Apple vs GNU+Linux

People complaining about lack of Linux support should try to install MacOS on anything apart from Mac hardware. Unless you have a cracked version, it's not even possible (and good luck finding/trusting new ones!) Even with hacked versions, try to find driver support for all your hardware. Linux is worlds ahead when you want to choose your hardware. If you don't feel like shelling out a thousand or more bucks every time a computer dies, using an older computer, or making a special-purpose computer for a friend without taking out a loan, the choice is clear. If you want to be guaranteed the same compatibility you get with Apple's OS, then you can still use Linux, pre-installed in a laptop from Dell, etc. Wow, it just works! Magic! :P

Linux (especially Ubuntu, lately), has become a definite advantage to people who want to choose their hardware, and it gets better with every release.

With Apple, unfortunately, you buy more than just hardware and an OS, you've officially bought a style, image, and a glowing apple to make sure everyone knows that the computer is far more important than whatever you happen to be doing on it. Apple's marketing machine makes sure that every Mac user is a walking/talking advertisement for it. That's good for Apple, but that's a lot of pretentious corporate overhead for me. I don't want to buy an image. I don't want endless throngs of consumer drones commenting "Wow, is that the new Apple whatsit? I want one of those!" People don't care what you're doing. It's all about that Mac with the glowy apple logo. You might as well not be there. I'd much rather be using Blender, GIMP, Photoshop, Open Office, and be appreciated for what I'm doing, rather than having endless queries about Apple's latest gadget. I do a lot of cool stuff, so it helps (especially for my business) to have people's focus on the artwork, and not the laptop.

People will even attribute your success to Apple's hardware. "Well, I could be good too, if I had one!" Of course, disillusionment follows, after having shelling out the money for one; No, no, you can't be good just for buying an overpriced machine with go-faster stripes. It takes a lot of hard work! Endless hours of practice, and honing your skills to be good, even with Apple's glory-glory ware! They will happily take credit for your work. And people merrily give it to them. "Yeah.. huh huh. I use a Mac! Macs are BETTER for graphic design!" Yea? Try graphic design without Adobe's software. You realise Apple doesn't make that, right? Try using iPhoto. Then you see how much better Apple is at graphic design! Better yet, try and find where that crapware stored the file you're working on? Thousands of high-res photos/projects? Notice how iPhoto takes 4 minutes to load? Yep. Better!

I know a whole company of graphic designers, all on Mac, all very very embarrassed to be walking Apple stereotypes, and just waiting for something else to come along that runs the latest version of Adobe's Creative Suite. Unfortunately, only available for Macs and Windows PCs. (Adobe's fault, not Linux).

I'm a professional graphic designer (with 12 years of industry experience). I choose Linux, and if Photoshop is a must (it is sometimes), I use WINE. If the latest version of the Creative Suite is a must (Often it is for the printing/publishing industry to deal with), I'll run a VM with Windows XP.
Or maybe I could run OSX in a VM? Oh wait... no, no I can't. Apple's suing machine won't allow an of the VM developers to make that possible. Okay. Well... guess I have NO USE for OSX then... at all! :D

I do this all from my laptop/Linux workstation, which I paid like $400.00 for, from a guy selling it to buy an iPad. Lol. I guess there IS some benefit to Apple's advertising machine after all! :D I haven't needed a desktop machine, (or a laptop that costs over $600) for anything in over a decade.

Moreover, I have a full install of Ubuntu 10.10 installation on a USB keychain, so if my hard drive fails, I can boot off the keychain and keep working from my backed up files (using Ubuntu One's free cloud) while I order a new one, without missing a beat. I don't even have to go home from the coffee shop! Magic! :D

I'm sure when Apple does the same (or strikingly similar) thing, they will call it the best innovation ever, and praise themselves for being ahead of the game in all things. "All others can only follow", and other rabid fanboy rubbish. So when that happens (again), know that the better informed world is laughing at everyone who adopts idiotic mantras like that. To those people, we're happy to tell you your wrong, explain clearly why, then watch you snort, put your nose up in the air and continue to pretend your Mac makes you more sophisticated, efficient, and cool.

We'll smile, and continue using Linux, and reaping the benefits, making it better and easier to use for the "average person" (like it's not already? Try Ubuntu 10.10), and enjoying some of the best eye-candy interfaces out there, for free (thanks Compiz folks!).

To end this bloody dissertation (TLDR)
I'd like to extend thanks to the Linux community (including Canonical) for making supremely good software that everyone can use free of charge, and continuing to make Linux better, and easier to use for everyone.

And remember, kids: It doesn't matter what Apple fanboys "think". You could slap an Apple logo on anything and they'd take out a second mortgage just to have it. If you listen to that kind of opinion, you certainly deserve to be excluded from the joys of Linux. :)

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45 Years Later, Does Moore's Law Still Hold True?

Intel Codenamed "Sandy Bridge," Intel's new lineup of microchips promises the biggest-ever leap in processing power.

Intel has packed just shy of a billion transistors into the 216 square millimeters of silicon that compose its latest chip, each one far, far thinner than a sliver of human hair.
But this mind-blowing feat of engineering doesn't really surprise us, right? After all, that's just Moore's Law in action … isn't it?
In 1965, an article in "Electronics" magazine by Gordon Moore, the future founder of chip juggernaut Intel, predicted that computer processing power would double roughly every 18 months. Or maybe he said 12 months. Or was it 24 months? Actually, nowhere in the article did Moore actually spell out that famous declaration, nor does the word "law" even appear in the article at all.

Yet the idea has proved remarkably resilient over time, entering the public zeitgeist and lodging hold like a tick on dog -- or maybe a stubborn computer virus you just can't eradicate. But does it hold true? Strangely, that seems to depend more than anything on who you ask.

"Yes, it still matters, and yes we're still tracking it," said Mark Bohr, Intel senior fellow and director of process architecture and integration. The company is certainly one reason Moore's Law has remained in the public's mind: A section on Intel's website details the law, explaining that "his prediction, popularly known as Moore's Law, states that the number of transistors on a chip will double about every two years. Intel has kept that pace for over 40 years, providing more functions on a chip at significantly lower cost per function."

Bohr told FoxNews.com that doubling the number of chips is far less important these days than making them smaller, which has other tangible benefits for consumers.

"The true benefit is to reduce the transistor size, because when they're smaller, you improve performance, reduce the power use, and you reduce the cost," he explained.

While no one questions the innovations Intel, AMD and other companies have brought to computers through their infinitesimally small transistors -- a human red blood cell is about 4,000 nanometers in diameter, 125 times larger than the smallest parts in Intel's new chips -- many industry experts are less certain that Moore's so-called law is really an accurate representation of the industry.

"Moore’s law isn’t tracking exactly, but the spirit of the law is still alive in that the dies are still shrinking, and CPUs become more and more capable every 12-18 months or so," said Joel Santo Domingo, lead analyst, desktops at PCMag.com. His former boss agrees.

"I did the math, and while it’s not exactly doubling every two years, it’s pretty close," agreed Michael Miller, the award-winning math geek and former editor in chief of PCMag.com.

Maybe, as Johnny Depp said in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, it's really more of guideline?
"Semiconductor chips haven't actually tracked the progress predicted by Moore's law for many years," said Tom Halfhill, the well respected chip analyst with industry bible the Microprocessor Report.

Halfhill is quick to note that Moore's law isn't truly a scientific law, merely "an astute observation." In fact, since Gordon Moore made his observation in '65, the law has been modified and manipulated to fit the actual progress of semiconductors to such an extent that it can arguably be said to have predicted nothing.
It's also been so frequently misused that Halfhill was forced to define Moron's Law, which states that "the number of ignorant references to Moore's Law doubles every 12 months."

Halfhill wrote a paper for "The Microprocessor Report," published in December of 2004, which debunked the connection between Moore's Law and reality. In it, he noted that Moore's Law was more like Bode's law, an observation by early astronomers that each planet in our solar system is roughly twice as far from the sun as the planet in the next inner orbit.

"Modern astronomers don't expect the distances between planets to add up exactly, and they don’t expect other solar systems to conform to the same rules," Halfhill explained. Likewise, engineers don't really require the latest generation of computer chips to exactly meet Moore's Law either.

In fact, to make it track more closely to actual transistor counts, he proposed Epstein's amendment, named after a fellow editor at "The Microprocessor Report," which adds a leveling factor that accounts for the law of diminishing returns.

Halfhill is quick to point out that the Law is meaningless -- but the idea that computing keeps relentlessly advancing, that's what's really important. "Whether it's exactly as fast as Moore predicted isn't really relevant. No one's holding him to the numbers," Halfhill told FoxNews.com. What's more important is that innovation continues. And at the end of the day, if the law drives innovation, and we end up with faster PCs, who cares whether Gordon Moore was right 45 years ago?

"Moore law is almost whatever you want to make it mean. And as long as chips keep getting faster, that's good enough for most people."

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Shamelessly stolen from: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/01/04/years-later-does-moores-law-hold-true/
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