[LINK] SMH flashback

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Why the news suddenly wasn't so new 

November 10, 2011 http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/why-
the-news-suddenly-wasnt-so-new-20111110-1n8jo.html


If our readers couldn't believe their eyes this afternoon, they weren't 
alone. Neither could we.

Our smh.com.au home page suddenly flashed back to February 9, 2009.

And while we are not absolutely sure why yet, our IT specialists have a 
theory that a failsafe program set up in a production system that was 
decommissioned two years ago may have suddenly been triggered by a 
journalist seeking to update an old story in that system.

For a while there, it was a case of "computer says no" when we tried to 
restore the current page.

But while our technical staff try to fathom exactly what happened and why 
today's news was suddenly overwritten by a page from more than two years 
ago, we'd like to apologise for the error.

Richard Woolveridge, smh.com.au news editor

--

Cheers,
Stephen