The Internet Sucks So Bad

The internet in China is VERY VERY slow, but thats not entirely the firewall's fault. There are only 3 main entry points for internet packets coming into china, and they almost all have to make round trips to US servers, but oh well. The censorship is definitely noticeable, but not as bad as I imagined. James Fallows wrote a great article about the censorship in a recent issue of The Atlantic, which explains how its done, why its done, and why even though its crazy, its not as crazy as some people make it out to be. People don't seem to care that much, and the ones that do get around it.

I can't access wikipedia, which is the biggest pain in the ass because its often one of the first search results. Worse, clicking on a wikipedia link seems to completely sever your connection sometimes (even for other pages). YouTube is accessible most of the time. Blogspot, Livejournal, and Wordpress blogs are almost universally blocked. Slashdot is inaccessible as well. Weirdly enough, sometimes I'll accidentally click on a link that was blocked the day before and find myself able to get through. Its more annoying than anything. I can already feel myself craving U.S. broadband.