Seriously? Less surface area on an already huge connector is going to magically attenuate the signal? I really don't think you know what you're talking about... We're talking about milliohms of resistance here. Nothing your ears can detect.
Now if there were intermittent contact rubbing issues, then sure, you'd hear scratching as it makes and breaks connection. But if there's enough constant contact then it's negligible.
Foxconn's factories are a mini-city. I'm sure if you compare US city suicide rates to Foxconn mini-city suicide rates, they'd be comparable. It's only really an outrage if their suicide rate was 3x or more higher than US suicide rates.
I dislike Apple software but as an electrical engineer, I'm a huge fan of their hardware.
You do realize that all computer companies outsource their manufacturing work to the likes of Foxconn, not just Apple right?
On the suicide note from your other troll post: the suicide rate at the Foxconn factories are less than the suicide rate at US universities.
I've always thought Bitcoin was stupid, but let's do some more analysis on the energy costs here, which this site really should have included.
The best GPU perf/watt was the 5870x2 (Ares OC) at 1.584 (Mhash/s)/watt. Not sure where they got their total watt figures from, but from a review site, it is 500W, unoverclocked. This site says it's 50W more overclocked. I'll be generous and not include this since the CPU isn't being taxed as much. So 500W power consumption.
So, typing 500 watts * 1 year * (10 cents / (kilowatt*hour)) into Google: about $482. Taking their $1,666 one year profit figure (mining profits - cost of card), it is now really a cost of $1,184. Which isn't as bad as I thought it'd be.
They didn't include the effect of increasing difficulty on decreased mining speed, but theoretically the currency should become more valuable as it goes on.
The cost of feathers has risen, even down is up!