OnLive and Gaikai — How To Stop a Gaming Revolution

happierr writes "The gaming industry has been struggling in the last few months, and it is about to struggle even more when OnLive and Gaikai launch later this year. The new services are both a step in the right direction to counter piracy and provide easily-accessible gaming to people with low-end PCs. They might even do for PC gaming what the Wii did for casual gaming; greatly expand the market and draw interest from people who would not ordinarily play games. The services are a real threat for the Big Three video game companies (Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo). How will they combat these revolutionary services? There are a few steps that the Big Three are taking to combat the New Two, such as an increased reliance on peripherals and vision cameras, exclusivity deals, and more online multiplayer features, which OnLive and Gaikai will have a hard time matching."

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Re:Latency

[stjobe]

The US has, bar none, the best medical care in the world.

Well, I've seen this touted before, and as then I feel obliged to point out that e.g. the WHO disagrees:

The World Health Organization (WHO), in 2000, ranked the U.S. health care system as the highest in cost, first in responsiveness, 37th in overall performance, and 72nd by overall level of health (among 191 member nations included in the study). The WHO study has been criticized in a study published in Health Affairs for its methodology and lack of correlation with user satisfaction ratings. A 2008 report by the Commonwealth Fund ranked the United States last in the quality of health care among the 19 compared countries. However, the U.S. also has higher survival rates than most other countries for certain conditions, such as some less common cancers. Yet, the U.S. has a higher infant mortality rate than all other developed countries. According to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, the United States is the "only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not ensure that all citizens have coverage" (i.e. some kind of assurance).

And more:

Medical debt is the principal cause of bankruptcy in the United States.

(source: wikipedia, of course, emphasis mine).