GitHub Bug Opened: Government Occasionally Shuts Down; Conflicting Error Messages

from the expected-result:-government-should-be-working dept

Thu, Oct 10th 2013 10:56am — Mike Masnick

Via Brian Walsh, we learn of a rather amusing bug report that's been opened on GitHub by Dave Rupert: BUG: Government occasionally shuts down. Rupert's bug report is both dead on, and quite hilarious:

I noticed a bug over the past week or so and it seems reproducible:

Go to U.S. Government.

U.S. Government is shut down.

Expected results: Government should be working.

I'm unable to debug or propose a fix since there's not an open, transparent stack trace. Conflicting error messages are being thrown as well.

Hope you can resolve this soon. It would seem that the U.S. Government would value 100% uptime in order to be a reliable and trustworthy source for the rest of the world.

Thanks! Love this project and would like to continue using it.

Tragically, no one has been assigned to fix it.

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Filed Under: bugs, github, government shutdown

32 Comments

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Sunhawk (profile), 10 Oct 2013 @ 10:59am

Some of the comments are hilarious - and a few even are hilarious *but applicable*.

And then there's a bunch of crappy ones, of course.
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Ninja (profile), 10 Oct 2013 @ 11:01am

Somehow I think the people are better without the Government working. Sure the surveillance operations are still working but at least it's just peeking.

Remember, it's not a bug, it's a feature!
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- Zakida Paul (profile), 10 Oct 2013 @ 11:25am
  
  Re:
  Tell that to the 100s of 1000s who are not being paid.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 10 Oct 2013 @ 12:11pm
    
    Re: Re:
    Obama can do that can't he?
    
    Start with, "You gave are your trust and handwork" and finish with "Yes we can".
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  - Chris Rhodes (profile), 10 Oct 2013 @ 12:44pm
    
    Re: Re:
    Tell that to the 100s of 1000s who are not being paid.
    They should quit permanently and get productive jobs.
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    - Zakida Paul (profile), 10 Oct 2013 @ 1:26pm
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      If the shutdown goes on much longer, you will see just how productive and important government jobs are.
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      - Anonymous Coward, 10 Oct 2013 @ 1:42pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re:
        or you could see something different, you could see people mobilize and take control.
        
        None of the really important things have shutdown, the Army is still there, the police is still working, firefighters are still on the job.
        
        Social entitlement programs are what was closed to all.
        
        Things that people can organize and take care for themselves.
        
        Maybe it is time for people to start taking responsibility for their own?
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        Pragmatic, 11 Oct 2013 @ 5:49am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
        Social entitlement programs are what was closed to all.
        
        Things that people can organize and take care for themselves.
        
        Statements like this are why Gary Johnson got only 1% of the vote in the last election. Social entitlement programs exist because wages have been frozen for more than 30 years. Meanwhile, executive pay goes up and up and up. Oh, and your beloved private enterprise can "LEGALLY" steal deferred wages, AKA pension funds from their employees.
        
        So tell me, who are the people who will organize programs for and take care of the people YOU say should learn to enjoy and manage poverty because the market says so?
        
        I'm sure they could do it themselves if they weren't working three or more jobs just to keep their heads above water.
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        Anonymous Coward, 11 Oct 2013 @ 7:16pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
        This mom with a rare form of cancer can't get treatment she needs due to government shutdown
        http://boingboing.net/2013/10/08/this-mom-with-a-rare-form-of-c.html
        
        But no problem, she probably brought the cancer on herself.
        /s
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      - Anonymous Coward, 10 Oct 2013 @ 2:14pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re:
        Youtube: Cuba's DIY Inventions from 30 Years of Isolation
        
        although I dislike Fidel Castro and the whole Socialist thing tremendously, Cuba had to DIY when the US left, was the DIY culture and mentality that made it possible for Cuba to survive and then thrive.
        
        I like to think that Americans can do better than Cuba though.
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        Anonymous Coward, 11 Oct 2013 @ 3:46am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
        Cuba DIY'ed NOTHING, they got their support from Russia.
        
        DIY Pffft, yea right.
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      - Chris Rhodes (profile), 10 Oct 2013 @ 2:16pm
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re:
        Or we'll see that we actually don't need them at all.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 10 Oct 2013 @ 1:37pm
    
    Re: Re:
    Time for plan B.
    
    Oh they don't have a plan B?
    Sorry, but there will be some discomfort for them then.
    
    Doesn't amaze people that the government have shutdown 11 times before in 30 years and nobody not one soul bothered to make plans for it to mitigate adverse effects?
    
    This pain is not accidental, is by design.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Oct 2013 @ 11:28am

someone has to say it !!
It's not a bug.... it's a feature!

U.S. Government would value 100% uptime in order to be a reliable and trustworthy source for the rest of the world.

Source of what ?

I think most Governments would require more things than 100% uptime to be considered trustworthy and reliable.

oh, I get it source of amusement ??
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vastrightwing, 10 Oct 2013 @ 11:58am

NAB: User error.
Actually, it's not a bug but user error. The government is working as expected.

The government needs to be refactored using new specifications and new principals.

There are internal subroutines in the government that regularly manifest themselves as a shut down. In reality, this is caused by bad design.
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weneedhelp (profile), 10 Oct 2013 @ 12:00pm

The only known fix for this bug
format p:\ /u
format c:\ /u
Reload.
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- Falindraun (profile), 10 Oct 2013 @ 1:53pm
  
  Re: The only known fix for this bug
  Perhaps its just a version of a PEBKAC error
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Oct 2013 @ 12:03pm

The Government/State itself is the Bug
It's the Government/State that is the bug. It is an "expropriating property protector" which is a logical contradiction.

There's your bug.

The fix? Apply principles such as don't initiate force/violence (self defense is valid) and don't steal (i.e., "taxation") to everyone, including the Government/State...at which point one will realize that the Government/State can only exist by being exceptions to such principles.

Therefore it must be ended for the good of the human race.

I prefer consensual relationships and voluntary exchange.
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- Chris Rhodes (profile), 10 Oct 2013 @ 12:45pm
  
  Re: The Government/State itself is the Bug
  Indeed. I should file a bug report:
  
  BUG: Parts of government still continuing to operate and waste system resources after shutdown initiated.
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MBraedley (profile), 10 Oct 2013 @ 12:04pm

Have you tried turning it off and on again?
No really, the fix for a malfunctioning Canadian government is to fall back on lower level routines, and reboot the UI. Granted, the reboot takes at least a month (as is mandated by the design document), and there is a lot of resource fighting between the various UI routines while they start up, ultimately ending in a race condition where certain routines will gain enough resources to proceed to full initialization.

While the US government undergoes a partial UI reboot every 2 years, there is no specified means of rebooting the entire UI when a major problem is discovered. This seems to be a flaw in the design document, and the problem it introduces was probably not foreseen by the designers.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Oct 2013 @ 12:21pm

Well with budget overflows, congress race conditions, corrupt subsystems, and lots of malware inserted into that code is a miracle it didn't break sooner.
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- Anonymous Coward, 10 Oct 2013 @ 12:29pm
  
  Re:
  Eh, the budget overflows just had a minor RNG 0-day exploit.
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Richard (profile), 10 Oct 2013 @ 1:21pm

Type Error
Looks like someone mistook TeaPartyer as a subtype of Republican when it actually extends Libertarian.
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James Hopkins, 10 Oct 2013 @ 1:45pm

Bug in Public Class
I think that the problem is probably lack of proper Garbage Collection , it seems that both the public function "Citizen" and the public function "Government" is full of useless objects that are consuming resources.

Also the private class "corporateBusiness" seems to be consuming resources properly allocated to the above two functions.

Most likely can't be fixed, as the public "Voter" class is also saddled with lousy memory management.
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- Falindraun (profile), 10 Oct 2013 @ 2:06pm
  
  Re: Bug in Public Class
  i have noticed some repetitive error messages pointing to different aspects of the 'Government' class in relation to a lot of bloated looping code.
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Richard (profile), 10 Oct 2013 @ 2:20pm

Clearer Abstractions Required
This is what happens when you permit the kind of thinking that produces things like:

public class Dollar extends Speech {} //??!!!
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Spaceman Spiff (profile), 10 Oct 2013 @ 2:26pm

Assign to fix bug
Actually, we assigned Barack Obama to fix this bug, but instead of resolving it, it has regressed the rest of the system so thoroughly that his patches have all but destroyed any utility it may have once had.
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Alana (profile), 10 Oct 2013 @ 6:10pm

(A)bort, (R)etry, (F)ail?

://F
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G Thompson (profile), 11 Oct 2013 @ 1:40am

I have to question the expected result since in all my many years of associating with governments I have never ever seen any of them actually work!

;)
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Oct 2013 @ 3:07am

NOT A BUG
Resolution: WONT FIX.

Status: CLOSED.

Comment: Checks and balances are a feature of this form of government. Although some users may consider operation of checks and balances as undesirable or even harmful, nevertheless this feature is essential to long-term stability of product.
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- Anonymous Coward, 11 Oct 2013 @ 3:14am
  
  Re: NOT A BUG
  I wanted to click "funny", then I think again, and decided not to.
  
  No, this is not funny at all.
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John Pettitt (profile), 11 Oct 2013 @ 8:49am

Incompatible
The problem is GOP 20.13 is not compatible with Government 17.89 patch 23.
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