Auatech, what do you mean by "shorted pins?" BTW in general, I ran a few tests... I tried plugging the cable into another computer while it was off, to see if the lights would go on. They didn't, so I'm guessing that its a problem with the NIC. I also went into the bios and deactivated the NIC as a boot device... lights stayed on.
More importantly, is this even a problem? I only just noticed it a few days ago and it doesnt seem to be doing anything to my net connection, I just think its a little weird.