Editorial
Give It Up Guys!
What is going on at the Herald Website?

I'm about to give up on linking to stories on the site and I have to admit that I'm becoming less and less inclined to waste my time visiting on the off-chance that it will be running reliably.

They have acknowledged that there are problems and I've been informed from an unnamed source that much of it stems from the (lack of) reliability that Cold Fusion offers on a Unix platform.

Come on guys -- don't dick us around by offering a service which is often no more than a tease. Clicking a headline is a bit like playing Russian Roulette -- what error will you get this time?

The site did get better for a little while after I last complained but it has since lapsed back into a state of cyber-dementia.

There are thousands of news websites all over the world (admittedly I don't know of many that are using Cold Fusion) which perform reliably day after day. If your software is unable to keep up, ditch it!

The NZ Herald's unreliability record is almost exactly the same as that of the NBR's website when it was still going. Surprise... they were also trying to use a Unix-based version of Cold Fusion.

Yes, yes, I know that there are many, many satisfied CF users all over the globe -- but how many of them are using the Unix version in a heavy traffic environment?

Almost without exception, the reliable CF sites are NT-based. I'm not suggesting that NT is a better OS than Unix, simply that Allaire seem to have a very long-term problem with their Unix version of Cold Fusion.

Given that the problems were evident with the NBR site more than two years ago and still persist today, I certainly wouldn't be holding my breath for a fix. I'd suggest that maybe the NZ Herald ought to review their choice of software environment before they commit too much more money to developing their online presence.

End Of Week Notes
I'm a bit short of time this a.m. but it's interesting to see that the battle between Telecom and i4free continues.

And after the ear-bashing i4free's Annette Presley sent me a couple of days ago I felt sure she would have taken advantage of Aardvark's Right of Reply offer -- but nothing so far.

Another thing I note with Interest is that even though the USA leads the "new economy", their government has seen fit to hold a summit in which the "movers and shakers" from key industries were invited to make representations on how and where things should be moving.

Meanwhile our government has decided that its time would be better spent reviving the witch-hunt at TVNZ.

Sigh!

You will be kept informed.

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