Comments On: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds by Anthony Hecht http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2009/04/13/re-amazon-and-the-gay-french-glitch-mike-daisey-responds Comments On: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds by Anthony Hecht en-us Copyright 2013 The Stranger. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, The Stranger readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact The Stranger. webmaster@thestranger.com (The Stranger Webmaster) Sat, 25 May 2013 00:00:01 -0700 Sat, 25 May 2013 18:45:00 -0700 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss <![CDATA[Re: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds]]> Posted by Mr. Obvious]]> Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:45:06 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds]]>
Maybe Amazon is like toilet paper rolls and string, and maybe one employee did just fuck it up. I don't pretend to know anything about Amazon's internals.

Still, the weak architecture might also strengthen my case, no? Sorry if I don't believe you when you say the flimsy-ness of its construction makes employee error "far more likely than a hacker," since said construction makes it far easier for a hacker to exploit.

Even the smallest hole in construction can lead to a hacker breaking it (Twitter fell for a dictionary attack a few months ago, after all), so bad construction is not a strong defense when claiming a hacker couldn't have done it.

But again, this is all what I think, not what I know.
Posted by paul]]> Tue, 14 Apr 2009 08:33:04 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds]]> http://tehdely.livejournal.com/88823.htm…

That does explain the early de-listing of Craig Seymour's book, and its subsequent re-listing, and the "policy letter" - probably an automated form letter for when your content gets delisted. 100% consistent with early testing of the attack before mainstream deployment.

Of course someone is going to take credit for it. Since Amazon has a public cover story we have almost no way of knowing if he is the real attacker, or if it was an attack or not (unless Amazon changes their story).
Posted by karlthepagan]]> Tue, 14 Apr 2009 07:51:33 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds]]> http://craigspoplife.blogspot.com/2009/0…

I'm also with the above posters - why purge the rankings of porn? Make it like Google safe search.
Posted by karlthepagan]]> Tue, 14 Apr 2009 06:53:05 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds]]> http://jezebel.com/5210647/amazon-is-emb…
Posted by Jigae]]> Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:09:59 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds]]>
You may know shit-loads about CS security but you obviously know sweet fa about Amazon's systems. Think of the IT equivalent of toilet rolls held together with duct tape & string and you're on the right lines.

I worked at Amazon for way longer than Mike Daisey and I can tell you that it's not only entirely plausible that one employee could screw up the listings for 58K items on the site, it's the only plausible explanation - far more likely than a hacker - and has happened on other occasions with other things (there were a number of very public pricing errors years ago until we managed to shore up those systems & put safeguards in place so you couldn't en masse mis-price items).

As for keeping the kiddies safe - that's one of the reasons Amazon has those types of flags in the database, and it's a perfectly reasonable reason. Even the illustrious Dan Savage would want to keep his little boy away from porn before puberty, wouldn't he?
Posted by shiraz]]> Mon, 13 Apr 2009 22:02:44 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds]]> Posted by TVDinner]]> Mon, 13 Apr 2009 21:46:55 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds]]>
Another reason we need registration -- there'd presumably be some way of sending personal messages.
Posted by Jigae]]> Mon, 13 Apr 2009 21:21:30 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds]]>
Normally Amazon shows you suggestions as you type characters in the search box. For example if you type "Christian m" you will see a list of suggestions including "Christian marriage". You don't have to type the full search, just select from the suggestions.

If you try this same search by typing "gay m" you get nothing. Unlike the term "Christian", the word "gay" just shuts off the search suggestions feature completely. Same for "lesbian."

This sucks.

I wonder what kind of "glitch" this can be attributed to.
Posted by CCSea]]> Mon, 13 Apr 2009 21:09:26 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds]]> years I've had people all of a sudden ask what has happened to me just because for the first time my opinion differs from theirs. I haven't changed, I assure you.
Posted by elenchos]]> Mon, 13 Apr 2009 20:43:31 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds]]> Posted by PISSED-OFF QUEER]]> Mon, 13 Apr 2009 20:27:39 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds]]>
What amazes me are all the RIDICULOUS conspiracy theories flying around in the various social networks. People mouthing off about shadowy corporate abuse straight into the unregulated ether; as if there are two internets: The fetid sewer of misinformation and buggy code we wallow in, and the opaque, flawless, tightly coordinated datacenters of the corporate elite. Sorry wingnuts and tinfoil-hatters, but there's only one internet, and it's ALL A SEWER.

A clever anarchist can light a match in the right place and cause an explosion. And when the shockwave reaches you, it's just a wall of sewage. If you can even figure out where the explosion came from, consider yourself well informed. Consider applying for an IT position. If you try to learn more, chances are you won't be consuming verified information, you're chewing on some blogger's freshly laid corn fritter.
Posted by garote]]> Mon, 13 Apr 2009 20:08:39 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds]]>
The link you provide that 'disproves' the hacker story is just someone with fewer tech skills than me trying to run the script and saying it doesn't work. I think the hacker was just lazy and going for the lulz, saying it could be done in 10 lines (and not testing them) when he probably did it with a more sophisticated 50-liner. The disproof is implementation, but the concept works rather simply if you care to write 50 lines instead of 10.

Besides, Amazon took down the feature he said he exploited, which doesn't prove his claim but supports it.

Still, he might have been going for the lulz when writing the LiveJournal post, and got me ^_^

Anyway, my two cents.
Posted by paul]]> Mon, 13 Apr 2009 19:11:13 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds]]> Or maybe the real glitch was that Amazon didn't realize what a huge shit-storm of negative PR this would bring down on their heads when people found out. Maybe Amazon didn't realize a large chunk of their outraged customer base would start canceling sales and protesting en masse. Maybe Amazon realized their marketing decision to "protect" the innocent 9-year-old Xena-loving fundie child (Won't you think of the children!?) was a colossal FUBAR and did some heavy shit shoveling to cover for it. Maybe that was the glitch.

p.s. Powell's is still better and I'll always be their loyal customer. So suck it, Amazon!
Posted by Y.F.]]> Mon, 13 Apr 2009 19:10:43 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds]]>
"If you like Xena, you might like {some hot lesbian fiction}."

Imagine the phone calls that came in from irate parents of 8-year-old girls who loved Xena.

And so began the bedeviling task of keeping young eyes safer from troublesome titles, while maintaining access to those who find those titles informative, titillating, or whatever. Invisibly.

The amazing thing isn't there was a glitch, the amazing thing is there haven't been more missteps.

Please lighten the hell up, y'all.
Posted by Scott]]> Mon, 13 Apr 2009 17:28:41 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds]]> Gawker:
This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.

It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles – in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon's main product search.

Many books have now been fixed and we're in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.

Thanks for checking in. Best regards -
Patty

Posted by Jigae]]> Mon, 13 Apr 2009 17:17:18 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds]]>
Must have been that Bands With "Goat" In It thread.
Posted by mackro mackro]]> Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:57:24 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds]]>
Glitch

In several usages in information technology, a glitch (pronounced GLIHTCH ) is a sudden break in function or continuity, sometimes of a transient nature, with a varying degree of seriousness. According to Eric Raymond, author of The New Hacker's Dictionary , glitch is from the German 'glitschen,' meaning 'to slip,' via Yiddish 'glitshen,' meaning 'to slide or skid.' In different contexts, the term has different meanings.

1) In electrical service, a glitch, sometimes called a power glitch , is a momentary power failure.

2) In network service, a glitch can be any temporary loss of service in the network.

3) In a computer program, a glitch can be a bug that isn't encountered very often, resulting in a problem that sometimes goes away because next time the combination of events is different. Glitches like this are often encountered with Web browsers . (Browser glitches are often fixed by closing the browser program and then reopening it, or by restarting the operating system.) A glitch can also be an intentionally planned trap or other program device that results in exposing a user's password or in some other security breach.

4) In computer audio , a glitch is a quick temporary noise in a file that sounds like a "snap."
Posted by Jigae]]> Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:51:56 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds]]> Posted by elenchos]]> Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:29:34 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds]]> Posted by Jigae]]> Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:25:47 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds]]>
Right, Jigae. Words mean whatever you say they mean. No wait, that would suck. Words mean whatever I say they mean. That's better. But I think we can both agree that Amazon's PR problem is that they think words mean what they think they mean.
Posted by elenchos]]> Mon, 13 Apr 2009 15:02:10 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds]]> Posted by Baconcat]]> Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:40:56 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds]]>
SPACEGOAT!!!!

PS -- Seriously, I am not making fun of you. I love your typo.
Posted by Cracker Jack]]> Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:37:25 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds]]> Posted by AndyNiable]]> Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:17:13 -0700 The Stranger <![CDATA[Re: Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds]]> Posted by mirror]]> Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:17:13 -0700 The Stranger