End of the LineBy: Barry C. Lynn In September 1999, an earthquake devastated much of Taiwan, toppling buildings, knocking out electricity, and killing 2,500 people. Within days, factories as far away as California and Texas began to close. Cut off from their supplies of semiconductor chips, companies like Dell and Hewlett Packard began to shutter assembly lines and send workers home. A disaster that only a decade earlier would have been mainly local in nature almost