The load isn't on the front-end, it's on the enterprise service bus that talks to all the various government agencies, verifying eligibility status or whatnot. That, and the whole procedure is synchronous, so that it's trying to mix this validation with the user experience instead of sending an email afterwards to let you know whether it worked. (Source: Spoke to Some Guy in the industry.)

If it is just a matter of too many people on at once, I suppose they could assign people timeslots. But it'd be pretty insulting to be told that you can only buy health insurance between 2:00am and 4:00am on odd-numbered days (or if you prefer, even or odd depends on the last digit of your IPv4 address).

Not to single you out when there are many other offenders around, but comments like yours remind me of something I don't miss on slashdot. You open up with an unsound criticism of someone's word choice ("exponentially" has an informal non-technical definition that does not equate to geometric growth). You close with a sarcastic putdown. You sandwich good stuff in-between.

Did the person who told you this give you any more detail? Are you not engaging often enough, or are you not good at explaining yourself and listening during the times when you are engaged in conversation? The former is partly a matter of being friendly/comfortable with the people you're around. The latter is critical thinking -- what do I understand, what do they understand, will this choice of words be interpreted how I want, etc.

What'd you expect, to be treated with dignity?

Now strip naked and get on the probulator.

Great. Now I have to remember how to construct a fix point suspended environment to do physics. *Looks around* Anyone seen the Y-combinator?

Time Travel: 375
FTL Travel: 1460

Looks like slashdot could use a primer in General Relativity.

I'm really not sure if this is a damned lie or a statistic.

What was that? I couldn't hear you over Tears for Fears playing in my head.

I've noticed that almost all patent commentary focuses on the title as if it were equivalent to the claimed material. Unfortunately, even such misleading summaries are probably more informative than attempting to actually read the claims section in their twisted glory.

Why would a plaintiff need to employ a judge when the law is on their side? Sometimes the injustice/corruption exists in the legislative branch of government, you know.

Nothing will ever replace Wing Commander 2 for me, and I'd almost be afraid to see someone try. There's just something completely intoxicating about the setting that I fear would almost certainly be lost in any remake.

New orbiting material? It's one very large, predictable and trackable piece compared to the tens of thousands that we already have to deal with.

I don't understand why we can't park the ISS at an higher orbit that won't decay. Is there any particular reason the ISS has to be so Near in Near-Earth-Orbit?

Publish?

It doesn't matter to you that actors in their late 20s playing teenagers aren't actually convincing?