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Health Exchange Sites Crushed By Demand; Shutdown Blanks Other Gov't Sites
An anonymous reader writes "The launch of a national health exchange site was marred by overloaded servers in several states around the country. In a White House press conference, President Obama said that by 7 a.m., there were over a million users, and he likened the capacity problems to the glitches that Apple experienced after discovering bugs in their rlease of iOS 7. 'I don't remember anybody suggesting Apple should stop selling iPhones or iPads, or threatening to shut down company if they didn't,' the president argued."
Meanwhile, a number government websites went blank as a result of the shutdown, instead of simply lying dormant until personnel could return. The National Science Foundation, NASA, the FCC, and the Library of Congress are a few examples.
Seriously, simple typos and grammar mistakes get through now?
Huh, funny that, the IRS seems fully up and running their site during the 'shutdown'.
Maybe they should help Nasa out with theirs
Fewer government mandated healthcare sites means more porn sites for natural sexual healing!
Why are you electing a government consisting of greedy dumbasses? The world is laughing at you.
All of the sites on Day one didn't have prices, plan choices nor a way to sign up.
It's not an IT glitch, that information simply isn't available yet, despite what you're hearing.
After all, how hard would it have been to publish a PDF with a list of plans and prices? Pretty simple *IF THE INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE! *
The press is guillible and lazy these days that they'll print anything they're told.
Somehow, the NSA has the bandwidth to sift through the ****WORLDS**** internet and telephone bandwidth in **real-time**, but the Obamacare servers can't deal with the miniscule amount of requests required for uninsured persons to obtain a bare-minimum of medical insurance.
USA GO FUCK YOURSELF.
(A)
Science, space exploration, communications, knowledge. Do not want.
Things Americans do care about: sucking the entitlement teat.
American idiots, indeed.
Well actually that's quite spot on. "We know what you want... and its for the best! So eat it and shut up"
It was a glitch because it affects the peons. Besides if Apple had all the problems this system did they would of been crucified in the newspapers and everywhere else.
Things Americans do care about: sucking the entitlement teat.
And they won't stop until they get their hands on our Social Security and Medicare. Communists every last one of them,
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Slashtardism: The inability to use proper grammer or to deploy a spelling checker when posted 'news' stories.
Yumpin' geebus, hire me fer crissakes, and I'll make sure to check each top post!
The servers weren't overloaded because there was too many people checking them out, they just didn't create good websites. They probably didn't test them because they were behind schedule because that's how government always is, but they had to release on the deadline, ready or not. At least one site showed error messages that later changed into "busy" messages.
And it's pretty stupid to disable all these websites. They only would have saved money if they had actually powered down the machines, which they obviously didn't do. So, it was just pointless politicking.
African-Americans are enrolling in record numbers, because their Dear Leader happens to be black.
What not of people realise is, at the moment, there is some tenuous control over Gov't shut-downs. The time is coming where the shut down is brought on by external factors, like being broke and incompetent, and is therefore not a choice!
Actually, they may have powered down many servers. For example, nsf.gov, fastlane.nsf.gov, and research.gov all point to the same host and serve the same generic page. Additionally, since the notice pages are static, then it is entirely possible, maybe probable, that the database servers for the Library of Congress, the FCC, the NASA sites may all have been shut down.
This "shutdown" is no shutdown. The things people do not want is not to be shut down.
The most telling thing is that the stock market didn't react to this "crisis." If anything will react as an indicator, it's the market. It didn't.
I get the feeling this is an attempt to get people who are already hooked on government to freak out and demand action. As a former TSA screner, I still receive emails from a government employee organization who yesterday pushed out a message directly blaming the republicans and urging recipients to flood the house with calls demanding action. At the top of the list of "hooked on government" are these parasites who skate through life as government employed wastes of money.
To me, this is a "cable TV" moment. The cable TV moment happened to me when I moved to another state and attempted to bribe the cable internet installer to leave the TV signal unblocked. He refused and I have been without TV since that time... over 4 years now. I don't miss it. I never paid for TV and I never will. But now they aren't able to sell ads as effectively because I'm not watching them. (Some cable TV vendors are giving it away for free now because I'm not the only one cutting down on their subscribership numbers.)
Let's all hope we can cut back on government addiction and dependency and that this "shut down" illustrates how much we don't need it.
'I don't remember anybody suggesting Apple should stop selling iPhones or iPads, or threatening to shut down company if they didn't,' the president argued."
And Apple can't put us in jail for not buying their product. Although I'm sure they'd like to.
If admins aren't allowed to check log files, what happens if you experience a hack? What if a new zero-day vulnerability is released during the shutdown? What if the server room AC goes out?
The only safe thing to do is shut it down until the Republicans stop trying to negotiate with a gun to everyone's head.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
"The National Science Foundation, NASA, the FCC, and the Library of Congress are a few examples. "
Priorities, priorities. The senate barbershop, too?
If I don't like Apple's bugs or capacity problems, I have the option to never pay for another Apple product. I don't have the option to opt out of ObamaCare.
So the Government can send a few billion on a server farm in Utah for the NSA, but heaven help they send money on servers to handle 3 million people trying to log in at once.
I am going to give the benefit of the doubt that there are smart people who set this up and even they could not anticipate the initial load factor. So the republicans tried everything in their power to make people afraid of the ACA and the result was overloaded systems. Perhaps that says something about the population as a whole. IT is easy to pull something down when you think you're not effected, but when you need it,real bad, then it becomes the most important thing to have.
Anyway, the DBAs and Admins will figure this all out, the process will continue and within a week this will fade as the debt limit looms next.
Life is a great ride, the vehicle doesn't matter
This must be exactly how "small government" feels like, exactly what they're always asking for. Only absolute essential government tasks (running wars in faraway countries and spying on civilians are notable examples) are still being performed.
The government is actually spending MORE money to close these resources than it is keeping them open.
An example is the closure of the memorials in DC. Normally there might be one parks officer roaming around them, but under the closure, there are dozens of park police manning the barricades to ensure nobody can go see them.
It's all political theater. The Administration (and don't get me wrong, I don't give a shit of an R or D is in the white house - they both would do the same thing) is doing today exactly what it did with the sequester - it's punishing the American people as much as it can.
Most of the sequester cuts were planned in a way to have the greatest negative effect on people, and these closures are being executed in the same way. Government is not happy that it has lost it's money source, and it figures the only way to get it back is to go around kicking people in the face to get them to scream at the people who control the purse strings.
It's despicable. Instead of doing their jobs and negotiating the best possible compromise between all interested parties, they've become a bunch of extremists (on both sides) who refuse to negotiate. It's "my way or the highway."
Obama in particular ought to be ashamed of himself. He campaigned on a platform of unity and leadership, and he has exemplified NONE of it. In fact he's the biggest one going on national TV proclaiming with pride that he refuses to negotiate.
Fire them all. Seriously. Every last despicable goddamn one of them.
demand? doubt it. how about piss poor government planing.
At least the DEA website is up, letting us know they are still operating. Gotta get those pot smokers.
http://www.justice.gov/dea/index.shtml
Meanwhile the USDA is down, but don't worry, there's no problem with our food supply.
http://www.usda.gov/
Makes sense to me. Going after the druggies is far more essential than the food we eat.
Incomprehensible.
BlameBillCosby.com
Last time this shutdown happened it was but a blip on the international News. You'd hear about someone not getting something done while traveling to the USA and you'd think 'Oh, they must have something similar to a general strike by goverment employees'.
But now, with the internet, the rest of the world hears your complaints about how the government itself is forcing the shut down. It's like the USA is screaming: "Oh look at poor us, our country is out of money we are almost as poor as North-Korea now. We are shutting down NASA maybe soon you will see dark spots on imaging satelites there where our cities used to be. We are now so poor you may claim the sovjet block has won the cold war in hindsight."
the gubberment!!!!...Wow
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I have to wonder how much of the crush was due to the Randians, the Baggers, and Koch Whores trying to overwhelm the site and flood it with bogus accounts. Given the depth of their hatred of the working poor, it would not surpise in the least.
Well over a million users and their site couldn't handle it? Mr President, call up Yahoo or Go-daddy... they could have your site up and running in a few minutes.
I think Congress has found a powerful new cyberattack vector. With very little technical knowledge, the 535 members have successfully launched a DDoS attack on the health exchange site and most of the other major websites of the United States Government. Imagine what they could do if they put their hacker skills to good purpose. Then again, as Mark Twain noted, "There is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress."
They have a complicit media pointing all the fingers at Republicans, and every liberal and democrat cranking out bulletin board posts using the R word with no mention of the D word to be found.
That's because this is one of the very few times where it IS one party's fault - the Republicans in this case.
The budget ceiling is supposed to be just a Congressional formality (and has been in the PAST before the Republican party went off the deep end) that is just a "housekeeping" job. But no, the Republicans are using EVERY chance they can get to damage the Affordable Care Act - and to Hell with everything else!
And instead of trying to be all PC or to cover the Republican's stupidity by saying bullshit things like "well, both parties have a hand in it", we should point fingers at the people responsible and say, "It's YOUR fault assholes!" which is Republicans - period.
The Republicans have been trying for YEARS to get "Obama Care" over turned and couldn't do it.
The Dems are just sitting back - they could play just a dirty and put in a gun control measure in the law or a Free Abortions for everyone measure or something like that - but they didn't.
It is ALL THE REPUBLICANS!
One's not (now) compelled by law to own an iphone. Just sayin'.
-Styopa
Always done half assed by a contractor that barely has the skills to do the job. Honestly, who was the consultant because they were no talent n00bs in gauging the amount of traffic these sites would expect. Even if it is only an initial spike in traffic they could have EASILY paid for temporary increased infrastructure from places like rackspace to handle the first 3 months easily.
Plus the number of outright failures and nasty bugs being reported makes me even wonder if they tested the sites.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Frontend devs love their Ruby, but we server mongers know the truth. Ruby just doesn't scale well at mega load. Not even Akamai's CDN could save them from that self-inflicted wound.
The Healthcare devs made other sloppy mistakes too. Unminified jquery-ui... Unprocessed Ruby vars leaking into HTML... Enough unsettling comments to make Uncle Bob cry... Reading the HTML looks as if they threw the whole thing together over a weekend.
And yes, the Healthcare.gov site is indeed written in Ruby:
https://github.com/CMSgov/healthcare.gov
All external facing sites are contracted out. This is merely a political stunt.
(From the NSF)
"In cases of imminent threat to life or property, please call the Office of the Inspector General at 1-800-428-2189."
WHAT? In cases of imminent threat to life, call 9-1-1!
The motivations are completely different.
The Reps are trying to delay it so that they can put through more bills to over turn it and other things to get rid of it.
But what they don't realize that if they did get their wish, that would give time to get more of the kinks out of Obama Care - make it better.
The trouble is that the Reps haven't figured out they lost this battle and they keep coming back and making themselves look like retarded asses.
When you have a Fox News pundit (O'Reilly) accuse the Republicans of being over the top in regards to Obama Care, I think they should give up and fight some other battles.
But now, that won't happen.
You're a victim of partisan nonsense that by the admission of those at its core is flawwed. Thanks for being a zombie.
You're are so right! It is Partisian non-sense - one the Republican's part - period. This is one of the very few times when it IS one party causing the problems - the Republicans. The debt ceiling is supposed to be a routine pass so that the government can pay its bills. Now because of the Republicans, it's this bullshit.
The health exchange site is crushed by the demand and can't keep up? Clearly, the American people don`t want Obamacare!!
This could all have been avoided with a single-payer, socialized system. It's time to get politics out of the healthcare arena. Healthcare is a basic, fundamental human right. End this nonsense of marketplaces and regulations. Everyone gets healthcare, paid for by taxes. A very reasonable 3% hike in taxes would cover everyone and for the average person, represents far less than they are paying now for "healthcare premiums", which are tantamount to actual theft.
It's simple... healthcare should be a non-profit venture. Doctors should never make what they make now. Yes, I'm advocating what it sounds like. People ALWAYS trump profit, and should, especially at the expense of the rich, who, despite it all, will remain rich.
I will now because of recent events, never give a dime to Pap John's Pizza or Dunkin Donuts. Both of these companies are against the Affordable Care Act and are doing their level best to not hire full-time workers to avoid paying for their care. My question is simple: How much profit do you need? You are already rich. It's your workers who earn the money by making what you sell. Set the example and pay for their healthcare until we can arrive at where we all should be. Single-payer system.
I love how most Twitter accounts are shutdown. Except the Whitehouse account. It's still running. Oh, and it's doing promoted tweets! That's essential.
They weren't overloaded, as is typical with ANY government project, it was half-baked, over-budget (with most going to incompetent pockets), and downright poorly implemented. My dead grandmother can do better than this government can at implementing a decent solution.
Not to mention the regs are, what, 20K pages long? Who the hell can properly implement that? Bloody idiots.
Pax Vobiscum
Are you sure it wasn't the government buying them up to donate them to certain Slavic-speaking countries?
I thought you wanted them to cut "non-essential" services.
Tax revenue is essential.
Collecting tax is essential to doing that.
Advising you how to fill in your tax form is NOT essential to doing it.
So which is it? Close down non-essential services or keep the ones you use going?
3 years ago, they were given the requirement.
A fully functioning multi-million-user system does not come about instantly, however.
Moreover, that "billions" is just bullshit. You mean "A lot of money, how much I don't know, but it's a lot and billions is a lot, so I'll say billions and pretend it's really true".
One-drop rule (touch of the tar-brush) and all that.
Both parties are guilty of this: when there's a shutdown, they decide whom to send home, and they will inevitably play to their base(s) and try to get the public angry at the other party. It's all political theater.
That is quite true. However, in this particular instance, the blame rests solely on the Republicans. The Reps tried to "compromise" (an impossible one) and then have the nerve to say "Well, WE tried but the Dems won't play ball!" This year delay is just a ploy to get more time to submit more bills and try more legal challenges to get Obama Care off the books.
The Reps are going to keep trying to get rid of Obama Care - spending taxpayer money - on a battle they lost and are too stupid to realize it.
Even Obama Care didn't exist, the Republicans would find another reason to shutdown. They stated in 2008 that their goal is to make sure Obama can't do anything and destroy his Presidency.
The Republicans just want to be a party of "No" and of brinkmanship.
The USSR were even more diverse.
The USA is also smaller in GDP than the EU.
Java . -> unable to handle the load, at least in my state. And not only was it not able to handle the load, it would not die gracefully, instead putting out messages to the end user useful at best only to a programmer. Why did they not use COBOL? I guess time tested and 'just works' means nothing anymore. Yes, java is the first thing I think of when it comes to high volume transaction processing. These sites are nothing more than airline reservation systems under a different name.
And no, I'm only half joking.
an example error:
Error 500: org.springframework.core.task.TaskRejectedException: Executor
[java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor@aee9ec22] did not accept task:
org.springframework.context.event.SimpleApplicationEventMulticaster$1@6ae3d673
May they fired 9/10 of these guys too. You know. For security reason.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Poor wittle baby Obama. Did the big bully pwess make him cwy?
You know, he could try pretending to be a President and not respond negatively to every criticism.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Yeah, you're a moron.
Obama was enthroned by foreign powers to undermine the US and that's exactly what's happened.
Its really amazing it works at all.
I got 36 HTML errors on the front page running it through the wc3 validator. Its chuck full of misspelled attributes, duplicate attributes (aka two hrefs in an A tag, etc).
There is no doctype on the login page, and it throws another 61 warnings (mostly because without the doctype the validator turns errors into warnings).
Plus there were a fair number of jqeury errors.
Finally I stopped at the login because the security question AJAX URL literally returned a 500 line java/jboss exception pile of crap wrapped in JSON data.
You have got to wonder who is creating a site where they can't even get the markup correct.
Removing a website from the web during a shutdown "Protects" it from exploiters when there is no one to respond to threats from hackers, foreign governments that are not shutdown and anyone who would exploit the code on a webpage for distributing Malware or Viruses.
SQL Injection and Javascript Injections hi-jacking an End users website are quite common on the most hardened websites because they are always evolving systems and new exploits are discovered daily.
Shutting the website off in an orderely fashion is the most responsible thing the Government could possibly do.
Those branches still funded are online and monitoring their situations and protecting their customers.
The only ones trying to take advantage of the situation and proposing keeping them up on auto-pilot are probably the ones asking for a Vulnerable playing field in order to raid your bank account.
The ones suggesting leaving National Monuments are asking for people to be harmed accidentally or intentionally with no help in sight.. or who want an opportunity to deface a National Monument.
How can anyone propose "walking off the job and leaving things to disintegrate" is the right thing to do?
That is simply irresponsible.
And Apple can't put us in jail
You don't go to jail, you are levied a fine.
for not buying their product.
The product doesn't come from the government, it comes from a health insurance company. It isn't the government's product.
Although I'm sure they'd like to.
The jailed environment of iOS isn't sufficient?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Slashdotters have become such sheep.
A government shutdown? What government shutdown?
Have all the wars stopped? Did the NSA stop collecting our communications? Did the TSA stop raping our kids? Did the CIA's proxy stop murdering Christians in Syria, Iraq and Egypt? Will you get your full paycheck this week?
No? Well it looks like there was no shutdown after all.
I checked it today, was working fine. For fun I looked at insurance, they stuff they offer in Washington was worthless. Sure you can get insurance for 220$ a month, with a 6000$ deductible(yes not hundred), 60% payment (You pay the remaining 40%) and copays from 60$ (office visit) to 200$ (ER). For coverage you could actually use it's over $400 a month, I would not call that affordable.
Everyone should have free healthcare and no doctors should be paid. Stick it to the man.
- Posted from iPhone 5S @ Starbucks in Harvard Square.
If this turns out to be just a political stunt by Democrats to intentionally take the servers down to amplify the "shutdown" then they will look bad. If it turns out that the servers were simply overloaded and not up to the task then that feeds right into the Republican claims that Obamacare will be a disaster. I mean, if you can't even get to the website how confident are you in their ability to provide medical care? Didn't anyone think that maybe testing the whole thing before rolling it out to millions of Americans might be a good idea? If it wasn't ready then delay the launch or at least give a little forewarning that it might be a bit slow on the first day. Idiots.
Please cut it out. We all know now both parties serve the same masters, and none of us number among said masters. It's BS top to bottom. But rolling out the tired and demonstrably untrue "both parties are too extreme" defies common sense. There is no Left in American politics. There is only the corporate lackies vs. the corporate lackies, all of whom do whatever they can to disguise that fact from the average American while the corporations steal everything that isn't nailed down, and salt it away in some ridiculous tax shelter like the Isle of Mann or Switzerland.
We can't live 1st World lives, advance science, cure diseases, solve eminently solvable problems because we are betrayed at every, every turn by sociopaths and leeches who have turned our very system of supposed universal suffrage against us. And, most of us being mentally healthy, find it difficult to accept that a defective few really would consign us and our children to misery and death for their personal benefit, yet that's exactly what they do under this arrangement, every day.
We try to "give them the benefit of the doubt" and do a thousand things we might do to preserve equity among our fellow, non-ill citizens. Except those measures are precisely those which the ill have learned well to exploit. And now we find ourselves at a point where the accretion of dysfunction from the Ill represents a mortal threat to everyone, and we can choose to excuse them to our doom, or deal with them in a way that saves everyone.
So I plead with fellow citizens who have not yet taken leave of their senses, resist! The sociopaths know they're outnumbered, vastly. Many of them know in their hearts that they're sick, and they secretly yearn for others to recognize their illness and help them. If we don't, then they reflexively act out in ways that are even more lamentable.
We must stop them now.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
In most western democracies there is a system of mandatory health insurance.
The reason is the same everywhere: we do not tolerate that in a civilized society people have to die just because of money. Any other society is barbaric in the eyes of most enlightened people.
You can either pay everything from the general budget (like the UK's NHS) or pay through some (often income-dependent) insurance premium, which has partially the character of a solidarity tax.
If it were not mandatory, you would have to fund it otherwise, like via income tax.
Do you really rather live in a society where people that have bad luck have to die so you have a bit more wealth?!?
I think 95% of all non-US citizens are appalled and shocked that this is even worth a discussion in the USA, and this is a sign of the extreme egoism and selfishness of parts of US society.
And if you don't pay the fine, you do go to jail. The IRS is funny about that. Ask Wesley Snipes.
And if you don't pay the fine, you do go to jail. The IRS is funny about that. Ask Wesley Snipes.
Wesley Snipes went to jail for not paying his taxes. This is not the same as not paying taxes.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Have they disabled government MX hosts, too? If they're going to disable web, they ought to disable email too.
This president is a total joke and no i did not vote for him and yes i did vote. When the president of the UNITED SATES OF AMERICA starts making excuses for bad planning and implementing of the so called obamacare comparing it to what Apple,Ms,adobe.and on and on and on does which by the way is to just get it out the door on time screw the bugs mentality is embarrassing. Apple,Ms and all the rest do this to get it out the door making users paying bug finders because it HAS to be out the door on launch day. I remember the day when games were put back months and months to fxg bugs to send out a great product. All this i have to have to now at all coast is not OK and should never be used as an Excuse by the President of the United States of America. That is MO and you cant change it so dont try :}
Jack of all trades,master of none
They have 4 weeks of cash reserves!
You can always push for Article the First to be ratified and finish ratifying the original 12 amendments. You'd have a representative for every 50,000 people so about 6000 representatives. Harder to bribe them all and more responsive to those who they represent. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_the_first
http://www.thirty-thousand.org/
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Dealing with spike loads are always a difficult proiblem to deal with
Ive had to deal with such problems with provisioning University Enrollment systems. Often with such systems - enrollments open at a set time and you get the entire student body (or most of it at least) logging in at that instant - to get the preferredd subjects and tutorial times.
The problem is - how much do you spend on servers - for a load that will last about a few hours - 2 or 3 times a year -
If you have an unlimited budget - you buy hardware for all possible users and you do decent load testing
BUT good load testing tools are expensive and good load testing people arent cheap either actually (but they ARE worth the money BTW) .... but it assumes they were given a budget and time to do it right - and my experience with many governments around the world is that is rarely the case .....
and for a uni system at least - you know the peak loads will re-occur - with these systems the peak load will fade out over the next month or so as people sign up. I must admit this would have been an interesting case to budget and provision. A good case for renting servers capacity perhaps to deal with this initial load
Still load should drop - and hopefully the systems are sound and its just load related. The rest of the developed world are pleased to see the USA has joined civilisation in offering some form of healthcare to people.
Funny that no one can find anyone who actually signed upfor obamacare. Not even obama signed up for obamacare.
If the repubs continue to defund government and even worse fail to raise the debt limit, how long until President Obama decides to institute Presidential directive 51? It was dreamed up by Bush, but, is custom made for this scenario!
My karma is bad. Don't get too close!!!
Anybody else consider it likely that the anti-Obamacare fanatics launched Denial of Service attacks against the insurance exchange websites?
P.S. My lie is that any of this applies to me. It doesn't. The wire doesn't even run to my house. If it did, I would pay [Mediacom] for cable internet, because I would get a better deal than I get from my WISP. I would not have cable television at all unless it saved me money on my bill somehow. It's not worth stealing. This is how I have operated in the past. Thankyou.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"