Hi guys, Thank you very much for filing this bug report and trying to make Debian more reliable.
I agree with Patrick and Philipp. When "apt-get update" fails, it should not return an error status of 0. Scripts routinely check the exit status of command, and assume they worked if 0 was returned. I ran into this bug with a cron job that updates local copies of package indices. Since 0 was returned, I was none the wiser of a problem. I agree that "apt-get update" should return something other than 0 when it fails. Please fix it. So, Kingsley -- Time is the fire in which we all burn.