Most operating systems prefer to erase a block (of memory, or disk) when it is requested the first time after being unallocated; this is done for several reasons, the most notable being some significant performance improvement.

Even with an SSD, writing zeroes to a block to indicate it is now free would cost performance. Nowhere near as much as with a spinning disk, but it'd be there. (Remember, while that I/O operation is being done, that's going to mean some other I/O operation isn't.)

TRIM is an optimization; SSDs have to move data around. Marking a block as free means that it doesn't have to move that block around. (Also, of course, it knows it can use it for a later target or allocation.)

SSDs are best considered as filesystems internally -- they have to do block allocation and mapping, and they have to run consistency checks (and repairs!) at startup. Right now, I think most (if not all) of the vendors use a synchronous garbage-collection scheme, which shows up as random spikes in latencies; TRIM is supposed to help reduce that. (And doing it asynchronously would help a lot as well, of course, but given how often just the basic firmware is buggy, I'm not sure how long it would be until I would trust the SSD firmware to be its own multi-tasking RTOS. :))

Note that I am not disagreeing with Matt there -- just clarifying a tad.

hadn't shown multiple vendors who can't implement TRIM properly. Like the very popular SSD vendor whose firmware treated any TRIM as "TRIM all blocks" several years ago. Or the currently-shipping vendor whose firmware causes TRIM to delete a random block.

Which part of "the publishers set the price and the profit margin" did you not understand?

The sale price is $10, and the publisher benevolently allows Amazon to keep 30% of that. So they send $7 to the publisher, and keep $3. But Apple demands 30% of the sale price, $10. So Amazon doesn't see $10, they see $7. And they still have to send $7 to the publisher. Therefore, Amazon gets nothing.

In many cases, Amazon is not allowed (contractually) to set the price -- the publisher does. This happened last year, when Amazon and MacMillan had their kerfuffle. If you look at Kindle books, if it says "The publisher has set this price," that's what's going on there -- and the publisher has graciously allowed Amazon to take 30% profit on the price the publisher dictates. So, no, Amazon won't be raising prices. They can't. And since Apple takes 30% of the sale price, and the publishers have graciously allowed Amazon to keep 30% of the sale price, that means there is no money for Amazon. Which means no Kindle for iPhone/iPad/whatever. The same thing applies to the Nook.

Yes, quite ridiculous: Apple doesn't set the prices. Apple has price ranges for the developer or publisher to pick, but Apple doesn't set them. (That is, the developer can pick a price of US$0.99, US$1.99, and so forth.)

The South Harmon Institute of Technology.

Unskippable ads. Unlike with cable (with a DVR), where you can fast forward or skip through them, if you've recorded it.

Or not... clicked on the link on an iPad, it then said "No Smokescreen :(".

(Okay, let me amend that -- it is, in fact, very very very impressive, and my hat off to the guy. But as a demo of "Flash on iDevice," not so much.)

I wonder why my 8-bit per channel scanned BW negatives edited in the POS GIMP capture more stops of light than any APS-C or even FF small format digital camera I've seen with a single exposure?

Worse. He's comparing Flash to Apple. All of Apple. That's where I quit reading.

Even the usual comparison of Flash (proprietary) to H.264 (proprietary) is wrong. The proper comparison for video, which is the subject the article is harping on, is Flash (proprietary) to HTML5 (open standard). Most Flash video uses the encumbered H.264 codec, just as Apple has suggested H.264 is the ideal codec to use with HTML5. So the codecs are the same. What's the difference? The container, and one container is indeed proprietary while the other is an open standard.

Triple-bad, I think -- the guy who "found" the phone and rather than leave it with the bar, decided to instead take it and sell it, is probably going to be the target of lawyers as well.

Anyone can remote-wipe their iPhone using the "Find My iPone" page. The fact that it was remote-wiped doesn't mean Apple knew about it.

(It also doesn't mean they didn't know about it. I'm just saying, there's no real evidence here either way, at least not at this point.)

He was convicted of obstruction -- because after getting out of the car in which he was repeatedly assaulted (that is, struck in the face by the officer), he did not immediately drop to the ground when ordered to do so.

I fully agree. I should have made it clear that Amazon's "life" includes their business model. It may be that the publishers can change the business model to the one they prefer; it may be they cannot. Or it may be that some other model will appear. Amazon can try to fight it, can go with the change being pushed by the publishers, or can try to come up with a new model.

My point, however, was that right now, Amazon appears to consider this a life-or-death situation, and are reacting thus.

Personally, as a consumer, I like being able to find deals -- either lower prices, or package deals (e.g., buy all three books in a trilogy for less than the combined prices). As a member of the society, I dislike retailers pushing prices so low that the producers (e.g., manufacturers, publishers, or writers) suffer. As I said, a pox on all of them.

(And I would say that both Macmillan and Amazon are acting as stubbornly and as self-damagingly as the record labels did.)