Ah, Spring! The time of year when children wear sandals and then admonish their siblings not to pick their toes on the way to pot-luck dinners.
Yesterday’s toe picking prompted me to tweet a question that was mostly facetious:
Category Archives: Technical issues
Morality, outrage, and #amazonfail: a reply to Clay Shirky.
A bunch of people (including Bora) have pointed me to Clay Shirky’s take on #amazonfail. While I’m not in agreement with Shirky’s analysis that Twitter users mobilized an angry mob on the basis of a false theory (and now that mob is having a hard time backing down), there are some interesting ideas in his post that I think merit consideration. So, let’s consider them.
Some thoughts on #Amazonfail.
Those of you on Twitter yesterday probably noticed the explosion of tweets with the hashtag #amazonfail. For those who were otherwise occupied carving up chocolate bunnies or whatnot, the news spread to the blogs, Facebook, and the traditional media outlets. The short version is that on Easter Sunday, a critical mass of people noticed that many, many books that Amazon sells had their Amazon sales rank stripped, and that these books stopped coming up in searches on Amazon that were not searches on the book titles (or, presumably, authors).
What fanned the flames of the frenzy were certain consistencies in what kind of book was getting deranked. Many were books with LGBT subject matter. Some were classic books (like Lady Chatterly’s Lover) or more recent titles with what might be classified as adult themes. Some were books about disability and sexuality. A partial list of the deranked titles can be found here.
The effect of the derankings angered lots of people, indignant that a search on “homosexuality” on the behemoth etailer’s website brought up as top results guidebooks to curing your child’s homosexuality but omitted titles aimed at helping prevent suicide in gay teens. The question to which people wanted an answer was whether these changes reflected concerted policy on Amazon’s part, and whether the problem (as seen by the angry Twitterfolk) was going to be addressed.
As I write this post, the response from Amazon has been anemic to non-existent. The news outlets are reporting that Amazon blames a “glitch” for the derankings. Publisher Weekly reports:
And … we’re back!
To celebrate the successful (!!) upgrade of ScienceBlogs to MT4, here is a dragon:
Thanks, as always, for your patience.
ScienceBlogs upgrade this weekend.
You’ve probably already gotten the news that ScienceBlogs is getting a backend upgrade to MT4 this weekend.
While this is going on (from Friday 1 PM Eastern until sometime Saturday, we hope), you’ll still be able to read the ScienceBlogs posts that are already up, but Sb bloggers won’t be able to publish new posts and you won’t be able to leave new comments.
(Actually, I’m hearing rumblings that the comments might already have been disabled. Hold that thought! Jot it down on a Post-it or something, ’cause I want to read it when the comments return in MT4)
During our radio silence, you might want to pass the time by checking out some of the excellent blogs listed in the blogroll in the left sidebar. For particularly good reading, let me recommend:
Wait, you’re saying ignorance *is* a defense?
And you’re really a lawyer?
The verdict came back in the Los Angeles trial of Lori Drew, the Missouri mother who facilitated cyberbullying of a former friend of her daughter, who subsequently committed suicide. Since cyberbulling isn’t an easy crime to prosecute, the trial focused on whether, in setting up a fake MySpace page as a 16-year-old boy (whose online identity was used to befriend and then harass the girl who killed herself), Drew violated MySpace terms of service.
So, here’s the legal point- counterpoint, as reported by the Associated Press:
The “I rank number one on Google” meme (and dark mutterings about technology).
David Ng at The World’s Fair wants me to play along before I head to the airport. Here are the rules:
I’d like to suggest a meme, where the premise is that you will attempt to find 5 statements, which if you were to type into google (preferably google.com, but we’ll take the other country specific ones if need be), you’ll find that you are returned with your blog as the number one hit.
This takes a bit of effort since finding these statements takes a little trial and error, but I’m going to guess that this meme might yield some interesting insight on the blog in question.
To make it easier, we’ll let you use a search statement enclosed in quotations – this is just to increase your chances of turning up as number one, but if you happen to have a website with the awesome traffic to command the same statement without quotations, then flaunt it baby! Of course, once you find your 5 statements, pass the meme on to others.
Where I come out on top:
Monday brainteaser.
This is our third teaching day of the semester (which started last Thursday), so of course, WebCT’s servers decided that it would be a good time to freak out. (The official description:
… experiencing network latency within our VA2 data center that may be affecting your Blackboard environment. This may result in increased latency and/or packet loss when trying to access your hosted Blackboard system.
But you can’t tell me that this doesn’t amount to the servers freaking out, especially as they are still “working with our Infrastructure team to determine the cause and to work towards a resolution.”)
So here’s the brainteaser:
The other ScienceBloggers will be back soon.
I’ve been getting word (via carrier pigeon, mostly) that some of your favorite ScienceBloggers are just itching to provide you with fabulous new posts. However, a series of massive power outages in San Francisco Tuesday afternoon seem to have given the interwebs some hiccups.
When the series of tubes is properly connected, they’ll be back. Thanks for your patience.
Something to entertain you while comments are down tonight.
The ScienceBlogs servers are undergoing some serious spa treatments this evening (Saturday, June 2nd, starting at 9PM EDT) to rejuvenate them and help them achieve inner peace.
Or something.
Their massage and facial package (or whatever) is projected to last about three hours, during which time the system won’t be able to accept new comments. Jot them down on paper and get them in tomorrow!
In the meantime, via my mom, there’s a cool streaming video you might want to check out of Nobel Prize winner John Mather giving a colloquium at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center on November 21, 2006, before he flew out to Stockholm to receive his medal. (Click on the link near the top of the page that says “Video of John Mather’s special Scientific Colloquium (courtesy of the Goddard Library).”. You may need Windows Media Player to watch it.) Mom was “entertained by Mather’s ability to connect the dots for a more general audience.”
Further down the page, there’s a list of other colloquia given at GSFC whose streaming video you can access, but the Mather has Mom’s recommendation.