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What I read on my 'local' tech website (page in Dutch) is they arrested several admins in various countries, and a former admin in the Netherlands. Also, it wasn't a Europol lead operation. Law enforcement agencies of eleven nations were involved from Europe, North America and Hong Kong (Asia), 'in corporation with Europol'.

The site is seized by the US DoD. In the coordinated effort the agencies hunted down various admins. The hunt for other personnel and users of the services is ongoing.

Dutch police is answering questions about the case here on Reddit (in English).

losing value because it is becoming mainstream, and i don't mean you can use it to pay everywhere.
not only everybody knows about bitcoin now (xmas dinner was fun answering all those bitcoin questions, right?), but also governments and 'real' banks are joining the discussion. just last week it was announced that the government is now taking a 33% (!) tax on earnings made with bitcoin ( https://tweakers.net/nieuws/13... - article in dutch), chinese government is also starting to meddle on bitcoins and let us not forget about the banks who now want to cash in on it.
too much regulation, too much involvement of higher powers, means bitcoin is losing its advantage and appeal.

I suspect that there will be information on most countries having some group interested in this.

Dutch police: http://www.nu.nl/internet/4083...
Dutch IRS: http://tweakers.net/nieuws/104...

I have a whole raft of controllers, and I don't bother to use 'em. But that's just because I haven't struck upon the ideal desk setup yet. I mostly fear that I will spend money building a better desk, and then spend a bunch of money buying flight sims and driving games. I have a CH yoke and pedals, and a logi driving force PS2 wheel which ain't amazing but is still pretty good and works great on PC. Supposedly there is working Linux support now, so I am slightly more motivated.

I suppose it's time to google "gaming desk" and gaze in awe. I think perfect has been the enemy of good for me here ever since I saw what is now perhaps the most famous PC case mod.

http://tweakers.net/nieuws/101...
Totally going in the wrong direction.
There's an upcoming vote, but it only affects provincial government. Although they can stop this from happening it's questionable that they will.

Indeed, so it seems. Media says so, but i did not see this news outed officially by Google yet.

I read this at http://tweakers.net/nieuws/957...
which cited http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/...
but that lacks source, i for one did not find the original Google statement regarding business anywhere.

If true, i guess the gmail PGP they considered made it impossible to scan the emails anyway, so they might as well make a big deal out of it. First education ofcourse, it'll simplify that lawsuit and all. http://www.edweek.org/ew/artic...

This is good nerdy news to know! I googled futher, and attached citations. Thanks!

"Tom's Hardware" writes they had to sell off a lot of their facitiies:
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/h...

Western Digital's hopes of turning the hard drive industry into a duopoly have been dashed as the US Federal Trade Commission demands it sells its desktop hard drive manufacturing facilities to a competitor.

Western Digital had previously hoped to purchase Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, manufacturer of previously IBM-made hard drives, in a deal valued at $4.5 billion. While the FTC is allowing the deal to go ahead, it has a major caveat attached.

The revised terms of the acquisition require Western Digital to sell selected Hitachi desktop hard drive-related sales and manufacturing assets to rival Toshiba within 15 days of the acquisition.

Dutch language review follows. I had to copy paste into Google Translate but this person gives the drives a thumbs up at review-time, and wrote if it failed they'd update the review, which hasn't happened. And they wrote specifically with 'green' NAS requirements.
https://tweakers.net/productre...

Now, how to tell if their 3Tb drive is from the former Hitachi Fab?

This was reported on the Dutch site Tweakers as being a hoax, as reported by the layyers office itself here. Translations here and here respectively.

It's worth noting that GIFs may overlay multiple image blocks with separate color pallets, resulting in true color images.

True, but it's kind of a hack.

It's worth noting that GIFs may overlay multiple image blocks with separate color pallets, resulting in true color images.

The problem here is that some browsers (chrome) insert an artificial 0.1s delay between "frames".

Also if you can do this with GIF one has to wonder if APNG has actually any viability other than as a source format.

You do understand what an alpha layer is, right? No, I don't mean cheap one-color transparency, I mean full translucency. PNG can do that trivially. GIF cannot.

Also, PNG can support full 24-bit color without resorting to hacks that depend heavily on the browser's interpretation of an already-nonstandard animation hack on top of a hack of a file format.

It's worth noting that GIFs may overlay multiple image blocks with separate color pallets, resulting in true color images.

The problem here is that some browsers (chrome) insert an artificial 0.1s delay between "frames".

Also if you can do this with GIF one has to wonder if APNG has actually any viability other than as a source format.

Some pictures of the cabinet are found here: http://tweakers.net/nieuws/88635/providerwijkkast-haagse-schilderswijk-zat-vol-spionageapparatuur.html

LOL. The VCR isn't plugged in.

http://ic.tweakimg.net/ext/i/imagelarge/1366532940.jpeg

Some pictures of the cabinet are found here: http://tweakers.net/nieuws/88635/providerwijkkast-haagse-schilderswijk-zat-vol-spionageapparatuur.html

Yes, absolutely.

The â5 levy on e.g. a mediarecorder grants you a lifetime (for the life of the product) right to download any and all music and video products you want. Rather than paying â2500 for 100 DVDs, or â200 for 100 â2 'rentals', â5 and you are set. ... okay, no - not really. No more than the existing levies of a few dimes on tapes, video cassettes, CD-Rs and DVD-Rs are payola for putting those 100 movies on your HTPC.

The levy is a compensation measure for people copying, originating in the era of tapes. It's not a license to make those copies. And yes, it's a levy you pay even if you don't make copies - the alternative would be massive invasions of privacy to determine who is and who isn't making those copies. Or, of course, copyright reform - good luck with that one. Many of the same laws have been applied to the digital era* and with more people downloading to computers, 'MP3 players', etc. the levies on tapes and optical media were starting to be rather outdated.

Then again, downloading of such material is already legal in NL - it's only uploading that is illegal, and even uploaders are basically not targeted. (* This, too, is a result of laws formulated way back when - don't see too many complaints this aspect, though.) Major sites and facilitators on the other hand, are a different story. Several usenet account resellers were booted off by PayPal (while holding on to funds), for example - most likely after complaints by rights holders: http://tweakers.net/nieuws/85659/paypal-sluit-nederlandse-usenet-resellers-af.html

Note: This (the levy) is actually something being handed down from the EU level.. with the usual vague terms, causing each member state to implement things differently and leaving the courts to decide whether the implementation is in accordance, etc.

I sure did. The source I copied the name from uses it like so: http://tweakers.net/meuktracker/28971/warow-10.html
I pasted that, with the replacement for the S like there, and Slashdot then stripped it which I missed. Thanks for clearing it up. :)

Same happens at MS.. upload a file that violates their code of conduct policy to MS sky drive, and your windows 7 phone account will be permanently blocked without telling what file caused it or getting any good response.

Note that that includes files that are not yet shared of, and includes partial nudity

Not just like Google, then, because if Google blocks your Google+ account, only your Google+ account gets blocked, regardless of a bunch of widely-repeated erroneous reporting early on.

Same happens at MS.. upload a file that violates their code of conduct policy to MS sky drive, and your windows 7 phone account will be permanently blocked without telling what file caused it or getting any good response.

Note that that includes files that are not yet shared of, and includes partial nudity

I cannot believe..........no wait....I cannot understand why these things aren't being made with security at the forefront. Surely anyone with half a brain realises that every point of communication with a phone is a potential point of exploitation. LOCK IT DOWN PEOPLE - FOR BLINKY'S SAKE, THIS HAS BEEN GOING ON TOO LONG.

For the nexus phone, the actual exploit was in the browser, NFC was just used to open the browser without the user being asked to do so. On the nokia, the actual exploit was in the bluethooth stack. This particular implementation allows bluetooth device pairing over NFC even if bluetooth is turned off on the phone, so now with NFC the exploit is reachable without the users knowledge. The exploit in the bluetooth stack allows for root access on the device. So the biggest problem with current NFC implementations is they don't ask the user anything, just act on what the other side is giving you. That is the real problem, because now one may change the payment terminal to hack your phone. If I hold my phone against a payment terminal and it asks me to pair a bluetooth device I'll just deny it, but with the current phones, I'm not asked anything. Info from this site (dutch): http://tweakers.net/nieuws/83354/beveiligingsonderzoeker-waarschuwt-voor-misbruik-nfc.html

KPN didn't discover it themselves. An ICT company did (accidentally even), and reported the flaw to an IT site (webwereld.nl) instead of contacting KPN directly.

Dutch link: http://tweakers.net/nieuws/82955/kpn-maakt-blunder-met-standaardwachtwoord-z-adsl-accounts.html and http://webwereld.nl/nieuws/111057/140-000-kpn-adsl-accounts-lek-door-welkom01-fail.html

Like this dutch guy: http://tweakers.net/ext/f/S8yQU57CR777iio7mI1FrcZj/full.jpg

Uh, it pretty much already happened.

(That is, Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, etc., have dropped them, the various logistics are shaking out as we speak.)

Except... in the Netherlands, where DigiNotar is operating from. The government has demanded Microsoft in the Netherlands to delay the rollout of this patch, because it would cause too many problems for users, and because they need more time themselves to get all certificates replaced.

Dutch article about this, including a link to the preliminary report about DigiNotar, here: http://tweakers.net/nieuws/76587/overheid-dwingt-bij-microsoft-vertraagde-windows.html

I would have included links to the original articles if I would have thunk that a significant percentage of /. were competent at reading Dutch.

Awh, poor BT, after taking it up the ass for the content owners, they get it shoved up there again!

Remember that when dealing with the content industry, if you give them a finger, they bite of your head.

Once this motion passed, other motions will be easier and easier until the entire internet consist only of sites the content industry approves off. And politicians who are used to compromises let it all happen because they think the content industry will meet them half way. The problem with meeting someone half way is that if it is you who keeps doing this, sooner or later you are completely on the other side.

For those who can read dutch, read it and weep: http://tweakers.net/nieuws/75349/overheid-hollywood-staat-achter-onze-auteursrechtplannen.html

For those who can't read dutch: You poor wretch of a not quite human being. How can you face the dark void that is your miserable life each day?

Nah, it does became apparent that the second provider (Vodafone) also does DPI ( http://tweakers.net/nieuws/74441/ook-vodafone-geeft-gebruik-dpi-toe.html - Dutch). There are 2 other providers, which have basically not been caught using DPI yet, I am afraid.

Here's how I do it, and how I recommend others do it.

First of all.. almost any notebook that's actually in the notebook category you're going to buy -new- now is going to be powerful enough for internetting, e-mailing, organizing music, photos and video, and editing music, photos and video.
So you really have to figure out what she plans to do with it within the expected lifetime of this new notebook (say 5 years).

If she wants to do -heavy- photo editing, you'll want a slightly beefier CPU. Not a Core i3, but a Core i5. If she's doing a lot of video editing, you'll want a faster HDD (you don't want an SSD for this!) that also has room to spare. Perhaps even find a model that has 2 HDDs so you can RAID1 the things for some peace of mind - though I would go with an external HDD at this point, hook it up with FireWire or eSATA for some speed over USB2*. If she's working with programs that read/write semi-randomly a lot, an SSD might be beneficial. If she plays a lot of heavy 3d games, you'll want to make sure it has more than just an IGP on board - check review sites for what the better mobile graphics cards are these days. * On USB.. USB 3 is coming.. if you're pondering upgrades on storage and such, that might be something to keep in mind as to whether it has it on-board, etc. Working with graphics also usually means a bigger screen (think 17" or above), whereas internet/e-mail.. well, 13" (just above netbooks) should do.

Be flexible with your specs, though, as these are what limit your absolute market choices.
Now go out into that market.. i.e. visit a Best Buy or whatever other store that has lots of models on display. The reason for this is one of the most important parts of choosing any notebook.. you want it to 'feel' right and look right. By 'feel' right, I'm talking literally about feeling when it comes to typing (do you want to be stuck with a notebook for 5 years that you think is weird to type on?) but also whether things are laid out well for you, individually. This goes hand-in-hand with looks. You don't want to look at a machine that you think is ugly for whatever reason; glossy screen when you prefer matte, some swirly pattern on the housing that some designer thought looked great but you're wondering who would want to be seen with that, etc.
Yes, some of those are probably petty concerns... but remember, this is going to be your wife's notebook.. she'll be working with it a fair bit. She's already demonstrated that her dislike of a notebook can easily turn into discarding of said notebook.

So go and set out to find 5 models that fall within your tech specs and have the right feel and look. Now go online and find out what the reviews are for those.. check the positives, check the negatives.. weigh them according to your wife's desires. I.e. if somebody complains that the bluetooth is dodgy and she never uses bluetooth and doesn't see herself using bluetooth ever, but it otherwise gets glowing reviews, why rule it out?

You should be able to narrow it down to just 1 model, and that ought to be your choice.

You can then choose to order it online, or buy it in the store where you saw it.. both have their merits; for one, the store did offer you the chance to look at it in person and touch it and all that. But if they charge quite a lot more than you can get it online, that may not factor in so much.

If you really don't want to deal with this choice business, you can always go online to some review sites. Some of them have a periodically updated list of 'best notebook for X' things. The Dutch tweakers.net site is one of them, and the models recommended there may be available wherever you are, but I wouldn't count on it (EU market is fairly different from US and Asia).

http://tweakers.net/reviews/1993/notebook-best-buy-guide-februari-2011.html (base/business/gaming, from Feb 2011)

Here are some benchmarks to prove it. Sparc gives 2-3 times less performance per core at much higher cost.

According to the Dutch site tweakers.net ( http://tweakers.net/nieuws/69349/garmin-roept-nuvi-navigatiesystemen-terug.html ), the supplier of the battery will take on the cost of replacing the battery. So it seems there's at least an issue with that battery and who knows if other devices may also be affected.

It also mentions, however, that Garmin will be adding a spacer between the battery and the PCB.

So, speculation time... 1. the battery's casing may not have been up to spec and under some circumstances can lead to a conductive area that is -not- one of terminals being exposed and 2. the battery's proximity to - possibly direct contact with - the PCB actually made this into an issue simply because a soldered pin may end up touching the exposed area and shorting the battery or otherwise causing a too high draw bypassing the safety systems usually in place. Wouldn't be the first time.. but, again, speculation.

build a monitor in the drivebays http://tweakers.net/ext/f/yH7HML9VL2L3Rk5OK5grdosF/full.jpg full story (dutch) http://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/list_messages/1359397/0//scherm%2Cdrivebay All credit goes to Terw_Dan here, not my mod. Very impressive, and most useful solution of the drivebay space i've seen so far.

build a monitor in the drivebays http://tweakers.net/ext/f/yH7HML9VL2L3Rk5OK5grdosF/full.jpg full story (dutch) http://gathering.tweakers.net/forum/list_messages/1359397/0//scherm%2Cdrivebay All credit goes to Terw_Dan here, not my mod. Very impressive, and most useful solution of the drivebay space i've seen so far.

Mark Moons of HTC Benelux posted his response to twitter.
source: http://tweakers.net/nieuws/68622/mobieltjesmakers-reageren-fel-op-antennevergelijking-van-apple.html
( the comment threads there are a lovely Apple vs The World whinefest )

Translated (Google fails due to colloquial word usage)
"Is Jobs yacking about the reception on competing devices to justify his own design error? I must seeing it wrong*"
( * "I must be misinterpreting", though that would typically be written as "Ik zal het wel verkeerd begrijpen")
http://twitter.com/markmoons/status/18702074270

"....ok, stopped following that fruitlet's sobstory.... got better things to do... he's denigrating the industry."
http://twitter.com/markmoons/status/18702370046

The article you're referring to can be found here (Dutch text, but the attached image / graph is in English).

It's data from 2008 and shows that RIM and Apple together have about 3% of the market share, yet make 35% of all the profits in that market.

Even more telling is mobile data usage, which exploded since the release of the iPhone.

Just find a reputable computer seller and order a machine that fits your budget. It'll probably run whatever you need it to run. If Oblivion is the heaviest game you're going to run, you can be done for about $500 probably.

If you don't want the same boring standard machine that everybody else has, then you'll have to do some research. I did that 2 years ago. My main resource was Silent PC Review because I was tired of my old jet-engine-soundalike. AnandTech is also a good source, as is Tweakers, if you happen to be Dutch. Lots of articles on those sites will refer to Tom's Hardware, which does benchmark graphs, but really, just get what everybody's recommending.

Two years ago, I went with:

• Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (brand new at the time, very fast, very low power usage, therefore little heat) with a passive Scythe Ninja cooler,
• ATI HD3850 (new, powerful, not overly expensive, good for all games expect Crysis, low power usage when not doing 3D stuff) from Peak (cheaper than other HD3850s because they had a badly fitted cooler which I was going to replace anyway) with passive Accelero S1 cooler (very effective passive cooler, and very cheap).
• Seasonic S12II-380 power supply (SeaSonic has the quietest PSUs, and 380 W is more than enough for a modern PC that doesn't try to waste as much power as possible),
• Antec Solo case (Antec makes the quietest cases, but stay away from their power supplies)
• Some new Samsung harddisk that everybody else was using too.
• Some Gigabyte motherboard with P35 chipset, which was what you needed two years ago

All of this cost me about EUR 1000. Very happy with it. Dead quiet, too. Mind you, this is from 2 years ago. There's probably better, cheaper, quieter, faster stuff around now, but I'm not keeping up.

As for the dual core/quad core stuff: how many heavy CPU-using applications will you be running at the same time? Will your heaviest applications be able to make efficient use of multiple cores? If you don't know, go with dual core. One for the main app, one for everything else. No need to have to extra cores that are only idling all the time.

And (a screenshot of) the original post by "Vendetta":

http://tweakers.net/ext/i/1256117383.png

I wonder if this is the same 'hack' used to attack Belgacom.
http://tweakers.net/nieuws/63200/belgacom-hacker-publiceerde-authentieke-inloggegevens-van-klanten.html

For the curious, a quick recap in English...

A hacker going by the name 'Vendetta', supposedly an American living in Belgium, got fed up with the monthly data cap (at Belgacom, figured out that there's a way to find the username/password for a modem by browsing to it (much as in this article), did that to a claimed several thousand (285,000) modems, and is threatening to release them slowly over time until November 30th as long as Belgacom keeps its monthly data cap.

So far this hacker released 30 usernames/passwords, and they were found to be genuine.

Belgacom contacted authorities, is investigating the claimed method of hacking, blabla.

The modem in question with Belgacom is labeled a "B-Box2-modem".

This has good coverage: http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=hp&hl=en&js=y&u=http%3A%2F%2Ftweakers.net%2Fnieuws%2F61541%2Frechter-verbiedt-the-pirate-bay-in-nederland-update.html&sl=nl&tl=en&history_state0= (In dutch http://tweakers.net/nieuws/61541/rechter-verbiedt-the-pirate-bay-in-nederland-update.html )

Check out here as well...

Who am I kidding. The article was posted hours ago while I slept, no one will ever read this now...

This are only charges.

Last year someone already got 20 years for something similar: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28319199

Upheld by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Also, this is not just a US thing, it's happening everywhere in the West.

Example from The Netherlands here.

They claim there images could be used to persuade children into engaging in sexual contacts.

If you're ever wondering why we're all saying goodbye to our privacy, look no further:

http://www.reformsexoffenderlaws.org/materials/Sexual_Fascism_in_Progressive_America.php

I have always wondered why people do not use PostgreSQL that much. It is better than MySQL in terms of stability and scalability.

You might wonder how I came to this conclusion. Well, I have used MySQL with MythTV and I have gotten sick and tired of corrupted databases/tables.

I have a read a reviews of PostgreSQL's stability and scalability beyond two cores and have no doubts it is better than MySQL on this front, though there have also been crowds here at Slashdot who think MySQL is better. My experience suggests otherwise.

And that's exactly what Sun's Niagara processors are: 8 cores running 4 threads apiece, and fast at integer math.

That would be great for sun oracle except for one problematic fact. They don't compare favorably to stock x86's in the mysql/posgresql benchmarks.

Skype is one, if not the biggest users of PostgreSQL and has released some tools that they use to manage their PostgreSQL cluster that are probably worth looking into.

With postgresql, you also have the option of scaling vertically instead of just horizontally. It seems that Postgresql scales better than MySQL across multiple cpus/cores and handles heavy load better.

Another interesting benchmark shows that both Postgresql and MySQL handle load better on Solaris instead of Linux.

Skype is one, if not the biggest users of PostgreSQL and has released some tools that they use to manage their PostgreSQL cluster that are probably worth looking into.

With postgresql, you also have the option of scaling vertically instead of just horizontally. It seems that Postgresql scales better than MySQL across multiple cpus/cores and handles heavy load better.

Another interesting benchmark shows that both Postgresql and MySQL handle load better on Solaris instead of Linux.

Not sure that it was such a good idea moving the servers to Netherlands.

The local RIAA (BREIN), have been pretty successful in having the law 'bent' to their will and having various torrent sites closed down.

Even now they've announced that the want to block the Pirate Bay in Netherlands [link is in dutch]:

http://tweakers.net/nieuws/59677/brein-wil-na-vonnis-the-pirate-bay-in-nederland-laten-blokkeren.html

Rough translation: "Brein will use the guilty judgement against the Pirate Bay operators as a chance to try and convince the government to block Pirate Bay in Netherlands".

The current parliment act as if they're in the pockets of Brein, so I'm not sure why TPB thought it safe to put the servers here.

What we really need is some sort of decentralised torrent client.

How exactly did they "fuck with the formula"?

Most of the things Sun was trying to do seemed reasonable from my perspective.

One example is this MySQL developer complaining about how Sun wanted to scale up so that MySQL can work better across multiple processors/cores.

That seems like a no brainer looking at where everyone is going with multi core, multi threaded cpus. Here's a review of one of Sun's CMT servers that shows a comparison of MySQL vs Postgresql scalability down the page. PostgreSQL blows MySQL away.

For a MySQL developer to be complaining that Sun wants to scale up when that's where everyone is going is ridiculous. You can build yourself an 8 core opteron system pretty cheap these days. 16 cores is even possible but not cheap.

Database do better when they scale vertically rather than horizontally. It's also much easier to maintain. The best price performance you'll get for most db applications is to have a single server with a lot of locally attached 2.5" Velociraptor or SAS 15k Drives.

And for I'd guess 99% of the people posting on here, you could host their sites all on the same box and nobody would tell the difference.

The only other thing I can recall is when MySQL CEO announced a new tool that would be available for Enterprise clients (paid) only but then Sun made them open source it.

Sounds to me like Sun might have been good for MySQL, but I'm not so sure MySQL will be good for Sun.

I think MySQL will start loosing more towards PostgreSQL as people need a better RDBMS and to these newer non RDBMS DBs that are coming out for those that just need an easy scalable persistance layer.

I mean, look at this. It's clearly Apple's IP. It's clearly a new invention.

Hmmm.

Not sure about that.

And what about Nokia?

What's all this talk about 1 GB or 2 GB SD cards? Come on, 16 GB cards are available for as little as 32 euros, and the 32 GB cards ~100 euros. Buying a dozen of 16 GB SD cards costs less than 400 euros. Surely a professional could cough up that amount.

You can also read it in Dutch ;) here)

But another way is ofcourse English. Full story from researchers right here

I get a prize now for finding it ;)?

Message from the netherlands, and this has been in the news for a couple of days over here as well.
The i aint going into whether or legal system is good, if our priorities are screwed up, whether our sentences are too high or too low, but just a little feedback from the dutch sources.
please dont hold me for not using the proper words for everything, i will try to explain this as good as I can.
The sentence the 2 boys got was for stealing property with violence.
The motivation of the judge was that like with real-life property you had to go thru some kind of effort to obtain these items and being able to use them afterwards, therefor it is property and had some kind of value(ingame gold, status, emotional)
His motivation for calling it theft was that the boy who got beaten and threatened wasnt able to use the "property" after this, saying his property wasnt within reach for him and therefor stolen.

I hope this clearifies any questions about how the judgement was made.

sources(in dutch):
http://games.fok.nl/news.php?newsid=27831
http://tweakers.net/nieuws/56315/jongeren-veroordeeld-tot-werkstraffen-wegens-diefstal-virtuele-goederen.html
http://webwereld.nl/articles/53099/taakstraf-ge-ist-voor-digitale-diefstal.html

This would imply that for a certain software product the US version would cost less than a localized version. A quick look tweakers price watch seems to confirm this.
If you look at this page you see that the US Int. version for Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 costs 113,18 euro whereas the dutch version costs 240,30 euro.
I know, statistically "one" means "none" and I'm not sure what the "US Int." means. Are there any other examples where the non localized version is cheaper than the localized version for the same software product?

Years ago RAID cards switched to PCI-X to gain the increased bus bandwidth and now you'll find them using PCI-Express.

The PCI bus is slow. Not slow enough to notice if you are using a 100mbit network card or a sound card, but definately too slow for modern GigE network, SATA drives, and graphics.

I had to dig back to 2003 to find an article where they had bothered testing PCI for RAID bandwidth. The results are unsurprising.

I like a bit of quality.