Amazon doesn't return results

[luinil]

Looking at the console, I found the origin of the bug :
My time settings are in japanese, using the japanese year instead of the usual one.
So the date transmitted by Bookpedia is 0022-06-07... instead of 2010-06-07

So someone at Bruji should look how to allow users to use the calendar they want

[Aessedai]

I haven't been able to get results from Amazon when adding entries in DVDpedia for about 6 months. I upgrade and upgrade and the problem is never going away. I am running version 4.6.1. I have tried on different networks (ISPs) and computers. Cascade will eventually find entries that are normally foreign or completely wrong from other sites, but Amazon just acts as if it is blocked completely.

[Nora]

Have you checked your time setting to make sure that it's set correctly, i.e. to the time zone you are in? (If this is not set correctly Amazon will automatically deny the request for information.) You can check this in the System Preferences/Date&Time.

[Aessedai]

Hello,

My time setting is fine. At least it is set to the correct time for the time zone I am in, which is the New Zealand time zone, because I live and work on a military base on a Pacific Island. Should I be setting my computer's time to a particular U.S. time zone? About a year ago and before I had no problems and I have been in the same location for 7 years.

I also recently travelled to the east coast with my laptop hoping it would work there. I set my computer time to the local time there. I continued to have the same problems.

I wouldn't be very concerned about it if IMDB or any other place worked as well as Amazon used to. IMDB completely and emphatically sucks! Just look up LOST and see if you can find Season 5 from IMDB. Then after scratching your head for a while, try Stargate Universe SGU 1.5. Good luck. IMDB is a complete failure every time it's tried even though it does pull up results.

Amazon simply doesn't pull up any results anymore. It's dead. I can try setting my computer's time to every time zone on planet Earth and see what happens, but I don't see how that is going to help me. Amazon has no idea where on earth I am, so they have no clue what time my computer should be set at.

[Aessedai]

Addendum :

Ok, come to find out, the time zone was the key to fixing this. It appears that although the island I am on does not observe any kind of daylight savings time, Anadyr Russia does. So, this is what I have confirmed:

Manually setting the clock does not work unless you have it set to the correct time in the time zone you have chosen in the Clock preferences. Being in that time zone and not observing daylight savings can cause major issues. Anadyr Russia and New Zealand fall into the same Time Zone in the Apple Clock Preferences, however, if I choose New Zealand instead of Anadyr Russia, my computer goes to the correct time, because they apparently do not observe Daylight Savings either.

So, now it works. The time zone AND time have to be correct even if it's not really what time it is. It's a retarded requirement of Amazon, especially in a day and age when people have laptops and travel extensively, but there you have it.

Now I have a LOT of work to do updating my DVDPedia with all of the DVDs I have bought over the last year or so. And coincidentally, I get them all from Amazon. They should be happy and flattered that people want to use their data, especially when they purchase DVDs from them exclusively.

Thanks!

[Alex]

Amazon has no idea where on earth I am, so they have no clue what time my computer should be set at.

They do know, based on your IP address. While not completely accurate (especially if you are rerouting your connection through different parts of the world as in using some of these "anonymous" servers that are out there) it is used extensively these days.

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7856

Glad you sorted it out though. Although I agree with you about Amazon making life difficult for laptop users with this requirement.

[Conor]

The new Amazon request require that they be timestamped (in order to invalidate them if 15 minutes have passed and hence making it impossible to reuse request previously digitally signed by others). The timestamp is GMT (Greenwich Meridian Time), but the way the Mac works it deduces the GMT time from your current time and time zone settings. A wrong daylight calculation or timezone location will give DVDpedia a wrong timestamp and hence the error from Amazon. Been thinking of confirming the time with a time server, but really this is a small issue that appears rarely (mainly Argentina, as they decided to skip the daylight savings at the last minute this year and told no one about it).

[jenv]

The timestamp is GMT (Greenwich Meridian Time), but the way the Mac works it deduces the GMT time from your current time and time zone settings.

I hope it doesn't work that way, because that's not historically how Unix works. Unix keeps all times in GMT and deduces local time from your time zone settings. You may recall some nasty Windows bugs as a result of its keeping filesystem timestamps in local time rather than GMT. Are the Pedias using some function other than gmtime() to get current GMT?

[Conor]

We use the internal Cocoa classes of NSDate, NSDateFormatter and NSTimeZone, code below. I agree that these classes should be based on GMT and have no problem reporting GMT time regardless of time zone settings. I think the bug stems from users setting their actual clock back to deal with the computer automatically adjusting for daylight savings times in Buenos Aires, when they decided to skip it. There is no way the computer can report the correct GMT time if it has a wrong clock time set. In case it's useful to others the code we use is:

Code: Select all

NSDateFormatter *dateWriterFormatter = [[[NSDateFormatter alloc] init] autorelease];
[dateWriterFormatter setDateFormat:@"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss'Z'"];
[dateWriterFormatter setTimeZone:[NSTimeZone timeZoneForSecondsFromGMT:0]];
NSString *aTime = [dateWriterFormatter stringFromDate:[NSDate date]];