With so many unemployed IT specialists, I'm surprised that everybody still rubbishes socialism, why the hell is this?
I've never seen rubbish used as a verb, but I'm assuming you mean why does everyone disparage socialism.
The simple answer is socialism doesn't work. Everywhere it's been tried it's been an utter failure. I'm not talking about the European countries that have socialized limited aspects of their government, only countries that were completely socialist.
Besides, the fact that some IT people are unemployed has absolutely nothing to do with socialism.
That's a pretty bold, and false, statement. Some people may pronounce it that way, but most DBAs and database programmers I know (myself included) pronounce the language SQL as 'sequel' and some implementations or extensions of SQL by their name plus the initials 'S Q L.' For instance, the database MySQL would be pronounced 'my S Q L,' PL-SQL as 'P L S Q L,' and so on.
Right, but those other companies are debtors that K-Mart owes money. If you read the whole article, they aren't objecting to the sale itself, just that the proceeds would go to K-Mart and not themselves.
On the other hand, Microsoft is objecting to the sale on the sole premise of possible lost future sales. If bluelight.com is sold, Microsoft thinks its new owner should have to pay for all new software licenses, even though K-Mart already bought licenses once.
Herb Simon (a nobel prize/turing award winning professor) always gave the example of BACON, a program that discovered Kepler's 3rd Law of Planetary Motion. Not bad.
Kepler (and others before him) had to observe the phenomena of the planets' orbits, infer there was a relationship, then use trial and error until he found a formula that worked in each case. Simon had the computer assume the first two, and have the last as a goal. That didn't take any creativity or original thought, only testing possible formulas until it found one that worked.
He always believed computers can and will think, and I agree with him.
Which is at this point an irrational, unfounded belief. Even a basic understanding of AI can show how incredibly difficult it would be: computers can perform rote mathematical computations billions of times per second, far greater than any human, but have an incredibly difficult time with language and abstract thought, which young children can learn easily.
When the ship this monster, they have to make the source available!
Not necessarily. Unless they sell this commercially or offer binaries for download, they're under no obligation to release source code to the general public. It sounds like all the Blue Genes will be either used internally or in government labs. As long as they provide source code to the Blue Gene owners, they'll fulfill the requirements of the GPL.
On the other hand, I believe IBM will share most of the kernel modifications they develop to get Linux to run on this beast.
Rev. Sharpton is also, according to latest polling data, a more respected Democratic Presidential Candidate than Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt. That appears to be an individual that is being taken seriously.
What polls are you looking at? The latest FOX News poll shows him with 2%, up from 0% in Jan. Daschle and Gephardt have 8% each, unchanged from Jan.
The African American community takes him very seriously as shown by his widespread support.
Unfortunately, he keeps reinforcing a victim mindset.
...who is black? I assume you must be white because you are an Anonymous Coward, hiding in anonymity like a KKK member in a hood.
He may hide, but I'm not anonymous, neither am I a racist.
As I remember, this statement was made at the National Action Network HQ. Are you going to debate that the Reverend Al Sharpton doesn't know who is black?
Al Sharpton is an opportunistic vulture. Nobody's taken him seriously for several years. Besides, Michael suprised even Sharpton when he called Tommy Mottola a racist (see the MTV article).
Race is not a skin color but an ethnicity. It's sad that this sort of message can be moderated as 'Funny' so quickly.
Race is entirely a social construct. There is only one race, the human race. We're all the same color, just different shades. It is easily possible to be closer genetically to a person of a different so-called race, than somebody that looks fairly similar to yourself.
With negotiation and assent of the elders of the Quraysh he made an unarmed pilgrimage to the Kaba. This continued for a while but then the agreement broke down, and war was declared. But there was no bloodshed.In 630, 20 years after being forced to flee, Mohammad marched with an army of 10,000 followers back to Mecca, and the Meccans surrendered without a fight. He became a religious and political leader of the city. He destroyed all the idols in the Kaaba, and gave a general amnesty to all his enemies in the town.
After the submission of Mecca, two of the tribes were subdued by force, the Thaqif and Hawazin. To Mohammed's credit though, the surviving people of these tribes were treated well, and as a result eventually converted to Islam.
1. Islam is NOT spread by the sword. That myth was spread in the Middle Ages during the crusades. There are other legitimate ways to worship God, like Christianity and Judaism, so the "people of the book" are left alone. Forced conversion is strictly forbidden in the Koran.
The Quran may say it's forbidden, but there has been plenty of forced conversion to Islam. The Umayyad Empire spread Islam from North Africa to Central Asia largely through the use of force.
2. Conquered Christians and Jews lived side by side Muslims, with no problems. Look at the Moors in Spain. They were the Muslim rulers from 700-1400AD, and in that time, all three groups lived in peace and harmony; so much that the time is known as the "Golden Age of Judaism." The only thing the Muslims asked their fellow monotheists was to pay a tax, because the Islamic government collects taxes from all Muslims that go to welfare, and everyone else must do the same. To compensate, non-Muslims are exempt from any draft.
Their treatment in Spain was very different than in the Middle East under the Umayyad Empire.
The tax, called the dhimmi, was much higher than any other people were taxed. Of course, they always gave the option of avoiding the dhimmi if you converted to Islam. For more information, see The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam by Bat Ye'Or.
Also, there wasn't really a draft as we understand the term. Most armies of the Islamic kingdoms and empires were basically mercenary armies of Turkic peoples like the Seljuks or Mamluks.
Today the situation is much worse. Almost all Muslim-majority countries have little to no religious freedom and non-Muslims are heavily persecuted (usually government sanctioned or at least condoned).
3. For most of the last thousand years, the Muslim world was the forefront of science and arts, while Europe struggled with serfdom. Science, Math, architecture, and Medicine all grew. Free public hospitals, universities, even paved roads were common in Muslim lands.
During the Dark Ages in Europe, the Muslim world was at the forefront of science and philosophy, including the discovery and preservation of many original Greek manusripts and artifacts.
However, Europe surpassed the Muslim world in the Renaissance and never looked back. Since then, the Muslim world has been a backwater, and is actually regressing in some areas. Any technology and development that exists there now is a product of the West. No major scientific or technological advances have come out of the Muslim world since the Middle Ages. (Muslims have come up with advances, but only while living in Western countries.) For more on this phenomenon see What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response, an excellent book by Bernard Lewis.
4. The Islamic political structure began as something akin to a representative democracy. Over time, as the empire crumbled through a few corrupt leaders and Mongol invasions. The crusades didn't help any, either.
There wasn't a Muslim-majority country with any sort of democratic government until after their colonizers left. For all its damage, colonization had some positive effects: they left in place modern infrastructure, technology, and institutions. Areas that weren't colonized, like the interior of the Arabian peninsula, were only developed with Western money after oil was discovered there.
Besides, the fact they crumbled because of a few corrupt rulers demonstrates their system of government didn't work in the first place. The US has endured countless corrupt politicians and we're still the most powerful, prosperous, free nation in history. The reason for our resilience is a 200 some odd year old document called the US Constitution.
By the way, have the Turks ever gotten rid of capitol punishment? I know that was a sticking point with them for a while.
Yes, they abolished the death penalty earlier this month, except during wartime (see CNN story).
That removed the largest barrier to entry in the EU (as long as the Europeans can put aside their prejudice against it being a majority Muslim country).
Did you notice the building Ximian is located in? Looks so.gov to me...
No, it was a common building design in the earlier part of the 20th Century. Another poster to this thread mentioned it used to be a Sears building at one point. There is an almost identical building here in Minneapolis that also used to be a Sears, and another half dozen with similar designs elsewhere in the Minneapolis/St Paul area.
Please cite examples where "competent" Linux administrators put 2.2 or 2.4 into production use the moment they were released. Ahhh, the power of a qualifier.
If they weren't ready to be used in production systems, they should have retained the 2.1.x and 2.3.x (or 2.2-pre and 2.4-pre) tags respectively.
Version numbers are just arbitrary labels. Any competent system administrator would wait until there's a version that's widely deployed and tested to be stable before they upgrade.
SP3 adds a similar feature...but I'd recommend against installing it
Remember...even numbered service packs only;)
I thought the "even's good, odd sucks" rule only applied to Star Trek movies... Applies to many other things as well. Another good example is AutoCAD. Release 12 was great, 13 blew until the 4th update, and 14 was good. So instead of naming the next release 15, they made an abrupt change and went with Microsoft's braindead naming scheme, 2000 (2000i & 2002 since then).
Guilty of hypocrisy over Iraq? Little known fact is that despite all the bitching from Washington about the lack of inspectors in Iraq etc, they don't allow UN inspectors into some American sites either - and we KNOW that America has weapons of mass destruction, so shouldn't they be monitored too?
We don't allow UN inspectors because we've not signed any treaties or agreed to any inspections from them. However, we allow Russian (and other) inspectors into just about all of our sites because we've signed several treaties with them: SALT I, SALT II, START, CWC (Chemical Warfare Convention), Open Skies Treaty, and more.
Since Bush came to power, America has ripped up more international treaties and conventions, and ignored more UN conventions than the rest of the world combined in the last 20 years. Examples: kyoto is the biggie of course, but america also attempted to dismember many other international bodies
It's the President's prerogative to enter into (and withdraw from) treaties. He did the right thing by pulling out of the Kyoto Accord, until there is conclusive proof, or a consensus among scientists that we are causing global warming. Besides, the International Criminal Court is a bad idea. Other proposed conventions (CEDAW) are just plain ridiculous, almost as bad as nominating Libya to chair the UN Commission on Human Rights (see this).
America is steadily isolating every single ally it has. Even the British government is seriously split on the issue. It apparently refuses to listen to anybody except big business, and has firsthand told the world that it will not do anything for the environment if that might mean harm comes to the American economy. They acknowledge the science and even agree with most of it (the rest of the world long ago agreed with all of it, but hey) - yet they still refuse to take action.
At the end of the day, our allies might disagree with us on some issues, but they'll still be our allies. They need us much more than we need them. Besides, if they don't have the courage to act when it's critical, it's better for us to act unilaterally, no matter what the connotation the media tries to pin to that word.
Bush preaches free trade as the means of saving the world. Yet he has imposed massive trade barriers to protect inefficient American industries.
I agree with you on this one. All subsidies should be abolished.
The administration is prepared to invade another country pretty much without evidence, and without any political backing from anybody else at all. If the US can invade Iraq because Bush doesn't like Hussein, why is Iraq invading Kuwait bad?
There's plenty of evidence to justify hostilities against Iraq: Saddam Hussein has been continually trying to acquire or develop weapons of mass destruction, has demonstrated his willingness to use them (even against his own population), has routinely massacred the Kurd and Shiite minorities in Iraq, encouraged Palestinian suicide bombers by offering their families $25,000 rewards, and impoverished and starved his own people by not allowing arms inspectors dotheir job and by diverting money from the oil-for-food program to his own coffers.
Britain will support us, look the stand Tony Blair is taking now, even while it's unpopular there. France is too busy violating the UN Security Council sanctions on Iraq (and Russia is planning to, to the tune of $40B) with lucrative business contracts to support another war in the region.
Iraq invaded Kuwait based on fabricated lies, for the sole purpose of territorial expansion. Their mistake was believing the rest of the world would just stand idly by.
The funny thing is if it's a classic car (over 20 yrs old) the emission standards are very low, and you even get registration and insurance for less.
It's the same here in Minnesota. If your car is 20 yrs old, you can license it as a classic car, or an antique car if it's 40 yrs old. You pay less for licensing, lower insurance, and you could run the exhaust straight from the cylinder if you felt like it!
You know, it amazes me how many popstars come out in favor of music-sharing after they've made their millions and millions of dollars, bought their flash cars, and the real nice mansion in Beverly Hills.
Why don't we hear the artists who aren't Top 20, platinum album, millions in the bank jumping up and down in favor of this?
Oh yeah.. that's right... because they actually want the chance to get up there themselves.
There are thousands of independent artists that are in favor of p2p. But because they aren't rich & famous, they don't get heard by as wide an audience as Prince.
Where is that written in stone, other than in your mind? As someone who has operated his own business for the past 6 years I have switched models 3 times, in order to capitalise on changing markets, and to minimise the damage of competitors massively undercutting us.
Is your business private or public? If public (i.e. listed for trading on a public stock exchange), there are a whole lot more laws, regulations, and obligations to both the SEC and your shareholders.
If you look at what we started out doing, and what we do now, there is a link - but the model and technology is utterly changed.
If Liquid Audio ever had one iota of success, and was just expanding into other, albeit related, markets, it might be feasible. Unfortunately, they've never generated any significant revenue and could never even dream of profitability.
If Liquid Audio can MAKE MONEY it is fulfilling its obligations to the shareholders. Period. They dont care how, just make money.
That's my point exactly. The decision isn't even up to Liquid Audio. I think their shareholders are going to vote nea on the merger, then hopefully demand liquidation. At the rate they've been burning through cash, they've got only got a few quarters before their only option is to declare bankruptcy and not return a dime of their shareholders' investments.
This "news" site was probably bought off by Coke and Pepsico (which owns SoBe) to do an "article" about their "energy drinks" in exchange for a few cases of each of these drinks.
Based on the comments about Pepsi Blue in the article, I'm pretty sure Pepsi didn't pay him. Here are some of the better quotes:
This crap stinks! I didn?t have my face near the bottle and I sure as hell didn?t try to sniff it for a while until after I?d recovered; all I did was twist off the cap and almost fall back against the cabinet. I think I found a way to describe this stench: blueberry paint thinner. Guess what? It
tastes like blueberry paint thinner too. It?s harsh on the tongue, the aftertaste lingers, and any energy kick it would give is immediately cancelled out by the gag factor.
Drinkability...Pepsi Blue is dead last.
Taste...Pepsi Blue is dead last. It tastes like blueberry paint thinner when cold, and it tastes like blueberry cough syrup when hot. Pepsi should have spent the time and money designing the svelte label on developing a drinkable soda instead.
Aftertaste. Pepsi Blue is dead last again; frankly, I don?t know why I bother ranking it anymore. I can?t decide if the aftertaste reminds me of a blue Sweet Tart or Robutussin Cough Syrup.
Oh, did I mention I?m not too fond of Pepsi Blue?
Before I crown the winner, I promised I would give Pepsi Blue two special awards. The first award I?m going to give Pepsi Blue is the ?Who Needs Citronella?? Award. Ladies and gentlemen, this stuff is rank. Open the bottle, set it near an open window, and I guarantee it?ll keep the mosquitoes (and probably your neighbors) away. Pepsi Blue also wins the ?LAN Party Sabotage? Award. Pick up a case of this stuff before your next LAN party, and give each person a bottle as a gesture of goodwill. While they clean off their monitors after the first few sips (I guarantee a few spews, folks.), you?ll have a chance to go in for many, many easy frags. Just be careful you don?t keep a bottle for yourself.
Businesses switch model every five minutes. To say that they should stop and start to change their model is naive in the extreme!
If they could leverage some of their existing technology and only slightly change their business model, fine, but the very core foundation of their company is worthless today. Only a completely new and novel business model could possibly save them. Then it would be Liquid Audio in name only, and not what the investors had in mind when they put up their money. In this case, Liquid Audio has a duty to liquidate (no pun intended) their assets and reimburse the shareholders.
Looks like Bush got more donors, but Gore got bigger donations--which could be Gore going for more rich folks, but it could be Gore getting the support of federations and community groups instead of individuals.
The article I linked to has several names of Gore's donors, mostly the ultra-rich and elite of NY and Hollywood, including Denise Rich (who bought a pardon for her ex-husband from Clinton), "producer" Stephen Bing, and traitor Jane Fonda.
It doesn't mention anything about group donations, but Bush raised 4 times more money while limiting the amount of each donation to $5k. Most of Gore's of the money (87.5% by my calculations) came from 84 donations over $5k (avg donation of $33.3k). Of those 84, 30 were from CA and 23 from NY. Most typical "community groups" and political foundations are headquartered in Washington DC, so they at least didn't play a big part in the fundraising.
I think I'd like a system where everyone's pre-election "nod" to one canditate was equally important, not one where Bill Gates is worth more than me just because he has money to donate and I don't.
If one rich guy wants to spend all his money on running for office, I say great--let's even out the wealth through the system. But when a bunch of rich guys throw their money together to drown out the little guy--well, that bugs me on a why-does-this-computer-take-so-long-to-boot level.
This is an interesting comment, though I can't quite agree with your conclusion. Here are two events that relate:
The 2000 US Senate seat here in Minnesota was pretty much bought and paid for by Mark Dayton. He inherited ~$100 million at birth that his family made from Dayton-Hudson (now Marshall Fields, they also own Target stores). I've got nothing against wealth, but his trust fund isn't even taxed at all in MN (it's a resident of South Dakota for tax purposes). I went to a debate (with 7 candidates!) where the incumbent, Rod Grams, was dressed in a nice suit, what you'd expect a US Senator to wear. Dayton wore jeans and a plaid shirt, trying to look like a working man. That's ironic because Grams literally grew up in poverty on a farm, without a father, and worked his way up to a TV news anchor before he was elected. Dayton had a lawyer and tax accountant before he was born, and would never need to work in his life (he did work by choice, but mostly as a political appointee). He ended up spending $12 million of his own money in the campaign.
On the other hand, in the 2000 presidential election court battles, each side set-up funds to defer legal expenses (see this article). Bush raised $13.8 million while limiting donations to $5000 each. Gore, on the other hand, didn't limit the amount of individual donations, and raised $3.2 million. Most of his donations were over $5000 each ($2.8 million). Bush raised more than Gore's entire fund from donations smaller than $200 each! Which candidate had the grassroots support?
My point is that there are no easy answers for campaign finance reform. Sometimes rich people buy their way into office, but sometimes the system works the way it was meant, and people use their contributions as a form of political speech.
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The simple answer is socialism doesn't work. Everywhere it's been tried it's been an utter failure. I'm not talking about the European countries that have socialized limited aspects of their government, only countries that were completely socialist.
Besides, the fact that some IT people are unemployed has absolutely nothing to do with socialism.
On the other hand, Microsoft is objecting to the sale on the sole premise of possible lost future sales. If bluelight.com is sold, Microsoft thinks its new owner should have to pay for all new software licenses, even though K-Mart already bought licenses once.
Which is at this point an irrational, unfounded belief. Even a basic understanding of AI can show how incredibly difficult it would be: computers can perform rote mathematical computations billions of times per second, far greater than any human, but have an incredibly difficult time with language and abstract thought, which young children can learn easily.
On the other hand, I believe IBM will share most of the kernel modifications they develop to get Linux to run on this beast.
Unfortunately, he keeps reinforcing a victim mindset.
Al Sharpton is an opportunistic vulture. Nobody's taken him seriously for several years. Besides, Michael suprised even Sharpton when he called Tommy Mottola a racist (see the MTV article).
Race is entirely a social construct. There is only one race, the human race. We're all the same color, just different shades. It is easily possible to be closer genetically to a person of a different so-called race, than somebody that looks fairly similar to yourself.
After the submission of Mecca, two of the tribes were subdued by force, the Thaqif and Hawazin. To Mohammed's credit though, the surviving people of these tribes were treated well, and as a result eventually converted to Islam.
The Quran may say it's forbidden, but there has been plenty of forced conversion to Islam. The Umayyad Empire spread Islam from North Africa to Central Asia largely through the use of force.
Their treatment in Spain was very different than in the Middle East under the Umayyad Empire.
The tax, called the dhimmi, was much higher than any other people were taxed. Of course, they always gave the option of avoiding the dhimmi if you converted to Islam. For more information, see The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam by Bat Ye'Or.
Also, there wasn't really a draft as we understand the term. Most armies of the Islamic kingdoms and empires were basically mercenary armies of Turkic peoples like the Seljuks or Mamluks.
Today the situation is much worse. Almost all Muslim-majority countries have little to no religious freedom and non-Muslims are heavily persecuted (usually government sanctioned or at least condoned).
During the Dark Ages in Europe, the Muslim world was at the forefront of science and philosophy, including the discovery and preservation of many original Greek manusripts and artifacts.
However, Europe surpassed the Muslim world in the Renaissance and never looked back. Since then, the Muslim world has been a backwater, and is actually regressing in some areas. Any technology and development that exists there now is a product of the West. No major scientific or technological advances have come out of the Muslim world since the Middle Ages. (Muslims have come up with advances, but only while living in Western countries.) For more on this phenomenon see What Went Wrong: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response, an excellent book by Bernard Lewis.
There wasn't a Muslim-majority country with any sort of democratic government until after their colonizers left. For all its damage, colonization had some positive effects: they left in place modern infrastructure, technology, and institutions. Areas that weren't colonized, like the interior of the Arabian peninsula, were only developed with Western money after oil was discovered there.
Besides, the fact they crumbled because of a few corrupt rulers demonstrates their system of government didn't work in the first place. The US has endured countless corrupt politicians and we're still the most powerful, prosperous, free nation in history. The reason for our resilience is a 200 some odd year old document called the US Constitution.
That removed the largest barrier to entry in the EU (as long as the Europeans can put aside their prejudice against it being a majority Muslim country).
O'Reilly is publishing Creating Applications with Mozilla this month.
It's the President's prerogative to enter into (and withdraw from) treaties. He did the right thing by pulling out of the Kyoto Accord, until there is conclusive proof, or a consensus among scientists that we are causing global warming. Besides, the International Criminal Court is a bad idea. Other proposed conventions (CEDAW) are just plain ridiculous, almost as bad as nominating Libya to chair the UN Commission on Human Rights (see this).
At the end of the day, our allies might disagree with us on some issues, but they'll still be our allies. They need us much more than we need them. Besides, if they don't have the courage to act when it's critical, it's better for us to act unilaterally, no matter what the connotation the media tries to pin to that word.
I agree with you on this one. All subsidies should be abolished.
There's plenty of evidence to justify hostilities against Iraq: Saddam Hussein has been continually trying to acquire or develop weapons of mass destruction, has demonstrated his willingness to use them (even against his own population), has routinely massacred the Kurd and Shiite minorities in Iraq, encouraged Palestinian suicide bombers by offering their families $25,000 rewards, and impoverished and starved his own people by not allowing arms inspectors dotheir job and by diverting money from the oil-for-food program to his own coffers.
Britain will support us, look the stand Tony Blair is taking now, even while it's unpopular there. France is too busy violating the UN Security Council sanctions on Iraq (and Russia is planning to, to the tune of $40B) with lucrative business contracts to support another war in the region.
Iraq invaded Kuwait based on fabricated lies, for the sole purpose of territorial expansion. Their mistake was believing the rest of the world would just stand idly by.
If Liquid Audio ever had one iota of success, and was just expanding into other, albeit related, markets, it might be feasible. Unfortunately, they've never generated any significant revenue and could never even dream of profitability.
That's my point exactly. The decision isn't even up to Liquid Audio. I think their shareholders are going to vote nea on the merger, then hopefully demand liquidation. At the rate they've been burning through cash, they've got only got a few quarters before their only option is to declare bankruptcy and not return a dime of their shareholders' investments.
It doesn't mention anything about group donations, but Bush raised 4 times more money while limiting the amount of each donation to $5k. Most of Gore's of the money (87.5% by my calculations) came from 84 donations over $5k (avg donation of $33.3k). Of those 84, 30 were from CA and 23 from NY. Most typical "community groups" and political foundations are headquartered in Washington DC, so they at least didn't play a big part in the fundraising.
I wholeheartedly agree.
The 2000 US Senate seat here in Minnesota was pretty much bought and paid for by Mark Dayton. He inherited ~$100 million at birth that his family made from Dayton-Hudson (now Marshall Fields, they also own Target stores). I've got nothing against wealth, but his trust fund isn't even taxed at all in MN (it's a resident of South Dakota for tax purposes). I went to a debate (with 7 candidates!) where the incumbent, Rod Grams, was dressed in a nice suit, what you'd expect a US Senator to wear. Dayton wore jeans and a plaid shirt, trying to look like a working man. That's ironic because Grams literally grew up in poverty on a farm, without a father, and worked his way up to a TV news anchor before he was elected. Dayton had a lawyer and tax accountant before he was born, and would never need to work in his life (he did work by choice, but mostly as a political appointee). He ended up spending $12 million of his own money in the campaign.
On the other hand, in the 2000 presidential election court battles, each side set-up funds to defer legal expenses (see this article). Bush raised $13.8 million while limiting donations to $5000 each. Gore, on the other hand, didn't limit the amount of individual donations, and raised $3.2 million. Most of his donations were over $5000 each ($2.8 million). Bush raised more than Gore's entire fund from donations smaller than $200 each! Which candidate had the grassroots support?
My point is that there are no easy answers for campaign finance reform. Sometimes rich people buy their way into office, but sometimes the system works the way it was meant, and people use their contributions as a form of political speech.