the best questions of any journalist alive.

    Keep in mind that ComputerWorld and the Boston globe filed for the Freedom of Information Act to be invoked in Massachusetts.  They got access to all the eMail, documnetation, and conferencing notes concerning ODF  and Microsoft.  Carol's interview with Louis Gutierrez last week was filled with the same hard questions Clark Kelso fielded so deftly.

    The "committee" Clark Kelso has set up to look at these issues is headed by Bill Welty, the CIO of the California Air Resources Board.  Bill is a long time opensource - Linux guy, but will be the firs tto admit that Microsoft is the only vendor providing a means of getting everything inot XML.  And that's the heart of any SOA strategy, "First, get everything into XML".

    With a 500 million MSOffice desktop bound business process headstart, Microsoft has the extreme advantage in this much needed migration to XML. 

    They now have their own proprietary application and platform bound version of XML; MOOXML (Microsoft OfficeOpenXML) heading for international standardization at ISO. 

    They now have their XML Hub in place; the Exchange4/SharePoint Hub.  This is also an essential part of any SOA strategy.  You've got to have an XML Hub where the XML information streams and service connection to legacy black box systems can be piped into, managed and resolved.  The XML must also provide an end user interface to these information flows.  One that converges and integrates information, documents, data, and workflows into an easy to manage and participate in interface.  The E/S Hub excells at this because it covers the fundamentals of eMail, messaging, portal, calendar, scheduling, c
Gary Edwards

Ecma Responds « Opportunity Knocks - 0 views

  • No, the real problem to me is that Microsoft wants to position OOXML as just a base format that their implementation is based on. And that the implementation adds all the other parts that are supposed to be non-XML, which includes VBA macros, OLE, DRM, password-protection, …
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    Walt Hucks and Stephane Rodriguez have taken on the MS Ecma response to ISO/IEC JTC S1 National Bodies objections and contradiciton findings that were filed at the end of the ISO/IEC Ecma 376 fast track - contradiction review phase.  

    The one - two punch Walt and Stephane provide is the clearest statement yet of what's really behind th eenormity of Microsoft's effort to establish their own international standards for XML file formats.  In particular, they discuss the issue of business processes bound to the MSOffice - VBA API layer through macros, scripts, OLE, DRM, and password protection type mechnaisms.

    They also point out that Ecma 376 is just a baseline file format that will be eXtended by MS Applications on implementation.  It is the this collection of embedded system specific processing instructions that bind current business processewss to MSOffice, and will hold the monopoly base of 500 million desktops intact as MS makes the tranistion from desktop shrinkwrap sales to server side systems and services stacks.

Gary Edwards

Is It Game Over? - ODF Advocate Andy UpDegrove is Worried. Very Worried - 0 views

  • This seems to me to be a turning point for the creation of global standards.&nbsp;Microsoft was invited to be part of the original ODF Technical Committee in OASIS, and chose to stand aside.&nbsp;That committee tried to do its best to make the standard work well with Office, but was naturally limited in that endeavor by Microsoft's unwillingness to cooperate.&nbsp;This, of course, made it easier for Microsoft to later claim a need for OOXML to be adopted as a standard, in order to "better serve its customers."&nbsp;The refusal by an incumbent to participate in an open standards process is certainly its right, but it is hardly conduct that should be rewarded by a global standards body charged with watching out for the best interests of all.
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    Andy UpDegrove takes on the issue of Microsoft submitting their proprietary "XML alternative to PDF" proposal to Ecma for consideration as an international standard.  MS XML-PDF will compliment ECMA 376 (OOXML - OfficeOpenXML) which is scheduled for ISO vote in September of 2007.  Just a bit over 60 days from today.

    Andy points out some interesting things; such as the "Charter" similarities between MS XML-PDF and MS OOXML submisssions to Ecma:

    MS XML-PDF Scope: The goal of the Technical Committee is to produce a formal standard for office productivity applications within the Ecma International standards process which is fully compatible with the Office Open XML Formats. The aim is to enable the implementation of the Office Open XML Formats by a wide set of tools and platforms in order to foster interoperability across office productivity applications and with line-of-business systems. The Technical Committee will also be responsible for the ongoing maintenance and evolution of the standard.   Programme of Work: Produce a formal standard for an XML-based electronic paper format and XML-based page description language which is consistent with existing implementations of the format called the XML Paper Specification,…[in each case, emphasis added]

    If that sounds familiar, it should, because it echoes the absolute directive of the original OOXML technical committee charter, wh
Gary Edwards

Choice - 0 views

  • With ISO/IEC having standardized Open Document Format (ODF) 1.0 and considering standardizing Ecma Office Open XML (Open XML), there is a lot of public discussion about document formats and whether the world should begin to focus on only one format or continue to see multiple formats developed and used over time. Microsoft believes that users should be able to choose among formats and pick the one that best meets their needs. We also believe in encouraging the continued evolution of computing and data formats. And we support the ratification of Open XML in ISO/IEC. There are several reasons for these views:
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    This the infamous Microsoft letter that many have misconstrued as an announcement of support for OpenDocument.  Only in a Microsoft universe can the statement, "We're not going to attack ODF" be taken as Micrsoft support for ODF.
Gary Edwards

Universal Interoperability Framework for OpenDocument - 0 views

  • SUMMARY: The OpenDocument Foundation proposes that the OASIS Office TC begin now to create an interoperability framework for inclusion in OpenDocument v. 1.2. This document, one of a series of planned proposals, proposes first steps towards a comprehensive interoperability framework and OpenDocument conformance requirements.&nbsp; This proposal is designed to bring ODF v. 1.2 into compliance with current ISO Interoperability Requirements.
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    The OpenDocument Foundation "Universal Interoperability Framework" Proposal has not been submitted to the OASIS ODF TC as of this bookmarking.  But this version is complete except for a closing summation.
Gary Edwards

The French AFNOR Proposal to Merge ODF and MS-OOXML - 0 views

  • Summary Statement:&nbsp; Hey, this is an excellent plan!&nbsp; We can fully support this effort, even though the ISO National Bodies still have to work their way through the treacherous big vendor consortia controlled channels of OASIS ODF and Ecma 376.&nbsp; Bringing the big vendor applications to heel is not going to be easy.&nbsp; Merging ODF and MS-OOXML however is a worthwhile effort - one that the conversion and translator plug-in communities have been working on for the past three years!&nbsp; It can be done!&nbsp; And all it takes is five generic elements added to the existing ODF 1.2 specification ........
Gary Edwards

PlexNex: Achieving Openness - 0 views

  • "ECMA 376" is a set of file formats subject to ECMA and now to ISO. "Office 2007" is a set of file formats which extend "ECMA 376" file formats. Office 2007 file formats are undocumented per se. ECMA 376 are. ECMA 376 file formats are documented but only at a syntactic level. To realize the true meaning of every single attribute is to realize that the documentation is more like 600,000 pages, not 6,000. Of particular difficulty is to keep some kind of control over the virtually infinite combinations of such attributes. Quick analysis of the underlying schemas reveals that simple concepts such as text formatting is expressed in no less than 6 different and incompatible ways. This leads to thinking that the file formats were only designed to comply with existing legacy formats that themselves are the result of 15 years of inside/outside library aggregation (some of the libraries were bought from non-Microsoft vendors). In fact, the truth is, ask any reverse engineer third-party who worked with legacy formats, they'll tell you Microsoft essentially added angle brackets around the binary serialization in legacy formats. This makes for a very cool XML-based file format, not an international standard.
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    Whoa, Stepen Rodriguez knocks this one out of the park.  What an impressive dissembling of MS OfficeOpenXML and it's poor sister subset, Ecma 376.  Incredible. 
Gary Edwards

Frankly Speaking: Microsoft's Cynicism - Flock - 0 views

  • In July, Jones was asked on his blog whether Microsoft would actually commit to conform to an officially standardized OOXML. His response: “It’s hard for Microsoft to commit to what comes out of Ecma [the European standards group that has already OK’d OOXML] in the coming years, because we don’t know what direction they will take the formats. We’ll of course stay active and propose changes based on where we want to go with Office 14. At the end of the day, though, the other Ecma members could decide to take the spec in a completely different direction. ... Since it’s not guaranteed, it would be hard for us to make any sort of official statement.”
    • Gary Edwards
       
      Then why is Microsoft dragging us through this standardization nonsense? Is this nothing more than thinly veiled assault on open standards in general?
  • To at least some people at Microsoft, this isn’t about meeting the needs of customers who want a stable, solid, vendor-neutral format for storing and managing documents. It’s just another skirmish with the open-source crowd and rivals like IBM, and all that matters is winning.
    • Gary Edwards
       
      The battle between OOXML and ODF is very much about two groups of big vendor alliances. Interestingly, both groups seek to limit ODF interoperability, but for different reasons.

      See: The Plot To Limit ODF Interop
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    Good commentary from Frank Hayes of Computerworld concerning a very serious problem. Even if ISO somehow manages to approve MS-OOXML, Microsoft has reserved the right to implement whatever extension of Ecma-OOXML they feel like implementing. The whole purpose of this standardization exercise was to bring interoperability, document exchange and long term archive capability to digital information by separating the file formats from the traditions of application, platform and vendor dependence.

    If Microsoft is determined to produce a variation of OOXML that meets the needs of their proprietary application-platform stack, including proprietary bindings and dependencies, any illusions we might have about open standards and interoeprability will be shattered.  By 2008, Microsoft is expected to have over a billion MS-OOXML ready systems intertwined with their proprietary MS Stack of desktop, server, device and web applications. 

    How are we to interoperate/integrate non Microsoft applications and services into that MS Stack if the portable document/data/media transport is off limits?  If you thought the MS Desktop monopoly posed an impossible barrier, wait until the world gets a load of the MS Stack!

    Good article Frank.

    ~ge~

Gary Edwards

Harmonization and Interop: The dizzying dance of ODF, OOXML, and CDF - 0 views

  • With the ISO BRM fast approaching, the harmonization of ODF and OOXML is all the rage. The legendary marbux takes on this discussion arguing that ODF and OOXML both lack the interoperability framework needed to meet ISO directives describing interop requirements. He argues that interop between MSOffice and OpenOffice can be achieved using CDF.
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    Will the real universal document format please stand up! Comments on the recent article posted by the Universal Interoperability Council: "Putting Andy Updegrove to bed without his supper". The UIC article is well worth your time. It is extremely well referenced and researched. The arguments put forth counter claims by IBM and OASIS that the W3C's CDF format can not be used to represent desktop productivity environment documents. Not surprisingly, IBM and OASIS argue that the OpenOffice specific ODF is the only alternative to Microsoft Office specific OOXML. The UIC argues that the full range of MSOffice legacy binary documents and emerging XML documents can fully be represented in CDF - something that not even the most ardent of ODF jihadists would claim as an ODF capabilitiy. The truth is that ODF was not designed for the conversion of MSOffice binary and xml documents.
Gary Edwards

Microsoft legislatively TKO's open document formats. At least stateside. | ComputerWorl... - 0 views

  • The question we should be asking is why State CIO's and IT divisions are not backing the legislative proposals? It's not the lobbying that is killing ODF. It's the lack of support from those who would have been left with the challenge of implementing ODF solutions. The silence of the CIO's is deafening. There are three quotes i've seen batted about that pretty much say it all:
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    Since December 16th, 2002, or day one on the OASIS Open Office XML Technical Committee, now "ODF", the challenge has been to suceed in the marketplace as the best XML format for desktop productivity environments. Success was seen as a technical challenge. Could we make an XML format capable of universal interoperability? Capable of universal implementation across the domains of desktop, server, device and web platform usage?
    All that changed in May of 2005, when ODF 1.0 was approved by OASIS and sent on it's way to ISO for consideration as an international standard. Following that approval, IBM led a swarm of large corporate vendors who invaded the cozy confines of serious universal docuemnt format work. No longer was the goal to perfect the most useful and lasting structured format the world had ever seen. The IBM led wave of corporate invaders seized on a new use of ODF - the use of ODF as a government mandate to rip out and replace MSOffice!
    The politics of using standards to compete against Microsoft trumped the traditions of seeking market success through technical excellence.
    Sadly, ODF would never recover from the anti trust veiled politics of IBM. The one thing ODF absolutely had to have to technically succeed is ability to convert legacy MS binary documents. Something it was never designed to do. Somethign that clearly is not in IBM's game plan.
    As if the interoeprability problems of ODF wer not enough, IBM forged ahead with their interoeprability plan. Instead of movign interop to the forefront of ODF technical issues, IBM openned up an ODF Interoperability Sub Committee at the OASIS ODF Adoption TC. A group dedicated to the marketing and promotion of ODF.
    Incredibly IBM sees ODF interop as a marketing issue, and not the technical challenge that continues to defy application implementation efforts.
Gary Edwards

Burton Group Responds to Ars Technica's Angry ODF/OOXML Rebuttal - 0 views

  • Five days ago Ars Technica issued its view of the Burton Group ODF/OOXML report and made it clear that they disagreed with its findings, going with the headline, "Analyst group slams ODF, downplays Microsoft ISO abuses." We've had some questions from Burton Group clients and others about the article, so I thought it would be worthwhile to go through where we agree, where we disagree, where Ars Technica mischaracterizes what we said, and where it's wrong.
Gary Edwards

Bluster keeps the ODF / OOXML debate afloat | BetaNews - 0 views

  • the Group went one step further, if only that far: It advised clients to steer clear of the whole format superiority debate, in order to avoid getting dragged down into what could be called "Office politics.""ODF is insufficient for complex real-world enterprise requirements, and it is indirectly controlled by Sun Microsystems, despite also being an ISO standard," the Burton Group's Guy Creese and Peter O'Kelly wrote. "It's possible that IBM, Novell, and other vendors may be able to put ODF on a more customer-oriented trajectory in the future and more completely integrate it with the W3C content model, but for now ODF should be seen as more of an anti-Microsoft political statement than an objective technology selection."
Gary Edwards

Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog: Response to Ars Technica's Article on the OD... - 0 views

  • Five days ago Ars Technica issued its view of the Burton Group ODF/OOXML report and made it clear that they disagreed with its findings, going with the headline, "Analyst group slams ODF, downplays Microsoft ISO abuses." We've had some questions from Burton Group clients and others about the article, so I thought it would be worthwhile to go through where we agree, where we disagree, where Ars Technica mischaracterizes what we said, and where it's wrong.
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