If I was talking about windows update you would be correct!
Windows has phoned home without any need of requesting an update since Windows 2000 at least, probably before than. Most of it is just ID information, but it does do it outside of windows update.
Microsoft already does this, and has for a number of years and they still haven't been fined by anyone for the practice. They just don't TELL you they're doing this. I prefer the honesty and the simple goal from Canonical.
Shit, all my grandfathers children are treating him like a borderline invalid now, and he's still in good shape. I took him out cutting wood for a few weeks winter before last. Sure he can't do as much as he used to, but not being treated like an invalid and doing something useful for a few weeks... the poor guy looked better for months afterwards than he had for years previously.
Seriously though, a man that can still safely swing a chain saw plus haul the logs he cut(all but the biggest, some of which I couldn't even move without further segmenting) is far from an invalid. I personally think this is a very widespread flaw in the current 30-60 generation in regards to their parents. I guess a lot of the 40-60 crowd led cushier lives and already can't do a lot of what their parents still can at 60-80+. I know thats a lot of the reason my grandfathers children treat him like an invalid. They basically look at it and go "Shit, I can't even begin to do that, theres no way its even safe for him to try!" Meanwhile he'd run circles around them.
I'm currently looking for a good part time job for him(something suitable, similar to what he did all his life, but of course without too much back breaking labour, he is in his 70's) just to get his spirits up. People don't understand it, my own generation included, but sometimes people are happier when they're WORKING. Not everyone digs the "Get as much money saved as I can so I can be as lazy as possible for as long as possible" lifestyle. My grandfather retired at 65 because the family basically forced him to. He wouldn't have if it was his choice.
Obviously his situation isn't going to be the situation of every other older person out there. If you've got one of those age related bone diseases or develop heart problems... things like that, then obviously for your own health you can't do what you've always done. Otherwise... people should just be more supportive and let folks do whatever the hell they want to do.
One other pet peeve of mine is that people complain that "Oh but that 65 year old man/woman doesn't need to work, they're taking a job away from a young person just starting out!". Well let me be the first one to say, if you're 15-25 and you can't out work a 65 year old its time to put down the god damn cheetos and get off the couch.
Sorry for going a bit far off topic, but back on topic: My grandfather is in a high risk group for developing a particularly nasty brand of alzheimers, and one of the most effective methods of keeping it at bay is exercise, so it really hits home for me when people mention this sort of thing, and pisses me off to no extent at the rest of my family.
Though I support the idea of them plugging *some* leaks. If they have a week or two to get any operatives that may still be working out of harms way then that would be a good thing.
The paranoia in the US may have some foundation in reality but its been taken to an extreme. Hell, the US has far more operatives than any other country. They have more operatives in Canada than Canada has operatives. The CSUS IT branch specifically warns new hires(who don't know anything important anyways) against anyone that looks/sounds like they may possibly be from south of the border, and a lot of the reason the US agents are in Canada is just to make sure that Canada itself is keeping tight security!
It is very true and there is a very large very powerful misinformation campaign going on against Wikileaks right now. Amnesty International does do good work, but they also bend over backwards to various governments requests in order to get anything that they would deem "more important". They've done it in the past, and I fscking HATE to be crying conspiracy but this just stinks too much.
The thousands of pounds of CO2 get eaten by the battery disposal for the most part(net pollution wise), so I can see them marking it at $0. Of course that will probably change soon, but the current hybrids on the road basically don't pollute any less.
Pure electric has good pollution savings, but hybrids are a lot closer to the feel good thats portrayed in the article than an actual "save the planet" motive.
On the same note there are a few newer hybrids that were prototyped in 2010 that will change that, so it will become a valid "save the planet" choice soon.
Wired: "Oh shit we're out of bandwidth. Guess we'll have to install more wires and associated routing equipment"
Wireless: "Oh shit, we're out of bandwidth....... Wait, we're fucked aren't we?" FCC: "Yep."
Theres nothing bad in this, all good. Theres a very very valid reason for the wireless. People should stop whining and take the victory for what it is.
Alright, since so many people have responded by beating a very very dead MS Office horse to my compatibility point, I'm going to take a moment to respond to yours.
#1 That teacher is a dickhead and should still be saving her MS Office files to 97-2003 format by default. No the new shinies in 2k7+ are not worth saving to the format. Every time I hear about someone like this I want to take them out back of the chemical shed and shoot them.
#2 Office applications, despite popular belief, are not the game breaker for compatibility. There are an absolute truckload of apps out there(many many teaching apps included) that will only run on windows. If you're a techie then boot camp/xen or wine/parallels might get them to work fine but lets face it, 99% of people do not fall into the category that can get this to work and provide their OWN support if something breaks.
That aside, getting your kid a Mac(especially young kids) is not doing them any sort of favor. Their best bet is to learn how to use what is still the OS of choice for businesses around the world. Basic skills in it are far more important than any sort of apple idealism or "Windoze sux" jargon.
Those are comparable specs. Macs run faster but the 1gb extra ram and 500 mhz are going to make it up easily. The mac tax is still very real and very large, they just try to distract you from it.
The fact that the stickers are included as making a difference makes ME think you were joking, but then again if you are actually a mac user.... you probably aren't.
The $450 toshiba laptops are fine and half the models in that range come without a keypad.
On the other hand I prefer my $550 lenovo. They did include a keypad but with thin keys, making the keyboard about normal sized since the screen is 16:9, which I prefer anyways and have on all of my desktops. I could have gotten a $400 lenovo or toshiba but I wanted a video chip that didn't have intel written on it.
The three macbooks I've used on the other hand I can't stand, the keys all have that weird feeling like theres already a fine powder spilled on them. Other than that, which admittedly is a personal pet peeve and probably doesn't apply ot a lot of other people, they're fine ergonomically, but by no means far superior to any other laptop.
Also they should check the numbers on how many people buy a mac going into college, realize its an expensive piece of shit after a year(Compatibility? Whats that?) and have to go buy a real computer anyways. I personally know 3 people that have "had to have" one and were immediately disgusted that they had spent so much money on something that offered very little extra and was actually worse in some cases. Of those people 1 admits it freely and 2 give you a strange look and espouse the virtues of the mac while already having admitted they won't buy another one.
Ah hell, maybe they'll discover some new mineral deposits of stuff thats really really useful but really rare on earth? Who the hell knows what they'll find until we go there?
This is a good idea. Someone should do something with this.
I like the tax holiday idea. I would include that any patent filed by any company using or directly related to a company using(same owners, major shareholders etc) becomes public domain immediately.
I would still keep nasa around at a reduced budget for developing new important techs as I said. 5-10b yearly in pure R&D will produce a whole crapload of really cool stuff that someone will eventually find a use for, even if it happens to not be in the space industry.
Agreed. The crap apple pulls and gets away with these days is something on a scale that I've never seen before... of course, that goes for many corporations nowadays.
It really just seems to me that they're getting more and more bold in regards to flaunting both the law and their purchased law makers...(not just apple, a whole bunch of different companies). Maybe people will start waking up to it soon. Then again... maybe not.
Let me be the first to say... I do NOT welcome our new corporate overlords.
No, I'm not espousing a free-market fantasy. If I had I would have advocated getting rid of NASA altogether.
What nasa should do is develop new technologies that will be required for space exploration. The end specs/components/implementation should be left to someone else however(in my opinion, of course). Preferably smaller, leaner, space startups. Companies that are willing to and capable of taking more risks. There comes a point when decreasing the chance of failure another.0001% isn't worth the next 10 million dollars. You do a run, if it fails, you do another one. The money spent on R&D is still there plus you now have practical data.
Making a material that absorbs heat better, or a combination thereof, or an entirely new system for dispersing the heat. Those sorts of things. They should be the realm of NASA. That should be the realm of NASA. Government funding is very good. Very very good. Its great at getting things invented. What government generally isn't good at doing until its forced on them is innovating. Thats what business is good at.
On the other hand, particularly lately with all these insanely rich but incredibly risk-averse asses out there, a lot of businesses are either slowing down massively on new tech or giving up developing new things entirely, letting someone else do it and then either stealing it or licensing it from them, and innovating with it.
Theres a good chance I can utilize technology X after its finished development... but if I put money into it now theres a chance it never finishes and those dollars are completely gone. On the other hand if Technology X is finished and working... well theres something I can do with it right now! It removes a layer of risk for new endeavors to not develop most of the technologies involved yourself.
Thats the main reason I think R&D should become even more the responsibility of government than it is now... for almost everything I feel it would improve everyones lives, and mostly abolish a lot of the industry patent lockouts that happen now, since everyone would have access at the same rate.
People told me I was crazy when I told them a few years ago I expected to see colonization of Mars within my lifetime.
I'm just so glad to see that someone is still working on it.
Now if the US could get their congress-critters to stop wasting cash on it... NASA should be technology development only. Implementation should be left to others(at least in my humble opinion). I think a lot more would actually happen that way.
I've noticed that it tends to slow down the system a couple of minutes after I maximize the window if its been left running in the background, and it had nothing to do with it caching to the hard disk or something... not sure whats causing it. Other than that I've seen none of the issues listed in the article...
It won't fix everything, but it will save a few lives, which is what the article said to me.
Lack of housing, poor health care, and lack of education are also all directly linked to the cost of transport. Government only has so much money and it currently costs multiple times the value of the goods to transport them to the needed locations.
Also don't point me to an article done by a fellow that visited briefly at best and doesn't actually know any of the logistics involved in doing anything at all up here. I live here, I am not from here, but I do live here. The reality is much different than the picture thats painted by most government reports.
There are a lot of social problems, but there are people working towards solving those problems. One of the largest slowdowns to progress is transport.
On education... how are you going to educate if you don't have a school that is sufficient to do it in? A piece of plywood that costs $15 to buy at home depot somewhere down south costs another $10-15 to get in here by boat, and you damn well better make sure you get enough then because if you don't you either have to fly it, and then you're looking at anywhere from $60 to $100 per sheet in freight, or you're waiting another year for the next boat.
To put that into more perspective for you: A hospital that would cost 3 million down south will cost 5 to 6 million here, IF you don't go into overruns and air freight. If anything is emergency and gets flown it it starts climbing higher.
Anything at all that starts reducing that 2-3 million extra overhead on that hospital is a huge step in the right direction. Even if its only air freight that it reduces and gets the total overrun much closer to or maybe a little below that 2 million, thats still a lot of money.
You're downplaying something that would ordinarily, down south somewhere, be fine to downplay, because honestly, it doesn't play as large a role. When you're looking at it up here, the dollar figure for it is so huge that it actually becomes central to everything.
Spoken by one who has no idea about the actual issues and hasn't been there. It happens quite frequently that items can't be gotten at any price. I've seen a 2 kg bag of flour go for over $50.
Yes there are other social issues at play in the communities but they are very far from the only issues in those communities. Do yourself and others a favor and do not speak of that which you do not know in certainties and absolutes.
With an actual land line involved it works out to 263mb per hour, low side. I get charged $25/gb over my limit so this is significant. Works out to $6.58 for an hour of talk time. In comparison my cell phone from bell with the package I have(and use all of) it is approximately $3.50 per hour talk time during regular hours and much less than that between 6 pm and 8 am + weekends.
I can't see a cell provider charging a whole lot less than that for data over usage.
The reason for this is that I live in a very remote area and the local Telco has zero competition and claims "Satellites are expensive" as the reason for the bill. My 10gb/mo connection costs 129.99/mo. The usual corporate BS though, they report record profits every year and continue to receive government grants that make up 50%+ of their profits in order to "Make it worthwhile to keep doing business here"
Also I may have screwed up some KB abbreviations there, but thats not bits I'm quoting, thats bytes. Overall its cheaper for me to talk on a Ventrilo server on 32kbit speex Codec when possible, their bitrates are more managable, usually around half of skype. Teamspeak is better still but I can't get the same quality of sound from them and I'm bad at hearing through static. Some people can manage it fine but its too distracting for me and I miss everything the other person is saying. The newer teamspeak apparently fixes most of this but I haven't had the time/opportunity to try it.
I live in a place where my DSL is capped to 10 gb/month making monitoring usage an absolute necessity.
Skype eats around 40kb/s most of the time if anyone is actually talking. Droops down to 5-8kb/s if the line is muted on both ends. Throw an actual land line into the mix and that drives it up to 60-70kb/s.
Honestly the PCIe cards are not even tapping on the door of the halfway mark for potential PCIe Bandwidth. I fail to see why keeping a good standard for the next 6 years is a down side.
Slashdot Mirror
If I was talking about windows update you would be correct!
Windows has phoned home without any need of requesting an update since Windows 2000 at least, probably before than. Most of it is just ID information, but it does do it outside of windows update.
Microsoft already does this, and has for a number of years and they still haven't been fined by anyone for the practice. They just don't TELL you they're doing this. I prefer the honesty and the simple goal from Canonical.
So THATS why I can't remember english lit at all...
Shit, all my grandfathers children are treating him like a borderline invalid now, and he's still in good shape. I took him out cutting wood for a few weeks winter before last. Sure he can't do as much as he used to, but not being treated like an invalid and doing something useful for a few weeks... the poor guy looked better for months afterwards than he had for years previously.
Seriously though, a man that can still safely swing a chain saw plus haul the logs he cut(all but the biggest, some of which I couldn't even move without further segmenting) is far from an invalid. I personally think this is a very widespread flaw in the current 30-60 generation in regards to their parents. I guess a lot of the 40-60 crowd led cushier lives and already can't do a lot of what their parents still can at 60-80+. I know thats a lot of the reason my grandfathers children treat him like an invalid. They basically look at it and go "Shit, I can't even begin to do that, theres no way its even safe for him to try!" Meanwhile he'd run circles around them.
I'm currently looking for a good part time job for him(something suitable, similar to what he did all his life, but of course without too much back breaking labour, he is in his 70's) just to get his spirits up. People don't understand it, my own generation included, but sometimes people are happier when they're WORKING. Not everyone digs the "Get as much money saved as I can so I can be as lazy as possible for as long as possible" lifestyle. My grandfather retired at 65 because the family basically forced him to. He wouldn't have if it was his choice.
Obviously his situation isn't going to be the situation of every other older person out there. If you've got one of those age related bone diseases or develop heart problems... things like that, then obviously for your own health you can't do what you've always done. Otherwise... people should just be more supportive and let folks do whatever the hell they want to do.
One other pet peeve of mine is that people complain that "Oh but that 65 year old man/woman doesn't need to work, they're taking a job away from a young person just starting out!". Well let me be the first one to say, if you're 15-25 and you can't out work a 65 year old its time to put down the god damn cheetos and get off the couch.
Sorry for going a bit far off topic, but back on topic: My grandfather is in a high risk group for developing a particularly nasty brand of alzheimers, and one of the most effective methods of keeping it at bay is exercise, so it really hits home for me when people mention this sort of thing, and pisses me off to no extent at the rest of my family.
This.
Though I support the idea of them plugging *some* leaks. If they have a week or two to get any operatives that may still be working out of harms way then that would be a good thing.
The paranoia in the US may have some foundation in reality but its been taken to an extreme. Hell, the US has far more operatives than any other country. They have more operatives in Canada than Canada has operatives. The CSUS IT branch specifically warns new hires(who don't know anything important anyways) against anyone that looks/sounds like they may possibly be from south of the border, and a lot of the reason the US agents are in Canada is just to make sure that Canada itself is keeping tight security!
It is very true and there is a very large very powerful misinformation campaign going on against Wikileaks right now. Amnesty International does do good work, but they also bend over backwards to various governments requests in order to get anything that they would deem "more important". They've done it in the past, and I fscking HATE to be crying conspiracy but this just stinks too much.
The thousands of pounds of CO2 get eaten by the battery disposal for the most part(net pollution wise), so I can see them marking it at $0. Of course that will probably change soon, but the current hybrids on the road basically don't pollute any less.
Pure electric has good pollution savings, but hybrids are a lot closer to the feel good thats portrayed in the article than an actual "save the planet" motive.
On the same note there are a few newer hybrids that were prototyped in 2010 that will change that, so it will become a valid "save the planet" choice soon.
Congrats Goeland86, you win one logic award.
Everything you just said is true.
To paraphrase for anyone who doesn't understand:
Wired: "Oh shit we're out of bandwidth. Guess we'll have to install more wires and associated routing equipment"
Wireless: "Oh shit, we're out of bandwidth. ... ... Wait, we're fucked aren't we?" FCC: "Yep."
Theres nothing bad in this, all good. Theres a very very valid reason for the wireless. People should stop whining and take the victory for what it is.
Alright, since so many people have responded by beating a very very dead MS Office horse to my compatibility point, I'm going to take a moment to respond to yours.
#1 That teacher is a dickhead and should still be saving her MS Office files to 97-2003 format by default. No the new shinies in 2k7+ are not worth saving to the format. Every time I hear about someone like this I want to take them out back of the chemical shed and shoot them.
#2 Office applications, despite popular belief, are not the game breaker for compatibility. There are an absolute truckload of apps out there(many many teaching apps included) that will only run on windows. If you're a techie then boot camp/xen or wine/parallels might get them to work fine but lets face it, 99% of people do not fall into the category that can get this to work and provide their OWN support if something breaks.
That aside, getting your kid a Mac(especially young kids) is not doing them any sort of favor. Their best bet is to learn how to use what is still the OS of choice for businesses around the world. Basic skills in it are far more important than any sort of apple idealism or "Windoze sux" jargon.
Those are comparable specs. Macs run faster but the 1gb extra ram and 500 mhz are going to make it up easily. The mac tax is still very real and very large, they just try to distract you from it.
The fact that the stickers are included as making a difference makes ME think you were joking, but then again if you are actually a mac user.... you probably aren't.
Excuse you?
The $450 toshiba laptops are fine and half the models in that range come without a keypad.
On the other hand I prefer my $550 lenovo. They did include a keypad but with thin keys, making the keyboard about normal sized since the screen is 16:9, which I prefer anyways and have on all of my desktops. I could have gotten a $400 lenovo or toshiba but I wanted a video chip that didn't have intel written on it.
The three macbooks I've used on the other hand I can't stand, the keys all have that weird feeling like theres already a fine powder spilled on them. Other than that, which admittedly is a personal pet peeve and probably doesn't apply ot a lot of other people, they're fine ergonomically, but by no means far superior to any other laptop.
Also they should check the numbers on how many people buy a mac going into college, realize its an expensive piece of shit after a year(Compatibility? Whats that?) and have to go buy a real computer anyways. I personally know 3 people that have "had to have" one and were immediately disgusted that they had spent so much money on something that offered very little extra and was actually worse in some cases. Of those people 1 admits it freely and 2 give you a strange look and espouse the virtues of the mac while already having admitted they won't buy another one.
I'm sorry, but I have to state my undying love for whoever modded this to +4 informative.
Ah hell, maybe they'll discover some new mineral deposits of stuff thats really really useful but really rare on earth? Who the hell knows what they'll find until we go there?
You're just a killjoy :P
This is a good idea. Someone should do something with this.
I like the tax holiday idea. I would include that any patent filed by any company using or directly related to a company using(same owners, major shareholders etc) becomes public domain immediately.
I would still keep nasa around at a reduced budget for developing new important techs as I said. 5-10b yearly in pure R&D will produce a whole crapload of really cool stuff that someone will eventually find a use for, even if it happens to not be in the space industry.
Agreed. The crap apple pulls and gets away with these days is something on a scale that I've never seen before... of course, that goes for many corporations nowadays.
It really just seems to me that they're getting more and more bold in regards to flaunting both the law and their purchased law makers...(not just apple, a whole bunch of different companies). Maybe people will start waking up to it soon. Then again... maybe not.
Let me be the first to say... I do NOT welcome our new corporate overlords.
No, I'm not espousing a free-market fantasy. If I had I would have advocated getting rid of NASA altogether.
What nasa should do is develop new technologies that will be required for space exploration. The end specs/components/implementation should be left to someone else however(in my opinion, of course). Preferably smaller, leaner, space startups. Companies that are willing to and capable of taking more risks. There comes a point when decreasing the chance of failure another .0001% isn't worth the next 10 million dollars. You do a run, if it fails, you do another one. The money spent on R&D is still there plus you now have practical data.
Making a material that absorbs heat better, or a combination thereof, or an entirely new system for dispersing the heat. Those sorts of things. They should be the realm of NASA. That should be the realm of NASA. Government funding is very good. Very very good. Its great at getting things invented. What government generally isn't good at doing until its forced on them is innovating. Thats what business is good at.
On the other hand, particularly lately with all these insanely rich but incredibly risk-averse asses out there, a lot of businesses are either slowing down massively on new tech or giving up developing new things entirely, letting someone else do it and then either stealing it or licensing it from them, and innovating with it.
Theres a good chance I can utilize technology X after its finished development... but if I put money into it now theres a chance it never finishes and those dollars are completely gone. On the other hand if Technology X is finished and working... well theres something I can do with it right now! It removes a layer of risk for new endeavors to not develop most of the technologies involved yourself.
Thats the main reason I think R&D should become even more the responsibility of government than it is now... for almost everything I feel it would improve everyones lives, and mostly abolish a lot of the industry patent lockouts that happen now, since everyone would have access at the same rate.
People told me I was crazy when I told them a few years ago I expected to see colonization of Mars within my lifetime.
I'm just so glad to see that someone is still working on it.
Now if the US could get their congress-critters to stop wasting cash on it... NASA should be technology development only. Implementation should be left to others(at least in my humble opinion). I think a lot more would actually happen that way.
There was supposed to be a "for" in there somewhere before someone jumps on it. :P
and its not a huge slowdown, just barely noticeable.
I've noticed that it tends to slow down the system a couple of minutes after I maximize the window if its been left running in the background, and it had nothing to do with it caching to the hard disk or something... not sure whats causing it. Other than that I've seen none of the issues listed in the article...
(WinXP Sp3, very thin install)
It won't fix everything, but it will save a few lives, which is what the article said to me.
Lack of housing, poor health care, and lack of education are also all directly linked to the cost of transport. Government only has so much money and it currently costs multiple times the value of the goods to transport them to the needed locations.
Also don't point me to an article done by a fellow that visited briefly at best and doesn't actually know any of the logistics involved in doing anything at all up here. I live here, I am not from here, but I do live here. The reality is much different than the picture thats painted by most government reports.
There are a lot of social problems, but there are people working towards solving those problems. One of the largest slowdowns to progress is transport.
On education... how are you going to educate if you don't have a school that is sufficient to do it in? A piece of plywood that costs $15 to buy at home depot somewhere down south costs another $10-15 to get in here by boat, and you damn well better make sure you get enough then because if you don't you either have to fly it, and then you're looking at anywhere from $60 to $100 per sheet in freight, or you're waiting another year for the next boat.
To put that into more perspective for you: A hospital that would cost 3 million down south will cost 5 to 6 million here, IF you don't go into overruns and air freight. If anything is emergency and gets flown it it starts climbing higher.
Anything at all that starts reducing that 2-3 million extra overhead on that hospital is a huge step in the right direction. Even if its only air freight that it reduces and gets the total overrun much closer to or maybe a little below that 2 million, thats still a lot of money.
You're downplaying something that would ordinarily, down south somewhere, be fine to downplay, because honestly, it doesn't play as large a role. When you're looking at it up here, the dollar figure for it is so huge that it actually becomes central to everything.
Spoken by one who has no idea about the actual issues and hasn't been there. It happens quite frequently that items can't be gotten at any price. I've seen a 2 kg bag of flour go for over $50.
Yes there are other social issues at play in the communities but they are very far from the only issues in those communities. Do yourself and others a favor and do not speak of that which you do not know in certainties and absolutes.
With an actual land line involved it works out to 263mb per hour, low side. I get charged $25/gb over my limit so this is significant. Works out to $6.58 for an hour of talk time. In comparison my cell phone from bell with the package I have(and use all of) it is approximately $3.50 per hour talk time during regular hours and much less than that between 6 pm and 8 am + weekends.
I can't see a cell provider charging a whole lot less than that for data over usage.
The reason for this is that I live in a very remote area and the local Telco has zero competition and claims "Satellites are expensive" as the reason for the bill. My 10gb/mo connection costs 129.99/mo. The usual corporate BS though, they report record profits every year and continue to receive government grants that make up 50%+ of their profits in order to "Make it worthwhile to keep doing business here"
Also I may have screwed up some KB abbreviations there, but thats not bits I'm quoting, thats bytes. Overall its cheaper for me to talk on a Ventrilo server on 32kbit speex Codec when possible, their bitrates are more managable, usually around half of skype. Teamspeak is better still but I can't get the same quality of sound from them and I'm bad at hearing through static. Some people can manage it fine but its too distracting for me and I miss everything the other person is saying. The newer teamspeak apparently fixes most of this but I haven't had the time/opportunity to try it.
Skype severely lies.
I live in a place where my DSL is capped to 10 gb/month making monitoring usage an absolute necessity.
Skype eats around 40kb/s most of the time if anyone is actually talking. Droops down to 5-8kb/s if the line is muted on both ends. Throw an actual land line into the mix and that drives it up to 60-70kb/s.
Honestly the PCIe cards are not even tapping on the door of the halfway mark for potential PCIe Bandwidth. I fail to see why keeping a good standard for the next 6 years is a down side.
On the other hand I find they are great for eating chicken noodle soup as I like to leave the majority of the broth for last and eat it with bread.
Theres a niche-use field for almost everything :)