textiplication.com

And if you eliminate all of the shortstops who were or are among the best hitters in all of baseball, Derek Jeter is clearly one of the best-hitting shortstops in baseball history who have never been the best hitters in baseball.
Amazing Derek Jeter tonguebath in the New York Daily News – http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/2009/08/18/2009-08-18_is_derek_jeter_baseballs_best_hitting.html
If you eliminate Alex Rodriguez because of steroids, ignore two hundred more home runs and two more MVP awards for Cal Ripken because a couple hundredths in slugging, Robin Yount because he was such a great hitter he played in the outfield, Ernie Banks because the writer forgot about him, Honus Wagner because he wasn’t on TV, I guess Jeter IS pretty obviously one of the best.
Honus Wagner led the league in slugging six times.
Alex Rodriguez was forced to third base because Jeter was clogging up short. There’s probably no other team that would have played him at third.

You’d be wise to pick somewhere else to violate the Liskov Substitution Principle, too.

Here

From my experience reading the almost the first half of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I already expect that the best part of the book will be the cover art.  But then, the cover art is fantastic.

Tragic.

h/t Scalzi.

n the course of researching how SF has looked at computers, software, and hacking, I’m looking for science fiction novels and shorter works about computer/network hackers. Movie references are welcome as well, especially any that people might think are particularly realistic or thought-provoking.
Here’s what I have so far.
1970’s
The Shockwave Rider, John Brunner

1980’s

Neuromancer, William Gibson

Count Zero, William Gibson

“Burning Chrome”,William Gibson

Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
In his early days in Battle School, Ender exploits a deliberate input-sanitation vulnerability to create bogus accounts on the Battle School computer.  Orson Scott Card used to programming articles for Creative Computing, the seminal publication of personal computing.

1990’s

Synners, Pat Cadigan

Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson

The Long Run, Daniel Keys Moran

The Last Dancer, Daniel Keys Moran

The Matrix, Wachowski Brothers

Hackers, Iain Softley
Added at the suggestion of commenter Ericka

2000’s

Diamond Age, Neal Stephenson

Cryptonomicon, Neal Stephenson

Little Brother, Cory Doctorow

Halting State (Ace Science Fiction), Charles Stross

Charles Stross is one of the most technically adept SF writers, and his books in general contain the most accurate or plausible depictions of software that anyone has yet published.

Digital Fortress: A Thriller, Dan Brown

Added at the suggestion of commenter Matthew. An excellent negative test for SF-ness. The Maguffin in this book is some sort of universal crypto thingy, so implausible that I did in fact throw the book away when I came to it. An SF book with this tone would have to account for the crypto in some way, whereas in thrillers, the guns, subs and planes have to be right, but the science is under no such constraint.

My good friend Pyegar sent me this fascinating article about Robert Johnson, Charlie Patton, and the Romantic notion of authorship. 

I was totally buying the argument until I listened to the two clips. Then thinking about the clips made me go back over the argument. I don’t know, maybe they’re trying to make isn’t as strong as the point as I initially thought they were trying to make.

First, the clips:

Stipulate, before I say anything else, that the Robert Johnson track was a) probably better recorded in the first place, and b) received tons of TLC in this release due to the magnitude of his legend, TLC that Charlie Patton recordings likely never will.

That said, Charlie Patton’s voice is incredibly eerie and moving, but the guitar work sounds to me relatively minimalist, even allowing for the sound quality. Robert Johnson’s voice is, surprisingly, less distinctive than Charlie Patton’s, but the guitar work to my ear is off the chart by comparison. What is it in his work that the “white British musicians in the ‘60’s” reacted to, the voice, the guitar, or the songwriting? If these two clips were all we had, we’d certainly point to RJ’s guitar work.

But there’s much more than that! On that same RJ compilation, this would count as one of the most conventional tracks to the unacculturated ear. There are several tracks in which the high, quavering timbre of RJ’s voice barely sounds human. Nor is this track an outstanding example of his guitar work, either. 

I wonder, BTW, why if you were picking only one RJ track available on YouTube it wouldn’t be this one :

So the strongest version of the argument that I can accept is that white majority culture has chosen to lionize an Extraordinary Specimen Of Underappreciated Black Minority Culture, rather than the Unique Genius of Black Minority Culture that some “white British musicians” believed him, and that there are other artists worthy of appreciation in their own right, as well as for the insight they can give us into the ESOUBMC.

But then I read back up, and came to this passage…

Why, then, did Robert Johnson, who in Arewa’s view was likely of a piece with an entire genre to African American audiences in the 1920s and 1930s, become known as a genius among musicians comparable to the way Shakespeare is viewed among writers?

The appearance of Shakespeare in this context I find an absolute howler. Is there another artist even widely accounted great who is absolutely known to have appropriated more of his work from other sources? Who also lived cheek by jowl with several other similar artists who helped out here and there in each other’s efforts? Who were quite arguably nearly as good, to the extent that several of them are suspected by some of actually BEING the artist? Who was so much “of a piece with an entire genre” to his contemporary audience that it barely noticed his death?

Rragh.

There are, however, several points you can make about Shakespeare that distinguish him from his contemporaries like Marlowe, Jonson, and occasional collaborator John Ford. Shakespeare wrote transcendent comedy and tragedy alike, which distinguishes him from almost everyone else, ever. [Who else, maybe Kleist? If so, then the question answers itself.]

History, for some reason, chose Shakespeare to play the role of the lone genius of his time; it’s probably known to lit majors who exactly was responsible for Shakespeare’s apotheosis, as he was certainly Just Another One of Those Guys both during his life and for some time after his death. Was he that much better than Marlowe? Are Jonson’s comedies all that inferior? Shakespeare certainly wasn’t sui generis, a lone Titan, or better, Zeus the father from whose mighty brow alone Elizabethan drama sprang full-grown. However, there’s a lot in Shakespeare’s work that justifies some level of elevation, particularly given the extent to which we moderns elevate the serious over the comic in general.

Similarly, RJ was not himself sui generis, a lone Zeus from whose mighty brow alone the blues was born. However, he was really fucking good. *

Honestly, the comparison between the Shakespeare and RJ is so much better than the authors seem to note, it’s insight by omission.

SK

*[I could, again, go on. Similarly, Michael Jordan was not himself sui generis; indeed, there were in general nine other guys on the court all the time he was playing, whether he was aware of them or not. However, if you’re really fucking good to a sufficient extent, all the other guys kind of fade away. I mean, if people deified RJ, was it in the belief that no one else was singing and playing the blues? That’s just so asinine that I decline to believe it, and there shouldn’t be any need to inveigh against that misconception. Perhaps any deification was more on the basis of his being RFG?]

My good friend Pyegar sent me this fascinating article about Robert Johnson, Charlie Patton, and the Romantic notion of authorship. 

I was totally buying the argument until I listened to the two clips. Then thinking about the clips made me go back over the argument. I don’t know, maybe they’re trying to make isn’t as strong as the point as I initially thought they were trying to make.

First, the clips:

Stipulate, before I say anything else, that the Robert Johnson track was a) better recorded in the first place (from many listenings, I wonder: two mikes, voice and guitar? Holding the guitar really high, and leaning over? Or just a really old mike that isn’t directional at all>) and b) received tons of TLC in this release due to the magnitude of his legend, TLC that Charlie Patton recordings likely never will.

That said, Charlie Patton’s voice is incredibly eerie and moving, and the guitar work sounds to me relatively minimalist, even allowing for the sound quality. Robert Johnson’s voice is, amazingly, less distinctive, but the guitar work to my ear is off the chart by comparison. What is it in his work that the “white British musicians in the ‘60’s” reacted to, the voice, the guitar, or the songwriting? If these two clips were all we had, we’d certainly point to RJ’s guitar work.

But there’s much more than that! On that same RJ compilation, this would count as one of the most conventional tracks to the unacculturated ear. There are several tracks in which the high, quavering timbre of RJ’s voice barely sounds human. Nor is this track an outstanding example of his guitar work, either. 

I wonder, BTW, why if you were picking only one RJ track available on YouTube it wouldn’t be this one :

So the strongest version of the argument that I can accept is that white majority culture has chosen to lionize an Extraordinary Specimen Of Underappreciated Black Minority Culture, rather than the Unique Genius of Black Minority Culture that some “white British musicians” believed him, and that there are other artists worthy of appreciation in their own right, as well as for the insight they can give us into the ESOUBMC.

But then I read back up, and came to this passage…

Why, then, did Robert Johnson, who in Arewa’s view was likely of a piece with an entire genre to African American audiences in the 1920s and 1930s, become known as a genius among musicians comparable to the way Shakespeare is viewed among writers?

The appearance of Shakespeare in this context I find an absolute howler. Is there another artist even widely accounted great who is absolutely known to have appropriated more of his work from other sources? Who also lived cheek by jowl with several other similar artists who helped out here and there in each other’s efforts? Who are quite arguably nearly as good, to the extent that several of them are suspected by some of actually BEING Shakespeare? Who was so much “of a piece with an entire genre” to his contemporary audience that it barely noticed his death?

Rragh.

There are, however, several points you can make about Shakespeare that distinguish him from his contemporaries like Marlowe, Jonson, and occasional collaborator John Ford. Shakespeare wrote transcendent comedy and tragedy alike, which distinguishes him from almost everyone else, ever. [Who else, maybe Kleist? If so, then the question answers itself.]

History, for some reason, chose Shakespeare to play the role of the lone genius of his time; it’s probably known to lit majors who exactly was responsible for Shakespeare’s apotheosis, as he was certainly Just Another One of Those Guys both during his life and for some time after his death. Was he that much better than Marlowe? Are Jonson’s comedies all that inferior? Shakespeare certainly wasn’t sui generis, a lone Titan, or better, Zeus the father from whose mighty brow alone Elizabethan drama sprang full-grown. However, there’s a lot in Shakespeare’s work that justifies some level of elevation, particularly given the extent to which we moderns elevate the serious over the comic in general.

Similarly, RJ was not himself sui generis, a lone Zeus from whose mighty brow alone the blues was born. However, he was really fucking good. *

Honestly, the comparison between the Shakespeare and RJ is so much better than the authors seem to note, it’s insight by omission.

SK

*[I could, again, go on. Similarly, Michael Jordan was not himself sui generis; indeed, there were in general nine other guys on the court all the time he was playing, whether he was aware of them or not. However, if you’re really fucking good to a sufficient extent, all the other guys kind of fade away. I mean, if people deified RJ, was it in the belief that no one else was singing and playing the blues? That’s just so asinine that I decline to believe it, and there shouldn’t be any need to inveigh against that misconception. Perhaps any deification was more on the basis of his being RFG?]

I’m not sure which of these is most tempting. 

No, it’s not a steering wheel – it’s Orange Book!

D: Minimal Protection.

Systems that were submitted but failed evaluation.

C: Discretionary Protection

Discretionary protection tends to mean that the user has a lot of power over the security.

C has two rating categories:

C1: Discretionary Security Protection

Based on individuals and groups.

Identification and authentication of individual entries.

Some form of access control.

Protected execution domain, low-privilege processes can’t adversely affect higher-privilege processes.

System’s operational integrity can be validated.

Design doc, test doc, facility manual (helps install and configure properly)

User manuals.

C2: Controlled Access Protection

Users are identified individually.

Security events are audited (lowest mention of auditing – C2) and protected from unauthorized modification.

Resource or object isolation for protection and auditing (below process level)

Object reuse concept – objects are cleaned after use to prevent residual data leakage.

Strict logon and decision-making on object access requests.

Division B: Mandatory protection

MAC is enforced by means of labels.

Based on Bell-LaPadula, must use a reference monitor.

B1: Labeled Security.

Each data object bears a classification label.

Each subject must bear a clearance label.

Data leaving system also bears a security label.

Policy is based on an informal statement.

Design is reviewed and verified.

B2: Structured Protection.

Policy is clearly defined and documented.

Subjects and devices require labels.

No covert channels.

Trusted path for logon and authentication

Subject communicated directly with the application or OS.

There are no trapdoors.

Operator and admin functions are segregated

Distinct address spaces for each process.

Covert channel analysis.

B3: Security Domains

More granularity in the protection mechanisms.

Protection mechanisms exclude code that does not implement the policy.

Reference monitor components must be small and testable.

Ref monitor must be tamperproof.

Security admin role is clearly defined.

Recover from failures without reduction in security.

Starts and loads from an initial secure state.

Division A: Verified Protection.

Formal methods used to ensure control of subjects and objects.

A1: Verified design

B3 + formal methods.

Stringent change verification.

I had a great time at Boskone this year.  Chris was on a bunch of panels, including a fabulous digital art discussion with Stephan Martiniere, Dave Seeley, and Alan Beck.  I had terrific conversations with Dani Kollin (co-author of the forthcoming Unincorporated Man[ordered]), Alisa Kwitney Sheckley (Robert Sheckley’s daughter!OMG!), and Rosemary Kirstein (author of the fabulous Steerswoman series), whom I’ve been looking forward to meeting for years.

Cons are always so inspiring. I started two new short stories this weekend, and even wrote a thousand words or so on Hack.  I find it tough to balance short story effort  against novel effort – finishing a short story is quck gratification, but the novel won’t write itself.  I guess I’m doing all right as long as I’m writing.