Comments on: A tale of two party websites

By: whysoangry

whysoangry — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 14:48:22 +0000

They have internet access in Iowa?

By: KaosKlerik

KaosKlerik — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 22:11:58 +0000

On January 4th, 2008 at 2:08 pm, Innismir said: nyc123me, #20 Possible on the DoS (Denial of Service) hypothesis, but judging how the website was responding last night, it just “felt” overwhelmed. Occam’s Razor suggests it’s a bunch of people just trying to get election results, rather then a deliberate attack.

With 93.5 percent of precincts reporting, Iowa Democratic Party officials reported 218,000 caucus attendees, compared to 124,000 in 2004. Iowa Republican Party officials reported projections of about 114,000 people taking part, shattering the numbers of 2000 Republican caucuses won by George W. Bush that drew 87,666. MM

Dems had a massive influx of new caucus voters, but they were able to handle it. No excuses, just fix it.

By: Innismir

Innismir — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 19:08:23 +0000

nyc123me, #20
Possible on the DoS (Denial of Service) hypothesis, but judging how the website was responding last night, it just “felt” overwhelmed.

Occam’s Razor suggests it’s a bunch of people just trying to get election results, rather then a deliberate attack.

By: nyc123me

nyc123me — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 07:19:22 +0000

I just tried and both sites responded immediately. Do not forget, there are plenty of nutcases out there likely flooding the Repub site for the very reason that they hate anything non-Dem. MM has her fair share of attacks here.

By: William Amos

William Amos — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 06:48:28 +0000

Man dont get me started on this issue. I have warred with the RNC and other Republican leaders for over a decade over thier dinosaur like thinking.

This is why the republicans lost Congress and why we might lose the White House. The pundits and talking heads of the Republicans treat elections like High School plays while the democrats treat elections like a Business.

This is just one more example of how clueless the republican leadership is on how to handle things

By: Klaatu

Klaatu — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 05:10:31 +0000

I know I’m late to the party…. earlier I couldn’t get in. But now! the first thing that loads is the Google map for the DEMOCRAT results. There is a link at the top to their main page.

Once there, you can’t find the stupid map of Republican results. I stumbled on it and it was the same Google map with the Republican results instead of the Dems.

The way google maps work means we should have been able to get to them a different way. I guess the Iowans are running their site on ethanol.

By: Jeddite

Jeddite — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 04:19:21 +0000

“Series of tubes” etc.

By: Innismir

Innismir — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 04:19:05 +0000

Thomas, #15
You hit the nail on the head for the most part. A ton of people were trying to get into their website, and they were overwhelmed. They should have expected it and planned accordingly, they got caught with their pants down.

The Google map is new actually, when I was there earlier it wasn’t there.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 04:04:07 +0000

Maybe they browser was swamped with too many requests while other people were accessing the interactive google map and there was too much traffic. I don’t know.

If the page shows up as a grey screen, then the webmasters should have enabled some sort of browser detection to re-direct to an alternate html display that ran simpler and faster.

– I guess so, Innismir. I just checked it a few moments ago, when it’s all over.

By: Innismir

Innismir — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 03:59:39 +0000

Thomas, #13

It’s gotten better, but during the rush it was slower the molasses going uphill on a cold day.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 03:49:38 +0000

Um… Seems to work fine for me. I got a cool google map of Iowa with an interactive display of who won county by county. Mouseover to see complete details.

/firefox 2.0.0.11 with flash 9 update 3.

*shrugs*

By: Innismir

Innismir — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 03:34:05 +0000

I found why the Republicans failed, and the Democrats won on the web server front. I looked at the web page source, and saw “http://s3.amazonaws.com/caucuspublic/index_live.html”

This is EXACTLY how I would have done it. Amazon has services that allow you to host data on it’s massive servers, which you pay per GB. It’s extremely cheap, and scale great. Check out this explaination.

I’ll tip my hat to the Democratic sysadmin, you planned well.

Ugh… I need to brush my teeth now.

By: islandman78

islandman78 — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 03:33:50 +0000

Duh!

Here in California there are two parties: the Corrupt Party and the Stupid Party.

By: Innismir

Innismir — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 03:26:41 +0000

I was never able to haul up the Iowa GOP website 100%. If I were there SysAdmin, I would be embarrassed. Way to plan guys.

Their overuse of Flash also probably killed them on the bandwidth.

Where do I send my business card? I could use a nice consulting gig.

By: ThackerAgency

ThackerAgency — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 03:25:08 +0000

Hey what do you expect? The Republicans are just like my dad. . . they have been successful before and never needed it, why should they need it now.

They don’t need to pony up extra for the bandwidth needed, they can host it on dial up can’t they? Isn’t it the same internet anyway?

The GOP had better wake up or Obama will be claiming to have invented the blogosphere and people will believe him like they believed Gore invented the internet.