A Meerkat's Bolthole

Amazon Says Glitch to Blame for "New" Adult Policy
By Rachel Deahl & Jim Milliot

A groundswell of outrage, concern and confusion sprang up over the weekend, largely via Twitter, in response to what authors and others believed was a decision by Amazon to remove adult titles from its sales ranking. On Sunday evening, however, an Amazon spokesperson said that a glitch had occurred in its sales ranking feature that was in the process of being fixed. The spokesperson added that there was no new adult policy.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6651080.html


Of course, this does not explain why authors who queried were told by Amazon reps that 'adult' material" was being excluded from appearing in "some searches and best seller lists" as a "consideration of our entire customer base." I'll be very interested what glitch explains that....

Anyone who seriously thinks about voting for McCain?

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/07/15/mccain-finds-rape-hilarious/

(and other, equally horrifying links added in comments)

That's the kind of human being you'd be sending to the White House.

woke up
wrote some
made coffee
went to the gym.
did some e-mail stuff
had lamb chop and roasted corn on the cob.
fed the cats (they insisted) (not lamb chop, although Boomer made a case for it)
did some more e-mail stuff
made some phone calls
waited for people to get back to me re: the e-mail stuff.
wrote some more stuff (about 1800 words total for the day)
ate some salad
did research trip planning
did some research on my newly-acquired silver box (I've established it's pre-1912, but not much beyond that. nothing else from the maker [Victor Silver] has the same design, although some are similar)
refilled my fountain pens (I use bottled ink, so this usually involves scrubbing my fingers afterward)
fed the cats again

Wasn't that exciting?
and now I am off to bed, still waiting on e-mails (you-all know who you are)


meanwhile, consider this from Locus, via clarkesworld...

"Results were tabulated using the system put together by webmaster Mark Kelly, with Locus staffers entering votes from mail-in ballots. Results were available almost as soon as the voting closed, much sooner than back in the days of hand-counting. Non-subscribers outnumbered subscribers by so much that, in an attempt to better reflect the Locus magazine readership, we decided to change the counting system, so now subscriber votes count double. (Non-subscribers still managed to out-vote subscribers in most cases where there was disagreement.)"

AFTER the voting, they changed the way votes were tabulated? Um...... right. Another reason why I don't really bother with Locus any more. If they don't want to count all readers equally, why open it to non-subscribers at all?

WASHINGTON (AP) — Consumer advocate Ralph Nader has announced he is running for president in the current White House race. Nader, who many Democrats say siphoned off enough votes from Al Gore in the 2000 election to hand the victory to George W. Bush by a razor-thin margin, made the announcement Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."


I think I speak for many people when I say "shut up and sit down, Ralph!"

Have you heard about the New Rules According to Six Apart's Morality Police?

"Thousands of LiveJournal customers are rebelling against the company's recent decision to censor hundreds of sex-themed discussion groups, a broad swath that has led to the removal of literary critiques and fan-written fiction about Harry Potter.

LiveJournal, which is owned by San Francisco-based Six Apart, confirmed Wednesday that it deleted around 500 journals this week in hopes of better "protecting children." It said the deletion was prompted by activist groups, including one called Warriors for Innocence that claims to track sites promoting pedophilia, the sexual abuse of minors, and other illegal activities."

The article then goes on to point out that

"Legal experts say LiveJournal is clearly not liable for fictional stories and related discussions posted by its users, thanks to a 1996 federal law immunizing Web-based discussion forums from lawsuits. 'If the content is otherwise legal, then LiveJournal has no obligation to police its site or remove any legal content it finds,' said Eric Goldman, who teaches at the Santa Clara University School of Law. "

(emphasis mine)

EtA: mind you, if something crosses the boundries into illegality, I agree it should go. But using a broadsword instead of a scalpel just proves you're a moron, and defending the broadsword means you're a moron without a PR person.

etA2: this post hasn't been verified yet, but it suggests that the so-called "Warriors For Innocence" have ties to several radical and extremely racists 'Christian militia" groups. You know, the kind that say if you're anything other than Them, you're a god-hating, child-abusing, liberal-voting, devil-worshiping....

hey. Has anyone told this group that LJ's mascot is a goat? And that they're based in San Francisco?



Anyone else really tempted to list "highly sexualized goat-pr0n" as an interest, to see how long it takes to get their account deleted as being "bad for the CHILdren?"

I'm not going to jump ship just yet -- I'm digging in and fighting back the only way I know how -- with words here, and a hit to their wallet there. I encourage everyone else to do the same. Leaving just makes these anally troubled organizations think they've taken the field without resistence. Hell no, I won't go. And if it takes posting explicit pr0n to this journal to make a point, well, my family's always been a big fan of civil disobedience....

The very definition of WTF? fannish style. Everything detractors sneer at, paraded in full view of the attorneys...


http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1933456027/002-4876564-3915249?%5Fencoding=UTF8&s=books&v=glance


I don't even want to bitchslap this person, unless I can use someone else's hand.


ETA: One of the suggested Amazon.com 'tags' given this book: "is yoda gonna have to smack a bitch" *dies*