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CES Tidbits 215

Various newsbits from the Consumer Electronics Show: Verizon promises cell phone TV; USB flash drives get more useful; Transmeta promises a fanless media center device, sometime; things you can stick on your iPod; and a tech site offers a photographic overview of day 0 of the convention.
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CES Tidbits

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  • Day 0? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Neil Blender ( 555885 ) <neilblender@gmail.com> on Friday January 07, 2005 @03:56PM (#11291031)
    Oh, now I get it. Nerds.
  • by mnordstr ( 472213 ) * on Friday January 07, 2005 @03:57PM (#11291039) Journal
    In case you missed Microsoft's less than successfull opening event on Wednesday, hosted by Conan O'Brien and including two full system crashes and other glitches, the torrent is still available on my blog [nordstrom.fi].

    Some good laughs in there (not only Conan's perfomance). :)
    • what parent is talking about is this.

      Gates Faces Down Blue Screen of Death [tvtechnology.com]

      yep. it happened AGAIN

      or about 1hr13 into the clip from parent's blog
  • U3 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by HeghmoH ( 13204 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @03:57PM (#11291041) Homepage Journal
    Flash storage manufacturers SanDisk and M-Systems are slated to announce Friday at CES a new USB standard called U3, which enables users to carry, store and launch applications directly from a USB flash drive without installation.

    Do we really need "a new USB standard" to allow apps to run without installation? I've been doing this on my Mac forever. I know that this can work on Windows if you write the program correctly. Why the need for a giant consortium?
    • Re:U3 (Score:5, Informative)

      by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @04:04PM (#11291111) Journal
      If you have an autorun.inf file on the media, Windows (if configured to do so) will read it and do what it says.

      I know it works with removable USB hard drives, we have various demos setup on usb drives, so all our dopey marketing folk have to do is plug it in to their laptop, and it starts up.

    • Re:U3 (Score:3, Informative)

      by daves ( 23318 )
      From the description in the article, it sounds like there is a sandbox involved.
    • Sounds just like what they did with Windows 95. You put an autorun.inf file on the disk and as soon as the system sees it, it starts.

      What's the market for this anyway. Am i going to have to carry one dongle for each application?

      Surely it'd be better to work on a standard for applications that run from removable media... require that they run from a single exe file and create some sort of sub-registry on the removable device - that'd make it easy for people to handroll their own usb functionality.
      • "What's the market for this anyway."

        What about (assuming the usb is big and fast enough) hosting an MMO client? Aren't people perennially complaining about griefers? If you could uniquely identify the key chain and it was required for game play, then you could ban the device if someone misbehaved badly enough. They'd have to buy another device to get back on and at say $50 a pop being a griefer would become an expensive proposition very quickly.

        Plus it'd be pretty cool to take your "Dark Age of Evercra
    • Re:U3 (Score:2, Funny)

      by b374 ( 799492 )
      Is that U2's upgrade? Is it for the next black iPod?
    • Re:U3 (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Genady ( 27988 )
      Hrm... this seems.... like a potential for evil. I can see this as a virus propagation vector. Just like floppies, but better because you can put a lot larger payload on a thumb drive. Am I the only one who can see a 'Windows XP Root Kit Thumbdrive' surfacing on eBay? Will we be talking about 'Thumb Kiddies' in a few years?

      With universities pushing USB flash as the storage medium of choice in their computer labs I think that college IT's job is about to get a bit tougher.
      • Re:U3 (Score:3, Insightful)

        It's worse then that. How long do you think it will take before this is the only method of software distribution available? It's got all of the features vendors like...none of this "just copy the software" any more. Don't have the USB drive? Lose it somewhere? Well then you don't have the software anymore. Looks like you'll have to buy a new one. And speaking about "Thumb Kiddies"...think of the new and exciting viruses you'll pick up from pirated drives. Plus all the ones you'll pick up off the net
      • Not that this is necessarily a USB root kit, but there is a very handy little tool called the Metropipe Virtual Privacy Machine [metropipe.net] that fits nicely on a 128MB USB drive. You pop it into a computer that is booted into Windows and can bring up a virtual machine running a tiny version of Linux, complete with GUI, web, email, etc. There is even a tool included that opens up an encrypted tunnel to Metropipe, bypassing any proxy servers or web filtering that may be in place on your network. The entire OS remains on
    • by argent ( 18001 )
      Because it's hard to do in Windows? Isn't that enough reason?
  • Cell phone TV (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nizo ( 81281 ) * on Friday January 07, 2005 @03:58PM (#11291043) Homepage Journal
    Great, now people can not only talk on the phone, but also watch tv on their cell phone while they drive.
    • Well, you can use your Camera Cell Phone to take a picture of them watching their TV Cell Phone (Be sure to get a picture of their License plate), and notify their insurance company.

      And I'll use my Video Cell Phone to take a movie of you watching your Camera Cell Phone to watch them ...
    • Driving. Who cares about driving?

      What I'm most worried about is the users of cell phones with TV being allowed on flights. Now I have to spend 5 hours being crushed by the sweaty overweight guy next to me, who's watching King of Queens reruns while giving a play-by-play, complete with guffaws, to his best bud on the other end of the line.

      I wonder if I could claim temporary insanity if I were to injure my neighbor in that situation?

      John.
    • Uh, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say this ends up in one of the 6 through 10 slots on the ol' Wired Vaporware Top 10 [wired.com] for '05.

      Why 6 through 10? Who really expects this to not suck enough for anyone to really be clamoring for it in the first place?

    • I was in Chennai (aka Madras) India 3 months ago and the local cell company was rolling this out with lots of splash at the time ... maybe Verizon offshored it ..... seriously though they do seem a bit behind the times globally.

      Still seems like a hokey idea to me - I understand that cell towers work a lot like cable qams so multicasting to people in unused bandwidth makes a lot of sense (I don't know if it really works this way - just guessing) - but I honestly think that the market for this is tiny (mayb

  • Is it just me, or do the display tables look very amateurish? I have never been to CES before though so...
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Some are pretty suck ass but that isn't uncommon. I live in Vegas so I get to lots of these shows. CES is bigger than most but it isn't especially anything special.

      I for one was pretty bored. There was really nothing new at the show. No exciting new technology. This year seems to be rehashes of existing technology in various cute packages.

      Take time to get your picture taken with all the cute girls working at various exhibits. That's about the only thing worth doing at this years CES. I especially liked a
  • by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @03:59PM (#11291058)
    Do they have:

    Digital cameras that act as cell phones?

    Handheld gameboy clones that play MP3s?

    Mp3 players that play videogames?

    Cell phones that play MP3's?

    Cell phones that play videogames?

    Mp3 players that take digital pictures?

    Gameboys that make phone calls?

    If I left off any of the the ridiculous convergence that makes up so much of tech buzz these days, let me know.

    • 1. Nope, not that I know of
      2. Nokia N-Gage
      3. iPod has breakout
      4. Some motorolla phones do this
      5. Nokia N-Gage again
      6. Not that I know of
      7. Well, Nokia N-Gage.

      I'd also like to mention that the Game Boy Camera acts as a Gameboy that takes digital pictures.
      • All of the above- 1 to 7- are covered in a single device from HP that TMobile is selling as a cell phone. True, it's a bit larger than most of those- the 640x480 screen adds some size all on it's own- but it does do all of the above and then some (damn thing actually has 4 radios in it: Wi-Fi, GPRS, GMS, Bluetooth). Add only one more small box (a Bluetooth GPS unit) and you've got the ultimate convergance machine.
      • 1. Nope, not that I know of
        2. Nokia N-Gage
        3. iPod has breakout
        4. Some motorolla phones do this
        5. Nokia N-Gage again
        6. Not that I know of
        7. Well, Nokia N-Gage.

        1. Me neither. Bad since most new cell phones have a built-in camera, and since there's already 3 megapixel cam/cell phones available (with 4 MP just around the corner [pcworld.com]) with storage becoming increasingly cheaper, I think it's only a matter of time before we cross from "cell phone with a camera gizzmo" into "full fledged digital camera that also t

    • You missed the Pocket PC that acts as a Camera, a WiFi Phone, a Cell Phone, a Bluetooth Navigator (with addition of Bluetooth GPS of course), a video game player, an MP3 player, a video player, and a Sattelite phone.

      It's going to be a damned long time before anybody beats HP out in the convergence field. (For those who don't know, I'm talking about the high end of the 4000 and 6000 series that actually came out *before* CES). Oh yeah, and thanks to Familiar Linux and/or the various 8088 emulators out for
    • All of the items on your list would be useless to me unless they also have GPS capability. And perhaps even a thing that tells time.

      • "All of the items on your list would be useless to me unless they also have GPS capability. And perhaps even a thing that tells time."

        They were working on it, but it got complicated when it was revealed that SCO had filed an patent on the hours from 02:00 - 11:00 AM.

    • If I left off any of the the ridiculous convergence that makes up so much of tech buzz these days, let me know.

      Yeah, you forgot the flashlight, heartrate monitor, and tire pressure guage with digital voice.

      Then we have convergence!
    • You forgot sunglasses that play MP3's [oakley.com], my personal nominee for the most overhyped and ridiculous "convergence" of 2003.
    • by Speare ( 84249 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @10:28PM (#11294172) Homepage Journal
      I swear, Brookstone and Sharper Image share this business model: they make a huge grid chart with every geek gadget labeling each row, and every yuppie gadget labeling each column. They then produce a Taiwanese product that implements each intersecting grid. Mix most combinations of golfball-caddy, hammock-pole, grill-fork, lawn-lamp, wine-caddy with phone-minder, address-book, usb-stick, music-player, calculator. Now you get the picture.
  • by stratjakt ( 596332 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @04:00PM (#11291070) Journal
    Like, your ass.
  • iPod Video Display (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Attar81 ( 574867 )
    I think that video attachment for the iPod looked pretty cool. I've not seen a HD-based video player that has a clamshell design. It makes a lot of sense (protects the screen and keys and kind of makes double to space for keys and screen)
    • "I've not seen a HD-based video player that has a clamshell design."

      I have. It's called an iBook. I'm guessing that it's not much more expensive than an iPod + this piece of junk, has a far better screen, plays DVDs, and has interchangeable batteries.
  • by Dark Paladin ( 116525 ) * <jhummel&johnhummel,net> on Friday January 07, 2005 @04:01PM (#11291082) Homepage
    I read the press release for this a day or so ago, but didn't know it would be this cool.

    My wife and I have been talking about getting a pair of portable DVD players for the kids - or, as I call it, "sanity preservers" so during the 10-12 hour drive to Grandma's house, Dad doesn't kill them after the 6000th "Are we there yet? I'm bored!"

    I can take their entire "Angelic Layer" and "Magic Knight Rayearth", rip the DVD's to AVI's and then slap them onto an iPod. 20 GB of data should store about 60 movies (at about 300 MB apiece) - plenty to store an entire season at once, with room left over in case Daddy wants to watch one of "his" movies while Mommy drives for a little while.

    No worrying about the DVD disks getting lost in the car or damaged (a problem since the cartoons belong to Daddy who gets very upset when they get scratched), and since the 5 year old is now listening to her own music she can either watch her movie or listen to something.

    Very cool idea from Nyko. Depending on the cost, I can see myself snagging one of these things.
    • My wife and I have been talking about getting a pair of portable DVD players for the kids - or, as I call it, "sanity preservers" so during the 10-12 hour drive to Grandma's house, Dad doesn't kill them after the 6000th "Are we there yet? I'm bored!"

      Actually, for said purpose there are better products, like the DVD players designed to be strapped to the back of the headrest, and run on the cigarrette lighter plug.

    • Of course, if you don't already have an iPod, it would seem an Archos box would make the wiser investment, since you can basically do what you want with it, rather than be limited to certain "allowed" formats.

      You can get a portable DVD player designed for kids for about 100 bucks, though. We got our youngest one for christmas. It's not a sexy geek device, the battery is an old NiCad and weighs a ton, and only lasts 4 hours or so. But it works great, and it reads DVD-Rs and VCDs.

      80 bucks for the playe
    • "or, as I call it, 'sanity preservers'

      Or as I call it, "the electronic teat".

    • My wife and I have been talking about getting a pair of portable DVD players for the kids - or, as I call it, "sanity preservers" so during the 10-12 hour drive to Grandma's house, Dad doesn't kill them after the 6000th "Are we there yet? I'm bored!"

      I believe a single Taser is more cost effective than individual DVD players, especially once you get past 2 kids.

      Or you can resort to my technique of "NyQuil" in the juice container...

    • by geekoid ( 135745 ) <{moc.oohay} {ta} {dnaltropnidad}> on Friday January 07, 2005 @04:19PM (#11291249) Homepage Journal
      me: "Are we there yet? I'm bored!"
      dad: "yes, get out."
      • by LetterJ ( 3524 )
        Yeah. The one time my brother and I were left by the side of the road we learned our lesson on this one.

        Threats were not idle in our house. I did go without supper, did have the TV physically taken away and my father was ALWAYS told when he got home.

        Of course, I also went to a school with pretty harsh discipline, where the entire male population of the 8th grade was given group detention for 2 weeks.

        I definitely never needed any of these lessons taught twice, so I'm a fan.
    • My wife and I have been talking about getting a pair of portable DVD players for the kids - or, as I call it, "sanity preservers" so during the 10-12 hour drive to Grandma's house, Dad doesn't kill them after the 6000th "Are we there yet? I'm bored!"

      My kid is still a baby, so I haven't experienced the "Are we there yet?" years too much. And I'm not trying to be preachy-- I just want to know what other parents do with their kids.

      You and I survived these long car rides with books, games, puppets, imaginati
      • You and I survived these long car rides with books, games, puppets, imagination and long period of staring out the window (a great time for day dreaming and thinking, and I still do it). We didn't have this constant stream of stimulation being pushed at us, and we survived fine.

        Well, I did that too, except for trips to the beach. Then we had that nice, long, winding road through the coast range which did not necessarily make reading while the car was in motion a good idea (motion sickness anyone?)

        Then ag

        • Then we had that nice, long, winding road through the coast range which did not necessarily make reading while the car was in motion a good idea (motion sickness anyone?)

          Most of my long drives involve the Coastal Range (in California, looks like you are up in Oregon). There is still a ton of stuff to look at... mountains, trees, seaside towns... call me crazy, but watching these things go by kept me occupied for hours... "how do these people live way out here", "look at that beautiful mountain", "I wanna
      • I have motion sickness issues, so reading in the car was not a viable option when I was a kid. Usually, I just suffered through the time trying not to puke.

        I built a stand that fits between the front seats in our van. It provides a stable platform for either a laptop or a flat screen (15" is nice) monitor fed by a Viewsonic video-to-VGA [viewsonic.com] converter (broadcast reception comes for free.) We can pipe video tapes in through a portable VCR. The 4-year-old is fully entertained, and typically doesn't complain
  • by davidwr ( 791652 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @04:02PM (#11291088) Homepage Journal
    Gee, we've had apps launching from CDs and before that floppies since, what, before 1980?

    Seriously, I wish more vendors would put "try me"/no-install versions of their apps on their distribution media, so I could use my apps without the bother of installing.
    • yup - another wonderfull virus medium .... (and already here) I had a friend's camera try and infect my machine the other day .... he'd stopped at an internet cafe to upload his photos to his travel blog and gotten it infected ...
  • by SoTuA ( 683507 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @04:02PM (#11291093)
    ...I think it should read "things you can stick your ipod into". Although maybe then slashdot would start setting off adult filters...
  • Wow (Score:2, Funny)

    Hot girl [thetechlounge.com] at the CES. Notice that she's got a tag on which means she's one of the show attendants. What a great way to market! (I'm so there next year!)
    • Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)

      by The-Dalai-LLama ( 755919 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @04:30PM (#11291374) Homepage Journal

      I used to work for a company that made memory upgrades. One of the key purchasing agents was a smoking hot little petite blonde who, at the time of this story, was not even old enough to drink.

      One year at CES some would-be vendor made a remark about the company having a piece of "fluff" at the booth. She wheeled on him and let fly with a diatribe that showcased her comprehensive knowledge of RAM chips, PCB issues, and our company's component needs and then she let him know, in no uncertain terms, that whether or not we ever purchased a single capacitor from his company would be a decision made by the petite piece of fluff with bubble gum-pink fingernails that he was speaking with at that very moment.


      He walked away dazed. I don't think we ever did business with him.



      The Dalai LLama
      • by Rimbo ( 139781 ) <rimbosity AT sbcglobal DOT net> on Friday January 07, 2005 @06:04PM (#11292387) Homepage Journal
        Let me tell you about a guy with an MBA from Harvard I know who grew up in Midland, Texas -- aka the Ass End of Nowhere. He was absolutely brilliant, particularly with human relationships.

        Now if you spoke to this guy, you'd never believe he graduated from college, much less got through grad school at the finest institution of higher education in the USA. He actually used that to his advantage. I saw him do this time and time again... he'd slip into the backwards Texas drawl, mess up some word or speech on purpose, and then people would think, "Oh, what a stupid hick." Of course, at this point, they were at his mercy, just like the lady and the vendor in the tale you describe.

        Only this guy one-upped your gal and then some. He became President of the United States this way.

        Twice.
    • I figured she was just working the booth, so big deal.

      But check out this image from the after party [thetechlounge.com]... there's a whole little group of them, what's up with *that*?!?

  • Is this just a clever dupe of the story on vaporware [slashdot.org]?

    Also, did anyone else find the list of coming attractions to be a bit underwhelming?

    --
    Was it the sheep climbing onto the altar, or the cattle lowing to be slain,
    or the Son of God hanging dead and bloodied on a cross that told me this was a world condemned, but loved and bought with blood.
    • Is this just a clever dupe of the story on vaporware?
      Also, did anyone else find the list of coming attractions to be a bit underwhelming?

      Actually, it's likely that it all seems a bit underwhelming because most of it are actually *real* products which, most likely, *will* ship. Which means it's actually all kinda boring because it's just updates of stuff we've already seen, or stuff we knew was comming.

      I've seen at least one other article today with such analysis; things that once were "this will happen

  • by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 07, 2005 @04:04PM (#11291112)
    In the /. world, Microsoft's media center is already fanless.
  • These guys seem to think that it's smart for K/M to put their image stabilization technology inside the camera body instead of the lenses [thetechlounge.com] since it'll make the lenses less expensive. Nice thought.

    I would point them to the lesson Contax learned when they put autofocus inside the camera body for the 35mm SLRs (the film plane moved back and forth in a mechanical box inside the camera to achieve focus). It was a great solution and allowed full autofocus with all of those great Contax lenses. It also died

    • probably because there's too much shit inside the camera already, and 9/10 times a serviced camera is never the same again.
    • Main reason it probably died was due to the body being completely incompatible with previous lenses. Go spend 5K (or more in most cases )on lenses and then tell me you want a body that is incompatible with them.

      The image stabilization in teh body, however, if it is compatible with current lenses WILL SELL. Especially to people that can't afford the current auto stabilizing lenses. (like me) Best bet for that is to license it to Nikon and Cannon for theirs and they will make a bloody mint.
  • by buckhead_buddy ( 186384 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @04:19PM (#11291256)
    If you take the worlds of television, telecom, games and music, and then remove content, you wind up with the consumer electronics show. Despite what you may be assuming, I think the inteligence level goes up quite a bit once content is removed. I envision telecom devices having fascinating conversations with my sister in Uganda rather than listening to telemarketers. I recall television products replaying some of my favorite cancelled shows rather than endless hours of mind-numbing nonsense.

    I find it a bit disheartening that so much of the success of these products will depend on the success or failure of the content. Finally, when I heard Conan's lame double entendres about flacid penises (as in the Microsoft intro) that shook me out of my interest in what was presented at this convention. More and more I'm coming to the conclusion that products that allow the common man to produce content are far more interesting, revolutionary, and important than the evolutionary products shown at the Consumer Electronics Show to allow you to consume the content of others. The products at CES that catch my eye are ones that allow me to create or enojy the creations of others, unfortunately I think I'll see more of that sort of thing at NAB in April than I've seen at CES so far.

    Please, tell me that I'm wrong and point out some great consumptive and productive tech that's made its debut.

  • by lcde ( 575627 )
    So it's like setting up Auto Run.. for USB. will it require new hardware or just software reconition?
  • Samsung announced a cell phone with TV tuner [pcworld.com], but probably it will be disabled by Verizon request in order to force the consumers to buy content from Verizon Wireless.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    Couldn't load the article in Camino. To save others the trip to another browser:

    Here [infosyncworld.net] is the picture of the device. The caption below the picture reads:

    Nyko's MoviePlayer promises to transform an iPod into a fully fledged portable media viewer.

    Bringing video playback to the iPod
    By Jørgen Sundgot, Wednesday 5 January 2005

    Beating Apple to the punch, little-known peripheral manufacturer Nyko has unveiled an iPod accessory which enables the popular audio player to play back videos on a 3.5"
  • by Anonymous Coward
    So how IS Ashlee Simpson enjoying CES?
  • by EXTomar ( 78739 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @04:34PM (#11291403)
    I don't care how "nifty" it is but from an IT point of view having any "hot-plug" device used on a computer in the enterprise automatically running things an unvalidated source (the hot-plug device itself) is a security risk. Where did the USB device come from? What does the USB device really do? If a user can't answer some simple questions about this they sure aren't added it to a machine on the network. I will not allow users pluging strange PCI cards into their machines that aren't quite sure what they do. Why should I allow USB to do the same thing?!?

    Why are these guys pushing to make this "standard"?? Thanks for more tracking and security headaches guys for the sake of "convience".
  • Advantages: can be held in one hand
    Disadvantages: only for people who like really tiny naked people (naked Thumbalina anyone?)

  • how about Cat Swartz's coverage at CES [weblogsinc.com] for engadget [engadget.com]. just watch how Kevin Rose of G4TechTV drools all over her 30 seconds into the clip ;)
  • I just had to comment on USB drives: This week's "Crossing Jordan" (which is often lots more fun than CSI) had them find a thumb drive on an FBI agent, which
    a) Had a huge amount of data (50GB? A terabyte? I don't remember, but it was ridiculous) (cough)
    b) Had USB *and* firewire (cough)
    c) Had *serious* encryption, yet they broke it in an afternoon (cough, cough, bird flipped at screen)

    Why must you insult our intelligence? Bad enough they have to scroll through fingerprints on-screen, and show web pages ap
    • a) Had a huge amount of data (50GB? A terabyte? I don't remember, but it was ridiculous) (cough)

      I have a huge (PC-card style) 128KB card in my HP48 that cost me about a dollar a KB when I bought it in high school. Local computer shops sell 1 GB SD cards for somewhere around $80-$90. It wasn't *that* long ago that I was hearing about 1GB hard drives and imagining how I'd use all that space.

      It was just yesterday I saw a 512MB SD card that folds to reveal a USB port.

      I'm not insulted by fiction showing sm
  • image 01 [thetechlounge.com]

    What's David Bowie doing with that geek playing pocket pool?
  • by Ralph Spoilsport ( 673134 ) on Friday January 07, 2005 @06:04PM (#11292383) Journal
    I'm not being a troll or anything - my former boss just emailed me - she is now at CES and said that there's some kind of pr0n convention going on at the same time down the road in some other center.

    Woo Hoo - I say it's time for some Silicon and Silicone!

    Can anyone else confirm this news? If they could co-ordinate the two events they would get Even More Attendees...

    RS

  • SNOW [theinquirer.net]. No, not the rapper from the early/mid 90s, but that white stuff that falls from the sky. Kinda odd, considering that Las Vegas is a desert climate - it reaches about 110F in the summertime.
  • That Fossil [thetechlounge.com] wristPalm (TM ;) is HOT! Replace the USB connector with BlueTooth, run PalmVNC against an iPaq running Familiar, toss in a headless NAS unit [thetechlounge.com], all BT'd together, and we're wearing our 'ware! Now to spread those other form factors around into a mithril mail vest, and the geek has finally arrived in its natural environment: the 21st Century.

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