The Importance of the Internet
I already knew that I can't live without the internet. But that fact was emphasized again recently. On December 28th of 2006, there was 2 major earthquakes at 7.2 and 6 point something on the Richter scale centered in the ocean about 15 km south of Taiwan.
Unfortunately, a lot of trans-oceanic fiber optics cables runs along the ocean floor through that area. As a result, 6 major fiber optics lines that connects China to other parts of the world were severely damaged. For the first few days after the earthquake, I could not access any foreign sites. Even now, the news is that it's probably going to be till the end of Janurary before all the lines can be repaired. Even now, checking my school's email account in the US is an exercise in patience and downloading any attachements largers than 50kB or so is basically impossible.
This has been extremely frustrating, and I really hope this can be fixed soon.
