A human engine has a torque curve similar to that of a steam engine, more or less, which is to say that it is flat until a certain critical rpm, at which point it begins to drop off, because the energy used in accelerating and decelerating massy components (legs) begins to take up all the energy produced.
Asterisk is known to run on many OS platforms. However, Linux is the main platform for development and Digium hardware support. If you are running VoIP only, or if you are comfortable with using external media gateways to connect conventional telephone equipment, then you have more systems to choose from, like FreeBSD, Mac OS X and Solaris.
An asterisk (*); from Late Latin asteriscus, from Ancient Greek á¼ÏÏÎµÏÎ¯ÏÎºÎ¿Ï, asteriskos, little star) is a typographical symbol or glyph. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often vocalize it as star (as, for example, in the A* search algorithm or C*-algebra).