I believe that 2.6.34 will natively support TRIM, which will keep most second generation SSDs running clean. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIM/

Taxes have no affect on profitability - earning are usually looked at before interest and taxes. Taxes do use up cash, if of course they are paid.

for the vast majority of people buying Apple products today, it is certainly not bullshit. If Apple products weren't so fashionable, they'd still be skirting the fringes with fifty year old academics, windows bashers and other types. Does the teenager buy a Macbook because it's Unix? doubtful. Does the teenager buy a Macbook because it's one sexy computer. Of course, to go online to facebook, play music and video AND impress everyone by doing it on a Mac.

Don't take it personally if you like Apple products. There's a lot of reason to buy them. But in terms of their increased POPULARITY, I agree with the parent, it's all because of fashion.

BTW, most every computer works... I'm actually typing this on a non-Mac right now and I don't have a CS degree.

..change. What's important is that they're moving forward and not afraid at touching sacred cows so to speak. While I've come to equate brown with Ubuntu (got a few hoodies that are brown), I think I can handle the change. I've never really bothered to change the default theme because, it's just not that important to me. At any rate, Windows 7 has a very welcomed - and fresh - look and looking back is greatly improved upon from XP, while Mac OS X 10.6 still has that space vagina splash screen from Leopard... Move on Ubuntu, move forward!

I've probably heard some of the most outrageous exaggerations coming from the Apple store. "Now, the Mac has everything you need for digital photos. Just plug in your camera and they automatically transfer. PCs don't do that". Yeah, right.

Or how about another browser at a minimum? Don't you think there is a reason why IE, Mozilla, Opera, Chrome, etc... all exist? Like I tell everyone at work, do your work in IE and keep the Yahoo, Live, Facebook, Pandora etc in Firefox.

What's new. Every financial institution in the US is bent on screwing customers over with legalese gibberish that no one understands. And our political institutions are just fine with that. In fact, for this we reward them with a Trillion dollar bailout when the pull off the granddaddy fuck-up of the century and bankrupt the country?

The Onion had a great take on there profitability: http://www.theonion.com/content/news/even_ceo_cant_figure_out_how

Why wouldn't you just ship freight collect to the small shop? And charge a handling charge for "small orders"? Mod down parent (hardly insightful).

Taxes pay for government and government services. Who builds roads? Hires policemen? Sends a ship into the Atlantic to pull dead bodies out of the water? Where the fuck does the money come from to do all this? From taxes. Back when I was in College as a finance major, we learned the goal of the corporation is to maximize shareholder wealth. We also looked at earnings before Interest, and before Taxes. Taxes do NOT affect profitability. They affect cash balances, something Microsoft has shitloads of. Since then 80/90/00s greed has left us with the worst economy since the Great Depression in the 30s. So guess what, something when wrong. What? a Jackass like that guy from GE figured out that making money was easier than doing work. So business got outsourced, split up, marginalized just to increase shareholders wealth.

Problem is simple: we only define wealth monetarily.

Everyone knows it's Windows 6, KB948465.

It just sends shivers down my spine, a new Mac OS to spend my money on and make my computing experience even more complete! Oh thank you Apple!

I seem to remember in my college days that we learned how corporations looked at profit: before interest, and before taxes Companies don't make less money from their operations because they pay taxes. They just have less cash.

This has to be the most preposterous thing ever posted on /. The Beatles will be the only band from the Rock-N-Roll era that doesn't fade into obscurity. To deny the Beatles, is to deny history.