Just when I think that I have finally reached a point where I can safely ignore cnet, whose take on "journalism" isn't fit to wipe my ass, they sink to even newer lows of being Microsoft-stroking, Apple-bashing morons. True, they've been against all things Macintosh from the very beginning, but now they are to the point where their constant attacks aren't just sniping at Apple with editorial ramblings and blowing actual problems out of proportion, oh no... now they are actually inventing bad news.

Lately, Apple has been promoting the use of their PowerMac G5 by Virginia Tech to create the word's third-fastest super computer. With off-the shelf Apple G5 computers, InfiniBand network cards, a lot of cable, and open-source software, Dr. Varadarajan and his team did the unthinkable: created a world-class supercomputer for a rock-bottom price of 5.2 million dollars... magnitudes less than solutions costing hundreds of millions with far less power.

But then along comes cnet to yet again do their best to smear Apple with shit. In an article charmingly called "A grain of salt with your Apple," they have decided to "warn" businesses that Apple's price tag is not accurate, and that using Macs involves all kinds of hidden costs. Naturally, nobody signed their name to the article... which is typical cnet bullshit... and none of the "facts" they trot out are verified, but who cares about that? Let's take a look, shall we:

The $5.2 million doesn't include hundreds of volunteer hours work. That's because volunteers are not paid you stupid jackass! The implication is that a business would have to pay for their Macs to be set-up, adding additional cost... which is true... but if you bought Dell or Sun computers, they somehow magically unpack themselves from their boxes, install their own network cards, and hop on the shelf and plug themselves in? Bitch, please. Even if you had to pay a team for 500 man hours at $20 an hour (unpacking a computer from a box @ $20 an hour is great work if you can get it), that adds just $10,000 to the bottom line. Whoopee. Even if you spent $100,000, that's a pimple on the ass of a $5.2 million project.

Virginia Tech had plenty of graduate students on hand to figure out how to best set-up the network and translate software to the Mac platform. Yes, but what you forgot to mention was that the software they used is open source you moronic prick. It was free for the translating! It's not as if they purchased 5 million dollars worth of software and then had to re-work it to the Mac... oh no, thanks to MacOS X's Unix architecture, Dr. Varadarajan tweaked existing open source code and compiled it to run on the Mac. While I am sure he probably had some help, the entire project was completed in less than 3 months, so even if you decided not to use the freely available technologies waiting and available for the Mac (like Apple's own X-Grid), how bad could it be? Again, the implication here is that this stuff adds millions of dollars in hidden costs which is far from the truth.

Since apple only has one computer in the top 500, it's just an experiment, and businesses should pay experts to design their clusters and not rely on Macs. Well somebody had to be first you condescending turd. Let me get this straight: Just because the solution is from Apple, it doesn't matter that it was far, far, far cheaper and exceeded every expectation... it still sucks because nobody else is using it? If that moronic logic was applied to all new technology that was released, we'd still be banging rocks together to make fire. What a complete dumbass! What excuse will cnet come up with when Apple has 20 computers in the top 500 and the software has been perfected, optimized, and is free for the download?

What's so stupid here is that people continue to rely on cnet for "news." They are clearly biased and inaccurate... how could you possibly trust anything that they say? Hell, their editorials aren't even signed! For all we know, this new bash against Apple was written by the president of Intel. The facts speak for themselves: you can buy a supercomputer cluster from Apple that is world-class in terms of speed, University-tested in terms of reliability, and much less expensive than anything else out there. Who are you going to trust... Virginia Tech who actually built the damn thing, or cnet who probably doesn't even know what a super computer is.