Your old motorola probably also beamed 3 watts of microwaves into your brain.
That's one advancement that was worthwhile... newer digital phones generally only require 1W of transmit power in the same signal conditions as the old analog phones.
I'd buy newer phones if they promised less radiated energy into my skull... otherwise new phones are just shlock.
My Nokia 6160 (circa 1999) turns on seconds... my friends Motorla V60 (circa 2003) takes about 10 seconds to "boot" and hangs occationally...
...and who can forget the favorite trick of the video card manufacturers...
Release a powerful (and expensive) card with a certain model number...
3-6 months later release card that contains an "MX" (or whatever) version of that chip which costs a fraction of the price, but also offers a fraction of the performance.
They confuse the hell out of consumers in order to sell you something... they play games with model numbers, twist benchmarks and employ deceptive advertising tactics... and when asked why, they all claim they have to because the other guy does it too...
Only problem is that there are a huge number of manufacturers for any given product, and they're all trying to "1-up" each other on features and/or price.
So if I release a cell phone, my competitor is going to release a cell phone that has a voice recorder... so I release one with that plus a camera... competitor releases one with a higher-res camera... now we can do video... now we have more storage... now it does holographic imaging... etc...
It goes on forever w/ electronics... what you have is never good enough, even when it is.
I have a 4 year old cell phone and I'm constantly harassed by friends in the business who say I should upgrade to get more features, etc, etc... most of them say "but it's only $29 for this new one!", besides the fact that it requires that I re-sign a year+ contract, I just don't see any value at all in a new cell phone compared to my old one.
But if you're Jane Sixpack and you're getting ads and product placements shoved down your throat for new cool phones with more and more and more and more ring tones, flashing lights, features, animated icons, colors, mobile AIM, blah, blah, blah, blah ALL for $29.99! of course you're going to wind up saying yes and doing it...
To use your analogy, what if the police only apprehended murderers or thieves whom they knew to be unable to afford an adequate defense? The wealthy would be given a free ticket to commit any offense they desire without fear of prosecution.
This already happens daily... people who are of a certain ethnic group or who live in a certain area, or who look a certain way ARE treated differently by authorities then people who look wealthy / successful / white...
Now that isn't true in ALL cases... but it does happen...
I wouldn't be surprised if the RIAA was researching WHICH college and 13-year old kids they were suing first, just to make sure that Dad isn't Johnny Cochraine or something...
It's bullshit scare tactics to force people to comply.
They make completely outrageous claims as to the amount of damage they received from you sharing songs, and then offer you some "reasonable" settlement that you can probably barely afford to scrape together... but that beats the cost of a lawyer or going through a court battle. AND THAT'S why this is extortion...
From Dictionary.com:
\Ex*tor"tion\, n. [F. extorsion.] 1. The act or practice of wresting anything from a person by force, by threats, or by any undue exercise of power; undue exaction; overcharge.
They are threatening you with a MASSIVE lawsuit and HUGE fines that might be hundreds or even thousands of times bigger then the settlement they are offering.
They have ZERO proof as to who downloaded what... I could share 5,000 songs, but that doesn't mean that for each song I've shared they lost business... that's their weak point and that's where someone needs to attack this farce.
obligitory slashdot: "Damn mac zealot! You could do this same thing on a Linux machine for free using 73 different editing packages!"
(meanwhile I'm writing this from a Mac, because hell, it's just better... it's like breathing standing in a forest far away from civilization as opposed to at an underground train station, sure you get air in both places but the quality is much better)
The Airport Authority is spending between $200,000 and $300,000 on the devices, Snowden said. The authority is trying to recoup that money through state and federal grants and by eliminating some of the 30 part-time, temporary workers that reroute lost bags.
Granted, 29 is "some" of 30 workers if that's what they mean... but it's also sounding they aren't planning to eliminate all the workers who route bags... just some of the ones who are temporarily employed to deal with lost bags...
Of course, I've been temporarily employed for 3 years now...
If someone is rude during a movie, they can always be asked to leave - the cell phone is a moot point.
I see... so last week when I was at the movies and the 300lb guy w/bandana and gang colors was having a colorful chat on his cell phone with someone who he refered to only as "bitch" or "woman"... I could have informed him he was being rude, and asked him to hang up, or just asked him to leave.
Dang it! Why didn't I think of that???
The point of this is to force the issue via invisible passive-aggressive means...
Now I understand why people get frustrated with people talking loudly on cell phones, so the better question is, why haven't the mic's improved?
I think most of the time people speak loudly into phones because of the noise around them... many newer phones I've used sound much better then older ones, but that doesn't stop people from yelling when they're in a loud environment.
They are also used for on call personal like plumbers, system admins, fire fighters, and meidcal staff. You know that nice doctor that helps out during a baby's delivery? They aren't standing by in the waiting room, they are out and about and get called in when they are needed.
Get a pager, the older 1-way models use different parts of the spectrum... leave it on vibrate. Or, excuse yourself every 30 minutes or so and check your voicemail in a public area. If you're so damn important that you can't be out of the loop for 30 minutes then you probably shouldn't be wherever it is that you are at that moment.
Let's look at the bad sides. Public events like fairs would use jammers to get people to pay exhorbitant payphone rates, hotels would use them to force people to use room phone, and on and on
Agreed... so any hotel that jams/blocks calls outside of in-use conference rooms, or in "public" areas will have to accept that the business world, which needs cell phones like they need oxygen at this point, will not go there...
Any other places, like fairs etc, will also have to deal with the repercusions of not allowing cell phone use in their area.
These legal jamming devices would need to have a fairly limited range, so chances are that walking for a minute or two would put you in a cell-phone ok area.
Public airwaves. What part of public is so hard to understand?
We're not talking about blocking people driving down the road (which is public areas), we're talking blocking inside resteraunt dining rooms, in theaters, inside hospital rooms, etc... I agree, the idea of blocking cell phones in "public" areas is very bad.
You have no more right to shut off someone else's phone for bothering you than you do duct tape someone who's talking too loud at the mall. This is incredibily self centered, and blatantly disregards other people who also have a right to free speech.
Actually... it's incredibly self centered for people to talk on their f*cking phone during a movie!
Also, please, please, please, please, please do not start this shiat about "you're violating my right to free speech by preventing me from talking on the phone"... that's complete bullsh*t
Now that've bitched... wouldn't it be great to have a standard in the US (and the rest of the world maybe?) where if you're within a certain proxmity to a beacon your phone knows to force itself into vibrate mode and not allow incoming or outgoing calls (except 911)? This would allow people receive notification of new calls/voicemails... still use their 2-way messaging... still allow 911 calls to be made... but solve the problem of people making or receiving calls while they're inappropriate locations.
I agree... these things are illegal... but it's frightening that the potential monetary damages and jail time are so high!
I've been watching Animal Planet all day... guy starves his dog to the brink of death, leaves it outside, he gets a $500 fine... no jail time, etc...
But allowing someone to copy a music file has routinely caused people to get multi-thousand dollar judgments held against them...
Now we're talking jail time + fines...
If even one or two people are financially ruined and left with a shattered life, it will be a tragedy.
I'm just hoping this winds up like that FBI warning at the beginning of dvds and tapes... yeah, $250,000 fine and 20 years in jail for copying... ok...
Jews in Nazi Germany had their property taken away from them...
The RIAA represents groups of people who produce and create music... it's being "stolen" from them and they have no ability to stop people from "stealing" it, except to use the laws that are in place for just such an instance.
Sounds like the people who are "stealing" the music are the Nazi's and slave owners according to your theories. BTW, I also think it's ridiculous to equal Nazi butchers and slave owners to this situation. VERY different ball game.
BTW, I quote "stealing" because the RIAA's claims are that file sharing music causes them to lose sales. So in this case the concept of stealing is one sided because usually stealing hurts because it directly costs the person who has something stolen via the replacement cost. In this case the claim is that they're preventing the RIAA from gaining money, but the RIAA doesn't have to pay to replace "stolen" music. And that claim of lost sales is dubious at best right now based on CD sales figures... but in the long run (5-10 years) if file sharing was allowed to continue uninhibited I have no doubt it would become a serious cause of lost sales for them.
And no, I don't accept the "free music is just the way it should be" mentality, just like there were people who felt (and fought for the fact) that it was wrong to think "blacks should be slaves, that's just the way it should be".
The original poster might as well bring up killing people when they get past 70 because they're become too expensive to maintain and are not productive. Maybe some of them still have sharp minds, they can file for exclusion from the law that orders them destroyed, because they might be able to pass on some wisdom...
When it comes to life vs. money it's fairly vile to even consider the money.
I think that's the point that the two people who are offended by this are trying to make.
However... there is another side to this... this little girl got 8 organs... which means that there are potentially 8 other kids who might have needed each of those organs. Statistically 8 children each needing 1 organ have a better chance of survival then 1 child who needs 8 organs.
IMHO that's the only way that someone could argue against trying to help this little girl with the world being the way it is today.
we could easily be the result of a "dirty" probe sent here 3 billion years ago...
Although I will admit that it would suck to announce results of finding life on another planet only to figure out that someone sneezed on the probe before take off.
Buying a house does not necissarily make sense if you're buying it with very little (least $50k for a downpayment (which means like $80k total when you figure on work you need to do right away, moving, closing costs, emergency money, etc) is nuts...
That's a form of surround-virtualization... you may be correct, I haven't checked it out...
I just know that they are the only vendor (codec or southbridge) to take a 6-ch source (be it actual 6-ch from a game, or mono spread out to 6 wacky channels) and encode AC3 from it...
I refuse to buy motherboards that don't come with SPDIF these days:)
I'm guessing you don't work in the industry... it's not only possible, but it's been done on many designs...
Codec construction is important, for example two major suppliers from Taiwan: C-Media and Realtek, are both pretty much crap even on their high end parts... they've traded features and low BOM cost for audio quality...
Other codec supplies, like Analog Devices & Sigmatel (or even Wolfson, Phillips, etc) have put audio quality as a priority to feature sets.
Unfortunately if Realtek rolls out some new feature then the others need to follow or be left behind.
Using ground layers properly, moats and keeping traces near the edge of the board... or even better, making sure you keep the codec as physically close to the jacks as possible, will yield very good results easily rivaling your average sound card.
Let's also keep in mind that an AC'97 or "HD-Audio/Azalia" codec goes for between $0.50 and $1.25...
Where-as a typical SoundBlaster will go from $50-200... they're able to use a lot higher grade support components, and since they are on a PCI card they're able better isolate from the rest of the motherboard (which speaks to your point...)
As for digital out...
Many motherboard manufacturers are finding that the masses are demanding SPDIF (digital) output from onboard sound, it's been available for the past several years from AC'97 vendors, even on most of the low end codecs, but adding the TOS (or even RCA) jacks cost too much in BOM and board real estate (surprise, surprise)...
I think the next big requirement from users will be that SPDIF provide an AC3/DTS signal for all 4/6/8 channel audio. I'm surprised that this wasn't a requirement for Azalia, but we'll see what happens in the near future... After all, AC'97 is currently at version 2.3, there's room for change...
Currently nearly all (even the $200 SB Audigy2) provide only PCM (2-ch) when playing non-DVD audio (when playing DVD they will all pass the AC3/DTS signal out, but they do not generate their own based on a multi-channel game or sound file).
This is mainly due to the licensing fees from Dolby to encode AC3/DTS signals, and partly due to the processing overhead that would be required for implementation in soft-audio.
The exception to this are boards equipped with the nVidia nForce2 audio, they build a DSP into the southbridge(ICH) that encodes AC3 out of any 4/6-ch source being played.
You're right... but keep in mind that most of the motherboards out there that give out lousy sound from onboard are due to poor layout from the manufacturers... who giving poor layouts because want to save money and physical space on the motherboard, at the expense of analog components like sound...
more bits and more kHz are useless for onboard until you clean up the analog paths to the jack, and properly isolate the codecs on the motherboards using ground moats. Nothing worse then a company that routes a processor +12V feed trace right under the analog side of the codec... or worse, a noisy signal like PS/2 or NIC.
Slashdot Mirror
Marquis' mother and a former girlfriend reportedly told authorities the teen had been having troubles
Holy shait! The guy's mom is also his ex-gf? No kidding he has troubles! Oh wait... grammer...
VCRs are stable because no one gives a shit about them anymore...
DVDs are a better example... they are fairly stable... not a lot of features being added...
But that's because the technology hits a point where there's nothing left to do...
Camera's can always get higher resolutions... smaller... more features... more storage, etc...
Your old motorola probably also beamed 3 watts of microwaves into your brain.
That's one advancement that was worthwhile... newer digital phones generally only require 1W of transmit power in the same signal conditions as the old analog phones.
I'd buy newer phones if they promised less radiated energy into my skull... otherwise new phones are just shlock.
My Nokia 6160 (circa 1999) turns on seconds... my friends Motorla V60 (circa 2003) takes about 10 seconds to "boot" and hangs occationally...
...and who can forget the favorite trick of the video card manufacturers...
Release a powerful (and expensive) card with a certain model number...
3-6 months later release card that contains an "MX" (or whatever) version of that chip which costs a fraction of the price, but also offers a fraction of the performance.
They confuse the hell out of consumers in order to sell you something... they play games with model numbers, twist benchmarks and employ deceptive advertising tactics... and when asked why, they all claim they have to because the other guy does it too...
Only problem is that there are a huge number of manufacturers for any given product, and they're all trying to "1-up" each other on features and/or price.
So if I release a cell phone, my competitor is going to release a cell phone that has a voice recorder... so I release one with that plus a camera... competitor releases one with a higher-res camera... now we can do video... now we have more storage... now it does holographic imaging... etc...
It goes on forever w/ electronics... what you have is never good enough, even when it is.
I have a 4 year old cell phone and I'm constantly harassed by friends in the business who say I should upgrade to get more features, etc, etc... most of them say "but it's only $29 for this new one!", besides the fact that it requires that I re-sign a year+ contract, I just don't see any value at all in a new cell phone compared to my old one.
But if you're Jane Sixpack and you're getting ads and product placements shoved down your throat for new cool phones with more and more and more and more ring tones, flashing lights, features, animated icons, colors, mobile AIM, blah, blah, blah, blah ALL for $29.99! of course you're going to wind up saying yes and doing it...
I totally agree w/ your sentiment that when you have rapid and constant spins on technology you wind up with cheap shit.
There is another scenario that is equally bad, but in a different way, for the consumer...
They constantly release new models which are basically the old models with some subtle feature difference and/or tweak to the appearance...
The purpose of that is usually to thwart bad reviews, or just confuse end users and allow for price increases without and NRE's.
"state of the art"? How about someone familiar with 5-10 year old technology?
If they need it, I've got my BBS on 5.25" disks from 1989...
Of course... I didn't take credit cards... and I wasn't a charity... is that what supposedly makes this unique?
I hope this guy gets spit on in public... he's giving people who actually come up with good, unique ideas a bad name.
To use your analogy, what if the police only apprehended murderers or thieves whom they knew to be unable to afford an adequate defense? The wealthy would be given a free ticket to commit any offense they desire without fear of prosecution.
This already happens daily... people who are of a certain ethnic group or who live in a certain area, or who look a certain way ARE treated differently by authorities then people who look wealthy / successful / white...
Now that isn't true in ALL cases... but it does happen...
I wouldn't be surprised if the RIAA was researching WHICH college and 13-year old kids they were suing first, just to make sure that Dad isn't Johnny Cochraine or something...
It's bullshit scare tactics to force people to comply.
They make completely outrageous claims as to the amount of damage they received from you sharing songs, and then offer you some "reasonable" settlement that you can probably barely afford to scrape together... but that beats the cost of a lawyer or going through a court battle. AND THAT'S why this is extortion...
From Dictionary.com:
\Ex*tor"tion\, n. [F. extorsion.] 1. The act or practice of wresting anything from a person by force, by threats, or by any undue exercise of power; undue exaction; overcharge.
They are threatening you with a MASSIVE lawsuit and HUGE fines that might be hundreds or even thousands of times bigger then the settlement they are offering.
They have ZERO proof as to who downloaded what... I could share 5,000 songs, but that doesn't mean that for each song I've shared they lost business... that's their weak point and that's where someone needs to attack this farce.
obligitory slashdot: "Damn mac zealot! You could do this same thing on a Linux machine for free using 73 different editing packages!"
(meanwhile I'm writing this from a Mac, because hell, it's just better... it's like breathing standing in a forest far away from civilization as opposed to at an underground train station, sure you get air in both places but the quality is much better)
The Airport Authority is spending between $200,000 and $300,000 on the devices, Snowden said. The authority is trying to recoup that money through state and federal grants and by eliminating some of the 30 part-time, temporary workers that reroute lost bags.
Granted, 29 is "some" of 30 workers if that's what they mean... but it's also sounding they aren't planning to eliminate all the workers who route bags... just some of the ones who are temporarily employed to deal with lost bags...
Of course, I've been temporarily employed for 3 years now...
If someone is rude during a movie, they can always be asked to leave - the cell phone is a moot point.
I see... so last week when I was at the movies and the 300lb guy w/bandana and gang colors was having a colorful chat on his cell phone with someone who he refered to only as "bitch" or "woman"... I could have informed him he was being rude, and asked him to hang up, or just asked him to leave.
Dang it! Why didn't I think of that???
The point of this is to force the issue via invisible passive-aggressive means...
Now I understand why people get frustrated with people talking loudly on cell phones, so the better question is, why haven't the mic's improved?
I think most of the time people speak loudly into phones because of the noise around them... many newer phones I've used sound much better then older ones, but that doesn't stop people from yelling when they're in a loud environment.
They are also used for on call personal like plumbers, system admins, fire fighters, and meidcal staff. You know that nice doctor that helps out during a baby's delivery? They aren't standing by in the waiting room, they are out and about and get called in when they are needed.
Get a pager, the older 1-way models use different parts of the spectrum... leave it on vibrate. Or, excuse yourself every 30 minutes or so and check your voicemail in a public area. If you're so damn important that you can't be out of the loop for 30 minutes then you probably shouldn't be wherever it is that you are at that moment.
Let's look at the bad sides. Public events like fairs would use jammers to get people to pay exhorbitant payphone rates, hotels would use them to force people to use room phone, and on and on
Agreed... so any hotel that jams/blocks calls outside of in-use conference rooms, or in "public" areas will have to accept that the business world, which needs cell phones like they need oxygen at this point, will not go there...
Any other places, like fairs etc, will also have to deal with the repercusions of not allowing cell phone use in their area.
These legal jamming devices would need to have a fairly limited range, so chances are that walking for a minute or two would put you in a cell-phone ok area.
Public airwaves. What part of public is so hard to understand?
We're not talking about blocking people driving down the road (which is public areas), we're talking blocking inside resteraunt dining rooms, in theaters, inside hospital rooms, etc... I agree, the idea of blocking cell phones in "public" areas is very bad.
You have no more right to shut off someone else's phone for bothering you than you do duct tape someone who's talking too loud at the mall. This is incredibily self centered, and blatantly disregards other people who also have a right to free speech.
Actually... it's incredibly self centered for people to talk on their f*cking phone during a movie!
Also, please, please, please, please, please do not start this shiat about "you're violating my right to free speech by preventing me from talking on the phone"... that's complete bullsh*t
Now that've bitched... wouldn't it be great to have a standard in the US (and the rest of the world maybe?) where if you're within a certain proxmity to a beacon your phone knows to force itself into vibrate mode and not allow incoming or outgoing calls (except 911)? This would allow people receive notification of new calls/voicemails... still use their 2-way messaging... still allow 911 calls to be made... but solve the problem of people making or receiving calls while they're inappropriate locations.
I agree... these things are illegal... but it's frightening that the potential monetary damages and jail time are so high!
I've been watching Animal Planet all day... guy starves his dog to the brink of death, leaves it outside, he gets a $500 fine... no jail time, etc...
But allowing someone to copy a music file has routinely caused people to get multi-thousand dollar judgments held against them...
Now we're talking jail time + fines...
If even one or two people are financially ruined and left with a shattered life, it will be a tragedy.
I'm just hoping this winds up like that FBI warning at the beginning of dvds and tapes... yeah, $250,000 fine and 20 years in jail for copying... ok...
Our already over burdened prison system... which is filled with actual criminals who rape, kill or steal...
The former president lies about getting BJ's while on the job, he's fine... but I share a COPY of a song and I get 10 years?
Save me jebus!
little sticky RFID blobs, not paper-thin stickers, but the fatter ones like they attach to clothing...
Let's spin this around...
Slaves couldn't own property...
Jews in Nazi Germany had their property taken away from them...
The RIAA represents groups of people who produce and create music... it's being "stolen" from them and they have no ability to stop people from "stealing" it, except to use the laws that are in place for just such an instance.
Sounds like the people who are "stealing" the music are the Nazi's and slave owners according to your theories. BTW, I also think it's ridiculous to equal Nazi butchers and slave owners to this situation. VERY different ball game.
BTW, I quote "stealing" because the RIAA's claims are that file sharing music causes them to lose sales. So in this case the concept of stealing is one sided because usually stealing hurts because it directly costs the person who has something stolen via the replacement cost. In this case the claim is that they're preventing the RIAA from gaining money, but the RIAA doesn't have to pay to replace "stolen" music. And that claim of lost sales is dubious at best right now based on CD sales figures... but in the long run (5-10 years) if file sharing was allowed to continue uninhibited I have no doubt it would become a serious cause of lost sales for them.
And no, I don't accept the "free music is just the way it should be" mentality, just like there were people who felt (and fought for the fact) that it was wrong to think "blacks should be slaves, that's just the way it should be".
The original poster might as well bring up killing people when they get past 70 because they're become too expensive to maintain and are not productive. Maybe some of them still have sharp minds, they can file for exclusion from the law that orders them destroyed, because they might be able to pass on some wisdom...
When it comes to life vs. money it's fairly vile to even consider the money.
I think that's the point that the two people who are offended by this are trying to make.
However... there is another side to this... this little girl got 8 organs... which means that there are potentially 8 other kids who might have needed each of those organs. Statistically 8 children each needing 1 organ have a better chance of survival then 1 child who needs 8 organs.
IMHO that's the only way that someone could argue against trying to help this little girl with the world being the way it is today.
I had a Car of Theseus once...
we could easily be the result of a "dirty" probe sent here 3 billion years ago...
Although I will admit that it would suck to announce results of finding life on another planet only to figure out that someone sneezed on the probe before take off.
You make a good point... which is basically that:
Buying a house does not necissarily make sense if you're buying it with very little (least $50k for a downpayment (which means like $80k total when you figure on work you need to do right away, moving, closing costs, emergency money, etc) is nuts...
different area codes mean it doesn't count...
That's a form of surround-virtualization... you may be correct, I haven't checked it out...
:)
I just know that they are the only vendor (codec or southbridge) to take a 6-ch source (be it actual 6-ch from a game, or mono spread out to 6 wacky channels) and encode AC3 from it...
I refuse to buy motherboards that don't come with SPDIF these days
I'm guessing you don't work in the industry... it's not only possible, but it's been done on many designs...
Codec construction is important, for example two major suppliers from Taiwan: C-Media and Realtek, are both pretty much crap even on their high end parts... they've traded features and low BOM cost for audio quality...
Other codec supplies, like Analog Devices & Sigmatel (or even Wolfson, Phillips, etc) have put audio quality as a priority to feature sets.
Unfortunately if Realtek rolls out some new feature then the others need to follow or be left behind.
Using ground layers properly, moats and keeping traces near the edge of the board... or even better, making sure you keep the codec as physically close to the jacks as possible, will yield very good results easily rivaling your average sound card.
Let's also keep in mind that an AC'97 or "HD-Audio/Azalia" codec goes for between $0.50 and $1.25...
Where-as a typical SoundBlaster will go from $50-200... they're able to use a lot higher grade support components, and since they are on a PCI card they're able better isolate from the rest of the motherboard (which speaks to your point...)
As for digital out...
Many motherboard manufacturers are finding that the masses are demanding SPDIF (digital) output from onboard sound, it's been available for the past several years from AC'97 vendors, even on most of the low end codecs, but adding the TOS (or even RCA) jacks cost too much in BOM and board real estate (surprise, surprise)...
I think the next big requirement from users will be that SPDIF provide an AC3/DTS signal for all 4/6/8 channel audio. I'm surprised that this wasn't a requirement for Azalia, but we'll see what happens in the near future... After all, AC'97 is currently at version 2.3, there's room for change...
Currently nearly all (even the $200 SB Audigy2) provide only PCM (2-ch) when playing non-DVD audio (when playing DVD they will all pass the AC3/DTS signal out, but they do not generate their own based on a multi-channel game or sound file).
This is mainly due to the licensing fees from Dolby to encode AC3/DTS signals, and partly due to the processing overhead that would be required for implementation in soft-audio.
The exception to this are boards equipped with the nVidia nForce2 audio, they build a DSP into the southbridge(ICH) that encodes AC3 out of any 4/6-ch source being played.
games are more swapable then ever before...
Rentals probably will start dying tho...
You're right... but keep in mind that most of the motherboards out there that give out lousy sound from onboard are due to poor layout from the manufacturers... who giving poor layouts because want to save money and physical space on the motherboard, at the expense of analog components like sound...
more bits and more kHz are useless for onboard until you clean up the analog paths to the jack, and properly isolate the codecs on the motherboards using ground moats. Nothing worse then a company that routes a processor +12V feed trace right under the analog side of the codec... or worse, a noisy signal like PS/2 or NIC.
Dear Boss: please don't fire me for this post