] I think that both Cheney and Edwards were occasionally guilty of
] being party mouthpieces who were repeating stuff that they
] didn't really believe,

And this is exactly the job of the VP. You float the contraversal ideas and take the heat from the press so the president doesn't have too.

As for Cheney's "I never meet you" bit, I'm amazed you fell into arguing its literal merits. Cheney certainly didn't mean he physcially had never met Edwards, and Edwards knows he met Cheney. The comment was not a "lie" that Edwards should have call him on, as you so profess. It was a slight, a dig at Edward and his lack of experience in Washington. It was a way of saying "you've not important enough to have run in my circles. You didn't even make the radar screen." Oh course Edwards wouldn't bring that up while in the debate. The last thing he wanted was to waste valueable time trying to combat this his experience. So he (I agree, poorly) stayed off the defensive and addressed other issues. After the debate was the time to address Cheney on the slight.

This whole "he has no experience in Washington, so he can't be VP" is a completely groundless statement to anyone who knows history. JFK was mayor, and then a 2 term Senator before running for *president*. He tried to get the VP nomination in 1956, after only *one* term in the Senate. And most of his time in the Senate, he was having back issues and wasn't in Washington. (Check Wikipedia). And lack of Washington experience is not a bad thing. JFK is *the* president referenced by political science professors when discussing the importance of presidential advisors to craft US policy.

Further, the people who stupidly spread this whole "no Washington experience" line interestingly enough tend to be Bush Supportor. That man was 2 term state governor for god sakes. Morons, and Hippocrits.

This whole "Edwards is only a 2 term Senator, and isn't qualified to be a 'heart-beat-away'" is expounded by uneducated fools.

RE: The VP Debate

] Maintaining and deploying useful FAQs can be a very
] tedious process. Luckily there are a number of open
] source FAQ generation and management tools out there that
] exist to try and make it a bit easier.

The FAQs on FAQs

] What is Dropload?
]
]
] Dropload is a place for you to drop your files off and
] have them picked up by someone else at a later time.
] Recipients you specify are sent an email with
] instructions on how to download the file. Files are
] removed from the system after 7 days, regardless if they
] have been picked up or not. You can upload any type of
] file, mp3, movies, docs, pdfs, up to 100MB each!
] Recipients can be anyone with an email address

This seems pretty cool.

Dropload - Drop off downloads

] # On 1 August 2004, the White House issued an official
] statement (based only on seeing the film's trailer) that
] they object to the film "mocking the war on terror".
] Parker and Stone responded by saying "We thank the Bush
] administration for the free press".

Trivia for Team America: World Police (2004)

] To adopt these solutions you need to either purchase
] certificates from a public Certification Authority (CA),
] or build your own Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). Both
] options are now incredibly easy

... ... Now I'm not the smartest man in the world, but I wouldn't quantify building your own PKI for scatch as easy. Yeah, using a wizard to connect and get issued a certificate might be something a PHB could do. Thats just what we need a Visual Sutdio .NET: wizard for creating a PKI!

PKI: Now for bosses!

] Rice said Bush did not misspeak when he said that the
] network of Pakistan's A.Q. Khan -- the founder of
] Pakistan's nuclear program who was caught selling secrets
] on the global black market -- had been "brought to
] justice."
]
] Khan is living in a villa and was pardoned this year by
] Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. None of Khan's
] co-conspirators have been brought to trial.
]
] Asked how that could be interpreted to mean Khan has been
] brought to justice, Rice said, "He has been brought to
] justice because he's out of business."

Come on! And Sadam, with almost half his country under a no fly zone and a military crumpled after 13+ years of conflict was in business? I call a fat steamy pile of BS on this one. If this doesn't show how fucked up the Bush Administrations priorities are, I don't know what does.

Rice: Pakistani Nuke Scientist was 'brought to justice'

] Stripe Snoop was showcased on G4TechTV's The Screen
] Savers. However, I have little beef with one of the
] hosts, Kevin Rose. Rose manages to do a 4 minute bit,
] using my software, my hardware, even my exact reader
] modification, and mentions Stripe Snoop once. Once! And
] for all my hard work on the matter, I am mentioned ...
] not at all. Yes, your humble author whose work Rose
] basicly jacks isn't even mentioned. Even Rose's
] introduction, "The other day I looked in my wallet and
] wondered...," was lifted directly from this site. He even
] uses a photo from my website in the production. While I
] enjoy the exposure, and indeed the web stats show I nice
] bump, Rose does not give credit where credit is due.
] Somehow I can't see Leo Laporte being a jackass like
] that.

Stripe Snoop on TSS: WMV Video clip

] Eastman Kodak Co. will return to U.S. District Court next
] week to seek $1 billion in damages from Sun Microsystems
] Inc. now that a federal jury has ruled in its favor in a
] dispute over the Java computer language.
]
] The jury decided in Rochester on Friday that Sun
] infringed on technology belonging to Kodak when it
] developed and introduced Java more than a decade ago. The
] computer language is now used heavily by software
] developers, on the Internet and in computer schools.
]
] The patents describe a method by which a program can "ask
] for help" from another application to carry out certain
] computer-oriented functions. That's generally similar to
] the way Java operates, according to Kodak and other
] experts.

The jury say that the way the Java Runtime interpreter runs Java byte code was an instance of program "asking for help."

WTF?! How the hell could such a broad patent be granted? Programs helping another out? Wouldn't that include dynamic link libraries? They're code, and other programs use them to help do it task. What about System calls? The kernel is "helping" isn't it? Prior art for this patent? How about nearly every damn advance in Computer Science?

] Kodak in pre-trial documents indicated it would ask for $1.06
] billion in lump-sum royalties – a figure that represents half of
] Sun's operating profit from the sales of computer servers and
] storage equipment between January 1998 and June 2001

Software patents are being used to kill innovation, not foster it. There should be a rule that if you have a patent, and someone else does something really cool with the idea that was covered, something you never planned to or were even investigating, such as writing a cross-platform computer language, then they don't owe you jack. Of course, this would not work, but its a nice dream.

Kodak gets to have its way with Sun, prison style.

I'm still not sure if I like more and more cartoonists going towards Flash, but this show how Flash can be more effective than print.

Mark Fiore: The Question

] What Vega gives Azul is the ability to spread Java
] software workloads across 24 cores per processor. Yep,
] Azul has come out with one of the most radical multicore
] designs to date. It will ship systems with four to 16
] processors, giving it 384 Java processing cores at max in
] a single box.

This would be cool, if only it was 1998.

Azul reveals supersonic Java machine