Excerpt from Press Briefing by Scott McClellan, Office of the Press Secretary, June 16, 2005:

Q Scott, is the insurgency in Iraq in its last throes?

MR. McCLELLAN: Terry, you have a desperate group of terrorists in Iraq that are doing everything they can to try to derail the transition to democracy. The Iraqi people have made it clear that they want a free and democratic and peaceful future. And that’s why we’re doing everything we can, along with other countries, to support the Iraqi people as they move forward. The fact that they are making great progress on the political front is significant because that helps defeat the terrorists, because the terrorists don’t want to see democracy take hold. They don’t want lasting democratic institutions to be put in place. And that’s why we are standing with the Iraqi people as they move forward on the political front.

We’re also standing with the Iraqi people as they move forward on — to address the security situation. We are working side by side with Iraqi forces now to defeat those terrorists and regime elements who want to derail the transition to democracy. And every day we move forward on democracy and training Iraqi security forces is every day closer that we are to succeeding in Iraq.

Q But the insurgency is in its last throes?

MR. McCLELLAN: The Vice President talked about that the other day — you have a desperate group of terrorists who recognize how high the stakes are in Iraq. A free Iraq will be a significant blow to their ambitions.

Q But they’re killing more Americans, they’re killing more Iraqis. That’s the last throes?

MR. McCLELLAN: Innocent — I say innocent civilians. And it doesn’t take a lot of people to cause mass damage when you’re willing to strap a bomb onto yourself, get in a car and go and attack innocent civilians. That’s the kind of people that we’re dealing with. That’s what I say when we’re talking about a determined enemy.

Q Right. What is the evidence that the insurgency is in its last throes?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think I just explained to you the desperation of terrorists and their tactics.

Q What’s the evidence on the ground that it’s being extinguished?

MR. McCLELLAN: Terry, we’re making great progress to defeat the terrorist and regime elements. You’re seeing Iraqis now playing more of a role in addressing the security threats that they face. They’re working side by side with our coalition forces. They’re working on their own. There are a lot of special forces in Iraq that are taking the battle to the enemy in Iraq. And so this is a period when they are in a desperate mode.

Q Well, I’m just wondering what the metric is for measuring the defeat of the insurgency.

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, you can go back and look at the Vice President’s remarks. I think he talked about it.

Q Yes. Is there any idea how long a last throe lasts for?

MR. McCLELLAN: Go ahead, Steve.

We live in fictional times indeed.

I’m doing some clearance on a server I’m canning, (check out the bandwidth monitor) and I’m hitting load levels I’ve never seen on a single proc machine before. Apache2 is, impressively more responsive than my SSH terminal (uptime took about 20s to get started, and another 7s to run). Check it out:

17:41:18  up 117 days,  7:50,  1 user,  load average: 108.48, 106.08, 77.03

I’m pretty jazzed to have discovered Kung Fu Monkey, the blog of a Hollywood screenwriter/exec, who was most interestingly was executive producer of a unbroadcasted TV series, Global Frequency (an adaptation of the Warren Ellis comic of the same name).

Last week, a screener of the pilot was leaked online, and this week, John Rogers wrote up a follow-up analysis. This struck me as particularly insightful:

I’ll also call Nelson McCormick, the director and let him know that on several counts he was right and I was wrong, and I owe him a beer. They made the show, you like the show. We executive types need to get the hell out of the middle of that relationship. … But you know what? I bitch and moan about how all this emergent technology is going to change the entertainment industry and nobody’s taking advantage of it. And here I have, well, unless I’m mistaken, a fan base which exists and is trying to organize for a show which has never appeared on television. Not a cancelled show — a show which has literally never aired on broadcast television. This is BoingBoing and Wired’s frikkin’ dream. Seeing as I was planning on writing a book on this stuff, I’d be insane not to follow up in some way.

Hey, what do you know, a Hollywood producer that gets it. This, from my experience, is depressingly rare in this town.

The “it” that I reference of course is the shift in the media consumption cycle due to distributed networks. This is playing out in a lot of very interesting ways, but in terms of TV production, the changes we’re seeing are just beginning (remember, this is an area where just a couple years ago, the cable was considered a “disruptive technology” (no joke, in essays published in the 00’s — what they’d call the Internet or P2P I don’t know — “the apocalypse,” most likely).

There’s a dozen connections I want to blurt out right now, but it’s late, and I’ve been swamped lately, so I’m not up for it. That, and there are already so much out there. I’ll leave off with a link to an (IMHO, classic) essay by Henry Jenkins, Interactive Audiences? The ‘Collective Intelligence’ of Media Fans. (Also: some related collected references I compiled a while back)

I just finished watching the WWDC 2005 Keynote. The presentation was good, but I’m still surprised by the way the announcement/timeline was handled. No punches pulled, no consolation prize, no “one more thing.” More of a “yeah, we’re Osborning our line for the next year. k thx bye.”

Jobs’ hand-waving about new PPC products was the least convincing part of the keynote, and I hope that that gets addressed before mass confusion descends (I’m sure the cognitive dissonance is deafening right now, especially as the Mac faithful look at the top-end).

In any case, I’m looking forward to a decently performing PowerBook with Napa (my currently top of the line 1.67GHz G4 has issues with HD playback and is still lacking in ‘teh snappy’), and I’m really hoping for a good media hub solution soon (but let’s face it, I’ll probably end up with an XBox360 or a PS3).

An interesting aside, MacRumors was using AJAX for its live updates (although MacObserver’s page handled much better regardless).

The Apple/Intel rumor was easy to dismiss when first reported by CNet, but with a front page post on the WSJ and FWIW, independent confirmation by the Inquirer and Scoble, it seems like tomorrow will be a pretty huge day for Apple.

The first question that popped into my head was whether the mobile situation was really so dire. With all the PowerPC momentum (Freescale’s Dual Cores, continued POWER5 and POWER6 developments, all three next-gen consoles using PPC-based chips, cell-processing) it seemed like rather odd from a long-term perspective despite the short-term hiccups. My assumption with the switch is that there is a potential long-term strategic impasse that I just wasn’t seeing.

This kind of a platform-change would be an enormous risk though, both for developers and for consumer sales (Osborne immediately comes to mind), and especially with CNet’s reported 2006 to 2007 timeline.

I remain a bit skeptical until it’s officially announced, but this being the net of a million lies, I’ll throw my prediction in the ring for how this plays out:

• Apple announces a partnership with Intel and announces OS X on x86 in low-end tablet and HTPC form factors (new products, the latter possibly a mini-like extension) with out-of-the-box binary PowerPC compatibility via Quick Transit
• The Intel announcement is spun not as a switch, but as a platform expansion. To sell this, the Intel announcement will be cushioned by an announcement of new 970MP-based dual-core PowerMacs (additional confirmation)
• a competitive mobile platform would seem to be a major driver for the switch (especially with laptops now outselling desktops), but Yonah’s Q1 2006 release still seems far away. Whatever happened to the e600?
• It’s been noted that Apple carries a lot of PowerPC IP with them, and while I have no doubts that there will be cross-licensing involved, it seems much more likely to me that it’d be vector unit changes (permute?) or PPC-µop decoding in Intel chips rather than a wholesale jump into the PowerPC market (remember, the console margins are very low and Intel has never been in a foundry model, but hedging their bets wouldn’t hurt)
• Oh, this is totally without any basis, but Apple releases Cocoa on Windows and Linux. (all hell breaks loose)

This scenario is one that could sidestep the most severe dangers of the Osborne effect, while simultaneously solving Apple’s mobile problems and giving prime strategic positioning for the upcoming living-room battle (as well as leaving Apple in a position of strength vis-a-vis Longhorn in 2006), all while providing more leverage and reducing future risk.

Or, it could just be introducing a new XScale ARM gadget. We’ll see.

Some other points of view:

• Daring Fireball: I’ll See You Intel – Gruber’s points and predictions
• CNet: Intel/Apple coupling could woo Hollywood (see also: Cult of Mac: Apple Shifting To Intel, For Hollywood’s Sake
• eWeek: Apple-Intel Chip Deal Outcry Keeps Growing – quotes lots of forums talk (heh)
• NYTimes: Apple Plans to Switch From I.B.M. to Intel for Chips – The move is a chesslike gambit in a broader industry turf war that pits the traditional personal computer industry against an emerging world of consumer electronics focused on the digital home.

Kevin Drum did a great series on peak oil this week. (Interesting to read alongside Elizabeth Kolbert’s Climate of Man global warming series)

One interesting aspect not explicitly covered was an increasing link between China’s growth and commodities pricing (there’s also a link to some counterpoint in the comments).

I finally got around to seeing Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith today (digitally projected at the Mann Village) yesterday. The second-half got me so caught up it made me wish there were three more movies that might explain what happened after that! Jokes, aside, watching the final act made me think about how good the prequels could have been. Also, it explains in a much better way why Anakin turns to the dark side (mostly because the Jedi are pompous, hypocritical assholes) while still illustrating why the Sith are no better. That’s actually more subtlety than I would’ve given Lucas credit for (especially as the hilarious ham-fistedness continues just everywhere else). However, my inner-geek is still niggled by the continuity errors like Old Ben not recognizing R2, being surprised by Leia later on (“no, there is another”)… Leia having memories of her mother (the whole time I was thinking how much more ironic it would have been if Padme didn’t die so that Anakin’s turning was pointless), if Anakin did have other family in Tatooine, what was his mother doing still in slavery for so long? oh, if Qui-Gon was the one who discovered immortality, how does Anakin learn it at the end?, also it took a long time to construct the original Death Star – union workers, huh?

Anyway, lots of movies out right now and in the next few months that I’d like to catch (most probably on Netflix… eventually)

• The Best of Youth
• Crash
• Howl’s Moving Castle
• Unleashed
• Me and You and Everyone We Know
• It’s All Gone Pete Tong
• Rize
• Nobody Knows
• Saving Face
• Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
• Lords Of Dogtown
• Batman Begins
• A History of Violence

Australian student Nick Bertke has been doing some amazing things with compositing Half-Life 2 models in photographs (he’s involved in making an HL2 short film). I’ve given all his photos a full mirror in case it goes down.

Related links:

• Paul Debevec’s HDR Shop Tutorials (see also HDRI Tutorial v.2 on Splutterfish, HDRI The Cheap And Nasty Way )
• Rthdribl – realtime HDR rendering
• V-Ray, Brazil RS
• CGTalk

I’ve been following Blake Ross‘s coverage of the Stanford Daily‘s link-farming with some interest since it first popped up on my radar. While it started out with his discovery of the practice at the Stanford Daily, it expands to the discovery that lots of college papers do it and leads to some interesting conversations (for more, see my attempts to discuss ethics with SEOs in the Syndic8 bruhaha). There’s a somewhat happy ending as the Standard Daily has removed their linkfarm.

Now curious, I checked the Daily Trojan (Technorati) and they came up clean. Woo, we’re not evil! Kudos DT!

On the other hand, if you’re looking for a good place to get online college degrees (not to mention licensed Canadian pharmaceuticals, and fish oil), be sure to check out UCLA’s Daily Bruin (Technorati). Yeah, Go Bruins! *snicker*

(College newspapers: yeah, you’re independent entities, but your actions will still reflect on your institutions. Also, stop lying to yourselves, you’re not serving anyone but yourselves in making the web less useful. I hope this sort of pissing in the pool never loses its stigma.)