The Census and Australian Bureau of Statistics websites have crashed on their most important day of the year [Census day for Australians], leaving Australians frustrated and unable to complete their form online. Many trying to log on to the Census and ABS sites were met with an error message on Tuesday evening saying the site could not be reached.
In a first, the census requires a full name to be filled in, though many including politicians are concerned about privacy issues. Crossbench senators including Nick Xenophon, Scott Ludlam and Sarah Hanson-Young are pledging not to comply with rules for the census will be treated like any other citizen and risk fines of $180 per day, the Australian Bureau of Statistics said on Tuesday.
Some took to Twitter to slam the ABS, with one user sarcastically saying they were "definitely technically competent enough to keep our most private data safe."
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 09 2016, @02:11PM
Soystain is down sometimes too. Hosted on genuine Linode penguins, maintained by super-genius Nigger Commandos, this is the greatest site of the entire web!
Why do we trust important shit to unreliable immature technology? Oh right. It's totally fucking cheaper that way!!!!!!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 09 2016, @02:16PM
Soylent isn't a muti-trillion dollar government endeavor, either. Did you miss the bit about falling apart under EXPECTED load? Not one mention of an update or anything, just normal, workaday, expected load.
Gubbermint - you can't live with it, and it won't let you live without it.
We're gonna be able to vacation in Gaza, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and maybe Minnesota soon. Incredible times.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 09 2016, @02:28PM
Did you know government buildings have toilets, and those toilets get clogged? Clogged even when trained government weasels dump an expected load of shit? Do you know what happens next? An intern grabs a plunger, that's what happens, because the janitor was laid off. There's only one kind of worker less important than the janitor, and that's the IT guy. The IT guy is worth less than the shit in the toilet. No matter what the IT guy does, the web site will fucking break, and no amount of plunging will fix it.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday August 09 2016, @03:32PM
Australian government worker responsible for the whole fiasco says what?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 09 2016, @04:04PM
American toilet design is fucked up. Nobody I know in Aus even has a plunger for the toilet. They simply don't block up.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 09 2016, @02:43PM
Want to live without government? You have several options:
1. Move to and take over a terra nullius [wikipedia.org] where no government claims control.
2. Move to a country with no functioning government. Somalia, for example.
3. Move to an area that's so remote, and live frugally off the land, that the government of that area doesn't even know you exist. Places you might be able to pull this off include Ninavut, the Amazon, and the Kalahari.
4. Buy yourself a boat and spend all your time in international waters, surviving on rainwater and seafood and such.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ledow on Tuesday August 09 2016, @02:46PM
And then good luck when you fall and break your leg.
Or get boarded by pirates.
Or whatever. People enclose themselves in government-controlled countries for a reason.
That reason isn't necessarily stupid, either.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 09 2016, @03:18PM
Well that's just it: Many people who complain about the government existing are the same ones that rely on government services on a regular basis. There are more than a few who are downright delusional about what government does and doesn't do for them, as best exemplified by the older Americans who are completely convinced that Social Security and Medicare are not government programs.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 09 2016, @02:48PM
5. Suck the cock of Musky to earn a chance to emigrate to SPAAAAAAAACE.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by VLM on Tuesday August 09 2016, @02:55PM
2. Move to a country with no functioning government. Somalia, for example.
Somalia is a shithole because of the people and their culture. We have non-functioning governments in Detroit and Baltimore and Wash DC and plenty of "urban" environments and they're full of (mostly) Americans and they're not that bad of a place to live. Well, mostly. But nowhere near as bad as Somalia.
As a counterexample, the government of South Africa hasn't completely collapsed (its in process) but given the residents the country is again a complete shithole of rape and street crime and violence, even though its got a semi-operational government.
I used to use Somalia as an example myself, but its obsolete. The problem with Somalia is the Somalians and no functioning government in Detroit isn't ideal but its not the end of the world either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 09 2016, @03:06PM
What kind of people do Somalia, Detroit, Baltimore, Washington DC, South Africa have in common. Yep. The villain of Star Trek Beyond was a black man too.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 09 2016, @04:36PM
I'm calling BS on that. If there were really non-functioning governments in that area, then:
- There would be no cops, jails, courts, and so forth. Think complete lawlessness, or the city controlled entirely by the various drug gangs without any kind of other power structure.
- There would be no agreed-upon medium of economic exchange, like the US Dollar.
- Nobody would be maintaining the roads, sewers, water supply, or streetlights.
- There would be no public school system.
- There would be no public parks.
And that's just a taste.
I live in a city that's not that much better off than Detroit in a lot of ways. But there's definitely a functional city government, and it does a lot of stuff, some of which makes my life easier.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday August 09 2016, @08:24PM
Umm, have you ever been to an urban city in the USA? I'm just sayin. Looking at the big city near where I live...
I mean on paper they have cops but they only come a couple hours later unless there's active shooters. Its not like the burbs. Occasionally they'll shoot an unarmed black citizen in the back and its like "Eh, BAU". The jail is dysfunctional and mostly used to molest kids and women. The courts are backed up and slow.
I see no reason why you need a government to use a medium of exchange. The medium of exchange needs a government to back it up but when I visit Mexico the locals are OK with dollars. One of those A implies B but B does not imply A problems. The dollar needs the fedgov but the dollar works perfectly well in areas outside fedgov control.
Public school system and parks holy cow man look up the conditions in poor urban areas. Worse than Africa out there. At least in Africa they get free vaccinations and better food.
Ditto road repair, basic infrastructure. Sign replacement is a big problem. So the stoplights were knocked out in an accident six months ago, what is the driving law about that, something like first wins and ties are broken to the right or something? Of course nobody has licenses or registrations on a percentage basis anyway so they just run red lights if the pole isn't knocked down...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 09 2016, @11:32PM
Yes, because I live in one. It doesn't sound like you have though, because what you're describing doesn't match in any way what I've seen in the bad areas of either my city or the cities I've visited recently (Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago). It does, however, sound very much like a caracature of what these places were like that is used to convince white people to stay away and thus have no clue what's actually going on in those areas.
I just drove through one of the worst parts of my city on my way to work this morning, one of the most crime-ridden areas in the country, where about 1 in 55 residents will be the victim of a violent crime this year. I also did some work there as part of a tech education program. And in that neighborhood you will find law enforcement, road repairs, public schools, reliable municipal water, public parks, a fairly reliable local bus system, etc. People were basically obeying traffic laws. And yes, the signs weren't getting stolen, and the stoplights were working.
While the cops don't come close to completely enforcing the law in that neighborhood, they do catch enough of the bad guys to make a real difference and have some legitimacy in the eyes of the residents. They have gotten into trouble over killing 3 unarmed completely innocent black people in the last decade, and as you can imagine black people were (rightfully, in my view) quite angry about that, but they and the US DoJ are working with the cops to try to fix the problem. The gangs aren't completely powerless, but they're definitely not in control.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday August 09 2016, @03:15PM
5. Wait till Australia falls apart under expected load and then take it over with a mighty libertarian horde.
It's funny how every time there's a story about the retardedness of government, we get these "But Somalia!" comments. Somalia didn't become like it is now because no government. It got that way because its government was so venal and incompetent, that the current informal situation is better. Maybe we should be more concerned about stories like the Australian census breakdown, because we don't want to make more Somalias.
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday August 09 2016, @04:11PM
Buy yourself a boat and spend all your time in international waters, surviving on rainwater and seafood and such.
This option is sounding better all the time. Plus, pirates might make things fun!
- Solar/wind for electric (when not using wind as propulsion)
- Wasn't there some lab that proposed using carbon nanotubes for desalinization?
- Create a video blag on Youtube (especially the action-packed episode 24 where you fight off Somalian pirates)
- ???
- Profit!
- Pay for satellite internet and trade when you make port with said Profit! (Well, ok, it would rather be something to spend all one's time out at sea.)
Then, of course, there are bigger possibilities [seasteading.org] than just one video blagger on a boat. One could envision a 21st century high tech resurgence of communes except as floating Libertopias. Maybe the lone seasteader can tow a vegetable garden on a barge behind the boat.
We used to have these book buses that would drive around town. You could trade one of your used books for one that was on the bus (or 5 or 10). Never was curious enough to ask how it was funded (was probably 7 or 8, maybe 10 at the time). Found some really interesting books that way. Might make an interesting Waterworld-esque story about somebody who takes a floating book bus from Libertopia to Libertopia just trading books. (Or a book bus boat full of books burned on to DVDs. Imagine the bandwidth!)
Not entirely trying to be serious :)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 09 2016, @08:50PM
Somalia. I wonder why you confuse Somalia with anything that resembles a "country" or a "nation". Is it your belief that Somalia was once a nation, or maybe even a "great nation"?
Somalia, a land of wandering tribesmen. Their great claim to fame is that they could fight the English to standstill. (Some will argue that isn't much of an accomplishment. A Scotsman, maybe?) Much like the Apache in America, Somalians were superb fighters. A dozen Somali warriors could tie up an entire British regiment, causing 100 casualties for every one they took.
But, Somalia has no claim to fame aside from that. They had a few villages, some fishing, goats and camels, and a great nomadic life.
Following in the footsteps of the rest of the world, Somalia was introduced to the benefits of modern medicine. Oh, wow - population explosion!! Who could have anticipated that? So, suddenly, a land that supported tens of thousands of nomads is expected to support MILLIONS of sedentary city dwellers?
Yeah, Somalia is pretty fucked up, but let's not pretend that it has anything to do with government. The British may be guilty of destroying a culture in Somalia, but there never was a "government", a "nation", or even a "country" to destroy.
Probably the best thing for Somalia, would be for the west to just go away, take away all their medicine, food donations, military and economic "aid", and let the Somalis support themselves. They'll quickly go back to their tribal lives, the nomads will take over again, and the land will be relatively peaceful again. That land will never support the millions who live there now. Let the Somalis decide how the great die off plays out.
We're gonna be able to vacation in Gaza, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and maybe Minnesota soon. Incredible times.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 10 2016, @03:16AM
You could say the same about any place.
How long do you think New York would last without trade or a functioning government?
Let's just cut off all support and let the New-Yorkers themselves see how the great die off plays out.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday August 10 2016, @01:56PM
NYC would be pretty fucked without trade - but Somalia has no trade to speak of. What do they export, besides hungry children? They don't even have tourism, because they are so mean and hateful.
We're gonna be able to vacation in Gaza, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and maybe Minnesota soon. Incredible times.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 11 2016, @01:49AM
So you agree that they are both unable to be self sufficient. But only Somalia should die because of it?
What about the functioning government part? How long without a government do you think NYC would last?
If Somalia did have a functioning government, they could have trade and tourism and all the other nice things.
Good luck getting one though...
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 11 2016, @02:01AM
Reading comprehension, much? Who said that Somalia should die? I merely suggested that Somalia should be returned to it's once pristine condition of arid desert, ruled by nomadic warlords. It's "natural state", if you will. Let the barbarians be barbarians. Somalia need not die - just the excess population.
As for the larger cities of the world "dying" - the surviviors would be better off. We have many competing interests, and increasing the human population of the world shouldn't be a main priority. Let's get off the planet, find someplace for some of those excess billions to live, before we worry about maintaining our huge population.
Just in case you still don't "get it", I am mocking mankind's assumption that we live in the best of all possible worlds, thanks to modern medicine and modern science.
We're gonna be able to vacation in Gaza, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and maybe Minnesota soon. Incredible times.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 12 2016, @02:14AM
Oh Somalia shouldn't die, just all the people who live there, gotcha.
You're still hand-waving over the whole government thing. Which was kinda your whole point at the start.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday August 12 2016, @07:50PM
Let nature take it's course. That's all I'm saying. If Somalians can support millions of people in the desert without outside charity, then let them do it. If they have to depend on world welfare organizations, then it's time to downsize.
What's so hard to understand about that? It is not your responsibility, nor mine, to ensure that all those millions are fed, sheltered, and clothed. If the desert won't support them, then they should move somewhere else, and try a different kind of life. Or, just die off.
But don't worry - it won't be just Somalia. I really believe the earth is going puke on all of us sooner or later. We continue to destroy habitat, in our quest for some imagined wealth. Diamonds, gold, uranium - strip mine entire regions of the world to get at them. Don't worry about how much of the environment is destroyed.
The newest thing? Mining the ocean floor. Don't worry how many animals live there, don't worry how many of them might become extinct even before science identifies them.
We're gonna be able to vacation in Gaza, Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and maybe Minnesota soon. Incredible times.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 09 2016, @04:24PM
Soylent isn't a muti-trillion dollar government endeavor, either.
Citation needed.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 09 2016, @05:31PM
As requested https://soylentnews.org/faq.pl?op=subscribe [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ledow on Tuesday August 09 2016, @02:23PM
23 million people, all trying to fill in a Census in one day.
I mean, however you cut that, you're causing problems for yourselves there, surely? Can the organisation of that not be done better, i.e. sending out the questions early and "fill in the information as it will be / is / was on the Census Day". Why does the data have to be entered on the day it's collected, or aimed at?
But it's not beyond any big company (I believe Lockheed Martin did some of the UK census, for example) - Google Apps would probably laugh at that even if the census form was just a Google Apps Form plugging into Google Sheets (i.e. zero preparation required).
And HTTP errors, and the other stuff like blank pages and so on is just laughable. I mean, seriously, it's indicative that there is no content delivery network being used properly, no proper redundancy, and they are literally all just coming into the same database from everywhere. That's a disaster waiting to happen.
But even 23 million online simultaneous users is not beyond the realms of ordinary in the IT world, really. There must be 23 million people online on iPlayer over the course of a day, and video streaming is a damn sight heavier and more difficult to do en-masse.
All I can say is that their testing must have been abysmally contrived ("Oh, look, we can load the front page on 1,000 computers simultaneously without slowdown, it must be fine...").
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 09 2016, @02:43PM
Censuses have been done successfully for thousands of years, by distributing the work to an army of census workers who count their local neighborhoods. The Real World scales. It scales very very well.
Of course if you want a census done properly, you need to pay the army of census workers. And there lies the problem when you want to be fucking cheap and use one website instead of an army of many people.
Fuck IT.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday August 09 2016, @03:19PM
I've got it on the vine: looks like it's expanding [wikipedia.org].
Perhaps the expansion stretched the network over the limit?
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday August 09 2016, @02:50PM
Google Apps would probably laugh at that
I found a link claiming there's 50 million K12 students and I know the local school district deeply drinks the Kool Aid and uses google apps exclusively for everything, as in handouts, assignments, lecture slides/notes, quizzes, schedules, reports/papers/essays, everything. Even if you assume only 10% of the countries school districts drink the google kool aide, there's at least a 10:1 ratio of load between "who is ye" (or however you say in in Australian) vs K12 kids screwing around for an entire working school day. And at least in the USA those 50 million K12 students all are on vacation, so google should absolutely trivially be able to handle the load.
My guess is "noob disease" where some rocket surgeon decided to make the page completely dynamic and no caching so its gotta smack the database 50 times per pageload and obviously you can't use an "old fashioned" form you gotta AJAX all the way so every time a key is hit there's a round trip and at least one database hit.
Something I don't understand about Australia is their country is immense and their population is microscopic therefore their houses cost more than California prices because ... damnfino. Lack of trees to make wood to build? I donno. You'd think its the kind of country where $50 would get you enough acres to operate a cattle ranch, but no, a remodeled outhouse is like $1M.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 09 2016, @03:11PM
Please tell us all again how little you know about Australia (most things?).
You can't even understand why people prefer to live in a city and not the middle of a desert...why are we not surprised.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ledow on Tuesday August 09 2016, @03:55PM
I work in schools, which is exactly why I choose Google Apps as an example.
As I speak, several hundred children and dozens of staff are logged in and doing their homework and working on documents collaboratively (multiple cursors in the document and live-change propogation). Word processors, spreadsheets, forms, you name it.
The reason schools use it is thus:
1) It's free. Totally free, but Google Apps for Business level service. As many users as you like, as much storage as you like (literally Terabytes per user if we wanted), all the services you like, all free.
2) It integrates fabulously. Our webfilters, database software, library system, etc. can all query Google Apps for users and their categorisation and then we can do things like redirect their proxy on their Chromebooks accordingly. I can manage all the users from a smartphone app. There's a tie-in straight to our AD that either live-authenticates (SAML? Can't remember the acronym), or allows you to manually push sanitised user lists to the cloud (so Google know I have a user Fred Bloggs but have no way to log into our school systems as Fred Bloggs and get access to anything except the stuff Fred chooses to store on Google).
3) It complies with EU data protection legislation so our children's data is guaranteed to never leave the EU and its data protection bubble (P.S. Last time I asked, Apple couldn't guarantee this for iCloud and Microsoft only just got it for OneDrive etc.)
4) You don't need to set up remote desktop, or provide copies of your MS office licences to the children (yes, we DO still have to pay for them). They can work from any browser in the world on any machine. You're not limited to Apple devices but can use them to write, edit, submit and colloborate on work, you're not limited to Windows to manage it, you're not limited to a particular browser. And at no point do you have to "download" or "upload" a file - you just work live, and can even block downloads/uploads so you instantly cut out all the virus hassle of documents coming in from home.
5) For our stuff, the data guarantees are enough, and the data doesn't really matter. The school database would never go on Google but the kids providing the answers to Section 3 from the book? Who cares?
6) Google Classroom. Press a button to make a class. Press a button to upload a document. Press a button to distribute to class. All the kids get fresh copies of the document, fill it out, and send it back with one click. Mark accordingly. Worth it's (free) weight in gold.
7) Most of our parents have Google accounts already. Sharing documents with them when we need is a breeze and we can stop the pupils sharing documents with users outside our domain and lock down to any level we like.
In the last year, our tiny little school made over 120,000 Google documents. And it hasn't cost us a penny past providing an Internet line.
The only thing I've paid for is Chromebook management licences for some new Chromebooks. For less than the price of an iPad we can give the kids a secure, locked-down, single-account-locked, proxied web device only capable of going to Google sites (and the sites we choose, obviously), under our ultimate control for every option (disabling SD card ports, etc.) with a perpetual management licence (£25), and a bunch of apps, and get ten times more out of it than we can an iPad, or even an Office licence. Setting up 40 Chromebooks took about 10 minutes. Setting up 40 iPads can take days in some cases ("Hey, we see you've tried to sign in on more than 5 new iTunes accounts into Apple devices at your IP! We're going to block you for a week and make you phone through 8 support lines to temporarily raise that limit if we feel like it after you grovel to us and tell us that you have 40 new children starting this year" - actual conversation I have had with Apple...).
I quite like Google and have an account, but I do keep my email on my own domain, never signed up to Google+, etc. but I have to say, they win at education hands-down. Microsoft comes a distant second. And Apple only learned this year that schools use their stuff, so if you buy everything only through them and meet their purchase criteria and buy everything brand new and never want to do anything complicated, iOS 9.3 actually has some education-useful features like FINALLY stopping the little goits changing the devices names against your will or signing out iTunes accounts to plug in their home ones to then install all the restricted apps, games etc. they feel like and put it back on their school account, even if you have £10k of Mac Mini servers, DEP settings, and Cisco Meraki device management especially just for the iPads. I'm not even joking.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday August 09 2016, @06:29PM
Pretty sure you could have said that more succinctly.
If it is free, and Google can't make any use of the data, then it will disappear when Google declares a spring cleaning.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday August 09 2016, @08:15PM
I donno about the school deal my kids use.
I did volunteer at a non-profit and they paid google for the $10/month product. Its a metaphysical argument if my volunteering cost them $10 or if they were going to have a treasurer anyway so even if I didn't volunteer they'd be out $10. The feature list is phenomenal. The bill was paid by higher organizational level and I suspect being non-profit we were not paying the full $10/person anyway. I mean we got the $10/mon product but were probably only charged a nominal fee like $1 or they wrote off the full $120/person-year as a tax deductible donation to us, I really donno.
But yeah we paid money and very theoretically if we needed support they had actual humans supporting us (which is rare with GOOG)
If you want, you can pay google $10/month for apps access and they add on some impressive features.
Your point is correct that in theory they could say "F it" and quit at any time, plus or minus contracted service. So if no contracts are longer than 1 year then they can sunset in a bit over a year if they stop selling and renewing today.
I don't know why they would stop, it seems a license to print money, but those idiots did shut down Google Reader so they can't be too bright.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday August 11 2016, @04:17PM
But Google reader never had a monitization scheme behind Google reader. And they couldn't see their way to making one.
Our company used to advertise via google, and the click-fraud we endured (that virtually never resulted in sales) meant we paid google far more than the load we ever imposed. So we were annoyed at the spring cleanings, but we understand their need to cover costs. We just learned not to get too dependent on any free google service.
On the other end of the spectrum, If you can embrace the spring cleaning idea: I recently read where they are selling cloud computer instances (Preemptible VM Instances) for as little as 1 cent per hour [techcrunch.com].
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 09 2016, @05:02PM
The average household is somethinng like 2.6 persons (citation currently uncontactable, due to ddos), so more like 10m attempts. The supposedly tested for 1m per hour., which is inconcevably poor planning, given majority would peg for the 'after dinner' time slot. Well that assumption and most of their published data pages ending in .nsf being a big givaway.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday August 09 2016, @05:04PM
If you have 10 RU in rack, you can buy Ixia or Spirent boxes which will emulate a whole lot more than 23 million simultaneous connections (plus a bunch of attacks thrown in "for teh lolz".
If you don't want to buy, I believe both offer stress test As A Service.
Going online with infrastructure which collapses under expected load isn't just dumb, it's incompetence.
(Score: 3, Funny) by cmn32480 on Wednesday August 10 2016, @01:26AM
So... um... kinda like Healthcare.gov?
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday August 10 2016, @04:31PM
Yup, that incompetence from the people not providing the proper budget to implement a law they can't manage to overturn with a veto-proof majority.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Tuesday August 09 2016, @06:23PM
I mean, however you cut that, you're causing problems for yourselves there, surely?
Why not Census Month?
Why does it have to be done in a day? Historically this task has never been done in a day, and it didn't matter.
So someone dies mid month, and never gets recorded, A Baby is born every minute. A day late an they are missed on the census. It doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 10 2016, @03:28AM
It's school holidays, lots of kids are having sleepovers. Who is going to count them? Nobody? Everybody?
Lets plan a new school, how many kids in this area? X, half X, 2X, zero, fucked if anybody knows now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 09 2016, @07:08PM
But even 23 million online simultaneous users is not beyond the realms of ordinary in the IT world, really. There must be 23 million people online on iPlayer over the course of a day, and video streaming is a damn sight heavier and more difficult to do en-masse.
I'll note that that is a different, and easier, problem. They have a continuous demand and are resourced to that effect.
By analogy, consider the following two problems. Which would be easier (note, I'm making up numbers).
1) You are in charge of snow removal in Chicago. Each year they get about 10 days of snow over 20cm. You have a budget of $2,000,000.
2) You are in charge of snow removal in San Francisco. Typically they get no snow, but due to a fluke they predict 1 day of snow over 20cm this year. You have a budget of $200,000.
Yes, you can bypass the problem with clever reasoning of weather melting the snow or other real-world tricks, but the general point stands. iPlayer/etc has both the economies of scale and the experience to deal with a large amount of demand on a continuous basis. A one-day census has neither, nor is it "worth it" to buy a lot of infrastructure for a one-day effort.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 10 2016, @02:26AM
Um The census did NOT crash. It was deliberately shut down due to the hack attempt (DOS) attacks as a precaution.
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Tuesday August 09 2016, @02:38PM
Xenophon
With a name like that I'd feel an uncontrollable urge to ask him to retell his story of the invasion of Iraq by superior western powers.
Frigging western civilization... 3000 years of thinking all we gotta do is march the infantry up to the banks of the Euphrates river at Baghdad and that means "mission accomplished", and every freaking time we end up getting powned and having to run back home.
You could do worse than give a teenage boy a copy of the Anabasis. Worlds first military fiction/action novel. Still one of the better ones. That was the start of my classical education, all downhill from there. I read Ringo's "Last Centurion" some years ago and probably the funniest part of that entire book was how it was an homage to Anabasis.
I'm surprised it was never made into a movie. Sony was gonna do it about a decade ago but chickened out. My guess is Hollywood can't do an Anabasis movie because they don't have a 1980s release to copy and remake, those Fing losers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 09 2016, @11:18PM
We can't bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere - like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Give me five bees for a quarter, you'd say.
Now where were we? Oh yeah: the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 10 2016, @03:34AM
“ISIS did not exist before March 2003, before the American invasion of Iraq,” he told a Q&A audience in Adelaide on Monday night.
“As bad as Saddam Hussein was — and he was a brutal dictator — the US, in a botched strategy, a muddle-headed strategy, made a mess of things and it spawned sectarian violence. We have to avoid the mistakes of the past. We must deal with the existential threat that ISIS is to the West — but we must acknowledge that we cannot bomb our way out of this.
“We must acknowledge that ... what happened in Iraq was a bloody mess. We have to learn from that and unless we learn from it, we’re destined to repeat the same mistakes.”
Senator Xenophon said there had to be a political solution rather than a military one, as “what we have been doing to date has not been working — we’ve actually seemed to have strengthened ISIS and strengthened the terrorists.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 09 2016, @03:51PM
*nod wink*
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 09 2016, @04:47PM
Hosts file to the rescuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuue.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday August 09 2016, @06:23PM
HOSTS file
HOSTS file
HOSTS file
*waits for APK to appear*
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 09 2016, @04:27PM
It turns out that there is a missing power supply. In its place was a sticky note that read "Just borrowing this for a few days. Your pal, Delta"