A website with electronic access to articles published in ACM (AssociationForComputingMachinery) publications.  Requires a subscription.

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''I've been trying for over an hour to create an account, and now it's thrown an error. I'm now unconvinced that I should take advice from them about authoring software ...''

They just keep papers. They aren't giving you advice on anything. Even if they were
who knows who creates the web site.

''I can't help but feel that if they've commissioned a web-site then they should verify that it works.''

Certainly. But...you '''are''' aware of who ACM is, hopefully? Association for Computing Machines? The world's oldest and conceivably most prestigious computer science organization? Their banner journal CACM has turned into a pile of crud in recent years, but once upon a time, it was '''the''' number one place to publish cutting edge CS research.

A crumby web site is always a bad idea, but in this case it is highly secondary to the point of the organization. That's a mistake on their part, of course; insisting that people pay $178 per year to be able to access important but '''old''' research papers on their site just means that they are rapidly fading from significance.

Still, one shouldn't think that they are some new organization giving advice on how to do software; that's very far from the truth.

''Yes, I am aware of who they are. This is just my frustration spilling over at trying to get something from them, paying for the privilege, and then being stuck for over 4 hours failing to get anywhere because of a completely crap web-site.''

In that, I completely sympathize...what's more, I've been thinking about paying their extra fee for that privilege, and as a result of your comments, I'm seriously reconsidering. Someone should give them a wake up call before it's too late. Not that they seem to care about such, seeing how little they care about what happened to CACM.

''They've sent me a receipt - it appears they have now charged me for something they are refusing, unable or incompetent to deliver. This goes to my CC company within hours now.''

Sigh. Well, please post followups of your experiences as events unwind.

''I complained, they replied saying they were sorry, what did I want and they'd email it. I told them what I wanted, and they emailed it. So I now have the article. It took a week, three emails, and I still can't register on their web-site. Still, I have the article now, I only hope it proves worth the wait.''

I'm curious. What went wrong when trying to get set up with them? I had no problems despite using a somewhat-minority browser (Mozilla) on a somewhat-minority platform (FreeBSD). I can't say I'm ''impressed'' by their web interface, but it does at least do its job for me. -- GarethMcCaughan

I'm an ACM member and there is a lot of usefull and relevant stuff for members. Worth to try. Also, I have no problem to use the web site. -- RicardoRivaldo