14 Jul 2006
Error messages are usually a bland and opaque non-explanation of what has gone wrong. Especially when they're posted by large companies.
So hats off to Fish4.co.uk for a truly fine, if slightly bitter, error message. The problem is blamed on a piece of Sun equipment - a Sun Fire E6900 Server - described by Sun as an "Extreme Enterprise Powerhouse".
The message says: "Thank you for coming to Fish4 this morning.
Unfortunately the fish4 website is unavailable due to the failure of a very expensive piece of Sun hardware. A Sun engineer is at the data centre but didn't think to bring the replacement part with him."
