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The second U.S. Presidential debate kicks off in about a half-hour (9PM ET, 6PM PT, 0100 UTC) from Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York. Incumbent Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney will take questions from an audience of allegedly undecided voters. A live stream of the event will be available from a number of sources (C-SPAN, CNN, ABC, and PBS), and it will be broadcast nationally on the major networks. The flash-less and television-less can use rtmpdump to catch the debate from C-SPAN. It won't preempt the more important telecasts, like playoff baseball. Candidates from smaller parties again went uninvited (e.g. Gary Johnson from the Libertarians, Jill Stein from the Greens, Virgil Goode from the Constitution Party, and Rocky Anderson from the Justice Party). In fact, Jill Stein was arrested for attempting to enter without credentials (her side of the story). Assuming she's out of jail by Thursday, she and Gary Johnson will be participating in an online debate hosted by IVN.us. While tonight's debate is in progress, Politifact will be fact-checking the candidates in real-time (while CNN has demonstrated their journalistic capabilities with a debate drinking game). Feel free to weigh in with your commentary on the debate below — it would be helpful to provide timestamps or other context when referring to particular statements. As before, we're posting this here in a vain attempt to keep the political discussion out of other story threads tonight. If either of the candidates spontaneously concedes the election or catches fire, we'll do our best to update you.

Tonight's debate between the two largest American political parties' candidates for vice president of the United States takes place at Danville, Kentucky's Centre College, starting at 9 p.m. Joe Biden and Paul Ryan will face each other on stage, and are expected to talk about issues "including the economy, foreign policy and the role of the Vice President," according to C-SPAN, which will feature a live streaming view of the event. (Criteria from the Commission on Presidential Debates means you won't hear tonight from other presidential candidates' running mates (like Cheri Honkala, Jim Clymer, and James Gray, of the Green, Constitution, and Libertarian party tickets, respectively). If you'll be watching the debate tonight, please add your commentary below. It would be helpful if you start your comment's title with a time-stamp (to the minute), too, for context. (Like this: "9:08: $Candidate just intentionally mis-repeated the Q on taxes.") And Yes, we're posting this here in a vain attempt to keep the political discussion out of other story threads tonight. Update: 10/12 01:18 GMT by U L : If you don't have flash, you can use rtmpdump and mplayer to watch (incantation duplicated below, in case the site is slashdotted).

Via Don Armstrong an incantation to watch the debate without flash:
rtmpdump -v -r rtmpt://cp82346.live.edgefcs.net:1935/live?ovpfv=2.1.4 \
--tcUrl rtmp://cp82346.live.edgefcs.net:1935/live?ovpfv=2.1.4 \
--app live?ovpfv=2.1.4 --flashVer LNX.11,2,202,238 \
--playpath CSPAN1@14845 \
--swfVfy http://www.c-span.org/cspanVideoHD.swf \
--pageUrl http://www.c-span.org/ | \
mplayer -xy 3 -;

longacre writes "For all their incessant bickering in the first two presidential debates over conflicts of interest and government regulation, PopMech columnist Glenn Derene is puzzled that the candidates have yet to be challenged on a vital issue directly related to both those topics: Net neutrality. John McCain and Barack Obama have stated elsewhere their opposing views on the issue, with McCain being opposed to Net neutrality and favoring light regulation of the Internet, while Obama is in favor of neutrality and seeks Government involvement. In any case, since there is no standard accepted definition of 'network neutrality,' until the candidates elaborate on their positions (which they both declined to do for this piece, nor anywhere else so far, for that matter), 'both sides can make a credible case that they're the ones defending freedom of innovation and open communication.'"

method9455 writes "Barack Obama has edited his official website on many issues, including a huge revision on the technology page. Strangely it seems net neutrality is no longer as important as it was a few months ago, and the swaths of detail have been removed and replaced with fairly vague rhetoric. Many technologists were alarmed with the choice of Joe Biden before, and now it appears their fears might have been well founded." Update: 09/22 18:07 GMT by T : Julian Sanchez of Ars Technica passed on a statement from an Obama campaign representative who points out that the changes in wording highlighted by Versionista aren't the whole story, and that more Obama tech-plan details are now available in a PDF, saying "there is absolutely no substantive change to our policy - folks who want more information can click to get our full plan."

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "John McCain has finally released a technology platform. Most of it is the same old stuff; lower corporate taxes, protect children from porn, and avoid Internet regulation unless 'necessary.' Alas, in his view, helping the RIAA's War on Sharing is necessary to stop the 'global epidemic' of piracy, while Net Neutrality is something he 'does not believe in.' Ars Technica has a review of McCain's platform." A brief analysis is also available from Federal Computer Week. In addition to the technology policy, McCain has also released a paper describing his stance on security and privacy. We've previously contrasted his views with those of Barack Obama. Obama's technology policies are also available online.

ya really notes a blog posting up at Wired reporting that foes of the Telecom Amnesty Bill have mounted a campaign on Barack Obama's own website. Though the group was created only days ago, on June 25, it has grown to be the fifth largest among 7,000 such groups, just short of Women for Obama. Although it is widely known that Obama changed his stance from opposing telecom immunity to supporting it, many have not given up hope of getting him to switch once again. Meanwhile, left-leaning bloggers and libertarian activists have joined forces to raise $325,000 in the fight against the legislation. "Their Blue America PAC is already targeting House Democrats who voted for the bill, including placing a full-page ad in the Washington Post [an image appears in the Wired story] slamming House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who claimed credit for creating the so-called compromise bill. The coalition plans to follow-up with a Ron Paul-style money bomb, which will be used to target key Senators..."

kgamiel writes "The Obama campaign's CTO is hiring LAMP-biased geeks for the Boston office to help elect the Senator in the fall. This got me to wondering, what if he instead announced a SourceForge project toward the same end? What would such a project look like? Tools that both sides could use 'equally' would not achieve the desired end. And philosophically, could the Open Source community support one side in a competition such as this? What other issues does this raise?" Another reader notes that the Obama campaign is also searching for a security expert to plug the holes that allowed a hacker to redirect Obama's site (Linux/Apache hosted by GoDaddy) to Hillary Clinton's (Windows/IIS hosted by Rackspace).

kgamiel writes "The Obama campaign's CTO is hiring LAMP-biased geeks for the Boston office to help elect the Senator in the fall. This got me to wondering, what if he instead announced a SourceForge project toward the same end? What would such a project look like? Tools that both sides could use 'equally' would not achieve the desired end. And philosophically, could the Open Source community support one side in a competition such as this? What other issues does this raise?" Another reader notes that the Obama campaign is also searching for a security expert to plug the holes that allowed a hacker to redirect Obama's site (Linux/Apache hosted by GoDaddy) to Hillary Clinton's (Windows/IIS hosted by Rackspace).

Behind the link are my first impressions of the Internet presences of the top US presidential candidates for each party. Any website design pros care to chime in?
Democrats:

Hillary Clinton: Good professional web site. Using a photo where the Senator is smirking for the main image of the candidate strikes me as a bad idea since it re-enforces some negatives. Fourth overall in seeming to encourage supporter action/participation.

John Edwards: A bit of a disorganized mess. The Edwards campaign needs to hire a professional web designer (or fire the one they have). Bunch of links to the Edwards campaign's accounts on various social networking sites (no multiply though). Second overall in seeming to encourage supporter action/participation.

Barak Obama: Very clean and professional. Links to the Obama campaign's accounts on a few social networking sites. First overall in seeming to encourage supporter action/participation. Supporter area has its own social networking features. Best campaign web site by far.

Republicans:

Rudy Giuliani: What is with the flags at the top pointing in all different directions? Don't know which way you are going? Also what is with that candidate photo? It makes Giuliani look like a villain out of a comic book. This site looks like something from 8 years ago in terms of design and content. For "participation" it appears to just ask for money and allow you to sign up for his email list. Worst overall in seeming to encourage supporter action/participation.

John McCain: Eeek! What is with the funeral colors? They seem kind of creepy. Might work as black and white if white was the dominant color. The site is a bit of a bandwidth/browser pig. Other than those two issues the cleanest site other than Obama's. Third overall in seeming to encourage supporter action/participation.

Mitt Romney: Good professional site. Good choice of images. Fifth overall in seeming to encourage supporter action/participation.

Arlen writes "As many as 17,000 people (according to police estimates) watched Senator Barack Obama officially announce his candidacy for President in Springfield, Illinois today. He mentioned several things that will interest readers of Slashdot. The Senator said he wanted to free America from 'the tyranny of oil' and went on to promote alternative energy sources such as ethanol — a popular stance in the Midwest where he announced, because of all the corn farmers. He also talked about using science and technology to help those with chronic diseases, which is likely to have been an allusion to his staunch support for stem cell research. Perhaps most of interest to readers here is the following statement halfway through Obama's speech: 'Let's invest in scientific research, and let's lay down broadband lines through the heart of inner cities and rural towns all across America. We can do that.' Like nearly everything in his speech, this was met with robust applause from the crowd. You can watch a video of the entire speech at Obama's website."