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We have sure seen a lot of flooding, mudslide and drowning deaths in the last two-years. More than normal in fact, but could this increase be an affect of Global Warming? Some say it is and others are not so sure.

Personally I seriously doubt if it has anything to do with Global Warming at all. Floods happen all over the year all around the world, there is generally a huge geological record of massive floods so I agree with you. I am not a Global Warming alarmist.

In our online think tank we have a section on Global Warming because people are talking about it, not because I necessarily believe that mankind’s activities is causing the planet to warm, as it appears to warm and cool all by itself over periods of hundreds and thousands of years due to all sorts of interrelated cycles and patters. As a matter of fact, I am surprised at the number of posts in this section, as it some of them should probably be in the other sections on Water Flows or Extreme Weather Sections, along with the essays on the patterns of erosion.

However in all fairness, large amounts of pollution in the air could cause severe rains, which could in turn back up prevailing weather patterns and one could say that those rains were bigger than normal due to the particulate in the air. Thus, although not Global Warming, some of these large rain events in some regions of the world could have been aided by regional air pollution, or not. Perhaps we should be checking some of the pollution that data available and check after each flooding event at the time to see if those issues existed prior to the flooding events. This might be a way we could prove beyond a reasonable doubt if human pollution is causing large rain events in various parts of the world? Consider this in 2006.

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Internet access in China

It was difficult getting internet access in China a mere 6 years ago. Corporate leased line were difficult to apply for, hotels had no internet access, dial-ups were extremely unreliable, xDSL or cable were largely unavailable and cybercafes largely denied foreigners access.

Today, China is one of the easiest country in the Asia to make internet accessible to businesses, homes, travellers and students.

If you are a business traveller or tourist, you will be pleasantly surprised that almost all hotels, down to 3 stars hotels, even in more remote cities offer broadband internet access in their hotel rooms. Most rooms will have an ethernet port for you to hook up to the hotel’s broadband. Access is mostly automatically DHCP with dynamic IPs but in certain hotels, you may need to call the reception to allow access from your room.

You can also visit a cybercafe or ‘wang ba’ as they are known in China. Cybercafes are everywhere in China and can be a dingy 5 computer setup to large cybercafes with hundreds and hundreds of computers. Most cybercafes in China are patronized by young people whose sole purpose are computer games or online-chatting. These youngsters can spend days in the cybercafes without going home. If you find them too noisy for your liking, you can even request for a private VIP room to surf in peace and comfort!

As a foreigner, you will need to show your passport before you can be allowed access to a cybercafe. In many provinces, the local law requires your picture to be taken and your particulars submitted to a central database. The cybercafes are pretty strict about this or they are liable to have their operating licences taken away. Cybercafes are lucrative businesses in China and you can be sure that they implement the required laws most strictly!

One of the problem that you may face in a public cybercafe is that all the log-in procedures and computer operating systems will only be in Chinese even in the touristy areas. Hence, you will need the cybercafe operator assistance before you can eventually start answering all your Hotmails and Gmails.

If you like visiting coffee cafes, you will also find that many of the newer cafes offer internet points for you to plug in your laptop. Most of the time, usage is free. At this point of time, wireless internet access does not seem to be entirely popular as compared to wire access in these cafes.

If you are running a business, getting a corporate lease line or xDSL broadband is a breeze with very competitive ISP fighting for your business. Monthly charges are low and access speed is decent. In fact, many newer office buildings offer broadband access as part of the rental deal and you need not apply seperately to the ISP.

Home users are well taken care of as well. Many new apartment also comes with broadband access or you can apply to the ISPs directly. Charges for monthly sDSL broadband can be as low as US12.

Control of the internet

China is one of the countries with strict internet laws. Having said that, internet usage in China is very, very high for both business and social use. Because personal computers are still expensive by China’s income standard, most people access the internet from cybercafes or from offices.

All websites hosted in China needs to be a approved by a government unit. One of the first thing you will notice in China is that domestic sites are blazingly fast but foreign hosted sites tend to be very slow. This is due to foreign sites having to go through a proxy as well as a bottleneck on China’s limited conduit out to the international internet pipes.

Many foreign sites such as CNN, Falungong, Playboy and other sites deem sensitive to China’s society are blocked.

Web applications and development in China are often of a high standard. Many domestic sites such as Alibaba and Sohu has made it to the very competitive top internet arenas. Many web development companies from Taiwan, South Korea and even the USA has also made China their development base for their web applications as China offers a large pool of competitive and high qualified web developers.

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The invention and continuing popularity of the internet changed the way we live. Life certainly became a bit easier with the internet. With the internet, we now have the ability to search archives of files in the library, communicate with relatives half way around the world and we can now even shop for groceries right in the comfort of our own home.

It has changed the way we communicate and live our lives. Even businesses now use the internet as a tool for making more profit.

A few years ago, we accessed the internet using a modem; this would seem fast for someone who grew up using snail mail, but after the invention of high-speed internet, we now notice how slow a 56kbps dial up internet can be.

You might have experienced using a 56kbps dial up internet and after you typed in the website, it would seem that you can actually go to the kitchen make yourself dinner and after you come back to find out the webpage you typed isn’t even finished loading.

Today a speed of 256kbps and higher is considered a high-speed internet, it would seem that 56kbps is puny. It the time of the 56kbps internet, downloading a simple mp3 file could take a long time.

Today, the 256kbps high-speed internet gives you the ability to download full-length movies.

There are so many advantages with high-speed internet. One would be online gaming. It is now possible for people with high-speed internet to play with others from every part of the world with high-speed internet connection.

Another great feature is that you can update Windows protection software half the time a dial up internet can. Since many viruses are circulating the internet, your computer should have updated anti-virus software. The dial up internet is much more prone to viruses because of slow updates.

High-speed internet changed the way we communicate. With this technology, it is now possible for us to communicate not just by plain text but also through video and voice, much like a video telephone. The cost of putting up this technology in our home is very affordable. Almost everyone can afford it.

As the year’s passes, the demand for high-speed internet connection increases. Because of the growing demand, many companies opened as providers of high-speed internet and created competition. This increase in competition enabled people to afford high-speed internet.

The competition between providers did not only result into more affordably priced high-speed internet connection but it also caused a wide variety of products for high-speed internet connection. Some companies now offer VoIP phones. They also offer different high-speed internet packages that you can choose from to suit your needs.

Choosing the best high-speed internet providers is easy; all you need is a little time and effort.

Here are some few tips to keep in mind before you choose your high-speed internet provider:

Find out what you really need from a provider and estimate how much time you will be using the internet.

Bob Hett has extensively covered the Internet Service Provider industry as an analyst and has researched the various companies for factors based on price, reliability, support and overall quality. Learn more at High Speed Internet Service

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